[Confidential to Alicia: I will respond to your post later this week! I already have a Weds post scheduled, so probably Friday will be a good day for it.]
So, for tl;dr reasons I went back and looked at Cindy from Growing Her Worth's first post, in which she linked to this terrifying article about how single people (especially women) need to be insanely frugal in order to ever even dream of retiring.
As it happens I haven't written nearly as much about issues of single-woman finance as I'd intended to when I picked my blog name. But it's not like I never think about them. I actually think (and worry) about them all the time. There are a slew of issues: no help with the rent (unless you live with a roommate, as I currently do), no backup if you get sick or are unemployed, etc. However, what caught my eye was the net worth chart. Citing the Census Bureau in 2004, she gave a median net worth of $30,026 for single women, compared to $144,580 for married couples. For ages 55-64 (that is, approaching retirement) the median net worth numbers were $62,140 for single women (oof) and $268,835 for married couples (still not great, but much better.)
I was all fired up to set some new goals for myself based on this information when I realized that the financial picture in the U.S. has changed just a little bit since 2004. It took some digging around, but I finally ended up looking at the Census Bureau's data from 2011, which is available in some detail on their website. There have been some net worth studies since then -- like the one summarized at the Times, here, but when I looked at the data I didn't see it broken out either by gender or by married/single (maybe I just missed something?) The upshot is that the 2011 numbers are probably a bit high, as net worth has been declining for everyone but the wealthiest. But I'll roll with 2011 for the moment.
Median net worth numbers of interest to me, as of the 2011 census:
Married-couple households, 35-54 y.o.: $116,170
Married-couple households, 55-64 y.o.: $239,847
Female householder, 35-54 y.o.: $9640
Female householder, 65 years and older: $104,000
A couple of notes: That's a huge decline in median female wealth. I assume most of it is attributable to housing issues (either drop in home value, or foreclosure, since I know single mothers were very hard hit by cruddy mortgage issues.) The wealth drop wasn't nearly as bad for older single women; in the 55-64 age range, median net worth was almost identical between 2004 and 2011. Of course, that's without accounting for inflation, so I guess there was still a serious drop.
OK then -- how am I doing? I'm 35 years old and my net worth ought to hit $10,000 in mid-November (there's a slim chance of getting there by the end of October, but I think that's unlikely; it should be very close, though.) So, I'm right around the median for single women, and since I'm on the very low end of the age range there, I'm probably doing rather better than the median for 35-year-old women. However, obviously that leaves me in terrible shape, so I'm not going to get all happy.
I think instead I should take aim at the married couples. Damn it, why should I let not having had the good sense to either get married, or pursue some career that paid, hold me back? At my current rate of net worth growth, I should be able to hit $116,000 in about four years, by age 40. (Oh my God, I'll be 40 in four years. I am so not ready for that.) Ideally, of course, I'll get a better-paying job soonish and be able to increase it faster!
Monday, September 15, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Paydays are the best days (?)
In my new job, I get paid twice a month, on the 15th and the 30th.(*) Thanks to the miracle of direct deposit, though, the money usually hits my bank account quite late the night before, so I can see it if I log in around 11:30 or midnight.
Do I do that? You bet I do, every time, because I love payday. :-)
This time, the 15th is Monday. So I'm hoping that means the cash will actually show up tonight, instead of Sunday night. (Operating on the theory that payroll will go out last thing on the business day before payday. When payday falls on a weekend, we're paid on the Friday before, so I figure the same principle will hold up.)
Money Manifesto wrote a couple of years ago about emotions on payday. (I got to that by googling "excited about payday.") He is doing well enough that he falls in the "indifferent" camp, apparently, which is obviously not me. I would say I'm not in the "relieved" camp either -- I don't have debt collectors chasing me down, and I have enough stability with my current job that I know the money for rent, etc, will in fact show up. I am definitely, however, happy (his third posited emotion.) I'm excited to see my net worth go up, along with my savings accounts; currently, I have the first paycheck of the month earmarked for rent, utilities, groceries, e-fund, and travel fund.(**) So as soon as I can get the money transferred over, I'll see those two savings balances rise, which will be fun. It's just a good day.
