Keep raising the wage floor!

Products with integrity...

According to TheGuardian, Amazon raised the minimum wage across warehouses and Whole Foods stores to $15. One of the main arguments against raising wages is always that hours will be cut. So, Whole Foods cut working hours to compensate. All of this is predictable behavior, but at the same time, Yahoo Finance says, "Thanks to the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), Amazon’s federal tax responsibility is 21% (down from 35% in previous years). But with the help of tax breaks, according to corporate filings, Amazon won’t be paying a dime to Uncle Sam despite posting more than $11.2 billion in profits in 2018."

So, Whole Foods, a store whose workers can't realistically afford to buy their own goods, will cut hours, meaning their (generally high-earning) patrons will be waiting longer for service. One user mentioned having to make room for employee shoppers who are gathering goods for home delivery orders. The long-con here is that customers with time constraints will then switch to Prime Fresh and get Whole Foods delivered to them. I won't be surprised if Amazon beats $11.2B this year, but no one is doing anything useful with those profits. I think the argument against raising wages comes with the complete acceptance that companies will behave this way, but the largest ones really don't have to, not with such huge coffers.

Shout out to Trader Joes for having happy employees who, while not millionaires by any stretch, can at least afford to shop at their own stores. In the same way you can't leave Costco without muffins, I can't leave TJs without lava cakes.

Spend less green, BE more green!

If you're outside of Washington State, you might not know that we had a carbon fee initiative that failed to pass on Election Day 2018. Regardless of how you vote(d), I think being environmentally friendly is something most people can get behind. This is where some frugality practices can help you minimize your carbon footprint. I'm going to limit these suggestions to my own habits that I currently practice.

(By Kevin Schoenmakers) This lady figured it out!

Let's start with a seasonal favorite: hot beverages. They double as hand warmers! If you've been here before, you'll know what's coming. Make. That. Shit. Yourself! Hot beverages are super easy to make. They're tastier than cold beverages by default because they're not dulling your tongue! Milk, some kind of sweetener (honey, sugar, maple syrup), and a flavoring (cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, vanilla). I get the hand warmer part, but folks are going to that place with the green mermaid/Statue-of-Liberty-ripoff and spending $4 a pop! You can raid your pantry for the makings of a hot beverage. For $.50 a cup, you can drink some of the finest coffee available to the middle class if you make it yourself. I alternate between LaVazza (more like $0.20 a cup) and Kirkland Signature (which is Starbucks, minus the label. $0.11 per cup).

A trip to the cafe or McDonalds means you've commissioned TWO people to do the work of one, albeit amazingly efficiently. However that wad of napkins and fistful of sauce packets you throw away every spring is just plain irresponsible. Sit-down restaurant? The host, the waiter, the cook and the busser. I completely understand the convenience of having an expert prepare your food, but another way to shrink your carbon footprint is to cook for yourself. Or invest in some great pre-assembled entrees. Either way, you're going to create less waste, spend less green and likely eat healthier.

No recipe needed. Seriously.

In addition to cooking for yourself, eat oats and vegetables! Actually, for the last month, I've added 3 cans of different beans, some dry lentils and sausages into a crockpot. For about $4 of ingredients, I get lunch for 4 days. A friend of mine who has a high-paying job as a software engineer still lives frugally. Once a month he buys two big ass bags of rice and lentils that works out to something ridiculous like $0.10 per meal, except on those decadent days where he adds an egg, skyrocketing the cost to $0.40 per meal. Washington Post gives a chart on just how much of a reduction of greenhouse gases you make if you choose veggies over beef! Of course, frugal people like ourselves opt for chicken, pork and tofu anyway.

It hurts to dryyyyy...

I am one of those weirdos who uses his dishwasher as a drying rack and hand washes everything. Green. I also air-dry my laundry. In addition to living in Asia where that's till normal, a 25-year-old me once saw a friend's gorgeous blue dress that I thought was brand new. Turns out she'd had it for 10 years and just doesn't use a dryer. The only drawback of hang drying is crusty towels that don't get fluffed by the dryer. There are also weeks where it's just too damn cold and humid so I concede to the machine.

Public transportation. Use it. Be green. Airport run? Take the light rail. Read a borrowed book from the library or read this blog on your phone instead of being accident-fodder!

One of the stats is that skipping beef once a week is equivalent to switching 12 incandescent light bulbs to LED, which is the first thing I did when I moved in August. If you live in Washington State, LED bulbs are subsidized and you can get ~20 bright-as-day bulbs for $15 at your hardware stores (significantly cheaper than buying online, where the store likely can't pass along the discount.)

