This post, on The Dollar Stretcher (excellent website for thrifty types), does a better job than I have in explaining why I think it's pretty much a good idea for almost everyone to pay off their mortgages.
http://www.stretcher.com/stories/04/04apr12c.cfm#.UWQynKw86So
The tax write off is not enough motivation since you only get 25-30% of your interest money back. In the long run, paying off early, even just over paying a bit each month, can save you more than 25-30% of that interest.
And think about what you could do with that money WITHOUT a mortgage payment. Save it. Pay off other debt. Improve you health insurance. Travel. Buy better food. Quit your job in a huff. Avoid losing your house if you lose your job. Less debt means you are less of a wage-slave.
So, that sort of logic is why I'm saving saving saving and hope to buy my next home without a mortgage. If I pay cash, I'll save a TON on interest. I already did that by paying cash for the car. My interest cost was exactly $0.00. Nice.
According to an online interest calculator, if I'd gotten a 4 year loan at 5% interest I would have paid nearly $2000.00 in interest. Instead, that money is in the bank. I also paid no loan fees or costs.
I should look back at my old mortgage papers and see what my closing costs were. I know the interest, if I paid the loan off in the 30 years with no over payments or pre-payments, would have been pretty much 2 times the cost of the house...yikes.
End of today's rant.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Thursday, April 4, 2013
The King is Dead...
Sad news today. I'm not sure if it's frugal or not but I wanted to comment on it.
Roger Ebert just died. The film critic and author.
His writing had gotten much more interesting since he'd lost the ability to speak a few years back. He wrote about how he was left out of conversations even when he had a computer that could produce speech. By the time he typed in what he wanted to say, the conversation had moved on. He seems to have also had more time to think. Some of his reviews and columns were much more philosophical than in the past.
He'd recruited and mentored a crop of new film critics. They'd been doing most of the reviews since he broke a hip a few weeks ago. He announced that the break was not related to cancer. Alas, it was. And now he's gone.
I agreed with most of his reviews, though not all. And his website has been a great resource for finding great old, and new, movies as well as figuring out what was coming out on DVD. I hope "they" keep the website going, whomever "they" happen to be.
I checked his site each week to see what was coming out that I might want to see. I also read his cookbook, and got a library to buy a copy. That was pretty thrifty...making soup in a rice cooker.
He'll be missed.
Ebertfest, his film festival in Illinois will start soon. I'd always wanted to go. I wonder if that will continue. He chose the films himself. They were often not "new" but always overlooked gems that didn't get enough screen time in regular theaters. One of the main films this year is Days of Heaven. It's been a favorite of mine for years and years. It think it's the first time I realized how important cinematography is, not just plot and dialogue. Also, how quiet a movie can be. It's wonderful. I think I'll watch in in memory of Roger.
Roger Ebert just died. The film critic and author.
His writing had gotten much more interesting since he'd lost the ability to speak a few years back. He wrote about how he was left out of conversations even when he had a computer that could produce speech. By the time he typed in what he wanted to say, the conversation had moved on. He seems to have also had more time to think. Some of his reviews and columns were much more philosophical than in the past.
He'd recruited and mentored a crop of new film critics. They'd been doing most of the reviews since he broke a hip a few weeks ago. He announced that the break was not related to cancer. Alas, it was. And now he's gone.
I agreed with most of his reviews, though not all. And his website has been a great resource for finding great old, and new, movies as well as figuring out what was coming out on DVD. I hope "they" keep the website going, whomever "they" happen to be.
I checked his site each week to see what was coming out that I might want to see. I also read his cookbook, and got a library to buy a copy. That was pretty thrifty...making soup in a rice cooker.
He'll be missed.
Ebertfest, his film festival in Illinois will start soon. I'd always wanted to go. I wonder if that will continue. He chose the films himself. They were often not "new" but always overlooked gems that didn't get enough screen time in regular theaters. One of the main films this year is Days of Heaven. It's been a favorite of mine for years and years. It think it's the first time I realized how important cinematography is, not just plot and dialogue. Also, how quiet a movie can be. It's wonderful. I think I'll watch in in memory of Roger.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
How Big Is Your Wardrobe?