On the other hand, apparently mortality goes up on payday, so I suppose I should keep that in mind and not get too excited!
*until Alicia asked about it, I hadn't thought about how I'd been paid just about every way possible over the years, from cash on the same day I worked, to the weekly check I got when I worked in the theater, to what I think of as the typical American bi-weekly schedule at most of my jobs, to the monthly check I got during my year of research funding in grad school and also last year. I think this is my first time being paid twice a month.)
**The second paycheck, which arrives on the 30th, is for debt payment, gas, insurance, and "slush.")
Do I do that? You bet I do, every time, because I love payday. :-)
This time, the 15th is Monday. So I'm hoping that means the cash will actually show up tonight, instead of Sunday night. (Operating on the theory that payroll will go out last thing on the business day before payday. When payday falls on a weekend, we're paid on the Friday before, so I figure the same principle will hold up.)
Money Manifesto wrote a couple of years ago about emotions on payday. (I got to that by googling "excited about payday.") He is doing well enough that he falls in the "indifferent" camp, apparently, which is obviously not me. I would say I'm not in the "relieved" camp either -- I don't have debt collectors chasing me down, and I have enough stability with my current job that I know the money for rent, etc, will in fact show up. I am definitely, however, happy (his third posited emotion.) I'm excited to see my net worth go up, along with my savings accounts; currently, I have the first paycheck of the month earmarked for rent, utilities, groceries, e-fund, and travel fund.(**) So as soon as I can get the money transferred over, I'll see those two savings balances rise, which will be fun. It's just a good day.
On the other hand, apparently mortality goes up on payday, so I suppose I should keep that in mind and not get too excited!
*until Alicia asked about it, I hadn't thought about how I'd been paid just about every way possible over the years, from cash on the same day I worked, to the weekly check I got when I worked in the theater, to what I think of as the typical American bi-weekly schedule at most of my jobs, to the monthly check I got during my year of research funding in grad school and also last year. I think this is my first time being paid twice a month.)
**The second paycheck, which arrives on the 30th, is for debt payment, gas, insurance, and "slush.")
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
How to be not cheap about food when you're on a strict budget
Gather round, everyone! I have a rule of thumb to impart. :-)
As I've previously mentioned about 6000 times, I really like to eat, and I like to eat well. If I were truly in the poorhouse, I could eat for probably about $25 a week (basing my diet around dried beans at $1 a pound and cheap vegetables and fruits.)
But usually I spend substantially more than that -- but not anything like as much as many people who eat a much less delicious diet than I do. (I know, because I watch people ahead of me in the checkout line!)
Here's the secret:
I buy expensive versions of cheap ingredients, not cheap versions of expensive ingredients.
In practice, this means being largely vegetarian is a good idea. Instead of buying meat (which, if raised correctly, is resource-intensive and therefore costs a lot) I focus on high-quality beans, lentils, and grains as the centerpiece of most meals. I generally add sparing amounts of something else (cheese, bacon, an egg) to round it out, and cheese and bacon are some of the most expensive items in my regular rotation. But really good farmer's market bacon is about $6-7 a pound, and I can make a pound last for a month or even two, by cooking just a few strips at a time to crumble into salads. Eggs are amazing; I buy them at the farmer's market for $2.25 a dozen, so if I have two for dinner, that's $.37 for the centerpiece of a meal.
As for the beans, etc: I love the beans from Rancho Gordo. They are expensive, yes: $6 a pound, six times the cost of the beans on my "broke and unemployed" shopping list. But that's the basis for about 12 servings of soup or bean salad or whatever. And they are good, fresh and creamy and interesting.
I use green lentils (sometimes called French lentils or lentilles de Puy) a lot for salads. They're more expensive than the ordinary brown lentils, but they hold their shape well (which is what makes them so good for salads and for soups if you're not going for something that falls apart.)
I buy high-quality wheat flour and make my own bread. Last year I was lucky enough to have a local mill I could buy flour from, and man, it was good. Typically, however, I buy King Arthur organic whole wheat flour at the supermarket. It's twice as expensive as the supermarket brand, but it's noticeably better, and since I'm making my own bread rather than buying bread, I think I still save money overall on this one.
