Money Saving Mindset- Group Journal

Budgeting
1606

Whew, this has been a very expensive few weeks! Our credit card balances have been about double the norm. Some of it has been frivolity but we’ve also had a ton of vet bills (over $1k) because our poor kitty has been having some issues :frowning: and there have been lots of tests and then we actually changed vets for all sorts of boring reasons, and then I also had dental work done, etc. Husband is visiting his mom this weekend so that’ll be more $ because he’ll probably treat her a lot, which is totally fine and we agree on doing. AND we paid in advance for a hotel for August to visit his cousin for a couple of days. I’ve also upped his 401(k) contribution which means the paychecks are smaller than they were before this last raise. It’s been a lot!

SO, I think I can get us through this patch and pay everything off and pay next month’s rent without drawing from our emergency savings (thank goodness it happens to be a 3 paycheck month!) but I don’t think we’ll put anything extra away towards our $30k e-fund goal. Not ideal. The only other upcoming expense this month should be my birthday dinner out, which won’t be a whole lot since I basically just want lots of dumplings. I’m thinking after husband is back from his trip (because I don’t want to stress him out at all before he goes) I’ll see what he thinks about doing an ultra frugal May and June to boost our savings and just get this e-fund funding off my plate/mind. I’m thinking no restaurant food for one, essential groceries only, cheap/free dates only, no non-essential shopping, and totally nixing the whole apartment refresh because it just doesn’t make sense to do that (minus the repainting and moving our existing artwork around/rearranging furniture, since that’s so cheap).

Ok. I think this is a plan! I feel better typing this all out.

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1607

I think we all go through spendy times now and then. I certainly am - I got paid, put aside for rent, paid off what was on my cards… and WELP, that’s the paycheck. But I paid off the cards! I have no debt. That’s something to be proud of, as is your ability to pay everything off and pay rent without dipping into savings!

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1608

Despite what I said above I have to admit that I am being pretty hard on myself for my move-related spending. We are fortunate to have gotten the apartment that we got, the market here is HORRIBLE and I am really happy with both landlord and next door neighbor, the latter of which is SO important in a duplex.

But. The place really lacks storage - like, REALLY lacks. There is literally no hardware in the bathroom, not even a towel rack or a place on the wall where TP can go. Thus, we have bought what we needed. As frugally as possible, and I did ask on Buy Nothing and check yard sales first and bought when nothing turned up.

I think it’s important to have a functional home but I have been… what is the Other Place term, something about diapers, I think? When discussing making your home/life/whatever cushy and comfy instead of toughing it out? Yeah, that.

I think I have had a hard time differentiating between want and need. Not sure where the line is, and one legit need (generator) still needs bought and is expensive. Argh.

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1609

I think keeping your stuff away from cats is a safety issue and not “diapers” or whatever. Also, the other place has some good ideas but they go waaay overboard prescribing them to people. I much prefer the OMD approach of recognizing that everyone has their own life and preferences.

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1610

I had a spendy month myself. Last 2 weeks we have had houseguests (first my sister then my bestie) and I was busy with work so there was a lot of takeout/restaurants, and weekend entertainments. And before that we had weekend plans for 3 weekends… Ready for life to quiet down a bit!

Question for all… What motivates your frugality mindset? Not like, your long term objective goal, but what feeling(s) drives you every day you meal plan, mow your own lawn, comparison shop, etc? Is it fear of being in the red or being unprepared for an emergency? Is it a saving good/spending bad morality you absorbed growing up or elsewhere? Is it all environmentalism (in which case, are you more OK paying for services than goods?) Is it just habit?

I think I spent a long time being fear driven and then mostly habit (despite the rationalizations I might have offered).

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1611

At this point, HEAVILY habit. Coupled with plenty of anxiety trying anything new. Restaurants dont tempt me because they’re not part of my pattern and therefore it’s easier to cook than to overcome the paralysis of The New.

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1612

I’m glad to hear about everyone else’s super spendy March :sweat_smile: it was a 3 pay month for us too, and if it hadn’t been we also would have had to dip into savings! But we did some stuff like getting wood for Ponder to make a set of shelves for extra toys, instead of paying twice as much for something similar from IKEA that would not have been made of solid wood. It also improves our DIY skills! Then there was the business I started. Most of the software and website sort of things I paid for a year so most weren’t recurring costs. I’m excited to write up how much it’s cost me to set this up. I need more paper though so I can paint stuff to sell it! I need to check it out in person and buy a few different sorts so this will be initially spendy until I settle on ones I like and can find a good bulk price (and actually start selling something!)

And then there was all the gardening stuff I bought since it’s cool enough to grow things now…

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1613

For day-to-day things it’s probably bigger life values that drive it for me (and some habit at this point- habit energy is very strong) and also the high quality of life a lot of frugal activities bring me.