Mine is way too big.
I'm trying to get rid of 1/2 of my crap right now. I'm starting with the kitchen and my wardrobe. More on the kitchen later.
To get going on figuring out the balance between need/want in the wardrobe, I interviewed my Gramma. She's in her 90s, not very far in, and lived through hard times before the Great Depression, and then the depression. She grew up in a tiny town in Iowa on the Mississippi river in the 1920s. The 20s may have been "roaring" elsewhere, but she says that for rural people, they were tight financial times.
I asked her how many outfits she had as a kid. She said her family was better off than most in the clothing department because her grandmother (my great great) in South Dakota was a dressmaker. Gramma's mom would get the kids' measurements, send them out in a letter. Then, their gramma would make clothes using material from the old clothes given by some of the ladies in town. She made dresses, shirts, pants, coats and underwear. As a result my gramma said she often had 6 or 7 outfits. This was quite a few. She said that the other better off families in town, like the people who owned the store, had 2 or 3 outfits per kid. The poorer had one outfit and one Sunday outfit. The very poor, and she said that was quite a few, had one outfit per kid and no undies. So they were cold.
She had 2 pairs of shoes. One for school and one for Sunday. Her father took all the kids to town each fall and got them shoes and they each also got to pick out a new cotton blanket. She said it was a big deal to have your own new blanket each year. Many families had one pair of shoes per kid. Others had zero.
I asked if her family was rich. She said she didn't know if they had more money or if her dad was more likely to spend his money on his kids. Maybe both.
When she got to high school, which was in another town so she worked for her room and board there, she only had one pair of shoes and fewer clothes. I think this was after the depression had begun. Also, her gramma wasn't making her clothes anymore. I don't know if that gramma had passed away or just gotten too old to do it.
She also told me about farming out kids. Her siblings weren't farmed out that I know of, they had gardens and a milk cow and bees and other things to do at home. Other kids, especially in poor families, were. She told me about Lyle. I knew him when he was an adult and I was a little kid. He was farmed out when he was 6 years old. He was sent to live with a farm family and help out. He went home on the weekend. She said that the family he worked for was very good to him which was not always the case. He went to school and they fed him and clothed him. I think he's the one she said got underwear from the wife of the family he worked for. When he went home on the weekend his mother would take the undies and put them on another kid before she sent him back to the farm. This way she ended up with underwear for all the kids. Undies are apparently a big deal. They were for warmth as well as hygiene. I can imagine your pants and shirts get quite a bit stinkier faster without undies than with undies.
So, back to my quest. 6 or 7 outfits seems reasonable. And yet...I think I'll shoot for 10 per season for the moment. I consider an "outfit" to be the pants/shirt combination and I wear my jeans multiple times between washings, fewer times in the summer or when doing fieldwork.
I think I could get by with 3 pairs of jeans (I've made do with 2 in the past but sometimes you have to wear damp jeans when it's that tight) at a time. For summer 1 or 2 pairs of lighter weight field pants and a pair of jeans. Right now I've been rotating 3 sweaters (those Norwegian ones from the thrift store) and 2 or 3 shirts for my winter work wardrobe. No one has said I look unprofessional, in fact I've gotten compliments on every outfit. I do need turtlenecks or mock turtle necks under these and I think I've been rotating about 4 of those. In summer I usually end up rotating 7 or 8 buttondown shirts. Let's go with 8 to make this less painful at the outset. Easier to donate another shirt than to buy it back from Goodwill. On the weekends I wear t-shirts or a t-shirt with a sweatshirt depending on the season. T-shirts are also important for fieldwork and gardening. Let's say 10 t-shirts for the first cull.
I have one formal event outfit and 3 scarves that go with it (Thanks for the scarves Chris!)
So that comes out to:
Winter
3 jeans
3 sweaters
3 shirts
4 turtlenecks
Summer:
1 jeans
2 field pants
8 shirts
Non-work wear:
10 t-shirts
2-sweatshirts
1 formal outfit (in case of weddings or a friend being inducted into some hall of fame)
I do have the occassional conference or meeting requiring a bit more spiff than my regular work days. For those it would be nice to have 2 decent shirts and one nice sweater. I wear either black or brown pants with these.