Ditto on cornmeal. I like to buy it local when possible, but Bob's Red Mill makes good cornmeal too.
Once you have flour, cornmeal, beans, and lentils, if you add some spices, vegetables, and good olive oil (I buy it from California Olive Ranch because studies of olive oil have shown that anything on the inexpensive side is usually adulterated with cheaper vegetable oils, and California Olive Ranch, while not the absolute cheapest thing on the shelf, is apparently the real deal. It's available in most supermarkets) you are in good shape.
Meanwhile, the other side of the equation is avoiding buying cheap versions of expensive things. No point in being frugal only to eat badly. I avoid cheap versions of "parmesan" [real thing only!], balsamic vinegar [I would not have believed how much of a difference it made until I finally tasted the real thing last year. Farewell, $5 bottles of random something or other calling itself balsamic], meat [seems unsafe and unethical as well as not good tasting], olives, etc. If I want to eat one of these things, I either have to wait til someone gives it to me as a gift, or until I've created room in my budget for it.
Just for fun, here's my grocery shopping for this week:
Farmer's market (all from local growers):
$2.25, 1 dozen eggs
$4.00, nectarines
$6.00, tomatoes
$5.00, cucumbers (to pickle)
$0.75, three ears of corn
$1.00, red onion
(total: $19.00)
Grocery store:
$0.59, scallions (locally grown)
$0.99, dill (for the pickles) (locally grown)
$0.50, garlic
$0.99, 1 lb brown sugar (stocking up)
$2.19, 5 lbs regular sugar (ditto)
$3.69, 2 lb bag of lemons
$1.58, 2 cans of chickpeas (store brand, not organic; if I hadn't been running so close to the line this week, I would have paid about another $1.00 for the organic version)
$3.99, Cabot cheddar cheese (on sale)
$1.69, quart of milk
(total, $16.47, including tax)
(grand total: $35.47)
Notes: I still need to buy green lentils before I can call this week's shopping "done"; that will probably add another $3 or $4, bringing me pretty close to my budget of $40 for this week. Cheddar, which is a basic cheese for me (I put it on sandwiches and in scrambled eggs, etc), seems weirdly expensive here; even the store brand, which I won't buy, is $6. I guess I just have to keep an eye out for sales, since it keeps well. The only thing I'm not happy with here, quality-wise, is the milk. For years I've bought milk mostly at the farmer's market, but this one doesn't have anyone selling milk. So I'm stuck with a variety of less than great options; this is just the store brand, as nothing else there seemed noticeably better. I don't like it, though. I'd rather be spending more.
More notes: Things I didn't buy this week because I was using cash include: ice cream, chocolate bars, more fruit than I could realistically plan on eating, more tomatoes, kale. I probably kept myself from spending $10 or $15 more, just by sticking to my pair of $20 bills.
As I've previously mentioned about 6000 times, I really like to eat, and I like to eat well. If I were truly in the poorhouse, I could eat for probably about $25 a week (basing my diet around dried beans at $1 a pound and cheap vegetables and fruits.)
But usually I spend substantially more than that -- but not anything like as much as many people who eat a much less delicious diet than I do. (I know, because I watch people ahead of me in the checkout line!)
Here's the secret:
I buy expensive versions of cheap ingredients, not cheap versions of expensive ingredients.
In practice, this means being largely vegetarian is a good idea. Instead of buying meat (which, if raised correctly, is resource-intensive and therefore costs a lot) I focus on high-quality beans, lentils, and grains as the centerpiece of most meals. I generally add sparing amounts of something else (cheese, bacon, an egg) to round it out, and cheese and bacon are some of the most expensive items in my regular rotation. But really good farmer's market bacon is about $6-7 a pound, and I can make a pound last for a month or even two, by cooking just a few strips at a time to crumble into salads. Eggs are amazing; I buy them at the farmer's market for $2.25 a dozen, so if I have two for dinner, that's $.37 for the centerpiece of a meal.
As for the beans, etc: I love the beans from Rancho Gordo. They are expensive, yes: $6 a pound, six times the cost of the beans on my "broke and unemployed" shopping list. But that's the basis for about 12 servings of soup or bean salad or whatever. And they are good, fresh and creamy and interesting.
