Denise Trowbridge

The End of the One-Month Spending Crash-Diet

December 1, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 9 Comments

It’s over. We did it. We made it through No Spend Month, where we had only $400 to spend on gas, groceries, and entertainment, with money to spare. We spent $339.54.

The last week was both challenging and liberating.

We hosted Thanksgiving for the family, and we managed to buy the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and bake two apple pies without breaking the bank. We even made ice cream from scratch on Black Friday and had enough money left to go bowling.

Now that the challenge is winding down, we’ve had the chance to wax philosophical.

“I think it was really good to be reminded what it’s like to live without money,” the hubby said over coffee this morning. “The thing is, you live like you don’t have any money until you fall into a real job and have money to buy whatever you want, and then you do, and it becomes a shortcut. You don’t spend time on stuff.”

I agree. It’s been a valuable experiment. In some ways, our month without spending has eliminated many wants from my life. That became clear when my hubby asked me for my Christmas list yesterday, and I didn’t have anything to put on it. Sometimes it takes an extreme bout of not spending to remember that buying things doesn’t make you any happier, and doesn’t make your life any better or more interesting.

The spending crash-diet has had more tangible results. We saved 50 percent of our take-home pay in November. We usually save about 10 percent. And, we talked about money and came up with a sustainable monthly budget for the first time in our 7-year marriage. November has realigned us, gotten us on the same page, and hopefully the lessons we learned this month will become a foundation for a happier, and more prosperous financial life.

In the final week, we spent

$35.54 on gas
$42 on groceries
$12 on bowling on Black Friday

If you want to replicate this experiment, here is how we made it through the month:

Food

Groceries were by far our biggest expense. We cooked at home almost every night, and when we didn’t cook, we ate leftovers. Most of our meals were vegetarian. Our main source of meat protein was eggs and chicken.

We made a lot of soup, such as vegetarian chili and corn chowder.We ate a lot of Mexican-inspired food. Yellow rice and beans can make a variety of dishes that are healthy and inexpensive. If dinner one night was fajitas, the leftovers were made into huevos rancheros the next day.

We did eat out, just once, after a memorial service for my dad who passed away in July. We didn’t go out because we were too tired or didn’t feel like cooking. When we craved restaurant food, we tried to make an equivalent meal at home.

While shopping, we used Aldi’s for canned goods, pantry basics, and cereals. We used grocery sale flyers to figure out what to cook each week and determine what fresh fruits and veggies we could afford.

We didn’t eat enough fresh produce this month. It was expensive, in part because it’s winter, so fresh local varieties aren’t available. We did eat a lot of bananas because the grocery near us has “Banana Thursdays”, selling them for 29 cents a pound.

A stocked pantry is essential. As is having bags of onions and potatoes on hand. With that, you are unstoppable. It gives you the option to buy only when things are on sale, to cook at home even when you’re in a hurry, and to avoid driving to the store every few days to pick up something for a recipe.

Gas

We have two cars, a 1998 Chrysler Concorde (the gas guzzler) and a 1998 Honda Civic (the gas sipper). We filled up the Chrysler once and the Civic twice. Both have almost-full tanks still. We saved gas by using the Civic for any trip over 5 miles. Hubby and I also worked from home as much as possible. We always ran multiple errands on one trip.

Entertainment

We got a lot of free DVDs from the library and from friends. We hosted two parties, and we also hosted Thanksgiving for the family. All party and meal supplies were purchased on sale. I went to an opening at an art gallery, for free.

I took many books out of the library and caught up on some home improvement and craft projects. I am still amazed at how many projects I have not yet done even though I bought supplies months ago.

We also spent several nights drinking a glass of wine by the fireplace. I also began hosting free yoga classes at my house every Monday.

Even though we have been on a budget, we haven’t been alone. We’ve still managed to socialize and spend time with family and friends. Before this month, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.

Baby

We have an 8-month old baby. To save money, we used the cloth diapers we received as gifts when he was born. This saved us about $30-$45 on disposable diapers. Baby food was included in our grocery budget, but at 49 cents a jar, wasn’t prohibitively expensive.

