Winter paperwork clean out

Well, a new year has rolled around; the date on those bills and checks and paperwork that are coming in now all end in a "6" instead of a "5".  So it's time for taking care of the annual routine of "out with the old, and in with the new".

And so it's also time for a little "thank you" to a long-ago version of me, a version who decided to keep my financial records in one of these accordion folders.  Because that version of me who figured out how to keep papers, she totally enabled and gifted the version of me who wants to get rid of papers, too.


Okay, we're supposed to keep financial records for 7 years.  I err a tad on the safe side, but just a tad.  This past weekend, I pulled out my "2007" folder.  I moved the tax forms and the home repair receipts into a more permanent folder.  Then I pulled out all other papers and put them in my "to shred pile".  From there, with the help of a glittery silver permanent marker, I had my new paperwork folder ready to go.  Zzzzip -- just that fast and brainless.

I'll keep the 2016 folder on a nearby shelf, next to the desk where I pay bills.  Until taxes are done, I'll keep the 2015 folder nearby, too.  But all my other accordion folders -- the ones dated 2008 to 2014 -- those are tucked away on the floor of the closet in my sewing room, out of sight  and out of the way unless I really need to get them.

The categories I created, lo those many years ago, for dividing up the folder aren't perfect.  But they're good enough that it's not worth it to me to change them.  Here's the names on those 12 pockets:

• ATM & bank statements
• Auto
• Charity
• Credit Card statements
• Insurance Bills
• Insurance Policies
• Medical stuff
• Mortgage/House (even though we don't have a mortgage anymore)
• Pay stubs and reimbursement
• Pets & Kids (this category always makes me chuckle)
• Tax stuff
• Utilities & Phone

Thank you, long-ago me!

What she bought: spilt milk and soggy cell phones

This week, as is fairly usual during the cold winter months, my only shopping trip was to market.  I usually bike there, making it a stop home after I've helped serve breakfast at our local rescue mission.  But the snow we got on Saturday was so humongous that there are still entire streets that are anti-cleared:  not only are the streets still full of snow, but the ends are blocked by giant mounds of snow (taller than a person), where the snow plows dump snow from the main roads.  My bike isn't made for snow.

So I walked the two mile or so to the mission, carrying my backpack on my back. Walking was kind of lovely, especially on the way there, before the sun came up and the cars came out.  Then I walked to market, and I bought dairy stuff: a half gallon of milk, some cheese, two quarts of yogurt.  $17.

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And if the story ended there, all would be good.  But that wan't the end of the shopping trip.  On the way back home, when I was super close to home, I decided to stop walking in the snowy streets along with the cars, and instead to cut across our campus, where the facilities crews have been going non-stop with heroic efforts to clear the paths.  I should have stuck with the streets -- dang, why don't I remember that ice is always a worse danger than snow?

At any rate, I hit a little patch of sidewalk that had been cleared, and then had some snow melt onto it, and then froze over.  Invisible ice.  Whomp -- I went down.  I didn't hurt myself or anything.  But about a half a block later, someone noticed that I was leaking milk; the glass milk jug in my backpack had broken.

Six hours later, I realized that my phone wasn't working.  I'm not exactly addicted to my phone -- in fact, the only reason I noticed is that I wanted to take a picture of J-son's newly pierced ears. The phone isn't cracked -- I don't think it was the crash that hurt it; I think it was sitting in milk that zapped the electronics.

Sigh.  I would sort-of love to have no cell phone, but I know my husband would freak.  Fortunately, we happen to have a back-up cell phone waiting for just such an emergency, although I vainly believed it would be my sons' emergency, not mine.

But it's gotta be said, right:  there's no use crying over spilt milk in my cell phone.

Cleaning up Christmas . . .

I really love printer paper boxes.

My little paper box collection (okay, my big paper box collection) started off several years ago as a throw-my-arms-around-and-thrash-a-bit attempt to find a storage method suitable for my sons:  easy access, cheap to replace after the inevitable destruction, non-toxic to our environment.  By trimming down one edge, I make a box that has good visibility but still has lots of space for stuff.

I'd tried a bunch of other alternatives of course, but they were only successful in the sense that they could tide me over until the next attempt.  But . . . cardboard printer boxes . . . wow.  They're just so handy.  And now I use them all over the house, storing everything from lightbulbs to bike gear to donate-able clothes.

Which is why, this year, instead of putting my Christmas decorations back away in the plastic fake-milk-crates I'd used for years, this year I switched to printer boxes.  (As the lids, say, they're "multi-purpose").  The only milk crate left is there because it keeps the boxes off the floor-- we occasionally get water in the basement -- and now that I think about it, I'll probably just switch that to a pair of 2-by-fours.

