Collection of Mental Lint and other Minutia
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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Samantha : sometimes you feel like a nut....." journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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08:31 am
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Being frugal isn't cheap, or why I don't shop at Aldi's
I don't find it generally worth arguing with people over the fine distinction between being frugal and being cheap because most people can't tell the difference or have a preconception that I have no hope of overcoming.
There is a blogger locally who posts the week's best deals, in her opinion, at each of the local chains. A few months ago, she added Aldi's to her list. I get that their food is cheap, and that's the appeal, but I like my money too much to waste it like that.
I have added the caveat "maybe I've just had bad luck" when talking about Aldi's before, but I'm just not buying it being my luck. Their products are awful. I can't be the only person who can smell the rotting food when I walk in the door. I can't be the only person to inspect 4 packages of strawberries, hoping to find one passable for consumption today, and have every last one have 1-3 strawberries on the bottom of the carton covered in mold. I can't be the only one with a 25% success rate buying multipacks of produce, as well inspected as the packaging will allow, who gets it home, opens it up and finds some large and conspicuous rot going on where I couldn't see it in the store. Produce sold open, I have much better luck with. If I can inspect it in its entirety, there's a fair shot it will be OK to eat today, and possibly tomorrow, but by day 3 it's headed for the compost heap because it's started to rot.
My husband talked me into making an Aldi's run 2 weeks ago. The closest Aldi's to our home is about 30 miles round trip, there are actually 4 Aldi's in 4 different directions, and they're all about 30 miles round trip.
They had tomatoes on sale, in a multipack. They also had mangos on sale. I selected a multipack of tomatoes, as well inspected as I could manage, and we spent the better part of 5 minutes inspecting mangos looking for good enough ones.
1 tomato in the pack of 8 was consumed, the rest were unceremoniously tossed a day later because more than half of them had black mold on them. My husband cut into a mango the next morning, and promptly tossed it. He cut into mango #2, and it was edible but less than ideal.
If I'd just bought the produce we actually got to eat at full price somewhere else, I'd have spent less money, and there's a fair shot it would have been better quality. Instead, I wasted it getting cheap produce. Not a good frugal move.
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08:53 am
[Link] | I know it's Saturday, but it's almost 9 am and nobody's up. The Boy is usually good for some early morning internetting, it's when he enjoys some of his weirder youtube subscriptions without having to wear headphones or field a lot of "WTF is that?" out of anyone. The baby, he should have been up a while ago.
Me, no, my sorry self wakes up at 5 and can't get back to sleep.
$5 says if I try to lay down now, and succeed in getting comfortable, Joe and the baby will both be up and requiring my attention in just long enough for my eyelids to get heavy.
Maybe I'll just hop in the shower.
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09:37 pm
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Fleshing out the "End Game" and the joys of being on the same page
I'm an ENTJ. I can't function without a plan. I don't need to micromanage every moment of every day, but for things of import there MUST be a plan.
My husband is an INTP. He's not so good with plans, though I'm trying to teach him. He's gotten pretty good at planning vacations and other major expenditures, mostly because until there are numbers, and there are no numbers until there is at least a loose plan, I will not approve the spending of funds.
We have been dancing around the End Game for weeks now. He never wants to talk about it. Cornering him and getting the conversation rolling is what his therapy appointments are all about (before you think that I should let him go about therapy his own way, understand that he'd go in and tell them everything was great and nothing was going on and they'd stop seeing him if I didn't go in and raise issues). We did that yesterday. What we had previously discussed was incomplete. We had the basis of a plan, but there were no dates and no timelines. I got him to commit to dates and at least loosely define a timeline. We also talked through some of the finer points of what will be required of the children.
We also needed to get on the same page for some house rules. His therapist asked us where we thought the disconnect was. He said it was because I'm too lenient. I said it was because of our differing definitions of family, learned behavior from our parents, which effects what color lens he views each of the children through. There is a kernel of truth to both.
Regardless of our parenting styles, we needed to settle upon some house rules. We did that. We didn't go far enough, IMO, but he decided that if we made too many changes at once there might be a mutiny, or exploding heads, and that we should do it in stages. So be it. The plan was to do a sit-down with the kids today, but that didn't happen. Joe's spent most of the day in bed, not feeling well.
