Grasshopper questions

My honorary daughter and my step-daughter are both moving into the "real" world . . . or at least into the next stage of the Academic World.  K-daughter is getting ready to head out of the house for her junior year of college; my step-daughter will soon be starting grad school in another state.  And they have both had lots of questions for me.

As usual, being a frugal-yet-slightly-pushy sort of person, I have lots of answers.  Here are some of them.

What kind of food is the cheapest to buy?

Free food.   Seriously.  When you're on a college campus, there will be all sorts of events that use food to try to lure people in; take advantage of those!  (The art talk/lecture/schmoozy stuff that goes with the food is often really good, too).  If you're at all connected to the organizer, offer to stick around and help clean up --- and maybe to take leftover food home.

Okay, but aside from mooched food, which kinds are cheap-but-nutritious?

Potatoes.  Rice and beans.  Add in healthy oils.  Think of traditional ethnic cuisines (curries, chili, etc), and you'll see how you can eat delicious meals for little money.   Don't forget to bulk-buy your food to bring the price-per-pound down even lower.

What's the best way to cook these small squash that are sitting on the counter top?

Cut them in half and scoop out the seeds; place the squash halves like bowls in a baking pan.  Make a mixture of olive oil, tomato, nuts, basil, parmesan cheese, and salt.  Use this as a filling for the squash.  Bake at 350 degrees.  Even J-son, who normally hates squash, said this tastes good.

Should I start saving for retirement while I'm still in school?

Wise people can disagree, but I say "yes".  The mere act of setting up a retirement account is the hardest part (from a learning/psychological/motivational point of view).  But that money you put in NOW is the most powerful money you can put in.   And setting up a retirement account is actually easy:  take it from Waste Less Grad Student!

What kind of retirement account does a young adult use?

Get a Roth IRA.   

Another alternative is a regular IRA, and that wouldn't be horrible, but it's better for high earners, which you are not, at least not yet. The difference is when the money gets taxed: a regular IRA gets taxed when you take the money OUT. If you're not making much money, you're not getting taxed much, so you would rather be taxed on the money going IN -- ergo, the Roth IRA is better for you right now.

You've heard of a 401K; that's what an employer sets up. You'll get that once you have a job, which you don't now, so 401Ks will come later. [Geek talk: My step-daughter has a graduate fellowship, so she's earning a bit of money, but isn't eligible for a 401K or 403b]. 

But can't I lose all my money?

Yes, if you invest in my uncle's Ostrich Farm.  He tried to get my parents to invest in that, but they decided not to do so, and you shouldn't either.  

If you invest in an "Index Fund" -- which sort of, but not exactly, means "an account that has a little bit of everything"-- then the only way to lose all your money is if every company on the planet goes broke, in which case you've got bigger problems than losing your money.  Then it's time for the underground survival shelter with a year's supply of canned food and water.  

But shouldn't I wait until I have a real job before I think about retirement?

Eh, if the choice is EITHER (a) saving for retirement while racking up debt, OR (b) doing neither, there's something to be said for option (b), it's true.  But if you're 25 years old, every dollar you put aside now will be worth $15 when you retire at age 65*.  If instead you wait just ten years to start your retirement savings at age 35, the dollar you invest then will turn into a mere $7.50.  That is, by starting now instead of waiting until you're settled in, you double the power of your money.  

*[Geek speak:  I'm using a 7% annual rate of return to get these numbers.  This is probably too low, or too high, depending on approximately 437,569 different factors you might want to add into the explanation.  But as a back-of-the-envelope computation, 7% is good enough to tell the story right.] 

Even more important than the total amount of money in your retirement account is the amount of money it can spit out at you every year you're retired.  That $15 in your Roth IRA will generate a dollar every year, for ever and ever*.  So forgoing a single movie now means you're setting yourself up to see movies every year of your retirement.  Skipping a spring break trip this year means you've funded a yearly vacation during each of your golden years.  To get the same benefit, but starting ten years later, you'd have to give up two movies or two vacations.  This is a powerful time in your investing life (and many 50 year olds can tell you regretfully they wish they'd known this).

*[Same 7%; same caveat.] 

How do you hem a black pair of pants?