Handling the money

How you handle your money during No Spend Month is critical. It has to be cash only. It’s just too easy to overspend if you have a credit or debit card. We used cash for everything except gas, only because we weren’t good at estimating how much it cost to fill up. When we used the debit card, we immediately took cash out of the envelope to cover it.

What’s next?

First, we celebrate. Staying on budget has earned us a dinner at a fancy restaurant. Ironically,we have decided to forgo $40 steaks for a $10 Indian buffet instead. It looks like our new frugal habits are sticking.

No spend month is great, but if it doesn’t carry over into your regular life, it’s really all for nothing. December marks the beginning of a new challenge. We have designed a new, long-term budget that will allow us to live on significantly less than we were before we went on a crash diet. No spend month has shown us what is possible, and that we can do so much more with the resources we are blessed to have.

The One-Month Spending Crash-Diet: Weeks 2-3

November 24, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 6 Comments

I can see it. The end. It’s almost here. We only have one week left of no-spend month, where we vowed to only spend $400 for all of November on everything we need, including groceries, entertainment, and gas.

But it’s a big week, with Thanksgiving and all of the usually-oh-so-tempting Black Friday deals that I have to ignore because they aren’t in the budget for me this year, no matter how cheap.

The silver lining is that the hubby has stopped pouting and has embraced our new super-frugal lifestyle, especially the cooking at home part. He now says “that the best thing about this challenge is that there is always something yummy in the fridge.”

Now that we are deeper into the experiment, we have seen the benefits and started to experience the drawbacks as well.

Let’s start with the positive.

1. The house is cleaner. If you can’t go out, you may as well vacuum. I also lost two pounds, which means for the first time ever our bank account is getting fat and I’m not.

2. Before the challenge, we saved about 10 percent of our take-home pay every two weeks. But we managed to put 50 percent of our pay into savings this week. That was thrilling.

3. The hubby and I also had the first real talk about budgeting — ever — in our 7-year marriage. He said, “You know, we should try to live on $600 a month, including bills, every month.”

I almost had a heart attack. First, because I don’t want to live on $600 a month, and second because we finally talked about money. We did work it out, we have decided to try to live on less all the time. Not quite as little as $600 a month, but still substantially less than before and a number we both agree on.

Now for the bad

1. I had a dream last night that I got to eat out. I’ve tried my best to replicate meals from our favorite restaurants, but it’s not always possible. I miss good ethnic food. And for the first time, we had to turn down a dinner and drinks invitation to our favorite restaurant. It just wasn’t in the budget. It made our library DVDs and popcorn date seem less thrilling that night.

2. I made a little headway on part two of the challenge as well, which was to try to lower our monthly bills. I only managed to shave $14 off of what we pay every month, by getting both my home phone and Internet with the same company. It isn’t as much as I had hoped, but at least it’s something.

Here is what we’ve spent:

During week two, we spent $118. About $90 of that went to groceries, which included most of the Thanksgiving dinner we are cooking for the family. Thank god for 29 cents a pound turkey sales. $19 went to gas, and $10 to odds and ends like a new inner tube for our jogging stroller.

During week three, we spent $86. Most of it, $55, went to groceries. We also spent another $18 on gas to fill up our other car.

How have we managed for this long on so little? If you’d told me two months ago we’d be able to live on $400, I would have thought you were crazy. But by breaking our bad habits — like eating out, all the time — and being a little more conscientious, we’ve been able to reduce our expenses significantly.

So, if you are sitting at home wondering how we’ve done it, or planning your own low-spend month, here are a few tips:

1. Meat is a luxury when you are living on a shoestring. Most of our meals have been vegetarian, more out of necessity than desire. If we do eat meat, it’s only what is on sale.

2. We’ve been borrowing DVDs from friends and from the library. And, we’ve been lighting a lot of fires and putting our feet up on the coffee table while drinking some of those bottles of wine we’ve had in the cupboard. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

3. So far, we’ve filled up the gas tank of each of our two cars once. To save fuel, we use the small, compact car for any trip longer than 5 miles, and we run multiple errands on one trip — no more running out just to get one thing at the grocery store.