I use green lentils (sometimes called French lentils or lentilles de Puy) a lot for salads. They're more expensive than the ordinary brown lentils, but they hold their shape well (which is what makes them so good for salads and for soups if you're not going for something that falls apart.)
I buy high-quality wheat flour and make my own bread. Last year I was lucky enough to have a local mill I could buy flour from, and man, it was good. Typically, however, I buy King Arthur organic whole wheat flour at the supermarket. It's twice as expensive as the supermarket brand, but it's noticeably better, and since I'm making my own bread rather than buying bread, I think I still save money overall on this one.
Ditto on cornmeal. I like to buy it local when possible, but Bob's Red Mill makes good cornmeal too.
Once you have flour, cornmeal, beans, and lentils, if you add some spices, vegetables, and good olive oil (I buy it from California Olive Ranch because studies of olive oil have shown that anything on the inexpensive side is usually adulterated with cheaper vegetable oils, and California Olive Ranch, while not the absolute cheapest thing on the shelf, is apparently the real deal. It's available in most supermarkets) you are in good shape.
Meanwhile, the other side of the equation is avoiding buying cheap versions of expensive things. No point in being frugal only to eat badly. I avoid cheap versions of "parmesan" [real thing only!], balsamic vinegar [I would not have believed how much of a difference it made until I finally tasted the real thing last year. Farewell, $5 bottles of random something or other calling itself balsamic], meat [seems unsafe and unethical as well as not good tasting], olives, etc. If I want to eat one of these things, I either have to wait til someone gives it to me as a gift, or until I've created room in my budget for it.
Just for fun, here's my grocery shopping for this week:
Farmer's market (all from local growers):
$2.25, 1 dozen eggs
$4.00, nectarines
$6.00, tomatoes
$5.00, cucumbers (to pickle)
$0.75, three ears of corn
$1.00, red onion
(total: $19.00)
Grocery store:
$0.59, scallions (locally grown)
$0.99, dill (for the pickles) (locally grown)
$0.50, garlic
$0.99, 1 lb brown sugar (stocking up)
$2.19, 5 lbs regular sugar (ditto)
$3.69, 2 lb bag of lemons
$1.58, 2 cans of chickpeas (store brand, not organic; if I hadn't been running so close to the line this week, I would have paid about another $1.00 for the organic version)
$3.99, Cabot cheddar cheese (on sale)
$1.69, quart of milk
(total, $16.47, including tax)
(grand total: $35.47)
Notes: I still need to buy green lentils before I can call this week's shopping "done"; that will probably add another $3 or $4, bringing me pretty close to my budget of $40 for this week. Cheddar, which is a basic cheese for me (I put it on sandwiches and in scrambled eggs, etc), seems weirdly expensive here; even the store brand, which I won't buy, is $6. I guess I just have to keep an eye out for sales, since it keeps well. The only thing I'm not happy with here, quality-wise, is the milk. For years I've bought milk mostly at the farmer's market, but this one doesn't have anyone selling milk. So I'm stuck with a variety of less than great options; this is just the store brand, as nothing else there seemed noticeably better. I don't like it, though. I'd rather be spending more.
More notes: Things I didn't buy this week because I was using cash include: ice cream, chocolate bars, more fruit than I could realistically plan on eating, more tomatoes, kale. I probably kept myself from spending $10 or $15 more, just by sticking to my pair of $20 bills.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Meaning and Numbers
So, when I was in high school, we had two kinds of physics we could take: one which was math-heavy and targeted at better overall students, and one that was more "conceptual" and targeted at weaker students. It's a long story how this happened exactly, but I ended up taking both. I did much better in the supposedly harder class, because identifying the right time to use an equation and then doing the math, that I could do. Not a problem. Actually understanding the meaning behind all the numbers...that was difficult.
I was reading My Debt Emergency the other day, and she had a post with a link to a contest where you could win $10,000. She's got $118,000 in student loans, so I assume she'd use the $10,000 to make a big payment on that. I would have done the same, last year. (As long as we're at this, here's a link to enter the contest yourself. Heads up: if you use that link, I get some extra entries.)
