Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Went to the drive-in again on Friday night. I bought the tolls and tickets into the show. ($4+$16=$20) Boyfriend bought us a whole 16″ pizza pie, popcorn and drinks. ($25ish) I also bought a drink for the road trip back. ($2) FWIW, lunch on Friday at work was free because of a group presentation.

Saturday I picked up my sewing machine refurb and it was $96. Spendy, but worth it. You can buy a whole new machine for $150, but it will be cheap and yucky. This one is a test refurb on a used machine I bought from a friend for $20 when she moved to Oregon. If I think the work was good, I will take them my precious vintage Singer.

Later there was a trip to the flea market and a $4 ironing board (No rust!) but nothing good to eat for lunch, so I snacked before going to a barbecue. I went to a barbecue for my old boss and bought some birthday cards ($6) and a gift card ($25). I also bought boyfriend take out dinner for $10. (Oh those annoying neighbors had a party with full on amplifiers so he had to bring the dog over and stay overnight. The yummy place we like to eat was closing and he didn’t go to the barbecue with me.) Boyfriend mailed a package for me for ($8).

On Sunday we ate brunch at Bistrot Du Coin which boyfriend picked up. ($30, because I am a pig who had salad and pate de campagne. Boyfriend had an omelette only. No drinks.) There was cool drive in the evening to Crystal City for a Chipotle dinner for $16. Boyfriend bought tasty Coldstone ice cream for $10 while we sat under a nice wisteria arbor and watched a pretty fountain. (It’s a really romantic spot. I highly recommend it for a date. The same neighborhood has Jaleo and Legal Sea Food and some other fancy and not so fancy spots for a variety of budgets.) I also picked up some dog food during the day for his dog for $21. (IAMS fancy stuff.)

There was spending every day and a lot of stress of running around etc. The drive-in showed Wall-E and Batman: The Dark Knight. Both worth seeing. We got a lot done, but maybe not enough.

This weekend was boyfriend’s birthday, but there wasn’t really time to go someplace nice for dinner. We also couldn’t decide what to have, so we’re going to put that off till he comes back from his trip for work.

How about 2 3rd place finishes for the baby goats my friend took to the show? Ok. I know, you don’t read my blog to hear about cute little baby goats. CuteOverload needs a new category for them though. They are pretty adorable.

Dinner Friday night at Calico was superb. The duckling I had was okay, but the bites of the filet mignon and bouliabasse made me regret the duck. The patisserie was the real treat. I had one of the mini cakes. It was a white cake with mascarpone layered in the middle with dark chocolate ganache and a merigue kiss on top. TASTY! I believe the name of the cake was ‘Joy’. Add a glass of wine, a cup of tea and splitting the check four ways, and my share of dinner was about $45. This was a planned fancy dinner we wanted to do because everything else for the weekend would be fair food and fast food.

(more…)

There have been days this summer, or rather sleepless nights, where I regretted getting the bike. And then I had a perfectly clear afternoon this week, schedule-wise and weather-wise. I put my fully-charged battery back into the bike, mashing up the screw on the right and got it started again. I love fixing stuff myself, especially when I don’t get electrocuted. (Upon closer inspection, I see that the screw on the right had been mashed into its socket before by the friend who first installed it for me. It’s just not a good fit into that spot. It just isn’t.)

At any rate, I haven’t made it out of the parking lot. Some nice people I know helped get me re-oriented and tweak a few things a couple of weeks ago, when I had my first moments riding in the parking lot at home. I was really nervous and tense about it all. But this afternoon, I had a great time making ovals around the cement medians, and cutting figure-8’s in low gears. It hurts my forearms to squeeze the levers, but it’s a good kind of ache.

Even though I am sorry I spent the money, on the other hand, I had a great time noodling around that afternoon. I can now stop reliably, even if it’s still not perfect. If I had a jacket on, I would have taken the bike out of the lot, onto the street. But I left it inside for the moment since I had only intended to practice. I’m not really supposed to ride alone anyway because I have only a permit.

I’m still edgy about riding on the street in traffic, but I had a great time on the bike. It’s perfect for puttering over to nearby places like the farmer’s market.

For the amount of enjoyment I’m getting though, I have no regrets. It felt really nice to ride around the lot and practice even if it’s costing me a gazillion dollars per mile. LOL.

Little by little, step by step. I’m going to learn to ride.

Sometimes I don’t know why The Consumerist doesn’t tell their readers to STFU. There is a story about a poorly made birthday cake for a three-year old.

Ok. Take a step back. Remember the post a few days ago about children’s birthday parties? Well, I do. KIDS ARE JUST HAPPY YOU ARE LETTING THEM EAT SUGAR.