Turn them inside out, put them on, and pin them up to the right length while they're on inside out.  Carefully remove the pants so you don't disturb the pins or poke yourself.  Baste with pink thread to check that you've done it right.  Try them on again.  When you're happy, do the hem in a regular stitch with black thread and remove the pink thread.  

How to NOT convert a spendy spouse

I've come to think of having a non-miser husband as just one of those puzzles that adds much-needed challenge to my life.  Some people have physical difficulties that mean they can't walk to work or do their own home repairs.  Some people have health problems that they'll have to spend money on all their lives.  Some people start their adult lives deeply in debt.  As for me, I have the challenge of trying to live a frugal life while surrounded by obligatory cable TV, Starbucks Coffee purchases, and Vitamin Water.  It's an added degree of difficulty, an extra adventure.  But it's do-able.

I've read many articles on "how to convert a spendthrift spouse" (and by read, I mean "read and re-read and annotate extensively in my own head").  But conversion, that's not my marriage.

For one thing, conversion (at least as far as my husband goes) just wouldn't work:  he's not going to change just because I happen to have a more sensible approach, because, really, why be sensible when you can have fun?

For another thing, both he and I have a philosophical and moral aversion to people getting married and then trying to "change" or "civilize" a spouse.  I could go on and on about this, but I won't:  I'll just say we both find it repugnant.

But there's a totally frugal reason for not trying to change a spendy spouse, and that's the point of this particular blog post.  And it's this:  one key tenet to a truly frugal life is being grateful for what you already have.  And as for me, I'm truly grateful for my husband.  Another key tenet to a truly frugal life is finding good ways to make the most of what you already have.  And there are lots of ways that having my (admittedly spendy) husband makes my life better.

Part of the trick for me is to take on the parts where I can take over -- to do what I call "preventative shopping".  By buying the boys' school clothes myself, by purchasing beef in bulk and having it near-at-hand in the freezer, by getting sandwiches and trail-mix together for long trips, . . . by doing all these things I can head off many more expensive impulse buys.

Another important ingredient is just to keep talking matter-of-factly about where the money goes.  We have a monthly financial update, during which I go over what we spent and what we brought in.  This has become a ritual that we both appreciate, because it satisfies my craving for rigor and accountability, and it gives him a chance to warn me about expenses he thinks might be coming down the pike.

But the non-conversion part of this adventure comes in learning to make the most of my husband's non-miser ways.  It's almost like a form of Frugal Jujutsu, using the power of my husband's expensive tastes instead of opposing them.

Here's an example:

My husband cares a lot about clothes.  A lot.  When he takes the subway, the toll collectors call him "Mr. GQ" -- and, in fact, he has a subscription to that particular magazine.  Whereas I spend downwards of $80/year on clothing for my boys and myself, My Guy will blow hundreds of dollars on a pair of suits for my pair of sons.  (They're teenagers; they will wear these suits perhaps a dozen times in their life.  Sheesh).

In contrast, I know zilch about clothes, except how to get them for cheap.  (Before I married my husband, my highly-colorful clothing philosophy was, "since I don't know what I'm doing, sin boldly.")   Left to my own devices, I could end up looking exactly how you'd think a cheap-o Miser Mom would look.  Even more, I could condemn my teenage sons to Middle School Ridicule Hell.  But when I combine my thrifty ways with my husband's eye for style, I get a bunch of stylin' sons, and a personal wardrobe that gets me compliments.


Here's another example:

My husband is impulsive.  Our lives have changed directions many times in the 16 years we've been married:  he's taken new jobs; he's suddenly enlisted in the military; we've adopted kids.  His impulsivity in spending a gazillion dollars on a Big New Something has faded over time (oh, thank goodness), but he'll still fritter away money on a gazillion smaller things that catch his eye in a bakery, grocery store, bike shop, clothing store . . . .

But his eagerness for all that is shiny means my husband shakes me out of ruts.  And I love him for that, because it's all too easy for a frugal, careful person like me to grow complacent.  So when I'm thinking of possibly taking on a big new project, and when any other ordinary person would be pessimistic or even cautiously realistic, my husband is the Labrador who has just heard the word "walk" and the rattle of the leash.  And so I've taken on bizarre big projects at work, and I've donated a kidney to a coworker, and I've adopted kids with him, and I'm getting ready for a triathalon.  And all of these with my husband being my most enthusiastic cheerleader.