But then I stopped and realized, you know, $10000 would have been more than half of my entire student loan debt. It would barely make a dent in MDE's. I know both those things, intellectually, and I realize our situations are very different. And yet: I can't really get my head around that difference. $10,000 is over 1/5 of my yearly salary. $10,000 is 1/12 of MDE's student loans. $10,000 is not quite 50% of my (now paid off) student loans. I could go on like this, but honestly, I don't really process $10,000 as anything but "a lot of money." Once you get me past $100 or so, it's all conceptual physics.
In thinking about this, though, I realized that there was a hack, something I could do that *does* make sense to me, that makes money seem "real" enough that I can actually understand it. I can think in terms of "expense months."
Take my retirement account. I've read a bunch of articles about having 8x your salary saved up, or drawing down at the rate of 4% a year, and so on, and I nod along, but they don't really mean much to me. What I can do, however, is look at my account and say "I think my living expenses will be about $3000 a month when I retire. Social Security should cover -- being very conservative here -- $1000 of that. So, if I have $2000, that is one month of retirement." A little envelope math showed me that, in the very optimistic scenario where I retire at 65 and die at 95, I need 360 "expense months." (240 is probably more accurate, but obviously it's better to be conservative and have a little something to leave to my nieces/nephews/godchildren.)
As of right now, I have three months' worth of retirement saved up. Well, three months down, 357 to go! And hey, if I win that contest, I'll suddenly have five more months in the bank.
I was reading My Debt Emergency the other day, and she had a post with a link to a contest where you could win $10,000. She's got $118,000 in student loans, so I assume she'd use the $10,000 to make a big payment on that. I would have done the same, last year. (As long as we're at this, here's a link to enter the contest yourself. Heads up: if you use that link, I get some extra entries.)
But then I stopped and realized, you know, $10000 would have been more than half of my entire student loan debt. It would barely make a dent in MDE's. I know both those things, intellectually, and I realize our situations are very different. And yet: I can't really get my head around that difference. $10,000 is over 1/5 of my yearly salary. $10,000 is 1/12 of MDE's student loans. $10,000 is not quite 50% of my (now paid off) student loans. I could go on like this, but honestly, I don't really process $10,000 as anything but "a lot of money." Once you get me past $100 or so, it's all conceptual physics.
In thinking about this, though, I realized that there was a hack, something I could do that *does* make sense to me, that makes money seem "real" enough that I can actually understand it. I can think in terms of "expense months."
Take my retirement account. I've read a bunch of articles about having 8x your salary saved up, or drawing down at the rate of 4% a year, and so on, and I nod along, but they don't really mean much to me. What I can do, however, is look at my account and say "I think my living expenses will be about $3000 a month when I retire. Social Security should cover -- being very conservative here -- $1000 of that. So, if I have $2000, that is one month of retirement." A little envelope math showed me that, in the very optimistic scenario where I retire at 65 and die at 95, I need 360 "expense months." (240 is probably more accurate, but obviously it's better to be conservative and have a little something to leave to my nieces/nephews/godchildren.)
As of right now, I have three months' worth of retirement saved up. Well, three months down, 357 to go! And hey, if I win that contest, I'll suddenly have five more months in the bank.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Worst Financial Mistakes
I 100% completely ripped this topic off from Debt Debs, who wrote about it at Frugal Rules.
I used to think of myself as someone who was fairly good about money, considering that I didn't have much. My credit score is about as high as it could be for someone with no car payment and no mortgage, indicating a stellar history of on-time payments and overall "responsible credit use"...as defined by the credit industry, obviously.
However, recently I've come to see that I was not quite as good as I thought I was. I'm not losing sleep over it, exactly, but here are the things I'm going to talk to my godchildren/potential nieces and nephews about, one of these days.