I will be having a sit-down with the girls tomorrow if he's not up for a rules meeting. They need a budgeting primer. I had solid money skills when I was 18 and even I screwed up with credit. They're not bad with math, they're just bad with money. Now I just need to find some resources I think don't suck. I've been looking. Everything I've found sucks.
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05:34 pm
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It's a choke everybody kind of day
I mean, really, why is everyone getting on my nerves today?
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01:40 am
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Title woes
So, we're doing a refi on the house. Joe bought it almost 4 years ago, before we were married. I did help him pick it out though. :D
We were talking to the mortgage guy, and he says to Joe, "so, the mortgage is in your name, I assume the house is titled in both your names." No, not it's not. "Well, we can title it tenants in common when we do the refi if you want." I respond, "wouldn't it be better to do tenancy by the entireties?" "Actually, yes, tenancy by the entireties gives a lot of legal protections. I'm not a lawyer, but what I know is...." "Oh, yeah, I knew that, it also is good because...." The mortgage guy and I go back and forth a bit, and he's nominally impressed that I'm clueful as to some of the reasons one would choose to title one's home that way.
So, it's up to Joe. I've decided that applying any pressure at all would be wrong, and I have no intention of trying to persuade him to add my name to the title. I have told him this much. He's unhappy about it.
Joe complains that I don't let him make decisions, and that's generally true. Any decision of import needs to go through me. He's brain injured, his logic filter doesn't always work. I can't make this decision for him, and I won't. It is his house. The mortgage is paid with his money. I can play the love and trust cards, but honestly if he doesn't love and trust me enough, there's something in our relationship that needs fixing. It takes 2 to tango, and if there's a problem, I'm part of it.
He's expressed some of his concerns to me, why he is hesitant to title the house with me. They are valid concerns. He asked me to persuade him, to make him feel at ease, and I refused. I do a lot of things, always have, the way I do them because I can see how things may play out in the future, and I will not be the bad guy. I will not have him, or anyone else, ever say I pressured him into adding my name to the title.
There are very few tenancy by the entireties states, and North Carolina is one of them. In my honest opinion, it would be beneficial to Joe, and me in the event of his death, for him to title the house that way. The two big legal protections of tenancy by the entireties, IMO, are that the title passes seamlessly at death to the surviving spouse and that no one can attach a lien on the property for a debt not held by both spouses. So, let's say Joe defaults on the car loan, they repossess it, and attempt to attach a lien on the house. I'm not a debt holder on the car loan. If the house is titled tenancy by the entireties, they can't put a lien on the house. Tenancy by the entireties is a great way to C-Y-A and protect your house.
Joe's one thought about this, past concerns, is that redoing the title costs money, money that's going to be paid during the refi regardless of how they write up the title. If we don't add me to the title now, it will cost us money to do it later. This is what passes as an attempt at pressuring me to persuade him to add my name to the title. It's a good attempt, since "but it will cost more later" is one of his more valid arguments for doing things most of the time. Not going to work though.
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12:48 am
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Adventures in budgeting
My husband is disabled enough that he gets an additional allowance for each dependent from the VA. The kids are each worth $$$ while they're minors, not a lot, but money is money. Well, his daughter turned 18 in March, my daughter turned 18 this month, and while it's not an epic budgetary hit, it's still a hit I really didn't want to take. My daughter is aging out of her father's SS survivor benefits, which is a much larger number, so the total deficit is substantial.
So, off to reevaluate where we're spending our money.
Back in February, we got new car insurance quotes. We try to do this at least once a year. Most of the time, we find very small variations in pricing. This time, we got quoted $75 a month less than we'd been paying. SOLD!
I have been trying to talk him into scaling back his cable package pretty much since the day we met. Our cable and internet provider was being sufficiently inconsistent (having to manually reset the router every 30-45 minutes is not my idea of a good time) that he wanted to check out other providers. Knowing that the budget is in flux, he decided to consider something short of the "every channel known to man" package (seriously, we have never subscribed to the adult channels or premium sports, but we always got everything else). The package with all the channels we actually watch, plus adding in a few pay channels (I like very little TV, and without HBO and Showtime, you could shut the cable off entirely and it wouldn't phase me), was going to save us over $75 a month, $100 a month during the first 3 months free HBO deal. And the router consistently works. Happiness is not getting kicked off my game during an AFK-able event.