The fake-milk-crates, they're headed for the thrift store.  I'm sure someone can use them, and as Bea J. of the Zero Waste Home says, I don't want to hoard things that could be put to use elsewhere in the world.  I know other people don't love printer boxes the way I do, but they might use plastic crates.  Time for a material rearrangement of the universe . . . or at least a material rearrangement of the city I live in.


 And so, with the ornaments, lights, and timers packed into cardboard boxes (labelled, stacked, and stored in their cupboard), all that's left of Christmas decorations out and about in the house now are these cards, decorating our  cast iron tree.  It's still a Christmas tree for a few weeks, but the seasons are changing, and it's about to turn into a Valentines Tree.






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Two more images from the Miser Mom Printer Box Photo Gallery.  Aren't these lovely?  (Okay, not lovely, but, y'know, they really do do the job).

Snow business and frugal forecasts

Saturday, the blizzard howled around our home while we watched Blacklist and Madame Secretary.

Overnight, the clouds parted and the nearly full moon shone down, making everything shine.

Early Sunday morning, I woke up with the sun and shoveled a path down the driveway to the street.  We have a garage out back, where our car gets to sit safely sheltered from the storm.  So the front driveway, I cleared just enough for pedestrian traffic.

A walkway from my front door toward the street,
in the early morning light.

The boys, I woke them just before 8 and sent them out to shovel -- not only a walkway for our home, but also driveways of three of our neighbors.  These neighbors, they paid the boys big bucks.  There's no business like snow business!

N-son walks down the sidewalk with his shovel,
on his way to helping a neighbor.

It's true there was a lot of snow for the boys to clear.  A lot.  The boys, they didn't finish shoveling until 3:30.  Aches and pains.   Some cold feet.

Not to mention, sore backs from throwing snow onto higher and higher mounds of snow business.

While the boys made piles of money busting their backs shoveling other people's snow, I got to sit back and be all "yay, me" while I enjoyed the fruits of frugality.   To wit,

• Because we're down to owning only one car (that we keep in the garage out back), we could get away with shoveling a mere walkway in the front driveway.   Even that one walkway took an hour or more of work -- this was a LOT of snow.  We have the luxury of minimal shoveling at our own home, thanks to our minimal car ownership.
• In fact, because we only own one car now, we offered up the other half of our garage to a friend whose New York lifestyle makes owning multiple cars difficult (but she owns them anyway).  As a result, my husband gets to drive around a sporty little rag top Miata this winter -- when it's not snowing, that is.
• The basement is chock-full of food that I bulk-purchased or canned this summer.  No last-minute grocery runs necessary.  We've been feasting on home-made bread, waffles, hot soup.  Ymmmm.
• The insulation and new gas furnace we installed in 2009 and 2012 cost a lot of money, but what those past costs mean nowadays is that from now on, our home is way more energy efficient and comfy than before.  Pre those upgrades, we spent $3800/year on heating oil and cooking gas; last year, we spent less than $700.  All this snow is just a reminder to me about how happy and comfy I am in this home; the blizzard was a little gift of gratitude.

Okay, maybe it was a big gift of gratitude, three feet deep and fairly chilly.  But what a lot of fun!

Family Phones update

If there's one area of personal finance where my husband and I disagree the most, it's phones. Me, I just about hate 'em.  When I was in college (that was back in the days when, if you wanted to talk on the phone, you had to stand next to the wall), I spent about 33¢ per month on long-distance calls.  But my husband, he got one of the first ever cell phones, back when these were called "car phones" and they came with a 5-pound battery pack that you had to lug along using a shoulder strap because the thing was so danged heavy.

So it's not surprising that my family has had pretty hefty phone bills AND that I continually try to find ways to bring those bills down from what I see as the stratosphere.

Just FYI, because of all our various kids, we've maintained about five different active cell phones for over a decade now.  For the most recent years that I've been keeping records, our average monthly cell phone bills have been

• 2012: $274/month
• 2013: $308/month
• 2014: $315/month
• 2015:  . . . dropping to "only" $200/month.

In other words, in the last four years alone, we've spent over $13,000 on cell phone bills.  To me, that's crazy.  To my husband, it's been a life-sustaining, vital expense.

Last summer, I wrote about how my husband finally decided to give up his old, reliable Verizon plan and switch to Ting.  Based on other bloggers' glowing reports, I was all excited to show him that frugal phone plans work, too.  (Yeah!  Goooooo, Miser Mom!)  But unfortunately, the switch was a little black hole of a disaster.  We just don't get Sprint service here at all (necessary for Ting), and the "bucket" approach to data turned out to be a "bathtub" of data for my guy.  All of a sudden we were paying boatloads of money for lousy reception -- the worst of both our worlds.