4. I also recommend spending as little as possible early in the month, so that you don’t run out of money at the end of the month. Our first week was our lowest-spend, at $46. We haven’t been able to go that low since, because the pantry runs dry and the cars eventually run out of gas.

Beyond that, it’s been just a matter of staying out of spending’s way. No window shopping, no mouse finger dangerously close to clicking on the Amazon.com deal of the day.

The One-Month Spending Crash Diet

November 10, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 6 Comments

Last week, I outlined our plan to make November a spending crash diet. We have only $400 to pay for gas, groceries, entertainment, etc. — everything that isn’t a monthly recurring bill — for the entire month.

By day four, hubby began pouting.

“This sucks. Everything costs money. It’s so depressing,” he said, as he unloaded our $18 bag of groceries. “I’m noticing all kinds of things I didn’t before. This takes too much planning.”

Meaning, he finally is noticing that diapers and formula, leaving the kitchen light on, and drinking beer costs money. And now that he has a set budget, all of a sudden he feels like he’s missing out. Because he can’t do something he really wants to at a moment’s notice. He’s never been a high-maintenance guy, so I thought he would have a much easier time than I would.

I, on the other hand, am feeling optimistic about the challenge. I think we are going to do just fine, even if we have committed to buying the Thanksgiving turkey for the extended family.

The challenge hasn’t put a crimp in our lifestyle yet. We are cooking at home every night, sure, but the food is good and plentiful, and there are still plenty of free movies to rent from the library.

We’ve also managed to live something resembling a normal life. Sitting at home moping and avoiding our friends isn’t sustainable, and we’d like this to be something we can and want to do again.

The first day of the challenge, I went to an art opening at my friend’s gallery. Cost: $1 for the parking meter.

On election night, we had a party. It’s been a tradition since the 2000 election, so it’d be a shame to skip it now. Normally we’d spare no expense to throw a party, but this time our budget to feed four kids and 11 adults was only $30. (Okay, $18 originally, but then hubby realized we had no lighter fluid and no side dishes, so we spent another $12.) We didn’t think we could pull it off, but we did, and there were plenty of leftovers.

Even though we’re only a week in, the challenge has already altered our habits. Our limited budget led us to shop at Aldi’s and look for loss leaders in the local grocery ads for the first time in seven years. By Thursday, the hubby had snapped out his depression and declared “Turkeys are on sale for 78 cents a pound.” Looks like we have our Thanksgiving solution. Here is what we’ve spent this week:

Total spent: $46

That includes $1 for parking, $31.50 for the election night party food, and $5 for raffle tickets as a fundraiser for my mom’s school, and the $8.50 that mysteriously disappeared from hubby’s wallet. He has yet to come clean about what he spent it on, but we’re not over budget, so I’m not going to nag. We had 3 No Spend days this week.

I also hit the jackpot. Sometimes small wishes do come true. Finding a yoga class has been on my to do list for a while, but was out this month due to our budget. Then I got a call from an old friend who is getting her yoga teaching certification, needs to log a lot of hours of teaching, and wanted to know if I’d host a free yoga session at my house once a week. Bingo.

Not shopping and not spending has had an unintended side effect. My productivity has sky-rocketed. In one week, I have knocked several things off of my to-do list, including framing four lithographs I bought 6 months ago and rearranging the guest room furniture. It’s also forced me to come to terms with my closets, which are overflowing with stuff we never wear and never use. It’s time to let all of that go. Ebay here I come.

I can see now the potential this challenge has to be life changing. Everyday, we think about what we really need and what we really don’t, and how to make as much as we can out of as little as possible. These are skills I embraced when I was young, broke, and in college. but somewhere I lost my way. I’m hoping to find my way back.

Freegan tips for the frugal

October 24, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 10 Comments

When I was in college, my roommates and I didn’t think twice about picking sofas, coffee tables, and housewares out of other people’s trash. Don’t get grossed out. We always gave them a good scrubbing and disinfecting when we got home. We were definitely tried and true dumpster divers, mostly because we were too broke to buy what we needed. It’s fun to see what treasures you can find that others have discarded, and you couldn’t beat the price tag: Free.

