Times of Extreme Frugality: Poor v. Poverty

I restarted blogging this summer after The Incident. 

Our only vehicle was totaled and replacing it, even with a low- priced, used vehicle, seriously ate into our savings. We instituted extreme frugality in an effort to replace those savings as soon as possible.

And I began posting about how poor we are, sometimes in laughter, sometimes seriously.

But are we really poor? Not by any reasonable standards.

We are on a fixed income and with careful budgeting, our income covers our expenses and usually can be stretched to build up some savings.

We own our own property, free and clear. We have a reliable car (again). We have no debts. We eat well, have health insurance, internet service, and a cat.

And even the federal government says for a family of two, we do not meet the poverty criteria.

Yes, our income is well below what most would consider is enough to get by in the United States today. But we have resources those in true poverty do not have. 

We both come from middle class families, we are college educated, we grew up with all of the advantages of being white, heterosexuals in safe neighborhoods in the boomer years when optimism for the future was not a pipe dream. 

In short, we were never marginalized or looked down on, we have had the opportunities denied many others. 

We have had many chances over the years to change our career paths and keep up with the Joneses.

But we have also had the luxury to develop our own lifestyle and our finances have mostly been by choice. 

We may well be considered poor compared to others, but we have never lived in poverty. 

I hope I can remember that and be grateful always.

Times of Extreme Frugality: The Tao of Ketchup

"Your money or your life!" 

This is not only the classic radio bit by Jack Benny, but also the title one of my favorite books about money:

While the investing advice is dated, the basic premise remains valid: time equals money. Is whatever you are contemplating spending money on, worth the part of your life you gave up to earn said money?

Or another way of looking at it, consider the tao of ketchup.

A bottle of Heinz ketchup will set you back less than $3 in the grocery store. In New York State, even at minimum wage, that is about 15 minutes of work.

My bottle of ketchup takes a bit longer.

Sometime in late winter, I set up my heat mat and grow lights, fill pots with seedling mix, and plant tomato seeds. 

If all goes well, they sprout and, over a couple of months, grow into healthy tomato seedlings.

In late spring, they get set out under a cold frame and, once the danger of frost has passed, are transplanted into the garden.

The summer brings weeding, watering, fertilizing, staking, and hoping the plants don't succumb to disease or insect attack.

If the garden gods smile upon us, sometime in August the tomatoes start to ripen.

Four quarts of tomatoes, some onions, and spices, cooked down and, voila!, ketchup. 

"Tower of ketchup" --get it?

Now, strictly from an economic point of view, I would be better off getting a job and buying the Heinz. But something in my soul, my tao, means I get very real satisfaction from growing and processing food from scratch and would rather spend hours growing tomatoes than 15 minutes working for someone else.

What is your tao of money? 

There is no one correct answer. Being frugal is a combination of being careful with time AND money and being mindful of what works best for you.

Times of Extreme Frugality: Give When You Can

I am worldwide financier, a partner in four international and one domestic agricultural enterprises. 

I am also a certified tightwad and even in my giving, I look for the best way to stretch my money.

Two years ago, I discovered KIVA. I originally donated $50 and took advantage of a partial matching fund someone offered (I can't remember the details), so had $75 to lend. And that money is still being loaned over and over.

Jane is a grandmother and farmer in Kenya. She needed $300 to purchase new farming tools and equipment. Working through Kiva, 8 different folks loaned her the needed money. She repaid the loan within 18 months. I could now loan that same money, a whopping $25 from me,  to Mercy.

Mercy, also from Kenya, needed $200 to buy seeds and fertilizers. She runs her own farm business and has managed to send all of her children to school. She repaid the entire loan in 14 months. 

So now that $25 could go to Attractive from Zimbabwe.

Attractive is a teenage entrepeneur who runs her own chicken broiler business. A loan of $300 helped her buy feed and chicks. She contributed "social interest" by volunteering with a local group supporting women and, after just 14 months, repaid the loan today.

With that money, we were able to loan to Paddy from Uganda.

Paddy only needed another $25 to get his loan of $550 for fertilizer for his banana farm, the exact amount we just got repaid by Attractive. Kismet!

Kiva operates globally, including the United States. Our only domestic loan so far went to George.

George is a retired New York City firefighter who became ill due to exposure to the 9/11 site. He decided to change lifestyle to cope with his medical problems and requested a loan to upgrade his poultry houses. He is still repaying the loan. And I'd love to hug that duck.

A small amount donated when we had a bit of extra cash continues to help people two years later and reminds us that you don't have to be wealthy to make a difference.

Times of Extreme Frugality: A Bird in the Hand...

...is not nearly as much fun as birds at the birdfeeder.

We've been here just over a year. In that time we have seen almost 40 different species of birds at our feeder.

And not gotten a good photo of any of them.

I am in awe of anyone who can can catch an image of a bird without sophisticated equipment, or even with. The birds that visit our feeder and stay calm even when the cat is sitting right underneath, fly away if we even point the phone in their direction.