Recycling is pretty obvious, and buying secondhand accomplishes a few things: it generally avoids wasteful packaging, it proves the item itself is durable enough to survive the first owner, and you aren't economically supporting the manufacturer (if you have ethical issues with them.) Full disclosure: I struggle with this because as much as I love to save money, my favorite game developers miss out on my cash when I buy their games used.

Just because the law doesn't (yet) push you to be green doesn't mean you can't be green yourselves! All of these require more time than simply paying for the various services that most others use everyday. One thing that shocks me is how much time I spend washing dishes for just me and my wife. We clear the sink after every meal and still spend a good 20 minutes on weekend days cleaning dishes. Air drying laundry means your skivvies won't be ready for up to 2 days. Making your own coffee robs you of 2 precious minutes, but the way I see it, you can do these things yourself, or you could earn the income to pay someone else to do it: you're investing time and energy regardless.

Tips in frugality: Where I ate in Japan

As of march 2015, just over $8

I've been to enough company dinners and dates in Japan to walk away from a $60 meal still hungry. It sucks. It's certainly a great way to bond, but is also usually Part One of a second, drinks-only place which will have you shelling out more of those sweet-sweet Noguchis (see right). Frugal romance note: Japanese women are proud to pay their half of the date, and actually look down on others who let (foreign?) men foot the whole bill. Thanks, ladies :)

$60 back home can buy dinner for two at almost any restaurant in my repertoire, most often with a drink. And for $60 per person in Seattle, you can eat like God. Even before I started socking away my kizzash, I sought out some cheaper alternatives to heartily suggest.

Izakaya are everywhere. The characters 居酒屋 are "to be somewhere" + "alcohol" + "place." There are dozens of izakaya chains, and most of them have competitive prices: Kin no Kura, Doma-Doma and Wara-wara will have you walking away fed and boozed for ￥2000-3000 per person, which goes down if you're sharing or eating lightly.

Kin no Kura boasts that everything on their menu, drinks included, is ￥270. My top recommended izakaya that also has this a la carte pricing is Tori-kizoku. "Chicken Kingdom" has yakitori (chicken skewers), different types of chicken salad and chicken-broth ramen, which, surprisingly, isn't very common.

After being in Japan for a while, you might start to miss Western food, and I wouldn't be worth my salt if I didn't mention La Pausa. For ￥3000, you can get tabe-nomihoudai　食べ放題　／　飲み放題 (all you can eat/drink.) On this dazzling menu, there are a handful of 8" pizzas you can order, a dozen pasta dishes, salads and of course wines and happoshu.

Happoshu 発泡酒is a malt beer made of slightly-different ingredients that generally costs half as much as real beer. Bud Light and Coors Light have this tasteless, sometimes metallic quality to them and remind me of happoshu. Japanese breweries started this because the government was a little too specific in which kinds of alcohol are taxed. While Yebisu, Kirin, Sapporo and Asahi have their delicious flagship lagers, they've all made their own cheaper happoshu variants. I personally am more likely to get a headache with happoshu than real beer, but that's what comes with cheaper izakaya.

$10 for all of this, about 3 meals. Katsu, gyoza, yakisoba, onigiri and karaage. Also, a free creeper.

Staying cheap, I also ate a lot of ready-to-eat deli food. I lived a close bike ride to Seiyu, Japan's Walmart, and would get katsu, seafood salads, rice balls and other entrees for a few hundred yen each.

Lastly, ramen. Ramen is the only contender for pizza in my book of favorites that I have regular access to. You're never far from a good ramenya ラーメン屋　in Japan. This was part of my favorite research whenever I moved to a new place, and bowl of ramen will run you $7-10.

All in all, I only cooked about half of my meals because over 2 years and 4 apartments, I never had a large enough prep surface to make cooking not a pain in the ass. Japan's ready-to-eat food has good portions, is not overly salty, and seeing delivery trucks more than once a day instills confidence that a lot of people are paying attention to freshness. I'm pretty sure my Japanese friends were quite aware that these suggested restaurants were cheap, but no one ever had an aversion to them the way you'd get shot down here for suggesting McDonalds to co-workers. Also, drinking after work was often a can or two from a 7-11 instead of going to a bar, which cut down drastically.

All aboard the Carb Express!

I think the average middle-class person there ate out a lot more often than I did, but I still bought food half the time. This was one of the ways I socked away 40-60% of my paycheck, and it certainly left a lot of room for improvement.