1) My budgeting never included long-term savings. It wasn't really all that systematic either; I've made back of the envelope budgets for my entire adult life, but they only ever projected, at most, a few months out, and I only made them when I had credit card debt to pay off (frequently.) Otherwise I just spent what came in. I knew that I ought to think about retirement savings of course, but that seemed dumb when I had student loans, and until just a few months ago, I've always had student loans (although the undergraduate ones were in deferment for quite a while before my parents paid the remainder off with an inheritance they'd received. But by that time I'd racked up some graduate school debt.) I went through periods where I was spending less than I earned, but they were always followed by periods when I ran through everything I'd saved and then some. If I could do it all over again, I'd have figured out IRAs early on and put something, anything, even 5% or 10% of my income, into one.
2) I took out the damn graduate loans. I didn't really need them; if I was going to go to grad school in the first place, I should have been willing to commit to getting out debt-free, even if that meant living situations I didn't find thrilling. I think the problem here was that I was valuing immediate gratification and not really thinking about how much clearing a $19,000 debt would impact my first year(s) out of school. I got really lucky in that my first job, even though it only lasted a year, was unusually well-paid. That job saved my a$$, financially, and it was pure dumb luck that I ended up with that and not with any of the much less well paid jobs I'd already been rejected from by the time I got it.
3) Speaking of which, I literally did not research salaries in my field until I was halfway through my graduate program. WTF. This mistake is part of a more general mindset I had through my twenties, namely, "do what you love and as long as you accept that you won't get rich, don't worry about the money." Well, not getting rich is one thing; not being able to afford a basic middle-class lifestyle is another. If I were doing it all over again, I would have invested in some really serious career counseling that would have included budgeting -- "ok, teachers make X a month, how do you live on that? accountants make Y, what about that?" -- as well as an assessment of my skills and interests. I do, in fact, really like what I do, and I think it is even useful to the world. But maybe I could have chosen a field that would have been something I liked, something useful, *and* not expected me to move halfway across the country at a moment's notice for a salary that's less than what most of my students make right after graduation.
4) I didn't get married to a financially successful person :)
I used to think of myself as someone who was fairly good about money, considering that I didn't have much. My credit score is about as high as it could be for someone with no car payment and no mortgage, indicating a stellar history of on-time payments and overall "responsible credit use"...as defined by the credit industry, obviously.
However, recently I've come to see that I was not quite as good as I thought I was. I'm not losing sleep over it, exactly, but here are the things I'm going to talk to my godchildren/potential nieces and nephews about, one of these days.
1) My budgeting never included long-term savings. It wasn't really all that systematic either; I've made back of the envelope budgets for my entire adult life, but they only ever projected, at most, a few months out, and I only made them when I had credit card debt to pay off (frequently.) Otherwise I just spent what came in. I knew that I ought to think about retirement savings of course, but that seemed dumb when I had student loans, and until just a few months ago, I've always had student loans (although the undergraduate ones were in deferment for quite a while before my parents paid the remainder off with an inheritance they'd received. But by that time I'd racked up some graduate school debt.) I went through periods where I was spending less than I earned, but they were always followed by periods when I ran through everything I'd saved and then some. If I could do it all over again, I'd have figured out IRAs early on and put something, anything, even 5% or 10% of my income, into one.
2) I took out the damn graduate loans. I didn't really need them; if I was going to go to grad school in the first place, I should have been willing to commit to getting out debt-free, even if that meant living situations I didn't find thrilling. I think the problem here was that I was valuing immediate gratification and not really thinking about how much clearing a $19,000 debt would impact my first year(s) out of school. I got really lucky in that my first job, even though it only lasted a year, was unusually well-paid. That job saved my a$$, financially, and it was pure dumb luck that I ended up with that and not with any of the much less well paid jobs I'd already been rejected from by the time I got it.
3) Speaking of which, I literally did not research salaries in my field until I was halfway through my graduate program. WTF. This mistake is part of a more general mindset I had through my twenties, namely, "do what you love and as long as you accept that you won't get rich, don't worry about the money." Well, not getting rich is one thing; not being able to afford a basic middle-class lifestyle is another. If I were doing it all over again, I would have invested in some really serious career counseling that would have included budgeting -- "ok, teachers make X a month, how do you live on that? accountants make Y, what about that?" -- as well as an assessment of my skills and interests. I do, in fact, really like what I do, and I think it is even useful to the world. But maybe I could have chosen a field that would have been something I liked, something useful, *and* not expected me to move halfway across the country at a moment's notice for a salary that's less than what most of my students make right after graduation.