There are so many things about The Consumerist post and its comments that bother me but I am deleting everything I wrote in my first draft and I’m just going to tell you to make your own cake from cake mix. It will be a much happier cake that way.

Cake mix is 2 dollars. At most, add 3 eggs and some oil or applesauce. It’s another $4 for two colors of frosting. For about $8 you can bake a cake at home. I admit, I don’t do this. But I am a cake snob. (Just click these bakery links and you’ll see what I think is a cake. I’ve had cakes from all three before and OMG are they frickin’ amazing.)

Time for some bakery confessions. I worked at a really nice gourmet bakery/deli in high school. Most likely your cake was made by the bakers a day ahead for you to pick it up. So your cake, by the time you serve it, will be approximately 36-48 hours old. Bakers usually work a$$ early in the morning because they fire up the ovens early and turn them off by noon. They may decorate them the same day, or not. Our cakes were gourmet and delicious stuff. No one **ever** complained about their freshness. (And trust me, they complained about a lot.) The one cake that was hard to deal with on timing and freshness was the flourless chocolate cake which had chantilly cream for frosting. Basically fresh whipped cream is unstable with crazy chemicals to prevent separation, so after even 72 hours in our own case, it didn’t look so hot. (We sold by the slice so we always had cakes on display.)

I tell you this because this means there is little excuse to bake a cake a few days early if you want to save some money. A cake you made 1 or 2 days beforehand will be fresh or fresh enough, just like a cake from a store. So don’t fret over it being made the same day as your party. That is a stupid obsession.

Cheap tip for decorating a cake:

Get some plastic figurines from the toy store and squish them into the frosting

Ok, I admit. They’re not food grade plastic. But get festive and don’t be such a pill for food safety. Have some fun for pete’s sake! And God forbid you use a recalled Thomas the Tank Engine toy! (Oh wait. Those are wood anyway. Stick with plastic toys you can wash off.)

The best wedding topper I ever saw was at the wedding of some goofy friends of mine. (I should know, I’m the one who brought the cake out.) The groom’s brother is a total Star Wars nut, the kind who keeps his stuff in the original package. In honor of the wedding, he sacrificed a Han Solo and Princess Leia to be the cake topper. Sure we had to squish them into the frosting up to their knees, but it was totally awesome to watch the bride and groom lick them clean for the cameras. Four years later, it’s one of our best memories of the wedding.

Want to get really crazy for an older child’s birthday? Like really-really crazy?

Make your own ice cream with liquid nitrogen!!

Ok, I’m not an expert at this and you definitely have to practice some safety here with the nitrogen, but basically you put some heavy whipping cream and a little vanilla into a bucket that can handle cold temperatures. Dump in some liquid nitrogen and stir, stir, stir till the cream starts freezing. I am sure this will work well for you inside an air-conditioned house. We did this at the above mentioned wedding, outdoors in 90+ degree summer Texas heat. It stayed a little melty the whole time. But everyone loved the novelty of it.

Enough of my ranting. As you may have noticed, I overuse ‘OK’. Sue me. I doubt you’ll win.

ps- I know you are asking how to buy liquid nitrogen. In my case, my friends ordered an enormous tank from a place like Airgas because we had about 200 people to serve and had no idea how much we needed. For a kid’s party, estimating down, I’d say you only need as much as a 20lb propane tank’s sized amount. (I don’t even know what size they sell it in.) I would say don’t let every kid mix their own. Make it in large batches, allowing kids to have a chance to stir, and serve it. They will get tired of stirring, so this shouldn’t be a problem. Anyone have any further advice? (Because I know Donna Jean has bought some before.)

Smart Money has an article, “Overspending on Kids Risks Parents’ Financial Future”.

I can’t say it more plainly than that. My parents didn’t save much for retirement till it was very late. I don’t think I was particularly spoiled, but there were definitely things my parents could have done differently to boost their assets. Though I value the choices they made, I’m no longer certain they were the best choice they could have made. Hindsight is 20-20 and I can say I am grateful for those choices and I am better for them.

Point is, don’t go overboard. $600 for a toddler’s birthday? How about some cake, food and a couple of activities? I bet I could throw a toddler party for less than $300. Heck my own 30th birthday party was ~$450, and that’s because I bought a lot of booze. (And I was graced with the presence of surprise guests from NYC!)

I wonder what people are doing when they spend money like this for a party. I mean, if you’re having a blowout barbecue for all of your family, OK, sure. But I’ve watched kindergarteners play with water mixed with cornstarch on a plastic tray for fun. Most expensive part is the tray.

Do you want to do something fun with the kids that will fascinate them? Try this activity. It’s splatter paint designs.