But just watching them is a delight. Bird TV rivals any cable show and is a bargain.

We have four birdfeeders. One is a squirrel-proof job bought at least 8 years ago. A squirrel did manage to knock it off the hanger and the plastic shell broke. The company sent me a new one at no cost!

The second feeder I cobbled together this spring. I have way too many canning jars and am always looking for ways to use them (yes, I can food but still have left over jars). An internet search yielded a feeder made from a jar and a chick feeder. We don't currently have chickens so the chick feeder wasn't in use. I put a dollar store pie tin over it as a cover, it doesn't look fancy but, so far, it works.

The third feeder I quickly put together when our little backyard bird oasis was visited by Baltimore orioles. The males' bright colors were so enticing that I knew I wanted them to be regular visitors. I had a hanging plant holder that was in a box of junk from an auction. I took it apart and made a low holder for orange halves and a small tin for jelly. It's fun to watch male and females eating the jelly, then wiping the stickiness from their beaks on a twig.

Bonus thriftiness: last year I made corn cob jelly--couldn't resist making jelly from something I would normally toss on the compost pile. It's not anything we're crazy about and orioles like jelly, so they are welcome to it.

The fourth feeder is the wire suet feeder. When I ran out of bought suet blocks late this winter, I made some using saved hamburger fat imbedded with seeds. This is for winter only, as I learned when the fat melted and dribbled to the ground in June.

Speaking of which, I have found that the best and cheapest thing to use in the seed feeders is black oil sunflower seeds. Everything that visits our feeder, from goldfinches to grosbeaks, cowbirds to wrens likes these. I buy it on sale in bags too heavy to lift (40 pounds?). An added feature is the dropped seeds that escape being eaten by cardinals and mourning doves and skunks, sometimes germinate for a nice ground cover under the feeders.

Oops, we have 5 feeders. I forgot the hummingbird feeder attached to our kitchen window. I make the food (one part sugar to 3 parts boiling water). Hummingbirds are fierce little things and their territorial and mating displays are a riot to watch.

Don't let finances deprive you of the greatest show outside your window--hang a feeder and enjoy the jewels of nature, our feathered friends.

The World's Best Gardener

I have always wanted an English Cottage Garden:

Ok, maybe Christ Church College in Oxford isn't exactly the cosy type of garden I mean, but you get the idea.

Now, I am a fairly good gardener...as long as I am growing stuff to eat. From asparagus to zucchini, I've had success with roots, leaves, and shoots. But somehow the type of garden that requires you to plan out colors and heights and foliage contrasts is beyond me.

So, we hired the best gardener in the world to landscape our hillside. 

Mother Nature--take a bow!

Times of Extreme Frugality: Shoelaces and Earthquakes

My ever helpful sister called the other day to cheer me up from my so-far-this-summer-sucks depression.

"We didn't have an earthquake," she offered.

Yup, that did the trick.

                                     လလလလလလ

When Tom and I were first married, like many couples we didn't have much money. He was a full time student and I worked part-time for minimum wage-- a whopping $2/hour. We managed to pay the rent, buy gas and groceries, but not much else. Then the shoelace on Tom's shoe broke. Rather than buy a pair, I CROCHETED SHOELACES FROM YARN. 

After he graduated and we were only poor instead of very, very poor, I vowed that, as God is my witness, I'll never crochet shoelaces again!

I never have. 
And I never will. 

Times of Extreme Frugality: Running Dry?

Scrimping is my default. 

Penny pinching is second nature.

It seems sometimes that I've tried just about every hint I've heard (clip the coupons, shop the sales!) and that new and realistic ways to stretch the ol' dinero are scarcer than hen's teeth. These two minor efforts from this week do fall outside of the normal tightwad suggestions; maybe they'll spark some different ideas for you.


1. The garden needed watering, I needed to do laundry and I remembered that we are now paying for water (last 3 houses had wells).

So:

Our washing machine is a portable that you hook up to the faucet and drain into the sink. These buckets are just a portion of the rinse water from one load. It was a lot of schlepping back and forth out to the garden, but I feel better for not just letting the PAID FOR water go down the drain.


2. And this:

Anyone who has talked to us recently, knows our big summer project involves digging drainage. HAND digging. We've got a long mound of dirt snaking along the back yard but some of it we have sifted (our "sifter" is a plastic grate we found in the garbage pile on our property), giving us screened topsoil. Soil for raised beds and pots that we don't have to buy.


Both of these are what I consider extreme frugality measures--they're time consuming and back breaking, not something we will do consistently. I'm all for saving money, however, sometimes the spirit is willing but the aged flesh is weak.


How about you? Any outside the coupon-box type of ideas for reigning in the spending? We all could use some inspiration from the hive-mind!

Times of Extreme Frugality: We Hit the Road

Sometimes even those of us buying only the necessities like a bit of pizzaz in our diet. So I decided it was time to try a recipe I've had for years and also to revisit one I made years ago.

First up, elderflower presse. 