There are more examples of course.

I could tell you how my husband is the athlete of the home, and how because of that he keeps me healthy and active when I'd otherwise be sitting on my duff doing math.   Or how he's the macho, take-control kind of guy a peace-nik like me is supposed to shun, but because of that he has raised our daughters and sons to be unafraid of hard work and physical challenge.  Or how, because he's a total cell-phone addict as well as a Guy kind of a guy, he becomes the point-person for talking with Customer Service reps of all stripes.

The point is:  spousal conversion is not the goal.  Having a happy (and financially stable) life is the goal.  And it's possible to be a black-belt-frugalist married to a Man of the World . . . and to have both of us be the better for it.

Family Re-frugal-union

I am on the road with family, back among my own, both literally and in the miser sense.

First, here is a picture of the splurge for this trip.

 It's a rented 15-passenger van to transport the 5 or 6 people from my own branch of this clan, plus their luggage, plus 5 bikes.  I suppose we could have made due with something smaller, but we really did manage to fill this baby up.  (Speaking of filling up, the tank took $100 of gas.  Wow!)

The bikes are for riding around through the Vermont hills.  We're also swimming in nearby lakes -- fab!

Eating with my large family is tons of fun.  Here's the front hallway of the home we're staying in.

Restaurants are right out, of course.  Note that we brought crock pots, cloth grocery bags full of food, several coolers.   We supplement what we brought with trips to nearby grocery stores.

We take turns cooking for one another.  My favorite meal so far was when my daughter and step-daughter pulled off a flawless taco dinner last night.  But right now I smell the bacon on the grill, under the capable hands of my frugal dad.  Mmm . . . memories!

Even with all the home cooking (or home-away-from home cooking), we're a fairly low-waste family.  We know we've come to the right spot when we see the family napkins . . .

 . . . embroidered with our names, so we can reuse them with minimal washing.

Several years ago, my sister bought a "memory book", and every year different people from the family fill in bits and pieces.  We've got stories of the 1940's from my dad and mom, we've got cute little pictures from my young nieces.

The prompt above says "My hairstyle(s) and hair colors during these years was . . . " and the response from one of my sisters is, "This is a family that cuts and colors their own or each others' hair. Dad has not paid for a haircut in more than 54 years . . . "

 We did head out to the local town one day so my step-daughter and husband could do some shopping and get fancy coffee.  I needed some colored pencils; the wonderful-yet-pricey bookstore sold some for $12.99/dozen.  Yoicks!  So I walked a half-mile (past waterfalls and parks) to a grocery store where I picked up a good set for $3.  phew!

And finally, here's a picture of some frugal gifting and re-gifting.  Here is what's left of my earrings; I've finally decided to go earring-less, so the family gets to split them up.

And what do I get in return?  A giant bag of torn jeans that I'll be able to tear up and make into a new denim rug.

Fresh air, family, good food, exercise, colored pencils, and a bag of denim.  What more could I ever need to make me happy?

Miser Mom's Ex-Wife

I married my husband in 1997.  Because we share everything, I figure his ex-wife is my ex-wife, too.  This post is all about her.

I'm going to do a bit of complaining here.  But before I start the whining and moaning about my ex-wife (and then move gleefully into the celebration that the whining and moaning is all over), I want to try to tell the story through her eyes as best I can.  I know that there's a version of this story in which I get to play the Evil Step-mother/Wicked Witch, and that's the version I want to tell first.

Imagine you are going through a divorce.  You have two children whom you love dearly and fiercely.  And you discover that your ex-husband is marrying an eccentric cheapskate: a woman who does not use toothpaste.  Who showers with a garden hose.  Who buys running shoes for $1 at a yard sale and wears them for years.  Who shuns air-conditioning.  Even in the best of situations, it's painful to share your kids with another adult of your ex-spouse's choosing; but now, imagine that your ex-spouse chose some nut like me!?

It is true I was not always this extreme.  Perhaps that makes it worse:  I am not sure it would be reassuring to see the general trend pointing in the "even weirder" direction.  I can not even imagine what my ex-wife thinks about all this stuff that I do . . . and that, I'll point out, is HUGELY to her credit.  I've never heard a single nasty word about me from her.   Not from her directly, not from our mutual acquaintances, not from her kids.  That says a heck of a lot more about her than it does about me.