4) I didn't get married to a financially successful person :)
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Cash is King
For the past several months, I've taken out my allotted grocery money in cash at the beginning of the month. It's a tactic I've been trying in support of my quest to spend less money on food, even though I looooooove food.
And I'm ready to call it: it's working.
Not that I've been perfect or anything, but I would say I'm showing noticeably more attention to the prices of what I'm buying, and I'm more likely to either decide not to buy something, or to choose something that's cheaper (like, given the choice between two kinds of fruit or two kinds of granola.) I am definitely saving money this way, although it's hard to say how much.
I keep reading that "studies say" that people who use credit cards just tend to spend more, and right now, I believe it. With food, it's so easy to just grab whatever and stick it in the cart; if you're limited, like I've been limiting myself, you have to be creative about fitting in exactly what you need, and there isn't a spare $7 left over for sushi or whatever.
So, cash it is, for the time being. The credit card rewards aren't worth it -- I'd get all of $2.50 cash back a month on my grocery money, and I'm absolutely sure I'd spend that and more if I were still using my card at the grocery store. (I still use it for basically everything else, though.)
And I'm ready to call it: it's working.
Not that I've been perfect or anything, but I would say I'm showing noticeably more attention to the prices of what I'm buying, and I'm more likely to either decide not to buy something, or to choose something that's cheaper (like, given the choice between two kinds of fruit or two kinds of granola.) I am definitely saving money this way, although it's hard to say how much.
I keep reading that "studies say" that people who use credit cards just tend to spend more, and right now, I believe it. With food, it's so easy to just grab whatever and stick it in the cart; if you're limited, like I've been limiting myself, you have to be creative about fitting in exactly what you need, and there isn't a spare $7 left over for sushi or whatever.
So, cash it is, for the time being. The credit card rewards aren't worth it -- I'd get all of $2.50 cash back a month on my grocery money, and I'm absolutely sure I'd spend that and more if I were still using my card at the grocery store. (I still use it for basically everything else, though.)
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Making Do and Mending
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I was so annoyed this March when I realized that my almost new ankle boots were busted; the zipper had separated from the leather of the boot. Although the boots themselves are pretty well-made, the zippers have been a problem from the start; they're stiff, and especially once I put my own insoles in, the boots were a little tight, and I was doing a lot of tugging and jerking to get them closed. So I guess it's not too surprising. But I looked more closely at the gap and realized that nothing was actually broken; the zipper still worked, and the leather didn't have worn spots.
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| Busted! |
When I was in college I learned that not everyone took their busted-but-not-broken shoes to the cobbler; in much of the U.S. there just isn't a cobbler, so people buy cheap shoes and then toss them. But in the cities I've always lived in, there's always been an old Eastern European or Italian or Greek guy nearby with a little stuffy shop full of shoes in paper bags waiting to be picked up. Once we were old enough that we wore shoes down rather than just outgrowing them, we joined our parents in semi-annual trips to have shoes re-soled (I always wear out the edges of the heels), weatherized, re-stitched.... This time, though, I was in the middle of paying off my student debt and I didn't want to spend money for the cobbler when I thought I could deal with it myself.
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| tools of the trade |
I didn't have the time to deal with it right then, though, and it was the end of winter; I was about ready to switch to sandals. So I just packed them up and moved them, but now, with fall coming on, it was time to get the job done.
Mending something like this needs one special tool: a leather needle. You can kind of see in the picture that, unlike a normal needle, which has a more or less round shaft, a leather needle is flat. They're also razor-sharp. They work brilliantly; unless you'd used one, you wouldn't believe how easily they slice through leather like it was butter.
I also used the other thing in that photo; it's beeswax in a plastic container with a groove in it so you can drag your thread through the wax. It gives thread extra strength, and I'm also hoping for a little weather protection. I'd say that's optional for something like this, but since I already had it, why not?
Anyway, the job itself took something like three minutes. I dunno if it's exactly as good as new, but I definitely think it'll hold up. I want at least another year out of these boots, hopefully two, so it had better!
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| All done. |
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