The Lost Arts?

Sometimes I wonder if I should have taken Home Economics in high school. For me, it was a choice between that and computer science and I chose the latter. Although computer science helped prepare me for a career in the tech industry I feel like I missed out on learning some of the essentials for running a household that could help save money.

It seems most of my friends didn’t take Home Economics either. Are students are getting this knowledge at home instead? I didn’t and neither did a lot of my friends. Are frugal household skills that were once widely practiced becoming less common knowledge with younger generations? Are you proficient in these “lost arts”?

Sewing & Repairing Clothing

Sewing I have absolutely no idea how to sew. How many people do you know actually sew? The other day a button fell off Eric’s pants and I realized I’d have to dig up my little sewing kit and figure out how to sew it back on. I just never had the opportunity to learn. I view this as a tragedy because repairing (and making) clothing is economical and can save money. It seems to be a skill that isn’t getting passed down as often as it once was.

Not only is sewing important for repairing clothing it is also useful for creating wonderful household goods from scrap fabrics like bedding and window hangings. One of my very best friends makes the most beautiful quilts and even made a successful home business out of it. I am amazed by her and this talent she has. I haven’t been able to figure out how to properly sew buttons yet she can make works of art.

Cooking From Scratch

Homecooking I feel strongly that cooking is becoming a lost art outside of professional kitchens. I love to cook but none of my close friends routinely cook from scratch. Not one. Many of my friends lack even the basic fundamentals of cooking and they have no interest in learning. It’s a shame because cooking from scratch is a valuable skill that not only saves money but helps pass down family traditions. I am lucky I happened to really enjoy cooking as an adult despite having very little exposure to it growing up.

Once upon a time learning to cook was essential; you simply had to feed your family and convenience foods weren’t an option. These days, you can accomplish the same task without really needing to learn how to cook with ready-to-eat meals. Unfortunately, these prepared foods are more expensive than their homemade counterparts. Perhaps the ease of convenience foods has made cooking from scratch less desirable so less young adults are trying it. To get good at homemade cooking you must practice. That is why everyone loves Grandma’s cooking – practice makes perfect.

Balancing A Checkbook

First Checkbook Toy I haven’t balanced a checkbook since high school. I don’t even write checks anymore. With online banking, budgeting, and Quicken I have essentially lost the desire (and maybe the ability) to hand balance my checkbook down to the penny. I remember my mother teaching me how to do this when I was young but I never really got in the habit. Only one of my friends still does this and the rest don’t. Is the joy of having that checkbook ledger balance perfectly a thing of the past?

Gardening

Homegrown Veggies I always have considered gardening and cultivating homegrown food an art form. When I lived on a farm we grew fresh green beans and my grandmother always had a garden full of fresh food. When we moved to the suburbs we never again had a garden and I missed out on developing that skill.

Around here, I see people tending flower beds but not vegetable gardens. Imagine how much you could save if you could harvest your veggies from your backyard rather than the grocery store! How wonderful would it be to have fresh herbs around? I think we may see a rise in this “hobby” now that vegetable gardening is more in vogue. I am planning to learn how to garden in our new home.

I could go on and on with topics (canning/food preservation, ironing, even household budgeting, etc) that seem to be fading out with my generation. Maybe some of the need has been replaced by modernization. I think it is interesting to look at these “lost” frugal household skills and see if people are still practicing them.

Image Sources: oskay, EverJean, mrbill, David Blaine

The Downside to Debt Consolidation Loans

I would like one loan for everything please! When I started my first job after college, I didn’t own much. I had my car, some hand-me-down furniture, some clothes, a TV and VCR, a computer, some books, and a variety of other small things. I didn’t have much in the way of assets, and the furniture I had was really starting to show it’s age.

I managed to get a good job and it payed well. Considering I had so little when I moved, and I thought I was doing well, I decided to “move on up”. I upgraded my TV from a 13″ to a 27″. I bought new furniture, including new couches, coffee table, entertainment center, and end tables. I bought some movies, new books, and a smattering of other things. Before I knew it, I had $12,000 in credit card bills. By some people’s standards, that might not seem like a lot. For me at the time, it was huge. My father had always told me to avoid debt, and never carry a balance on your credit card. He’s never had to pay a finance charge on his credit card before. I hadn’t either up until this point.

I knew I had to find a way to pay the debt down. So I took out a debt consolidation loan against my car. Everything worked out fine, and I managed to get out of debt at that point fairly painlessly. I didn’t learn the lesson completely (I’ve had debt since this incident), but in my case the debt consolidation loan actually worked out pretty well, and saved me some money in the end.