To make her situation all that more tough, the man that the step-mother of her children happened to marry was her ex-husband.  This guy has a long list of redeeming qualities, but conscientiousness and slavish-attention-to-detail are not up near the top of the roster.  This means that the bulk of the scud-work (as opposed to the fun stuff) of caring for her daughters fell squarely back on my ex-wife's shoulders.  Teacher conferences?  All her.  Doctor's visits?  Her again.  Dentist, orthodontist, dermatologist?  Her, her, her.   Hair cuts?  Back-to-school shopping?  Birthday parties?  Well, it ain't him.

When he could, he went to their soccer games and races, which he loved.  I got to spend time after school with them, read them Winnie the Pooh, make them dinner, and to get them out the door many mornings.  But it was clear that the bulk of the parenting lay elsewhere.  For reasons of geography (his commute is insanely long) and temperament (even when he's home, he'd rather be riding the bike than checking homework), the father of our children sloughed much of the mantle of child rearing onto the shoulders of the women in -- and out of -- his life.  If there's a lifestyle description that fits both me and my ex-wife, it's that we're professional, feminist women with PhDs who somehow didn't escape antiquated women's roles in the parenthood department.

It's not particularly nice of me, when I put it all this way, for me to diss my sistah.  But I'm going to rant anyway, and here's my totally selfish, completely miserly rant:

I hate the kid bill!

hate hate hate hate hate.

The divorce decree stated something to the effect that the parents would evenly split all "reasonable expenses".   "Reasonable" is clearly in the eye of the beholder, and let's just say that I wasn't beholding.  Because my ex-wife took on/got stuck with all of the shopping, the definition of "reasonable" was all hers -- that in-and-of-itself seems reasonable . . . but I still hated it.  So every couple of months, we'd get the bill from her, totaling our half of what she'd spent on their kids.  A whopper.

It's hard to describe the difference in our spending, hers and mine.  How did I hate the kid bill?  Let me count the ways.  I hated the excessiveness of the kid bill:  the yearly clothing expenses for one of my step-daughters could have clothed BOTH of my boys AND my own birth daughter AND me for several years.   I hated the waste of it: there was so much we paid for that I thought no one should ever buy for themselves, much less for a kid.  I hated the lack of predictability: I never knew when the next kid bill would come, or how much it would be.  You can probably remember a time when you got a credit card bill and said, "holy cow!  I spent this much?!"   Now imagine that it happens every couple of months, but it's not you that's doing all the spending.  For an obsessive plan-ahead person like me, this was torture.

It didn't help matters that the girls attended a local K-12 private school (that both their dad and mom wanted them to go to).  This is the school that, when I told my friends where my step-daughters went to school, my friends' first comment was invariably, "Wow!  I heard that place is expensive!".  This was the school where, when my younger daughter was in high school, her clique of friends bought her a bracelet from Tiffany's so she wouldn't have to be the only one with nothing from that store.  Sweet.

Between the private school, the kid bill, and the late start at saving for college, paying for my step-daughters became the largest rock around which I had to steer our family's finances.   Their expenses were the reason my husband took far-distant (but well-paying) jobs -- and even so, their care and feeding consumed half of my husband's impressive take-home pay.   The tuition/kid bills became the reason I went from being moderately frugal to black-belt nutso.

The end of an era has arrived, however: the younger of the two girls has just graduated.  We just got the last kid bill.

I'll say it again:  we just got the last kid bill.   This means more to me than I could say, and not just for the most obvious of Miser Mom reasons.  It's only a minor coincidence that we got the last kid bill the same week that my Guy told his boss that he's going to drop down to part-time work from now on*.  After fifteen years of two-hour-long commutes each way, he will finally get to spend more time (albeit less money) on the sons who are still at home.

* Well, not exactly right away.  He's heading out 

for an Army school for three months this fall.

But after that, the part-time plan will kick in.

And for me, it means that I get to appreciate my ex-wife for the things that I really do admire her for, without wondering where her wallet has been lately.  She's so many things that I (and many other professors) would like to be: an award-winning teacher who my own students effuse about, a scholar whose work gets cited in the cross-disciplinary works I read, an avid athlete.  