Materials:
Old squirt bottles
String
Paint
Butcher paper
Overhead rafter or branch
Weights
Tape
Scissors

1) Mix up your paint and put into the bottles.
2) Lay down some butcher paper under the rafter/branch. Weight it down.
3) Tie string around the first bottle. You may have to secure it with tape.
4) Flip the bottle upside down and tie the other end of the string to the rafter so it hangs down.
5) Swing the pendulum across the paper or in circles.
6) Change out the paint bottles or close them so they stop dripping.
7) Swirl till your heart’s content. It’s best to use about 2-3 colors and don’t let a deluge occur.
Cut down the string when you’re done.

The trick to this is not to have too much paint drip out. It will take a little experimentation, but it’s a lot of fun. If you’re outdoors, don’t do this when it’s too windy. You can add a simple lesson about physics if you’re good with pendulums and time/energy calculations. (SCIENCE IS AWESOME! But I digress.)

I think this single question is the “To Be or Not To Be” dilemma of frugality.

Recently a friend gave me a strip-cut shredder to replace a broken cross-cut one my dad gave me to try and fix. I am really bad with shredders. I was Fawn Hall at one company and had to shred entire file cabinets of old documents to make room for the current stuff. (Please God, tell me the younger folks remember who she is.) Since I had access to an industrial shredder I would throw in huge chunks of paper at a time. Uh. That doesn’t work so good with the home shredders you can buy at office supply stores. Not by a long shot. Read those directions and take good care of your office machines.

Basically, I break every shredder I have. My dad broke the cross-cut when cutting used lottery tickets. Retailers take the winning cards and report the results to the Lottery Commission, but they don’t have to send in the cards anymore, so he shreds them. That was his second shredder, like father, like daughter. Anyhow, I tried my best to repair the damned thing, but couldn’t. One of my friends decided that strip-cut wasn’t good enough for her and got a cross-cut one instead. She knew I had a broken one and offered me her strip-cut for free just to get it out of her house. She said it didn’t work great, but it’s better than nothing.

Well, I ended up breaking it too. I resorted to my old practice and shoved in too many papers doubled over, i.e. whole envelopes of junk mail. It’s max 5 sheets, but really works best with about 2 at most. I had almost given up hope, but decided to get out every single piece of paper stuck in the damned thing to see if that would help. I broke out the chopsticks, needlenose pliers and tweezers. I cleaned out every piece of paper I could from the thing and TA-DA! It worked like a charm once again! The AUTO setting didn’t constantly grind because the sensor wasn’t blocked. I got the REVERSE setting back too! It worked better than it did when my friend gave it to me. (Please remember to unplug your shredder when attempting repair!!!)

The point is, I was going to replace that first broken cross-cut because I couldn’t fix it. When faced with the karmic opportunity of a second shredder, I couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I took it and repaired it to spare myself the expense of a third shredder.

Ask yourself, when do you give up on fixing things? When is the repair not worth the replacement? I love fixing up my old shoes because I hate the pains and aches of breaking in new shoes. I get joy out of repairing things myself because I’m a nerd like that. But when I read Maus, by Art Spiegelman, I remember his father being a saver, scavenger type because of scarcity in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. It’s a life-long frugality that stayed with him, but embarrassed his son. (Especially the groceries at the beginning of the sequel, Maus II.) His father would try to fix everything Even my pop tells me too about scarcity in post-war Korea for things like clutches on cars, fresh produce, pocket knives, etc. (I used to sharpen my pencils with razor blades as a kid, like my pop taught me to do when I didn’t have a sharpener around. It sounds crazy now, but it teaches responsibility and how NOT to behave carelessly.)

I don’t like living in a disposable society. We don’t take care enough of the world in which we live. Stewardship matters, and if that means repairing things instead of replacing them, we should think about doing so. Making your car or TV last an extra year on a lifetime of cars and TV’s is a lot of money. Think about that.

I screwed up my WordPress migration so I don’t have any archives by month like other good bloggers do. Instead, I’ve been trying to tag my articles with categories so you can read them topically.

I’m not finished yet, but some old, but I tagged some good articles. I don’t know when I’ll get around to tagging what’s left. I have about 6 more months to tag and then I have to backfill all the other articles that weren’t easy to categorize.

Please enjoy the Books category for book reviews. (A new one will be posted soon!)
Articles I Like: for articles I have plucked from other sites and bloggers, but mostly other bloggers.
Personal Memory: if you want to get to know me better.
DIY: you are inclined to make things. Plus it’s one of my favorite categories.
Emergency Fund: if you want to see my Save-O-Meter progress and thoughts on the subject.
Emergency Preparedness: if you want to know what to do in an emergency or how to protect yourself.
Frozen Dinners: for Frozen Dinner Reviews (or search my blog for ‘FDR’, because not all were tagged yet)
Jobs or Employment: These include some of my best posts like Mapgirl, Inc.

