The Weight of Money

The cooler weather caught us unprepared, the daughter needed warm weather clothes. A quick 30-minute trip to my favorite thrift store was all we needed to stock up for winter.

I’m a big advocate of having just enough clothes for kids and no more. Anything extra just means more things strewn across the floor and more laundry to wash. Also, having too many clothes means extra time folding and more space needed to put things away. I buy enough clothes that she can wear a different top every day of the week and about four pairs of pants — we buy a couple extra items for days that it rains or the clothes just get messy. I don’t believe in school clothes and play clothes, thats too much space and laundry for me. Shopping at thrift stores means I don’t freak out when she wears her “new” pants to play in the mud (though, I do fuss a little) and I don’t mind (too much) if things get holes in them.

All of our thrift store clothes are in great shape — I don’t buy anything that is worn or has stains on it. The price on the like-new items is the same as the well-worn items, so I like to get my money’s worth. Also, I often end up reselling the items after she’s grown out of them, sometimes for more than I paid. I visit thrift stores where they have 50% off specials; at my favorite store, each items has a different color tag and certain colors will be 50% off that day. If I see something that’s perfect, but not 50% off that day, I pass. I know that I’ll find something else just as wonderful for half the price.

I find it helpful to know your local thrift stores and stick to the ones that are easiest to shop at. There are three near the partner’s work that have good prices. However, I primarily shop at one because they are always clean, everything is hung up according to color, and the racks are not jammed tight. If I feel like I really have to dig to find what I want, it’s not worth it. Today I scored 5 pairs of pants, 5 tops, 1 light weight jacket, and 2 pairs of pyjamas for $30, all within 30 minutes - for me, this is shopping at it’s finest. The daughter tried everything on and it all fits, we’re lucky that she’s pretty easy going in terms of fashions and is usually happy with anything I pick out.

I was prepared to write up a fairly eloquent post on how you can save money using dry, instant milk. I’ve seen this suggestion mentioned by the most frugal of frugal and figure that it wasn’t for me. I don’t know, but something about reconstituted milk just didn’t sit right. Crazy part of this untested assumption is that I’m not a milk drinker, so what would it even matter if it tasted funny? It’d still work just fine in cooking and baking, right?

So, I finally whipped up a test batch to test my assumptions and was unexpectedly impressed. What I figure to just be a sign of scraping the barrel of frugality turns out to be a reasonable solution to increasing milk prices. To test it even further, I poured it into the near empty milk container and waited for a blind taste test from the daughter — sure enough, it passed without detection (ie. success).

At the grocery store, I told the daughter that dry milk was on our list. We hit the dairy isle first (because we still needed regular milk, more on that in a bit) and was shocked to see that milk prices have climbed up to $4.25 a gallon - wow!. That means we’re paying more than a quarter for each glass of chocolate milk consumed. Outraged by this price, I vowed that we were now 100% committee to drinking powdered milk. The daughter freaks at this idea — no way is she going to drink powdered milk! I inform her she already has, much to her astonishment, and she’s stumped for an argument.

In the baking isle, powdered milk in hand, the daughter continues the case against the new change in her drinking habits, insisting that she didn’t drink anything like that. Once I tell of the blind taste test procedure, she admits defeat and doesn’t seem so overwhelmed by the idea. Feeling proud and thrifty, I head home with my purchases; but something in my mind starts wondering about the actual cost per gallon on reconstituted milk and how much this new milk is going to cost.

Once home, full grocery bags still waiting on the counter, I whip out the calculator and start playing with numbers. The 4 pound box of dry milk will make 5 gallons of milk, at a price of $2.90 a gallon — for some reason, this doesn’t seem thrifty enough for me.

Also, because we’ll be mixing regular milk with the dry milk to improve flavor for the occasional glass of milk and for cereal, that bring the price per gallon even higher. A 1:1 ratio will give us, at current market rates, a price of $3.57 a gallon. If we increase the ration to 3:1, price drops to $3.23 a gallon — the price we were paying last year for regular milk. Sigh.

These numbers are not very encouraging. Basically, it’s more work for less quality (I said I was unexpectedly impressed, I am not ready to go 100% dry milk - yet) and the price is still more than $3.00 a gallon. All in all, I think it is time for us to consider a dairy goat.

Being a homeowner has brought on some new and rewarding adventures - like calling the Building Inspections and Permits office to ask some innocent questions about building a barn on our property. The partner obsesses about the shackles of bureaucracy and gets so worked up worrying about what-if’s that he never really finds out what is what. So, to finally get some final (or somewhat more definitive) on our building prospects, I called up the permit office and began the department transfer dance.