A good friend and former roommate took it a step further. She was a freegan, meaning she didn’t pay for anything unless absolutely necessary. She would search for bags of discarded donuts and bagels in the dumpster of the local bagel shop. She would pull boxes of perfectly good, unspoiled pasta and fresh produce out of the dumpster behind the health food store three blocks from our apartment. She once salvaged a CD player from the dumpster behind an out-of-business electronics store, working except for the pause button, and reams of paper from behind a defunct office supply shop.

I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical of the salvaged food, but she gave me a sneak peak into a different lifestyle. Sure, I liked to dumpster dive, but where I saw limitations, she saw opportunity. I dumpster dove so I could have a place to sit or something to put my television on. She did it to live, so she could eat better food and work fewer hours at her minimum-wage job: freeganism reduced her expenses so much that she only had to work one or two days a week to eat, live and pay her bills. And, we lived in a relatively expensive city.

What is a freegan, exactly?

It can mean a lot of things, but the heart of freeganism is reducing or eliminating wasteful consumption and use of the world’s resources. The site freegan.info says this:

“Affluent societies produce an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash. As freegans we forage instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves.”

Yes, that means getting as much as they can out of the trash. Before you cringe, the freegan site says this:

“Despite our society’s stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, usable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model.”

Freegans and frugals have a lot of common ground. They don’t spend any money they don’t have to, and they deplore waste. Maybe it’s time for us frugal folks to think about incorporating some freegan-inspired (or freegan-light) ways into our lives. For example:

Dumpster dive: It doesn’t have to be for food. You can pick usable household items out of other people’s trash. Rental properties, college dorms at the end of Spring semester, and people who are moving are great spots for this. Or, like my friend, you could look through dumpsters behind major retailers looking for usable throwaway office supplies and housewares. I once got a really nice frying pan this way. I still use it 5 years later and it cost me nothing.

Get as much as you can for free: If you want free stuff but don’t want to dig through trash to get it, turn to Craigslist and Freecycle to fill your needs at no cost. On the flip side, post your unwanted items or discards on Craigslist or Freecycle, and keep it from going into the trash.

Intercept food before it goes into the trash: At my last office job, there was always a pot luck or a birthday cake somewhere. I noticed that half of it just ended up in the trash, so I started stashing Tupperware in my desk. After everyone was finished eating and the clean-up began, I’d ask if it was OK if I took something home and would stash it in my container. As long as you ask, most people are happy the food is going to a good home.

Swap: Get all of your friends together and host your own swap meet. Ask everyone to look in their closets and on their bookshelves for things they no longer want or need. everyone brings a box of stuff, and hopefully ends up trading it for something they need or will really use. Send any leftovers to charity. Swap parties sometimes work better the more people you have. Swap parties work really well with plants and garden items.

Recycle: Yes, that’s part of the freegan ethic and it should be part of yours too. If you are frugal and hate to waste, it’s logical to expect you not to waste, as in perfectly good recyclable paper and packaging. So please, hand over your leftovers to the recycling center. If you need more incentive consider taking your aluminum cans to the metal yard. It’ll net you a few dollars for your effort.

Go to or host a “free” market: This is just like what it sounds like: a market where all the goods and services are free. San Francisco, Flagstaff, AZ, and Carrboro and Raleigh, N.C., and Philadelphia are all home to free markets. If your city doesn’t have one, consider organizing your own. This is a variation on the personal swap meet, only on a community-wide scale.

Participate in a community garden or plant your own garden: In their effort to reduce waste, Freegans often grow their own food in community and personal gardens. What better way to save money, reduce the number of miles your produce has to travel from farm to table, than to grow it yourself? Some freegans also plant guerilla gardens, where they plant veggies or flowers on either abandoned overgrown lots or on public medians, to make use of otherwise wasted spaces.

My friend always had a few pots of seedlings on her balcony. She grew peppers, tomatoes, and one year even a few lentil plants. All were grown from free seeds of course, that she had culled from thrown-away veggies.