Now, I’ve got a friend who has never handled his money well. He’s made some bad decisions in his life when it comes to finances. He’s actually a very, very smart guy, but he just doesn’t always think when it comes to spending money. I guess I’ve been there too, so I don’t judge him, but he did make a decision that confused me recently.

Things had been going well for him for a bit, and he just got a debt consolidation loan. This loan lowers his overall payment requirements each month, has a lower interest rate, and helps him get all his debt into one place. It looked like a pretty good plan to help him get out of debt.

But then, shortly after he had everything setup, he went out and made some purchases on his newly paid-off credit cards. After going through all the trouble to consolidate his loans he started filling up his credit cards again and created even more debt. He purchased some things that he wanted, but couldn’t afford until he had more room on his credit cards. The things he bought were far from necessities.

Now he has to worry about paying off both the loan and the new credit card balances. It seems that he’ll be in debt for a while longer. He understands what he’s done, and that it’s not the best financial move, but it doesn’t seem to change his behavior. Instead of working to pay down that loan, he just compounded it by adding even more debt.

Normally I wouldn’t advocate cutting up your credit cards. We use our credit cards extensively, but we ensure that each month we don’t carry a balance so we avoid paying finance charges. If you use your credit cards responsibly they can be a very convenient and useful tool. If you have rewards, you can even get some cash back or some other type of reward for using them. In this case, I think my friend is too tempted by available credit and might be better off just cutting up his cards.

If you get a debt consolidation loan, make sure you keep these things in mind :

Make sure that the deal you are getting is actually giving you a lower interest rate than what you are paying now. And make sure that there aren’t any unnecessary fees.
Setup a budget that allows you to always make the loan payment and stick to it. This will help ensure you aren’t living outside your means and that you are paying off the loan.
Stop using your credit cards until the loan is paid off. Maybe stop using them entirely if you don’t think you can handle the temptation.
Pay off the loan early if possible. I paid my loan off about 6 months early to get out of some of the interest. It’s definitely a good goal to have.

Debt consolidation loans can work for you, but only if you work within some basic guidelines and exercise your self-control when it comes to your credit cards. According to Bankrate.com, 70% of people who get debt consolidation loans have the same, or higher, debt loads 2 years after they get the loans. If you think a debt consolidation loan would work for you, do some research before you commit to anything. Get some help from a financial advisor if you can. Don’t wind up in the 70% that don’t reduce their debt at all.

Image Source: SqueakyMarmot

Top 6 Things I’m Looking Forward To In The New House

Looking Good! Today we went and looked at the new house and it’s really coming along. We’ve had some delays but they have progressed to the electrical stage now. We can begin to get a real feel for what the house will look like even though it is just the framing, roof, and plumbing. I’m starting to get excited! It’s really happening now and we’ll likely be moving by the end of the year.

There are many things I’m looking forward to in the new house. Overall the house will be better suited for us and that will simply make life easier.

The top 6 things I’m looking forward to:

1. A bigger, better kitchen – This is the thing I’m most excited about. Our current kitchen is small and has only about a foot of usable counter space. I’ve had to resort to placing covers over two of our four gas burners to give us more usable space. Cooking is my true love and having space to stretch out will make such a difference. The new home will have much more counter/cabinet space and even a functional island. Woohoo!

2. A freezer – We will finally get to have a freezer! We don’t have the room at this house and we miss out on the cost savings of having a freezer. I can’t wait to start cooking meals in bulk and freezing them for backups when I don’t have time to cook. I want to be able to buy meats in bulk and freeze them as well. I need to start comparing models soon.

3. A utility sink – This will be really nice to have in the garage. Right now we have to wash larger objects like litter boxes in the bathtub. It will be great to have a place to wash dirty stuff outside the house. It will also come in handy for gardening.

4. Less carpet – We ditched carpet in most of the home in favor of tile. When you have pets the carpet just seems to get dirty so fast. We wanted to avoid dealing with stains and trapped dirt/hair if possible. I’m sick of steam cleaning! I’m hoping with tile we will be able to sweep and mop and keep a cleaner home. Not vacuuming three times a week could reduce our electricity bill. It will also help cut down on allergies, too!

5. More space and storage – We will have plenty of closet space in the new home. Maybe we will finally be able to park our cars in the garage. Here we have to use the garage for storage.

6. Having a garden – This will be an exciting yet challenging project for us. I can’t wait to start growing some fresh produce! I’m hoping it will be a satisfying hobby that also saves money. We are already planning the best spot for the garden in the new home. I still need to do the research on what grows best in my area but I’m expecting to try tomatoes, onions, peppers, and herbs at the very least. I’ll need to start with easy things and work my way up.