The first question was about required property setbacks and I promptly got traded to the zoning department. Since our barn will not house animals, 200-400 foot setbacks are reduced to 5 foot (as long as the building is behind our house, no problem). Back to permits, I find out that since our property is less than an acres, our barn can’t be a barn and instead a storage shed. Fine, I agree, though that means more red tape and permit fees. Turns out a 30′ x 40′ “storage shed” will be less than $250.

Now, being worried about the new shed classification, I call the zoning office back and speak to another person — this guy is a little less friendly and spins an ominous air as he puts me on hold to check our specific zoning (agricultural). After assurances that this is a personal use shed, he gives me the same 5-foot setbacks and sends me merrily on my way. Before getting off the phone, I ask again, if there are any size or height restrictions and am again told no. “It can be as big as I want?”, “Yes, as long as it’s behind the house”. Sweet.

We’ve also been concerned about setbacks from our well, so I call up the Health Department too. I get the numbers, 25-feet from the week, 30-feet from the septic, and am feeling pretty content with my progress. Now, I want to take the mega tape measure and see just how much room that leaves us to build a shed (cause our well is near where we want to put the shed).

Also, while talking to the second zoning person, I verified the process needed to get a home occupancy certificate for my home sewing business — $25 will buy me 500-sq-feet usage of my home for my business, assuming that there is no excessive vehicle traffic. Too bad the guy didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor and seemed a little annoyed at my quirky outburst, like “Ha, wish I had 500 sq feet available”.

We need doctors that are closer to our home. The daughter has seen the same pediatrician since we first moved to Maryland, which sounds wonderful except for the fact that she was local for less than 2 of the 5 years we’ve lived here. Since then, she’s been more than 30 miles from where we’ve lived. But, I really like the doctor, value the continuity of care, and don’t want to leave her practice. About two years ago, the daughter started seeing an orthodontist which was then less than 15 miles away, now the distance is almost twice a far. Again, I really like the care we receive and am not interested in finding a new doctor.

For the most part, this isn’t a major issue except when I get the clever idea of scheduling appointments with each office on the same day, today. School was closed for some reason or another and I figure this would be the best time to take care of some standard appointments. This would have worked out fine if the pediatrician and orthodontist were nearby, instead they are both 30+ miles from us, in opposite directions. And, of course, it had to be wet and rainy today and traffic was slow and tedious. So we drove the 30+ miles to the orthodontists, just to learn that it is now time for phase II of her treatment (aka time to fork over $4,200), then 60+ miles to the doctor where all is well (but we need to come back in 6 months instead of 12), and then 30+ miles home.

I’m exhausted from all the driving and waiting around for appointments. The daughter is happy though because the appliance that is in her mouth gets to stay in for a few more weeks and she got to eat at one of her favorite places for lunch. While I don’t plan to change doctors any time soon, I will be wise enough to not schedule both appointments for the same day again. As for future children, a more local pediatricians is a must — but so far, the mummer about local doctors isn’t very promising (at least not for parents interested in altered or delayed vaccination schedules).

We are spending more than $500/month on gasoline, ouch. I drive somewhere almost every single day and I don’t work outside the home. Instead, I get frustrated with the house being a mess and I try to run away from it. There is no reason that I should be contributing almost $100 to our monthly gas bill. Yes, everything around here is a 10-15 minute drive, but that doesn’t mean that I need to make that trip daily.

So, I need to combine my trips into one or two days a week. Of course, I’m not sure how I’ll balance that with the choice to get back to the gym since the gym I selected has the worst biking path available. Of course, if I was biking all the time, I probably wouldn’t need the gym membership, now would I.

Quick review of my progress on last month’s goals:

1. enter spending/earnings into budget weekly (not monthly) - Failed
2. develop savings plan for workshop by 09/30/07 - Failed
3. list at least 2 items on ebay (no listing fees this month, I think) - Failed
4. spend no more than $150 eating out - Success, we spent just under $150.00
5. setup monthly family budget meetings to just discuss where we are at - I discussed this idea with the family, but we’ve not started it yet.
6. update and reassess our quarterly progress towards our 2007 goals. - Complete

It looks like I managed a near 50% completion rate, if I consider that talking about family budget meetings as a success. I’m still falling behind on entering budget numbers and it’s hurting us this month since we’re looking at a $2,000 shortage (thanks to being over budget $1,000 last and short $1,000 this month). I gotta go work some number magic and figure out how we’re going to make it work.

Looks like house repairs will get put on hold for a while (thank goodness) and we’ll only manage repairs on one vehicle if needed. We got hit pretty hard last month with repairs on two vehicles at once. Part of me thinks that it what the emergency fund is for, but I still don’t like using it.

I spent yesterday checking out 3 local gyms because I need to get back to my exercise routine. I was prepared to write up my findings when I discovered two more local fitness clubs that I should probably consider as well. I didn’t get anything productive done and the partner teased that I just spent the day figuring out more ways to spend money - and he is right. sigh.