Udandi and MyMoneyBlog have great posts this week about buying generic.

Udandi says sometimes generic isn’t worth it. I totally agree. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Quality is important to getting good value for your dollar, so don’t skimp when it counts. Like her, I find adhesives are a place where quality counts.

I like Jonathan’s post because he lists out what is acceptable to him to buy generic and what isn’t.

I agree on the Pop-Tarts and OJ. They taste better when they are brand-name. Though I have started expanding my choice of orange juices. I used to only get Tropicana, but Minute Maid and Florida’s Natural are now acceptable and I get what’s on sale for the week I go to the grocery store.

One of his commenters says batteries are another item where you should go brand name. I agree. The Kirkland ones don’t last as long as Energizer. I used to live with an electrical engineer and he told me that studies have shown that Energizer really does last longer. On balance, I’ll get whatever is on sale if I need them.

PF Advice had a blog post in January about saving $1000 by drinking water.

Every year for Lent I give up soda. I’m not much of an observant Catholic, nor much of a Catholic at all, but I did latch onto the idea of giving up soda while in college. I really like soda. I don’t know that I could give it up for the rest of my life. I like Coke, 7-Up, orange/grape/black cherry soda, ginger ale, root beer, sasparilla, etc. Frank’s Black Cherry Wishniak is my all time favorite. Boylan’s Black Cherry is the best substitute so far. Levi’s Champ Cherry is a sentimental favorite and I’ll have Jones Diet Black Cherry because it’s tolerable for diet drinks, but I digress.

Now that you’ve seen how much I love a good cherry soda, you can see that this sacrifice is a big deal for me. I would rather drink a warm Coca-Cola at the office in the morning instead of the office kitchenette coffee. It tastes so much better. But it costs me $1 per 20oz bottle in the vending machine at work.

If I save up all those dollars, I’d have some serious money. But to get myself on track, I have to hit the proverbial reset button every year when Lent begins.

I’ve done this on and off since about 1994 or 1995. I think for 2006, I should save a dollar a day in a piggy bank or a few dollars a day. In fact, I should go buy one soon or ask a potter friend to make one up for me. I am bad at saving money. I need the one-way directional flow of a clay bank to make me save. Because of this, I have decided to add a saving money component to my Lenten sacrifice this year. I was deciding on this or halving my credit card debt. Either one would be quite nice.

So off I go to make myself a shoebox with a slit in the top. I will decorate it with pictures of the things I covet. I can only hope to be blessed with some money at the end of Lent which will go into the bank. I’ll be reposting here during Holy Week, i.e. that span between Palm Sunday and Easter with the total amount saved and then add it to my Save-O-Meter.

CNN Money writes that the bubble may be bursting with new home order cancellations.

Very interesting. I personally cannot stand all the traffic here in DC especially in the outlying suburbs where I work. It drives me bonkers. I left the office at 7pm tonight and there was still a lot of traffic to get home in to Arlington.

I think DC will still remain a strong market because the tech jobs aren’t going to disappear. Even if Carl Icahn breaks up Time-Warner, AOL will still be a bedrock in Dulles. The Federal government is shifting so many offices out to the suburbs that some happy new little Beltway Bandit startup firm will move in to take its Class A office space in Arlington and life will continue here. I can only hope that the condo market doesn’t collapse with the opening of a lot of new units next year.

“Not as many wants being considered necessities” - Anonymous Commenter

Aye. Isn’t that the rub?

This quote was left by a commenter last week. But I think it’s the hardest struggle out there. It’s in your *head*, not your wallet. I know when I splurged two weeks ago that I was going to need a spring/summer corporate wardrobe, but I knew I didn’t need the Spring 2006 Lilly skirt I bought. I wanted it, and wanted it very badly. Buying it was the fulfillment of some long held fashion dreams. I wish I had bought it on sale, but I know it was a want and I could have fulfilled my wardrobe need at Marshalls or TJ Maxx. In fact, I’ll probably fill the rest of my wardrobe need this year at my favorite sales site, Lands’ End’s Overstocks Page.