Also remember that a category only appears if there is a post with that tag. So every single category has something. You won’t be clicking nothing if you click them.

Dear Blogreaders,

I *heart* you. I made you a Valentine.

Turn down your sound and click the link. It’s safe for work and my frugal tip of the day. I send it to you early so you can dream up your own clever lines.

Sorry. I ate the chocolates.

Ricemutt on improving your resume. Excellent advice. Always be specific and quantifiable if you can. If you saved your company $3 million dollars, then say that.

Madame X on home inventory management. I walk the fine line between JIT and hoarding. I hate running out of toilet paper, paper towels and shampoo/conditioner. I will tolerate running out of soap since I can usually find really nice ones in my cache of hotel soaps.

Beancounter Blog on the mysteries of the check engine light. Given my 98K mile service recently, I think this was an interesting post. I admit, the check engine light had been going off in my car intermittently for the past month. Just when I think I was going to call the dealer and take it in, it would turn off. It was quite odd. Finally, my friend thinking of purchasing my car is what pushed me to take my car into the shop. Good thing too since I didn’t know my clutch needing replacing quite so bad. If you’re wondering when or what to do when your car needs maintenance, try Flick & Flack, the Tappert Brothers from Car Talk on Saturday mornings on NPR. (ooh ooh! The DIY guide!)

Jonathan on where to get free meals on your birthday. It’s a pretty long list, but call before you go since the list is a bit old.

Financial Freedumb on his homebuying budget. How much he can afford, what’s trying to buy, etc. I like his tables and his reasoning. Sometimes we all have to scale back our ambitions and he does it very thoughtfully.

Beancounter Blog (again!) on the BudgetBot. I might have to look into this one for tracking those stupid little cash transactions. Caveat though is the charges you’ll ring up for SMS/text messages on your phone. Go read Single Ma on that subject.

Dawn on conserving water and lowering your bill.

A Penny Saved on his book fetish. For a big reader like me, it’s got some good tips on how to save money on reading in the comments.

The Frugal Duchess on her strategies for dining out more cheaply. I think the best part is actually the article at the bottom on changing spending habits in the US vs the Globe. It’s rather interesting to see what Americans are choosing to cut back upon. Now what I would like to know is where we start out as well. For other countries, they may not dine out as much in the first place, which is why they might not cut back on their restaurant spending. Just a thought.

Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, currently of Vulcan Ventures, is just a little boy in love with aeroplanes. It’s not really personal finance related, but a description of his vintage warplane collection. It’s kind of interesting to see what a lot of wealth can do.

Money smells. No, really. It’s a pee-yoo stink to high heaven of sweaty palms and B.O. I always wash my hands after counting wads of the stuff. $10K of cash really overpowers in the small back office of our gas station. At least I was working there in the winter when it stank less.

Recently I was peering into the bathroom of a friend. There were several bottles of perfume there. I commented on the vanity or paranoia my friend must have to spritz themselves with posh perfume all the time. The reply was that every single bottle was a gift from a family member. Honestly, I couldn’t see the point of such a useless gift unless they were trying to say something about personal hygiene.

Do you wear CK One? JLo’s perfume? That godawful stench of Paris Hilton? (ick, I can’t believe I just mentioned that hideous crow in my blog.) Why?

Sure I love nothing better than sniffing my friend’s shirt on the escalators in the Boston subway on the way to church Easter morning. He was wearing Polo Crest that day and I will never forget it. (Especially since I went to a Harvard Law party the night before and actually HAD FUN.)

I prefer fresh flowery scents. In fact the cheapest perfume is one I make myself. It’s easier than mixing a cocktail.

Order essential oils from some place like Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs or Tenzing Momo. Get a spritzer/atomizer, a small funnel and distilled water. Fill the spritzer with a little bit of oil, and fill the rest of it with water. Spritz away. I use a small cobalt glass bottle instead of a spritzer.

There are more complicated kinds of ways of doing this involving oils and alcohol. But the nice people at Tenzing Momo explained to me that really all you need is a bit of water to thin out the oil.

Lately I’m wearing violets and vanilla. I shake up the bottle and dab a little behind the ears and on the wrists on my way out the door. All in all, it cost me $20.18 at Tenzing Momo for all the supplies. I went with true vanilla oil, which is more expensive than other vanilla oils, violet oil, a cobalt glass bottle and special funnel top. The good thing is that when I run out of oil, I will have two more perfume bottles I can fill with anything I want. Oh, that is also the price without shipping since I was at Pike Place Market in person last year. I will easily have enough perfume for two years. Not too shabby when you see that most perfumes at the mall are 40 bucks.