Conference wear:
2 shirts
1 sweater
1 black pants
1 brown pants
Then there are shoes. While 2 pairs, or 1....or none, may be a livable situation, it isn't practical for me. Right now I probably have too many partly due to my reluctance to get rid of those that are worn out.
For hazmat fieldwork I need one pair of old hiking boots and a pair of rubber knee boots.
For non-hazmat fieldwork I have a pair of "good" hiking boots (not as worn out)
I wear the good hiking boots to work most of the winter.
In summer I have a pair of brown walking shoes and a pair of black walking shoes.
For formal events I can use one pair of brown and one pair of black boots (non-hiking). Right now I have 2 black and 1 brown pair, but none of my "formal" (like for conferences) boots is less than 10 years old so I think I'm OK there.
And then there is the winter weather gear. I'll save that for another post.
I'm trying to get rid of 1/2 of my crap right now. I'm starting with the kitchen and my wardrobe. More on the kitchen later.
To get going on figuring out the balance between need/want in the wardrobe, I interviewed my Gramma. She's in her 90s, not very far in, and lived through hard times before the Great Depression, and then the depression. She grew up in a tiny town in Iowa on the Mississippi river in the 1920s. The 20s may have been "roaring" elsewhere, but she says that for rural people, they were tight financial times.
I asked her how many outfits she had as a kid. She said her family was better off than most in the clothing department because her grandmother (my great great) in South Dakota was a dressmaker. Gramma's mom would get the kids' measurements, send them out in a letter. Then, their gramma would make clothes using material from the old clothes given by some of the ladies in town. She made dresses, shirts, pants, coats and underwear. As a result my gramma said she often had 6 or 7 outfits. This was quite a few. She said that the other better off families in town, like the people who owned the store, had 2 or 3 outfits per kid. The poorer had one outfit and one Sunday outfit. The very poor, and she said that was quite a few, had one outfit per kid and no undies. So they were cold.
She had 2 pairs of shoes. One for school and one for Sunday. Her father took all the kids to town each fall and got them shoes and they each also got to pick out a new cotton blanket. She said it was a big deal to have your own new blanket each year. Many families had one pair of shoes per kid. Others had zero.
I asked if her family was rich. She said she didn't know if they had more money or if her dad was more likely to spend his money on his kids. Maybe both.
When she got to high school, which was in another town so she worked for her room and board there, she only had one pair of shoes and fewer clothes. I think this was after the depression had begun. Also, her gramma wasn't making her clothes anymore. I don't know if that gramma had passed away or just gotten too old to do it.
She also told me about farming out kids. Her siblings weren't farmed out that I know of, they had gardens and a milk cow and bees and other things to do at home. Other kids, especially in poor families, were. She told me about Lyle. I knew him when he was an adult and I was a little kid. He was farmed out when he was 6 years old. He was sent to live with a farm family and help out. He went home on the weekend. She said that the family he worked for was very good to him which was not always the case. He went to school and they fed him and clothed him. I think he's the one she said got underwear from the wife of the family he worked for. When he went home on the weekend his mother would take the undies and put them on another kid before she sent him back to the farm. This way she ended up with underwear for all the kids. Undies are apparently a big deal. They were for warmth as well as hygiene. I can imagine your pants and shirts get quite a bit stinkier faster without undies than with undies.
So, back to my quest. 6 or 7 outfits seems reasonable. And yet...I think I'll shoot for 10 per season for the moment. I consider an "outfit" to be the pants/shirt combination and I wear my jeans multiple times between washings, fewer times in the summer or when doing fieldwork.
I think I could get by with 3 pairs of jeans (I've made do with 2 in the past but sometimes you have to wear damp jeans when it's that tight) at a time. For summer 1 or 2 pairs of lighter weight field pants and a pair of jeans. Right now I've been rotating 3 sweaters (those Norwegian ones from the thrift store) and 2 or 3 shirts for my winter work wardrobe. No one has said I look unprofessional, in fact I've gotten compliments on every outfit. I do need turtlenecks or mock turtle necks under these and I think I've been rotating about 4 of those. In summer I usually end up rotating 7 or 8 buttondown shirts. Let's go with 8 to make this less painful at the outset. Easier to donate another shirt than to buy it back from Goodwill. On the weekends I wear t-shirts or a t-shirt with a sweatshirt depending on the season. T-shirts are also important for fieldwork and gardening. Let's say 10 t-shirts for the first cull.