But she's not a Miser Mom.

I have totally got her beat there.

*******


My ex-wife often reads my blog.  If she does read this particular post, I want to say here:  thank you for sharing your daughters with me.  Thanks for your incredible civility and constant fairness.  I know it wasn't easy for you to cede so much of your children's lives over to someone who had a very different outlook on life, and I really, really, really appreciate how much you seemed to trust me in spite of all the crazy twists and turns that life in this particular house seemed to take.  I might not like the kid bill ritual, but I do admire you.

Miser Iron Mom training

News flash:  training for an Iron Man can be time consuming!

(I mean, just in case you were thinking of trying this for yourself.)

Before I got this crazy idea in my head, my default weekly exercise routine was basically

• Run a total of 14 miles/week (2.5 miles 3 mornings a week; long run on Saturday).
• Spend about 3.5 hours/week doing said running.
• Rest (virtuously) 3 days/week.

Occasionally I'd take on an additional fun run, usually with my husband, but there was no pressure to do so.  And even when I kicked into high marathon-training gear, the biggest difference was that the week-day runs got a little more intense and the Saturday runs got longer.

Nowadays, in addition to the above running, I've added three more default components:

• Bike a total of 70 miles/week (15 miles 3 mornings/week; long bike on Sunday)
• Spend 5 hours/week doing said biking.

And

• Swim a total of 6 km/week (about 4 miles: 4km on Mondays, 2km on Wednesdays).
• Spend 3 hours/week doing said swimming

And

• Lift weights 3 days/week to build strength and avoid injury

In total, my weekly exercise time has gone from a piddly 3-4 hours per week to a rather substantial 12-13 hours per week.  And that doesn't count the extra fun runs or training rides that my husband cajoles me into.  

I have no idea how (or even whether) I'll be able to keep this up when classes start at the end of August.  And I know that this routine is a base, a minimum, just barely enough to get me ready for the real training that will kick into high gear come spring . . . because as impressive as the above amounts seem, swimming is the only sport where I'm doing the full Iron Man distance in the course of a regular week --- and eventually, I'll have to do the whole thing on a single day.

Given how quickly the bike training has progressed, I've decided I don't really want to spend two years training like this . . . so I've moved the target date for the race up to next summer.  (Plus, this way, if I have to bail on the Iron Man because of injury or adoption emergencies, I can still fall back on 2015).

Here's the baby I'm aiming for, for August 2014.  It bills itself as the "most vibrant venue", and I have no the heck idea what "vibrant" means in this context.  But the timing seems right for an academic like me; I'll have all next summer to kick my training from a wimpy 12-hours/week into something respectable.

Yeah.

Jar-Jar-Beets

The subtitle of this post should probably be,

"How to make hunks of healthy food taste good".  

Jar-Jar-Beet Salad

The hunks of food in this particular recipe is beets, but it could be any solid semi-edible hunk:  a potato, an apple, a turnip, a sweet-potato, a pile of kale.  I chose beets for this post because the transformation from Ugh to Yum is so dramatic for me.  "Dramatic" as in, I thought I'd never like beets.  And mostly, in just about any form you could name, I don't eat them.  Beets are not my food.  But ever since I tried this recipe three years ago, I can't get enough of Beet Salad.  Ta Dah!

Here's the recipe for Jar-Jar Beets.

Mix together

• peeled, shredded beets
• another shredded vegetable* 
• oil
• vinegar
• salt and pepper
• garlic
• a dash of hot sauce.

(*in today's version, zucchini, because it's coming out of my ears right now)

Don't bake it; chill it.  And then eat it.   And eat it.    and eat it . . . 

What make this recipe so good?  Let's dissect this recipe.

Love the food processor!

First, it tastes good because we cut things up.  Think about the difference between potatoes and french fries: size matters.  When my kids were young, they had a hard time eating apples.  But if I sliced the apples thinly (like potato chips), the kids would eat three apples in a sitting.  Slice sandwiches into "fingers", and the sandwiches disappear.  Chopping things makes them easier to munch on.  

Chopping things also increases the "surface area to volume ratio", meaning that even more of that solid, nerdy food can get coated in your favorite yummy dressing.  The beets become partly a vehicle for delivering the things our taste buds crave.  