I’ve watched many a girlfriend at the mall convince themselves they ‘needed’ something, new lipstick, shoes, skirt, cute blouse, etc. For instance, Lilly is known for the use of bright shocking pink. I would love bright shocking pink shoes to match, but I realized that I was telling myself I needed a pair to match the skirt. Then I realized that I could get away with my older pink Armani Exchange slides and will not have to buy any new shoes at all. (Long time readers are probably saying to themselves,’But I thought you were a Frumperella?!’ Usually I am, but I do have a few high-end fasionable clothes, usually bought on sale.) Consumers really generate false needs and they do it from a very early age. My friend’s two and half year old son has started begging for things by telling his mom that he *needs* it. Even a toddler can fool himself and try to fool his mom and dad about what is necessary in life. It’s a bad habit that can stick with you until you die.

I just switched over to a job with a corporate dress code and I know I am not dressed as professionally as I ought to be. I need a new summer corporate wardrobe because I have worked largely in business casual tech job environments since I graduated from college nearly a decade ago. I don’t really own enough of a wardrobe for a full season and it’s not ok to wear the same 4 outfits everyday. I wish it was not this way, but when there’s a dress code reminder email floating around from management, you tend to wonder if it’s directed at you. Thus my claim of needing a new wardrobe. I don’t really think I need one, I just don’t want to be admonished at work for wearing Diesel T-shirts that reveal my navel when it’s summer. Nor for the sake of my vanity do I want to look like I’m ready to attend a funeral in July.

One of my friends thinks I’m a miser because I don’t think I need a whole lot. I know pretty confidently when I’m buying something because I want it and I try not to fool myself about which category it is.

Be honest with yourself. Do you really need it? Are you going to die if you don’t have it? Does it fit into your budget? Were you planning on buying something else with your budget when you saw this item? Having a budget and sticking to it really helps here. Manufacture the need to stick to your budget not the need for more stuff.

This kind of goes back to the Suze Orman post.

I eat a lot of Frozen Dinners. I love them. I eat them for lunch. I eat them for dinner. I think of myself as a connoisseur of them. (damned French word! How do you spell it?) I generally don’t pack a lunch, if I do, it’s a frozen dinner. It’s cheaper than the cafeteria, and if it’s not enough food, I will get a small something to supplement my calories.

I am often overwhelmed by the mind-boggling variety of them all. Celentano’s? Or Michelina’s? Stouffer’s or Marie Callender’s? Lean Cuisine or Lean Pockets? What’s a lazy girl to do?

Tonight, I vow to bring you FDR’s, an ongoing series. This is very serious business, for any dedicated frozen dinner eater, you know that there are your tried and true staples, like Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese, but you get tempted by the new flavors our there, Uncle Ben’s Teriyaki Bowl. The problem is, do you know what you are going to get?

I am a sort of picky eater too. I have food allergies, namely to fruit, so I must be careful with spiced apple desserts and extra cranberries tossed on green beans. If you haven’t figured it out from my recipe posts, I am a devout meat eater. The protein is good for me. Though I like some of the veggie bowls out there, I just have to top them with chicken.

What’s the rating system?

* - 1 star - GROSS. Never getting it again

** - 2 stars - I could eat it again if I had to, but only if it’s on sale.

*** - 3 stars - Tasty. But not going to be my first selection, just something to round out the choices.

**** - 4 stars - Really yummy. I’ll be adding it to my fall back list of frozen food so that when I am overwhelmed with choices this will be a default selection which I know I will eat.

So on to tonight’s review!!

Michael Angelo’s Chicken Parmesean

The box was promising. It’s thicker than most boxes. the picture looked good. It took a few minutes longer to prepare than a Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine. 5-7 minutes versus 4-5 minutes. I think my weak microwave overcooked it a bit at 7 minutes, but the meat was fine. It was the sauce that got overdone. There was nice gooey cheese, but not too much, in fact, it could have had a little more.

I didn’t really pay attention when I bought it, so I didn’t know there were spaghetti noodles in the bottom. The chicken was nicely sized, larger than a deck of cards, but about half of what I would normally serve myself. I could have used some more noodles, about 2-3x what was in the box, but for a frozen dinner, it wasn’t an unusually small portion. I would say about average.

How was the price? I got this on sale with my supermarket card, which is how I usually buy my meals. This was a $3.00 meal, but I think it was worth it. Generally I get Stouffer’s or Lean Cuisine for about $2.00-$2.50 a box, depending on the deal that is running. At the original price of $3.99 I wouldn’t buy it, but served with a nice salad and a few slices of bread, it could be a pretty full meal.