Dump the phantoms: Phantom loads that is. When she first moved in, my freegan friend unplugged all of the appliances, except the fridge, when weren’t using them. Phantom loads, or the energy your appliances and electronics use when they aren’t being used, really does add up to a substantial amount over time.Every dollar was precious at my house, so this just made sense.
Revisit your living situation. Freegans pay as little as possible for housing. Could you reduce your housing costs, say by getting a roommate or downsizing to a smaller apartment? This is easier for some people than others, but is worth considering. Until I got married, I always had a revolving array of friends, family, and roommates staying at my apartment. In college, we even turned our living room into an extra bedroom so we could add a summer-only roommate. It saved us $100 a month, which seemed like a fortune to us then.

The truly freegan lifestyle isn’t for everybody, but we can all learn something from freegan ways. Isn’t it time Americans stopped sending so many perfectly good items to the landfill? With the current economic crisis and many families feeling the pinch of falling home values, rising energy prices, and job loss, it may be time to revisit the idea of salvaging everything we can.

Fight for Your Right to Line Dry

October 1, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 12 Comments

My mom likes to show my friends an embarrassing picture of me. I’m 3 years old, hanging on to my favorite blanket as it’s drying on the line.

Laundry hanging on the line, drying in the breeze, was a frequent part of my childhood, and probably yours too. I didn’t even think about it. It was just something that everyone did.

But when I hung a laundry line in my own backyard this summer, I realized that hanging laundry outside has become a hot button issue, not just in my neighborhood, but all over the country. Two hours after I hung my first load, there was a knock on my door. A neighbor I had only met once was on the porch, arms waving, furious. He was disgusted that we had hung a laundry line. He said we were bringing down property values and that only “poor white trash” would resort to hanging their socks and T-shirts outside in the breeze.

I was flabbergasted. But also confused. I might have believed that I was junking up the neighborhood, except that the line was in my back yard, not visible to the street, and visible to this one neighbor from only one room in his house.

After some research, I realized that many people share his sentiment. Homeowners associations all over the country have banned laundry lines, saying they disturb neighbors and bring down property values. Considering almost 57 million Americans live in a subdivision governed by a homeowners association, it is tantamount to an all-out attack on a staple of frugal living– the laundry line.

It seems the simple laundry line has fallen out of favor, now that more than 80 percent of all Americans think a clothes dryer is a necessity. How far we’ve come from summer afternoons hanging laundry in my grandmother’s backyard. And, from the days when an iron clothesline secured in a concrete foundation was a staple in most backyards.

Simply put, homeowners associations and municipalities that have clothesline restrictions associate laundry lines with poor people. After all, the thinking goes, only the poorest Americans don’t have access to a dryer and if you have a dryer, why wouldn’t you want to use it?

I guess I’m old fashioned. I thought line drying just made my clothes smell nice. Why pay Tide or some other company for dryer sheets that try to mimic the smell of outdoors when you can get the real thing for free?

Plus, in an era when households are loaded with consumer debt and are watching their energy bills spiral upwards, line drying is an eco-friendly, simple way to save money.

If you are like me and love your laundry line, take heart: you aren’t the only one left. Some are taking up the mantle of line drying. The states of Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire have proposed legislation protecting residents’ rights to have and use laundry lines. A nonprofit, LaundryList.org, has sprouted up to fight for those whose right to line dry are under attack.

Even if you live in an homeowners association, you can lobby to have the rules changed. But you have to convince your neighbors that your socks swaying in the breeze won’t bring down their property value, which can be a hard argument to make in a shaky housing market.

I’m lucky that I don’t live in a neighborhood governed by a homeowners association. I just have a neighbor with some very particular ideas about what I should or shouldn’t do on my property. I refused to take down the line and eventually he gave up.

That fight has saved me about $100 a year in energy costs and makes my clothes last longer. Dryers are really hard on fabrics. Where do you think all of that lint comes from?

I am convinced that everyone needs to fight for their and their neighbors’ right to hang their laundry out to dry. Why should you fight for your right to line dry? Because you are also fighting for your right to lead a simpler life, and in most cases, a more frugal and earth-friendly life. How can you afford not to?