I have one formal event outfit and 3 scarves that go with it (Thanks for the scarves Chris!)
So that comes out to:
Winter
3 jeans
3 sweaters
3 shirts
4 turtlenecks
Summer:
1 jeans
2 field pants
8 shirts
Non-work wear:
10 t-shirts
2-sweatshirts
1 formal outfit (in case of weddings or a friend being inducted into some hall of fame)
I do have the occassional conference or meeting requiring a bit more spiff than my regular work days. For those it would be nice to have 2 decent shirts and one nice sweater. I wear either black or brown pants with these.
Conference wear:
2 shirts
1 sweater
1 black pants
1 brown pants
Then there are shoes. While 2 pairs, or 1....or none, may be a livable situation, it isn't practical for me. Right now I probably have too many partly due to my reluctance to get rid of those that are worn out.
For hazmat fieldwork I need one pair of old hiking boots and a pair of rubber knee boots.
For non-hazmat fieldwork I have a pair of "good" hiking boots (not as worn out)
I wear the good hiking boots to work most of the winter.
In summer I have a pair of brown walking shoes and a pair of black walking shoes.
For formal events I can use one pair of brown and one pair of black boots (non-hiking). Right now I have 2 black and 1 brown pair, but none of my "formal" (like for conferences) boots is less than 10 years old so I think I'm OK there.
And then there is the winter weather gear. I'll save that for another post.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Most Excellent and Thrifty Movie
I watched a very cool Chinese film (obviously).
The Piano In A Factory.
It's about a couple who are divorcing. The wife has hooked up with someone who makes more money and moved away, while the husband is staying in the same defunct industrial town making little cash. He believes that his daughter will choose to live with the parent who can give her a piano. Hijinks ensue. There is, obviously, a theme about money and it's place in our lives.
To add to the fun, lots of Russian music. Quite humorous really.
Since this DVD is from Film Movement (which someday someone will get me a subscription to....) it comes with a short film. Noeud Cravat (Necktie) about what we give up to climb the corporate ladder and whether it's worth it. The cartoon is French, but there is no dialog so it doesn't matter.
The Piano In A Factory.
It's about a couple who are divorcing. The wife has hooked up with someone who makes more money and moved away, while the husband is staying in the same defunct industrial town making little cash. He believes that his daughter will choose to live with the parent who can give her a piano. Hijinks ensue. There is, obviously, a theme about money and it's place in our lives.
To add to the fun, lots of Russian music. Quite humorous really.
Since this DVD is from Film Movement (which someday someone will get me a subscription to....) it comes with a short film. Noeud Cravat (Necktie) about what we give up to climb the corporate ladder and whether it's worth it. The cartoon is French, but there is no dialog so it doesn't matter.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Sugary Drinks Are Apparently Evil
As my friends from college know, I was once a serious diet coke addict. I even drank the off brands...shasta, whatever was on sale at Fareway. I'm not proud, but if I needed to pull an all nighter to get a paper done, or because I worked midnight to 8am that one semester and then taught french from 8-8:30 (note the very very short transit time between jobs...yikes), and then had class all day with once a week an evening seminar that was supposed to end at 10pm but often ran until 11, the buses only running until 10:20pm...and the walk to my job being about an hour.
Anyway, drank lots of crappy sweetened carbonated beverages with known toxins like saccharine, aspartame, etc in them. I've stopped partly because of the costs. Even off-brand pop costs more than tapwater or tea (especially if one reuses the tea bags).
It looks like this has also helped my mental health. Sweetened beverages are linked with depression.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/sweet-sodas-soft-drinks-may-raise-risk-depression-183000091.html
So, in addition to the direct cost of the pop, the disposal costs whether recycling or trashing the bottles/cans, and the expected healthcare costs of getting diabetes from sugar or cancer from aspartame, now we have to add in the costs of mental health care. WTF?