I rate this one 4 stars. ****

I ganked it from Jane Dough who was too modest to tell us that she is quoted within.

It features Jonathan Ping from MyMoneyBlog, but Madame X is also mentioned.

Hm… Seems as though I’m getting traffic through the feed. If you are new, please say hello! Ask me questions, offer feedback, pontificate on the use of Quicken, just be nice and please leave your name. I generally despise anonymous posters. Use your initials if you like, no need to register with Blogger if you aren’t already registered.

FYI - Please note that I also moderate my comments, so don’t submit them three times if you don’t see it right away. I work for a Net Nazi company and I generally refrain from blogging during the work day. I pretty much log in once at lunch to check if there are comments needing publishing and again in the afternoon/evening for the same reason. Any posts during the work day are because I’m at home that day or post-dated it. I write most posts at night, which is why they ramble. Flexo says it’s ok to blog at 12:30am.

I try to provide fresh content every day which will explain why I have kind of disjointed timelines when referring to other posts. I publish out posts little by little and I rearrange them, etc. I’ll try to get it right, but having fresh and tasty content is hard to do when you’re working 40+ hours at all hours of the day and night. (Sleep deprivation 2 nights in a row = bad judgement = day off from work! Whee!)

FMF, if you are reading this, my mail account still doesn’t like your mail account. But thank you for taking my old Carnival submission and saving it for next week. I have found that Carnival hosts tend to forget to email me when the new stuff is up if I use the form. But I guess the form it shall be when I email you.

It only took me about a week to reprint my Federal Tax Form after I discovered my typographical error. So much for the daily grind.

So I pull it all together and do my ritual trip to the post office to send it off registered mail.

As far as the things which trigger an audit, how about a definitive article?

I find the demographic chart most interesting. For all those people spending thousands of dollars on their medical expenses, why don’t they do Medical FSA? Or do they not have access? It probably speaks more to the sorry state of healthcare accessibility that their insurance didn’t cover their bills.

Tasty recipes!

I’ve got two there, and it’s gone co-ed as of late January. I have yet to try any out since I haven’t been in a cooking mood lately. But now that my work responsibilities will be shifting, I hope to try cooking again soon.

With all the talk about Katrina rebuilding, it occurs to me that most of my so-called-wealth is my home. It seems to me that I should make sure that the largest holding in my assets is not my house. I should keep a mixture of my fully-insured home, investments, and cash savings. Is there a suggested percentage out there? Should I be striving for a 50%-50% home-to-everything-else mix? If like Jane Dough, I should have $3-4 million for my future retirement, I certainly don’t believe any home I live in will be worth $2 million in 30-40 years. I really can’t fathom that.

I keep thinking about a friend whose parents lived 4 blocks away from the first levee break. A few years ago her folks were given the option to insure their home against floods for over $1 million, which they decided to do. They were quite lucky compared to most folks and were able to get a payout immediately from their insurance company, though they lost everything. My friend unfortunately had some of her possessions in storage there and gets nothing from the insurer to replace her belongings.

I wonder out loud here, should the Pentagon ever get attacked again, what kind of insurance should I be carrying? I don’t live that far away from the world’s largest office building. I live inside the DC Beltway. If I had to jump into my car and drive away as fast as I could, what kind of access would I have to cash instruments, credit, my investments if I couldn’t return home for several months?

It occurs to me that I am awfully lucky to bank online and to have investment assets I could draw upon from a distance. My banks have out-of-state branches where I could present my ATM card and draw some cash. So many urban poor use those usurious check cashing services because they don’t have bank accounts. What can they do if there is no electronic way to store funds? What if I need to escape when the Vogons come to destroy Earth, or I decide to head off-world to Ballybran? Will my credits be accessible on the shuttle flight? (An attempt at levity. Please laugh here.)

It sounds weird to think about what an ‘emergency fund’ is. Should I throw $200 cash into my trunk with my flashlight, road flares, emergency blanket, etc? It sounds goofy and paranoid, but I think it’s worth contemplating in light of my location. At the very least, I could pay a tow truck driver if need be.

What do all you folks out there in TV Land think?