Fortunately for me, a bunch of different people commented with great suggestions.  The jackpot, as far as my husband was concerned, was the comment that came from Penn, who wrote: 

Verizon has now ditched contracts. So, if he still has a Verizon phone, you can actually do a "bring your own device." There's a variety of data plans. My husband and I share 1 gig a month (we monitor near the end but have been fine). We pay $20 each line for line access.
No worries about extended contracts, and his bill should be under $75 unless he uses a LOT of data. . . . 

So, he moved back to Verizon.  He doesn't swing $20 bucks for his line, but he does, as predicted, keep the cost under $75 -- just about $65, in fact.   (Although he's had one or two months where he had to institute a data-diet toward the end of the month to keep the bill that "low").

As for the rest of us, the boys and I share four lines.  (There are only three of us, but we've learned though repeated losings of phones on the part of the boys that it's just less headache having a back-up phone at home, especially now that we've ditched our land line).  And the cost for our four lines, using Republic Wireless? $53/month.  

So that's how we managed to bring the average cell phone bill down in 2015, and it looks like we'll be able to point to 

• 2016:  $118/month.

My husband, he's happy with his current phone, so that's good.  And as for me, I look at that phone bill and I know it's not 33¢, but it's definitely heading in the Miser Mom direction . . . so I'll take what I can get.  Thanks one and all for your good advice last August!

What she bought: the kitchen sink

So, our host daughter, Y, popped her head into my sewing room Saturday night and asked, "Is it okay if I put some duct-tape on the kitchen sink?"

This is not the kind of question I get every day, and I spent a couple of seconds with the gears in my head whirring around trying to perform computations and correlations:  duct tape?  sink?  Is there some natural connection?  I finally answered, "um, sure, but is there a reason you want to put duct tape on the sink?"

She said, "well, there's a leak, and so I figured duct tape would stop it."

Oh.  A leak.  Of course, duct tape is not the solution to a leak, so I got up from my sewing room, went down to the kitchen, and took a look for myself.  Sure enough the kitchen faucet had sprung a hole, about midway along the arm, so that when you turn on the water most of the water performed the correct duty of coming out the nozzle, but some of the water sprayed straight up toward the ceiling like a drinking fountain.  Cute, and possibly with practical uses for a creative person, but not really what I want in my kitchen.

My husband had the car that day, so I called and asked if, on the way home, he might stop at the store pick up an extra kitchen faucet set.  He did.

Sunday, I brought J-son down into the kitchen with me for a little plumbing lesson.  Stage one, clear out everything under the sink; stage two, turn off the water.

Except the shut-off valves on these old, old pipes are old and a little rusty themselves, and the hot-water valve just didn't want to turn.  J-son enthusiastically offered to use a hammer.  I equally enthusiastically rejected that kind offer -- oh, geez; that's JUST what I need!  (Anybody remember the time J-son "fixed" his bike with my mallet?  Neither the bike nor the mallet survived).

We tried a more gentle form of coercion, but when part of the hot water shut-off valve knob broke off in my hand, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.  A new faucet installation might be within my ability, but a busted water pipe is beyond my meager plumbing skills.

Since, on Monday, I headed out for yet another math trip, I delegated the calling of professional plumbers to my husband.  It really is nice having him around to take care of things in the house!

The plumbers apparently brought along a faucet with them; it's a super super nice faucet.  I'm really too cheap to splurge on something like this myself, but I'm secretly (okay, not-so-secretly) delighted at the upgrade we've gotten.

It comes at a price -- that price being $750.  With that, we also got new shut-off valves under the sink, plus a one-year protection plan.  I was not around to negotiate on this; my husband assures me it was a good deal, and I try not to second-guess people who I've asked to take over a project when I can't do it.  So I'll declare this a success.

But  I sure do hope I don't have many more plumbing adventures this January!

(I've silently lusted after hose-handle faucets.  And now I have one!)

Toilet Tank Tuesday?

Y'know, I am not really planning to have a regular Toilet Repair segment on this blog.  No "Five Frugal Things Friday, Three Thrifty Things Thursday, and Toilet Tank Tuesday" routine for me.

But the thing is, I got back from Seattle to find that our host daughter, Y, was nervous about the upstairs toilet because it flushed slowly.  (This is a different toilet from the one I repaired just before I left for the math meetings).  I checked it out, did some hefty plunging, a bit of icky cleanup, and declared swift-flowing success.

Except that the next time the toilet was used for, um, substantial business, the slowness problem returned.  More plunging, more cleaning, more declarations of success.  Repeat this paragraph a few times.

That is why, on Saturday, I brought N-son and J-son into the bathroom for their first lesson in how to use a plumber's snake.  And the real lesson we all learned from this particular exercise is this:

Do not flush toothbrushes down the toilet.  

I mean, you probably knew that.  You probably also know not to brush your teeth in the toilet, so how this particular problem occurred, I do not even want to contemplate.  But at least now we know, just in case we had ever thought to wonder, what happens when a toothbrush gets dropped . . . well, never mind.  Back to doing math.