Summary

Like, if I had all the money in the world I still wouldn’t outsource food because I like what cooking and meal planning does for me beyond just saving money (sense of providing for people I love when I pack my husband’s breakfast and lunch or serve dinner, the feeling of taking care of myself when I set the table for lunch-for-one, the amazing smells, honing a craft and feeling competency, the sensory experience, better nutrition than restaurant food which means better health, etc.). The same with things like comparison shopping (being a good steward of what I have, being grateful for the choices I can make, knowing I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve been given, etc.) or cleaning (making my home look beautiful, taking care of the gifts I’ve been given in this life, being on my feet getting some exercise instead of sitting, enjoying the daily routine of a peaceful life, folding cloth napkins and towels while I watch the birds out the window, etc.). Doing things for myself gives me a sense of self-respect and accomplishment. I also know I’m doing what I can while I can.

My home feels truly like mine because I make it mine. I feel like my energy is infused into the food I cook and the planning I do and the clothes and linens I launder. I take pride in doing those things and the things I didn’t like at first (cleaning and comparison shopping and organizing things, mostly) I have learned to appreciate those activities too, for their meditative qualities and the sense of accomplishment they give me and the new skills I’ve learned! I’m really good at organizing now and I used to think I was naturally “bad at it”. So it’s like a positive feedback loop. I love feeling good at things, and like my life is under control. It’s like the total opposite of what my life used to be like, lol.

I think I generally enjoy feeling disciplined too, and I’m a pretty high discipline person, and I sleep so well when I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, I guess. Like I am on track and life is easy to handle in the areas that I can control. I think daily discipline comes into it more when it’s about not overspending for me (rather than insourcing tasks), because that’s an impulse I definitely have. Like, if I had unlimited money I could absolutely spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on clothing, shoes, fragrances, makeup, furniture, etc. I love vintage sports cars too, haha, but I’m content with our single used car with over 100k miles because I know it’s right for my life, and that rightness gives me an incredible feeling of like, wholesome goodness and humility? I don’t know how to describe it well.

But for not buying other smaller stuff that I technically “could” buy (or eating out/going on vacation when we really shouldn’t) it’s about reminding myself of my bigger life values, which for me is my religion. In my religion putting forth the right amount of effort and having the right views on things is kind of baked into the DNA so it’s the main focus of each day for me. It’s about investigating what I’m trying to alleviate or fulfill and getting to the real root of why I feel so much “need” when one of those things comes up, too. I feel that feeling in my gut when I’m not making the right choice and it tips me off, like there’s a designer bag I reallllllly would love to own. I actually thought about going ahead and buying it because I technically could, but when I really considered it, I felt that sick little feeling in my stomach that tells me “this isn’t right, this isn’t responsible” and more than anything else in the world I have to live with myself. It would be a selfish decision and not very prudent to buy it, it would also be trying to live a life I don’t really have which almost implies the life I do have isn’t enough. What I consume impacts me (from media to actual consumables) so I want to do so mindfully, mostly because I am inescapable. I have to live with myself. And I have to feel confident and right in my actions, and if it doesn’t feel right I usually don’t do it, so that keeps me on track. I try to be really in tune and honest with myself about my motivations when I feel those wants. It gives me a sense of peace, overall, to do these little things that add up to a (relatively) frugal life.

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that the bigger the gap is between who I feel I should be (morally) and who I actually am, the unhappier I am. So for me it’s about closing that gap as much as possible. Of course no one is perfect and I’m gracious with myself. But when my actions and views and thoughts are too far apart from the type of person I want to be, I feel terrible, depressed, anxious, hopeless, bleak, ungrateful, and without much perspective. When my real life and actions and effort and perspective and words are quite closely aligned with my ideals I feel just, an almost indescribable sense of peaceful euphoria. That’s an incredibly strong motivator.

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1614

I think April is going to be extra spendy for us. We went to Ace the other day to get some gardening tools we need to get the yard in order and we need to buy a ton of mulch for the front yard. We also need to buy a grill and Ry wants an apple watch. We technically have money set aside in sinking funds for all of that, but I think we might go over the set-aside amount in the house fund depending on how expensive the grill ends up being.

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1615

Mow lawn - this one is timely because I just this week started looking into how much it would cost to hire a service. It was two to three times what I was expecting. I look at the hours we spend doing it versus the cost.

In hind sight I wish we had gotten a service with Kiddo was wee because Mr. Meer would go out for hours while I solo parented and then he’d come in, take a shower and eat, then collapse in an exhausted heap for hours while I solo parented some more. He basically lost his entire day, I came close to losing my sanity a few times because I kept expecting him to be available after he was done mowing and then he wasn’t because he need to recover from essentially doing heavy labor in a sauna for hours and hours.

Meal planning - habit plus there’s not that many great restaurants around here. A lot of the available restaurants skew towards chain places and my cooking skills are good enough that I can make the same thing for cheaper. Plus pre-pandemic I always worked in an open plan cube farm so I really did not want to spend more time with ambient noise of people talking.

Overall attitude - Mr. Meer has some baggage from early adulthood when he wasn’t earning very much, plus we’re both very risk-averse. When we bought our house we bought with our current salaries in mind despite well-meaning relatives telling us we’d be earning a lot more money in just a few years and we “deserved” a nicer house.