The Zen of Giving Away Your Stuff

September 30, 2008 By Denise Trowbridge 10 Comments

>Here’s something marketers don’t want you to know: Stuff cannot and will not ever make you happy. In fact, stuff can make your life more complicated and miserable than you can possibly imagine.

I learned this lesson a really hard way. I nearly lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.

I say nearly because we didn’t know what happened to our house and everything in it until more than one month after the storm hit and broke the levees in New Orleans. We didn’t know if we’d lost everything in a flood or if our house was even standing.

To our surprise, my husband and I mourned very few of our possessions during that time. The flat-screen TV? Nope, not a thought about it. The fancy stand mixer in the kitchen I thought I couldn’t live without? Nope. Didn’t care about that either.

All we wanted were our photo albums, the quilt my mother-in-law made out of my wedding dress, the bird feeder my late grandfather had made for us, and Squeaky, the semi-ferile yard cat who flat-out refused to get in the carrier when it was time to evacuate.

Realizing we didn’t care about all the other stuff we owned was profound. It wasn’t what we expected. And it caused us to seriously rethink our relationship with stuff.

We had never spent a lot of money shopping. Big-ticket items were few and far between, but I admit that I used to fill the void left by my crappy job with knick knacks and furniture. My husband would buy lots of books and CDs. All those little purchases added up to a lot of stuff over time.

Then, in a time of disaster, to realize we didn’t care about the little things that we bought to make us happy was profound. Especially because it turned out that none of our stuff was ruined, and we had to lug it all from our house in New Orleans to our new house in the Midwest. It’s no fun to lug hundreds of heavy moving boxes full of stuff you no longer care about onto and off of a moving truck.

That moment we knew we had to change, and our realizations about stuff turned into action.

We began to simply get rid of our stuff. For free. Yes, some of it has sold on eBay and Amazon, but most of it has gone to families who needed or wanted it more than us through our local freecycling group. We’ve given away a full-size bed, lamps, clothes, garden tools, and computers, just to start. We’ve also donated myriad items to the local Salvation Army. We’ve given things to friends who truly appreciated them more more than we did.

Our goal is to get to the point that we only have what we truly need, plus a few objects that give us a significant amount of joy, rather than dusty boxes and shelves filled to the brim with a lot of things that we thought would make us happy, but that have since lost their luster.

We still have a lot of boxes of stuff to give away, but with every item that goes out the door, we feel more free, like a great burden has been lifted off of us.

Giving away your possessions changes your relationship with material goods. When it’s gone, you realize that you don’t miss it. This has a cascading effect. It’s good for the spirit and good for the pocketbook.

You no longer want that must-have whatsit, because you can see that you don’t really need it. Or, that you won’t be interested after a month or two. You also become aware of the stories you tell yourself in order to rationalize a purchase, or to rationalize keeping something that is no longer useful to you. We are very tricky, telling ourselves we need things we never or rarely use.

Having fewer possessions shows you how much upkeep owning lots of things requires, from space to store it, to money to pay the Visa bill you ran up buying it, to maintenance and insurance costs on big stuff like extra cars or boats. When a box of stuff leaves my house, I am relieved because I no longer have to find a place for it, dust it, and I am no longer responsible for its well being.

You can live more comfortably in a smaller space when you have less stuff. And smaller spaces come with lower bills.

It’s also much more relaxing to live in a house filled with few objects you really enjoy than with a lot of things you only kind-of like. Physical de-cluttering leads to mental de-cluttering.

You start to truly understand that once you get to a certain level of comfort economically and physically, owning more doesn’t appreciably improve your happiness in the long or short-term. In fact, once you have shelter and some basics, you can live a comfortable and happy life without all the extra stuff. I didn’t fully understand this until I thought I had lost everything.

Stuff for the sake of owning stuff is worthless. It saps your energy and your pocketbook.

Why give it away? It feels good to share what you have with others. And if you are serious about unloading years worth of purchases, it’s a lot faster and easier to give it away than it is to sell it.

This is how we’ve made peace with our stuff, and made a lot more room for Squeaky, who has had a serious change of heart when it comes time to get in the cat carrier.