If that's not good enough, our mortgage lender gave us a call. They offered to get us in on the latest and greatest rates through the IRRRL with no closing costs. They're going to lower our rate by 1.875%, which is going to lower our monthly payment by about $180. Joe is happy that we won't have to make a payment one month soon (this is normal for a mortgage), which should give us the chance to get closer to where we want to be financially.
The $330 a month all of this will be saving us doesn't cover the deficit, but it sure does help a lot. It's the difference between "I have to be really good at making magic with these numbers" and "wow, this is going to hurt." OK, it wouldn't hurt me one bit, but I give things up because they're unnecessary at the drop of a hat. My family, they're not so good at it. There's a reason they call me the Power Nazi (as in electricity). I'll sleep in an unheated room all winter, under a pile of blankets to stay warm, but I'll be damned if you're running a space heater at 80 degrees all day and night, including while you're not even here, while I'm doing that to try and stay under budget.
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06:23 pm
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Discussing the "End Game"
( Or, no, really, do what you gotta do to get out of my house )
TLDR: The girls are 18, they'll be graduating HS, and they need to start pulling their weight. They also need to start behaving like adults. We have the beginnings of a plan to make sure that happens.
Critique, criticism and suggestions welcome.
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02:20 am
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Frugal tip for today: withholding
It's tax time. When I was young, I used to love tax time. I was a single mother, and that big score always made me happy. I would get back 40-50% of my annual take home pay between the Fed and the State in 2 quick deposits, and all would be right with the universe.
And then one day, when I was 21, I actually did the math. I had credit card debt, paying 15-28%, and while paying a large chunk off at once was nice, I was still just paying minimums, and lots of interest, all year long. If I adjusted my withholding so that I took home $100 more every week, and religiously paid $400 more than the minimums I'd been paying every month (yes $400 times 12 months is $4800, so in this calculation I'd be banking the remaining $400 over the course of the year), in a year's time I would owe $5208 less (assuming I'm paying a 15% interest debt), instead of paying down $5200 from my tax return, and I'd have banked $400 which is accruing interest. Paying the same extra $400 a month to a higher interest debt, like the 28% credit card I had, I would have $5594 lower balance in a year, almost $400 more paid off then taking $5200 in my next return, and I'd have banked $400. Adjusting my withholding and paying down my debts paid them off at about the same rate (slightly faster), and I actually had some cash to show for my effort.
The correct descriptor for this is "no-brainer."
Even if you're living debt free already, why give Uncle Sam an interest free loan when you can put your money someplace that will pay you interest?
Similar math, same extra $100 a week, assuming you put all of it into an interest bearing account paying a WHOPPING 1/2% interest, so figure $433.33 a month, you'll have $5214 in that account in a year. Or you can get $5200 from Uncle Sam. Or as soon as your 1/2% interest account hits a $1k balance, you move your money into a certificate of deposit paying an abysmal 1.5%. Then you'd have $5240 in a year, $40 more than Uncle Sam would give you back.
The real key to making it work is willpower. You have to have it, or at least fake it. Many credit card companies will let you set up payments online in advance. Set a payment every paycheck to come out automatically. Some employers will allow you to split a deposit, send your savings directly into a different account, preferably one where you do not have a debit card. There are plenty of online banks that will allow you to set up a regular transfer from your existing account to their bank, and getting the money back takes a little time, if your employer can't split your paycheck deposit. I'm all for getting to your money in the event of an emergency, but "Ooooh shiny" isn't an emergency, and if you need to make it hard to get at the money so you don't blow it, do that. An account where you have to physically enter a branch during business hours and talk to a teller may be enough for you. The trick is it needs to be difficult, but not impossible, to get. Figure out how you can trick yourself into saving. Fake the willpower, and make it happen.
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12:04 am
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Just because I haven't complained too much about them lately....
Have I mentioned lately that I hate the VA? With a deep and abiding passion.
If you think the government has any business getting involved in healthcare, ( spend just ONE day following us around the VA. )
Tags: joe, va
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04:29 pm
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Frugal tip for today
Ditch the word "only." "Only" is a very dangerous word when talking all things fiscal, be it saving or spending.
I'm sure there are fine and legitimate uses of "only" when talking money, but I can't think of any.
( Beware of ONLY )
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