I think there’s also an element of intellectual ego involved? Like if we don’t shop around at least a little bit then we might get taken advantage of and that would be foolish and our own fault and we’re smarter than that. Judgy-ness ahead - like I think buying all new baby clothes because you don’t want your infant in something (gasp) second hand is kind of dumb. I take pride in getting more items of clothing for $X because I got them from ThredUp or a local consignment shop. My mom shops at fancy stores and doesn’t think anything of spending $50 on one shirt, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that and would probably never wear that $50 shirt because I’d be afraid of getting something on it and “wasting” that money.

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1616

At first I was like “TF?” And then I remembered where you live. Ohhhhh yeah. Your grasses fight back there :joy: not to mention the weather.

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1617

For me: I think equal parts pure fear and not wanting to be controlled or told what to do. The latter motivates me more immediately because, well, I got lucky but honestly renting here is a complete shitshow and at my age I keep thinking, how much longer do we want to be at the mercy of a landlord telling us what to do with our living space or being able to yank our housing out from under us because they don’t feel like renewing our lease, or they’ve sold the building, or whatever? See also: being told what to do at a job instead of being FIRE and in control of my time.

The pure fear part… I considered my parents to be frugal but they STILL ended up fucked financially in the end due to my father’s care needs and also due to his repeated cash out refi’s of their house which is why my mother was still paying a mortgage in her late 70s on a house that should’ve been paid for LONG ago. The IBL is strong with me! Even though deep down I know most of us can’t save enough to self-fund dementia care.

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1618

We both do the yard work now that Kiddo can be by himself in the house for a while, we’re typically both outside for two hours. So Mr. Meer solo was four hours, and that’s just basic maintenance. We have a 0.25 acre lot (1,011 square meters).

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1619

Stuff we still need (“need”?) for our new place:

  • apartment-safe generator (I feel this is nonnegotiable given storm season, 2 remote workers, and just generally being in a place where power randomly goes out more than we’re used to) $500-$1,000 depending on how powerful. :exploding_head:
  • some sort of table for the porch (hoping to thrift/yardsale/BN this, no luck so far though) Cost unknown.
  • get our lease recorded with the city. This costs $250 and is necessary because of the poor tenants’ rights here; basically it means the lease attaches to the property and not the landlord so protects us in the event of a building sale. Otherwise if she sells she can toss us out before our lease is up. Given that our last 2 buildings were sold with us living in them, and sales happen a lot here, this seems prudent.
  • Stepladder; there are very high shelves and cabinets in the new place that we cannot reach. Hoping to yardsale/thrift/BN this as well but so far no luck. Cost - ??
  • 2 more over door hangers to make up for lack of storage. Realized yesterday this will work for bathroom towels as there’s a ledge above the door! The door itself is a sliding pocket door so I was stumped as to where towels were going to go as the suction cups weren’t holding even with nothing on them. I need to look up what the 1 I bought cost me, I want to say around $15 at Target?

That’s off the top of my head. At least we’re getting reimbursed for the window treatments.

Do you all think I could sell the moving blankets and ratchet straps I had to buy for the POD? All that was over $100 new on Amazon (cheaper than buying them from the movers; since it was a 1-way not local move they would not provide them for free as they don’t get them back). If so, what would you charge?

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1620

Aldi currently has stepladders for $19.95. It’s kind of light weight, but easy to haul around.

1621

:sob: :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob:
New Orleans doesn’t have Aldi.

Maybe I can check other discount places though, like Marshalls or something? Didn’t think of that.

Until we’re out of the sublet, we can just borrow the one that’s in here (as the sublet also has SUPER tall kitchen cabinets, must be a local thing in these old shotguns.)

1622

Ollies is good for cheap household stuff if you haven’t checked them out before. I saw some step stools there last time I was in the store and was like “Dang, I bought that same thing off Amazon for probably more money.” It’s where we get our rugs because we’re not spending $$$ on rugs that will be ruined by child/dog within a few years. https://www.ollies.us/locations/

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1623

Hm. There is one in the area, but far enough away that gas cost might negate any savings. If I ever happen to already be out that way I’ll check it out.

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1624

One of the last food bargains here isn’t as much any more, darn it!

Used to be at the cheap market, you could buy their house brand brown eggs, 1/2 doz carton for $1.09. The cheapest dozen carton was $2.79. So I started buying 2 6 count cartons for $2.18 instead. Easy peasy savings, right?

This week when I went to the same market, that 6 count carton is now $1.79. Still pretty cheap, but the bargain is gone. Don’t know if this is just the one market or the chain. As I go to 3 of these hereabouts, I’ll check!

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1625

Ego or pride is what I guess it should be called, but a fear of not doing the Right Thing? I’ve never lacked money, but I’m expected to Be The Best and use resources wisely so if I spend money frivolously then maybe I’m being wasteful and that is A Sin.

If you buy things for convenience, like my Ponder often does, you are a… Bad Person isn’t quite the right word, but you might be frivolous or not doing your part or some such. I definitely clash values with him on this over our spending, even though I spend more and he spends less because our worldviews don’t have obvious overlap.

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