I do have the occasional sweetened beverage now, but it's almost always a stevia gingerale or an all natural gingerale and I rarely exceed 3 servings in a week. I don't know if I'm less depressed, but according to science, I have less chance of being depressed.
Now for a rant on the stupidity of some of our medical research conclusions in this country:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/health/overweight-mortality/index.html
Read the title of this:
Anyway, drank lots of crappy sweetened carbonated beverages with known toxins like saccharine, aspartame, etc in them. I've stopped partly because of the costs. Even off-brand pop costs more than tapwater or tea (especially if one reuses the tea bags).
It looks like this has also helped my mental health. Sweetened beverages are linked with depression.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/sweet-sodas-soft-drinks-may-raise-risk-depression-183000091.html
So, in addition to the direct cost of the pop, the disposal costs whether recycling or trashing the bottles/cans, and the expected healthcare costs of getting diabetes from sugar or cancer from aspartame, now we have to add in the costs of mental health care. WTF?
I do have the occasional sweetened beverage now, but it's almost always a stevia gingerale or an all natural gingerale and I rarely exceed 3 servings in a week. I don't know if I'm less depressed, but according to science, I have less chance of being depressed.
Now for a rant on the stupidity of some of our medical research conclusions in this country:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/health/overweight-mortality/index.html
Read the title of this:
Being overweight linked to lower risk of mortality
According to this, being fat means you might not die. Uh. Yeah. You're gonna die. We're all going to die. Get over it. Fat or thin, young or old, at some point you're going to die. This sort of asinine research conclusion is common in the US. I wonder if the rest of the world thinks they too can avoid death.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Fall Update
Wow...like 6 weeks. Suck.
Anyway, been busy/bored. BUT some fun and possibly frugal or possibly spendthrift things have come to pass.
I bought a "luxury vacation home" called "Wagner Haus" (must be said with a rough bad german accent).
It's a 17 foot 1972 camper. No electricity, not even battery. Therefore CHEAP (1100$) and parked on friends' land up near Newport, Washington. It's fun. I get to try out simpler ways of living. Such as using more blankets because no electricity = no furnace (the fan...). The fridge would work on just propane but hardly need it now. I've been using candles and flashlights. It gets cold at night but with plenty of blankets it's been surprisingly cozy. I got up one morning and it was 25degrees inside the camper, but the only really hard part was putting on my pants which were also 25 degrees.
I'll be digging an outhouse shortly. I was going to do it this week while I was up there this week. But, there were complications (ironically I had diarrhea...couldn't leave the friends' real bathroom long enough to do any major digging). I did get a great deal on a seat for the outhouse! 2$ at a thrift store for a camp toilet. It's like a little folding stool (heh heh) but with a toilet seat instead of a canvas seat. It's meant to be used with disposable bags (puke). I remodeled it by cutting the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and JB Welding that to the camp toilet. Total outlay: 10$ (includes the new JB Weld which will be used on many many projects...probably only used 1$ of it for this). I've got some heavy gauge pallets to tear up for the outhouse foundation. For now, the "walls" will be a tarp.
Speaking of tarps. I spent 25$ for two good tarps and some rope to cover the roof of the camper for the winter. No reason to tempt fate.
SO, that is mostly money out in exchange for a great deal of fun.
Today I did something that I'm not sure is thrifty. We'll see. I bought winter tires with a set of rims for the new Subaru. It was 1000$! I could get a vacation home for that!!! The rims were 60ish $ each. This investment will be returned in 3 seasons of swapping them out for free at Les Schwab rather than paying each time which you do if they aren't on their own rims. I had to argue with the young man at the tire place. I asked for walnut tires. He kept saying they didn't make them any more. I kept saying I checked online and they do exist and Les Schwab sells them. He tried to sell me a "walnut pattern tread." I got firm and snotty and said "It's NOT a pattern. There are walnut shells in the rubber." He repeated they didn't make them. I stared at him. He called the boss over...yep. Totally make those. Toyo Observe tires. They were right there on the shelf. DUH. Don't question me. I know what I'm talking about. I don't understand all the ins and outs of tires though and it seems that putting different rims/tires on disconnected the automatic tire pressure monitor thingy so for now I have to stare at the tire symbol on the dashboard. Oh well. Better to have a light flashing at me than to end up in the ditch on an icy drive.