The Roundup – Feed Malfunction Edition

Sometimes spell check isn’t enough… For all our readers out there, we apologize if you had some issues reading or subscribing to the RSS feed recently. Thanks to PaidTwice for letting us know about the problem! Turns out we had a unicode apostrophe that seemed to be causing problems (a result of pasting directly from MS Word). Things should be up and running again now.

We tried to think of a good way to tell everyone about the feed issue while still giving something of value. We decided on this round up, even though we just had one a few days ago. In any case, there were so many good articles this week that there’s plenty of room for two roundups!

Now, for some of my favorite articles of the week :

Over at The Digerati Life, Silicon Valley Blogger discusses the contentious topic of renting vs. buying. Now, I for one bought my first house because it was literally cheaper than renting (and I’ve gotten a fair bit of equity out of it too!) This isn’t the case in many parts of the United States, but here in Texas, if you’re willing to live outside the city center, you can usually find less expensive housing.

Glblguy makes a good point about patience. It really makes a world of difference when you take the time to think about things you are going to buy rather than buying them impulsively. I think it’s gonna be another year or two before I finally take the plunge on the Hi Def TV. I’ve been wanting one for years but it just doesn’t make sense for me right now.

PaidTwice feels the same way I do about ING Direct right now. I wish they would have at least informed us of the change rather than just abruptly changing things. I guess it doesn’t matter much in the end. I’m looking at other options, but haven’t decided if it’s worth it to switch yet. I like ING, and I know the other banks are likely to drop their returns as well, but this change has me thinking about finding a higher yield account.

Pinyo had the same problem I’ve had when it comes to rationalizing how much something costs in comparison to my hourly salary. I was worse than that sometimes. When I was a consultant, I would sometimes rationalize buying something based on how much I billed for. I think I actually only got about 10% of what my hourly billing rate was, but I used that hourly number frequently. Now I don’t even calculate that number.

Carnival Time!

Carnival of the Homeowner’s is up at Homeowner’s Insurance Lowdown and they included Melissa’s article on The Sub-Prime Scrutiny Spares No Score.

SustainaBee has the Small Actions to Save The World carnival up and Melissa’s article on Coupon Karma was included.

Image Source: rick

When Frugality Becomes A Dirty Stinkin’ Excuse

But they’re soaking… This morning when I got up to make breakfast I noticed something didn’t smell right in the kitchen. The garbage was full and it was starting to smell a little. I kept putting off taking it out because I could fit more in the garbage bag. I might as well maximize using that bag before tossing it, right?

Realizing my garbage was in desperate need of attention I also noticed the dishes in the sink were building up. And in the laundry room there was a pile of dirty laundry. What happened here? Why did I get so behind in my household chores?

Frugality. Yes, you heard me. Ok, well maybe not frugality but the guise of frugality. I think I’ve been using frugality as an excuse to put off doing some chores that needed to be done.

“I can fit a little more trash in this garbage bag – I’ll wait to take it out until tomorrow”.

“But if I wait to do the dishes/laundry until tomorrow I’ll have a bigger load and it will save water and electricity.”

Who am I kidding? I’m not really saving any real amount of money – I’m just being plain lazy. It wasn’t like I only had a few shirts to wash or a couple of glasses in the sink. I had big enough loads to make it energy efficient and worth the cost. I was simply finding a way to justify my lack of housekeeping yesterday with saving money.

What good is saving a few pennies if I have to live in home with stinky garbage and dirty clothes? Quality of life plays into this, too. I don’t have to be a slob to save money.

I know I’m being dramatic here – I wasn’t horribly behind in my chores – but the smelly trash did make me examine my thinking behind not removing it earlier. I remember thinking that in a way I could be saving money.

This applies to more than just household duties. Could a desire to save money be used as an excuse to hide the true reason behind certain actions (or inactions)?

Could there be other reasons besides frugality that someone would:

Avoid social situations like dinners or group activities?
Delay traveling or shopping in favor of staying home?
Neglect their health by avoiding doctors, health checks, dental exams, etc?
Avoid replacing things they need when they are clearly worn out?

I can think of a lot of ways frugality could be used to justify behavior that is really motivated by different reasons. After all, you can still attend dinners with your friends if you eat an inexpensive meal or split something. If there are ways to make it affordable and you still choose not to go then maybe the desire to save money isn’t the main reason you aren’t going. It’s just a side effect.

Anyway, this morning I went on a crash course of cleaning to restore my home to its usual condition. I need to be more honest with myself about my motivations sometimes. For instance, if I avoid going grocery shopping is it really because I want to save money or is it because I don’t feel like going that day?

In my case, it was pretty obvious I was just avoiding doing the dishes and saving money was just a convenient (and barely applicable) excuse.

Image Source: Old Sarge

← Previous Page — Next Page →