Enter . . . the Dressing that contains those craved-for-substances.

Substances such as: fat.  Adding a bit of healthy oils just makes so many things taste yummier.  "Granola" is oats with oil (and some other stuff).  "Apple crisp" is apples with butter (and some other stuff).   "Mashed potatoes" is potatoes with butter (and not much else, really.   Dude!).    Noodles taste better topped with cheese.  Adding a bit of fat to something that came from something that grew in the dirt, well that can be enough to turn a vegetable or a starch into a meal.

The magic happens here

The vinegar adds a tang of acid.  People like cold foods that are slightly acidic -- wine and lemonade are common examples of acidic drinks; it's part of why so many people drink soda, and why a glass of water seems to taste better with a dash of lemon but not, say, a dash of pumpkin.  (Fruits and tomatoes are acidic; pumpkins not so much).  

For reasons I don't understand, hot foods don't seem to benefit as much from the acid influx:  when I'm baking a vegetable, the vinegar/lemon juice is the ingredient from above that I dial back, usually to the point of non-existence.  Tomatoes are still universally awesome additions, though.

Salt and pepper are (in the words of a lovely old Jennifer Berman cartoon), poster children for the "Fine Herbs and Spices of Ohio."  Salt is an incredible flavor enhancer, and I for one am very glad that it has recently been taken off the list of Very Very Bad For You condiments.  Yay, salt!

Garlic is on that list because . . . well, because . . . well, because any food that does not contain chocolate must automatically contain garlic, or otherwise risk perdition.  Garlic is the sacred essence of all being.  I mean, really.

The zucchini and the hot sauce?   They add the surprise bit of additional flavor and texture.  They represent variety, so they can vary.   When I make tomato salad it looks just like the recipe above, but with tomatoes playing the role of beets, and with nuts and basil taking over from zucchini and hot sauce.  When we make sweet-potato chips, the zucchini disappears and the hot sauce becomes paprika.  When we bake potatoes (sliced in 1/2 inch cubes), almost any kind of spice will work: oregano and basil for an italian mood, curry for those tangier nights, sage and thyme and chives when we're getting close to November.  

If possible, top the food off with a nice presentation.  (I love tossing this all in a jar; sometimes I manage to layer the veggies in stripes.  Mostly, not).

Even more important, give it a good name.  I am a huge fan of naming my food with appealing or funny names.  (True story: my husband recently asked me if "Swiss Chard" is really called that by everyone else, or did I just give it that location-based name?  I assured him that if I had named it, I would have called it "Chinese Chard" or "Chicago Chard" or "Swiss Salad".)  

Hence, when I bottle my beet salad into canning jars for storing in the fridge*, it gets the name, Jar-Jar-Beets.

*This recipe is not acidic enough to can in the sense of storing it up for the winter. For that, I pickle the beets, using this recipe plus extra hot sauce.

There you have it: a universal recipe for veggie salad:

• chop it.
• add fat (oil/mayonnaise/butter)
• add acid (lemon or vinegar)
• add garlic (or risk your very soul)
• add salt
• add other spices, and perhaps some other Stuff.

Give that baby a name, and serve it up proudly.  Yum!

Doing things the All-and-Nothing way

There's something to be said for slow and steady.

But slow and steady is not my life recently.  Instead, I've been energetically and exclusively focused . . . on  a variety of things.   Sort of like serial monogamy, but with aspects of my life instead of with romantic partners.

Last weekend, my boys went out of town and I had three days where I just threw myself into math.   (Remember, for me, math is fun).  For three days, except for a tiny bit of exercise and pauses to eat, the only thing I did was crank out pages and pages of math.  It was GREAT!

Monday was the 15th.  Math was over, but I moved about (running, lifting, biking, running again, swimming, biking, walking, dancing) for 15 hours straight, much as I did on June 15 but a bit less intensely because of the heat.

Another day was devoted just to the grand e-mail catchup.  Another day to committee work.

Last January, when my friend TL designed a marathon training schedule for us, she found one of the many programs that intersperses days of intense work with days of rest.  This summer, I'm discovering how much I like that system for so many different aspects of my life.

At any rate, today is mostly a rest-from-everything day, possibly meeting up with my best friend from childhood, so I'm not going to write much more now.