English lit and tv are big in our house and it seems someone is always offering homemade elderberry wine to visitors. I don't drink wine but I thought a drink made from elderberry flowers sounded interesting. And they are in bloom right now.

So, first step, gather about 25 elderberry blossoms. 

We have two elderberry bushes that we planted last year, but I wasn't willing to give up potential berries. Luckily, they grow wild along our road and it didn't take us long to spy some in a bit of wilderness.

Cut off most of the stems and pick over--there WILL BE BUGS.

Heat one liter of water in a pot (I guess my recipe really is British) and add 500 grams of sugar and four tablespoons of honey. Remove from the heat, add zest and juice of one lemon, the flowers and cover. 

Let sit overnight. Strain and store.

Essentially, what you have made is simple syrup with essence of elderflowers. Dilute one part presse with nine parts ice water or seltzer and pretend you're having tea with Miss Marple.


Years ago, I got interest in wild foods (anyone remember Euell Gibbons?). One of the few that we liked was day lily buds.

Day lilies grow wild along roadsides all over New York and are easy to spot. Word of caution: remember the old cartoons of corpses with white lilies on their chests? Those lilies are poisonous. Be sure you are picking day lilies, Hemerocallis, which have edible buds, flowers, shoots, and tubers.

I opted to saute the buds in some bacon grease. They are also good dipped in fritter batter and fried.

Cheap dinner of day lily buds, homegrown snap peas, turkey burger on a homemade bun. Summer on a plate!

Anyone else gleaned a meal from the wild? I would love to hear your experiences!

Times of Extreme Frugality: We Go Grocery Shopping

Extreme frugality can be succinctly expressed as:

       Don't buy stuff mindlessly.

Now, before you cry "DUH", bear with me for a bit.

We Americans are conditioned from an early age to buy, buy, buy. Buy our way out of depression, buy our way to a higher standard of living, buy because it's Christmas or Halloween or Martin Luther King Day. It becomes automatic and mindless.

Being frugal demands that you think before you plunk down that cash. Do I really need this? Can it wait? Will my world collapse if I don't purchase this or that?

The grocery store is as good a place as any to practice the zen of thriftiness. Follow me as I do my weekly shopping.

Caveat: Planning ahead means that my freezer and pantry are stocked. We probably could go without groceries for a month or two--meals would be interesting but we wouldn't starve. I hope you can say the same 'cause when the Zombie Apocolypse comes, I ain't sharing.

Anyway, on to the store!


On a typical trip, we ignore:

The Deli

The Bakery

and prepackaged cold cuts

Then we move on to not even bothering going down these aisles:

Sometimes, we do shop dairy (butter, cheese, but not milk), meat, produce, some canned and some paper goods. Coffee for Tom, and Diet Coke for us both (hey, we're human and we ALWAYS buy it on sale). 

Our ragtag little garden is starting to give us a bit of lettuce and tons of peas, so we skipped the produce section (except for some blueberries, on sale of course!). But at least 80% of the store is filled with items that we don't want or need. Lots of money saved right there!

Of course, even us misers are tempted:

But I am proud to say, I resisted these. If the desire is too strong, I can make my own.

Milk is one item we splurge on; NY dairy farmers need our support. 

When we can't make it out to Comley's Country Creamery we stop at Byrne Dairy--New York milk in glass bottles.

On today's trip, we also hit Aldis for cereal, orange juice, and sugar. Except for probably needing more milk later in the week, this should carry us through. Now, how many ways can I prepare peas?

How do you save on groceries? Any hints, tricks, or miracles you perform to keep the family fed?

Times of Extreme Frugality

So...it's been awhile. 5 years in fact. In that time we have moved twice and are now back in good ol' upstate NY. It is good to be back.

Midwest or east, some things don't change. Once again, we find ourselves needing to tighten our belts (if only my increased girth would allow me to wear a belt), and I have declared us in a time of extreme frugality.

Many of us find ourselves there occasionally. Luckily, we've had lots of practice in pinching those pennies til they squeal and I've decided to share some of our tightwad ways in the hope that: 1. we might be of help to others, and 2. others will share their skinflint hacks.

For my first post, I was going to share my latest baking adventure, extolling my cleverness in cheap, from scratch cooking. I'm still going to, but it turned out to be an example of a frugal fail. Such is life.


I volunteered to bring dessert to a family gathering. Looking around for what I had on hand, my eyes locked on the jam shelf. 

With over 40 jars of jam, I figured I could spare some for a dessert. So I did a quick internet search and got a recipe for jam cake. I had the other ingredients, so set to making a glorious mess in the kitchen.

Mixed it all together and popped it in the oven. The recipe said 350 degrees for 20 minutes. When the timer dinged, the batter was still soupy. Set it for 10 more minutes...then 10 again...and again. I lost track of how long it took to set and it never really cooked throughout. And a taste of the finished cake was Yech! So, the compost pile is now one jam cake richer.

And I brought an apple cake from a tried and true recipe to the gathering.


What are some of your less than successful attempts to save a buck or two? We won't judge, promise!