Will these 192$ tires be worth it? I think so, but hard to say. The last walnut tires I bought (same brand but smaller for the old car) lasted 6 winters at about 10-15,000 miles per winter and would have gone one more summer. And, they really help me stop on the conditions we have here in the winter. I like stopping.
Spending as much on tires/rims as I've spent on a vehicle in the past...a crap truck that I overpaid for at 800$, and almost as much as my luxury vacation home...that's hard for me. I'll be really glad I have them as soon as it snows.
Ok...the computer is acting funny. I'm going to try to post this before I lose it.
Anyway, been busy/bored. BUT some fun and possibly frugal or possibly spendthrift things have come to pass.
I bought a "luxury vacation home" called "Wagner Haus" (must be said with a rough bad german accent).
It's a 17 foot 1972 camper. No electricity, not even battery. Therefore CHEAP (1100$) and parked on friends' land up near Newport, Washington. It's fun. I get to try out simpler ways of living. Such as using more blankets because no electricity = no furnace (the fan...). The fridge would work on just propane but hardly need it now. I've been using candles and flashlights. It gets cold at night but with plenty of blankets it's been surprisingly cozy. I got up one morning and it was 25degrees inside the camper, but the only really hard part was putting on my pants which were also 25 degrees.
I'll be digging an outhouse shortly. I was going to do it this week while I was up there this week. But, there were complications (ironically I had diarrhea...couldn't leave the friends' real bathroom long enough to do any major digging). I did get a great deal on a seat for the outhouse! 2$ at a thrift store for a camp toilet. It's like a little folding stool (heh heh) but with a toilet seat instead of a canvas seat. It's meant to be used with disposable bags (puke). I remodeled it by cutting the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and JB Welding that to the camp toilet. Total outlay: 10$ (includes the new JB Weld which will be used on many many projects...probably only used 1$ of it for this). I've got some heavy gauge pallets to tear up for the outhouse foundation. For now, the "walls" will be a tarp.
Speaking of tarps. I spent 25$ for two good tarps and some rope to cover the roof of the camper for the winter. No reason to tempt fate.
SO, that is mostly money out in exchange for a great deal of fun.
Today I did something that I'm not sure is thrifty. We'll see. I bought winter tires with a set of rims for the new Subaru. It was 1000$! I could get a vacation home for that!!! The rims were 60ish $ each. This investment will be returned in 3 seasons of swapping them out for free at Les Schwab rather than paying each time which you do if they aren't on their own rims. I had to argue with the young man at the tire place. I asked for walnut tires. He kept saying they didn't make them any more. I kept saying I checked online and they do exist and Les Schwab sells them. He tried to sell me a "walnut pattern tread." I got firm and snotty and said "It's NOT a pattern. There are walnut shells in the rubber." He repeated they didn't make them. I stared at him. He called the boss over...yep. Totally make those. Toyo Observe tires. They were right there on the shelf. DUH. Don't question me. I know what I'm talking about. I don't understand all the ins and outs of tires though and it seems that putting different rims/tires on disconnected the automatic tire pressure monitor thingy so for now I have to stare at the tire symbol on the dashboard. Oh well. Better to have a light flashing at me than to end up in the ditch on an icy drive.
Will these 192$ tires be worth it? I think so, but hard to say. The last walnut tires I bought (same brand but smaller for the old car) lasted 6 winters at about 10-15,000 miles per winter and would have gone one more summer. And, they really help me stop on the conditions we have here in the winter. I like stopping.
Spending as much on tires/rims as I've spent on a vehicle in the past...a crap truck that I overpaid for at 800$, and almost as much as my luxury vacation home...that's hard for me. I'll be really glad I have them as soon as it snows.
Ok...the computer is acting funny. I'm going to try to post this before I lose it.
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