Frugality: How I stay ballin'

In light of my recent employment, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. At the highest point of my career, I had a salary of $36,000 - $53,000, depending on the JPY - USD exchange rate. This was the most money I've ever made by far.  Unfortunately, I only took advantage of the higher-end of that exchange for a few months in 2013 before the USD started getting stronger, shrinking my fund transfer amounts to 60% their value. Despite the fluctuations, in 2 years of saving half my salary, I paid off all credit card debt and invested about $30,000 into the US stock market via Vanguard.com. In 3 years, that $30k became $40k because the stock market is awesome. Because I live cheaply, I could essentially take 3-4 years off, if I really wanted. All these details are here because I know a decent amount of you have resources like this to save aggressively and get similar results. So, take this less as bragging and more as encouragement that you can do your own finance-fu too.

My middle-class salary days are over, though, folks. For the last 2 years, I've been working customer service work, making $12 per hour, mostly full-time. My New Years post shows that in 2016, I made $17k and socked away 17% of it, or $3000. I have since hit lean times and have had to start drawing on my savings. I still keep all of my frugality about me, and it's really important with little-to-no income.

Here are my conditions: I live by myself in an apartment 15 miles outside of Seattle, had no car for most of the last 2 years, and have a very small social life with partners and friends who pay their own way. I still give gifts, tip and go to birthday parties, I just don't have the latest phone, car or clothes. This lifestyle may not be for everyone, but here are some habits that will fit anyone.

Then it ejects a puck if you got pressing skills.

1) I almost never buy coffee to go. $2 here, $3 there for just the basic stuff might be fine for some of you, especially if you make more than minimum wage. 3 times a day, I use an Aeropress to produce some of the best coffee I've ever had. I personally use LaVazza, an Italian import that comes in a handful of flavors. The best coffee I ever had was in Italy, so why not keep it going? Also, here in Washington, LaVazza goes on sale for $6-8 every other week, plus Amazon sells bricks for the cheapest I've seen. Probably works out to 25 cents a cup, a lot less than the hot brew that comes out of those awesome vacuum thermoses. So that's $22.50 per month for something I can't live without, that also tastes amazing. Not going to cafes certainly miss out on a lot, though. No cute girls; no standing in line, listening to the comforting sounds of the machine (one of my biggest losses); and if the cup isn't satisfactory, it's your fault and there's no free replacement.

I just can't make that...

2) I try not to order food that I can make a satisfying version of. Satisfying, not better. I am not a steak person mostly because paying a week's worth of groceries for one main ingredient and several others pushes me away. Obviously, the chef's expertise, restaurant atmosphere, and freedom to enjoy such a high class meal makes the difference and is worth it for most other people on planet earth. Other forbidden foods: I try not to eat at restaurants with cuisine of countries I've been to. This is a weird one. I generally try not to eat at Italian restaurants because I've had it in Italy (and good stuff in New York) and I feel like having regular access to really good Italian food will diminish my desire to want to visit Italy again. Plus, I really enjoy the pasta I make, even if it's nowhere near authentic. There are purists who don't like cultural cuisine because it's not authentic, and that fact alone keeps them from ignoring the good food in front of them. I never eat Japanese food because I go there so often, I'd just rather save up a couple restaurant trips (it's so @#$#^ expensive) and buy a ticket to Home 2. I'm sure it tastes great, but each bite would make me want to go back that much less. However, I totally suck at making pizza. Even then, I doubt I could make a decent pizza for less than the cost of the $8 carryout that 3 local pizza chains offer. Once again, these aren't the most social of choices, but that's why you invite some friends over and enjoy it all together!

Side note: I try and make traveling sound trivial so it doesn't get written off as too expensive. I've visited 8 countries because I was either working there or stayed with a friend and cut major expenses like food and accommodations. Use any connections you have!

3) As mentioned previously, I get carryout rather than delivery most of the time. Even after a tip, I still save $4 delivery charge and $2-8 tax, depending on the size of the order. I'm out in the burbs, though, so hangouts are rarely more than 10 minutes from a pizza place.

cheap sirloin attack! 

4) Buy reasonably large. Since meat's sold by weight, buying more at once isn't necessary, unless it's a short-lasting sale. In that case, do what I did in the pictures and freeze!

5) I am on top of my subscriptions. I know which months my cable, Playstation and Amazon subscriptions renew. Every once in a while, I canceled Netflix for a few months after I've seen everything I'm interested in. My yearlong $50 internet (50Mbps) promotion was about to expire, so I called Comcast. 4 minutes later, I was rolled into the next year's $60 for faster internet (100Mbps) for the year, rather than the regular-priced $80. I know the customer service there is supposed to be Hell, but I had the best phone call that particular day. Sony raised the annual fee (which pays for online play and a dozen free games per year) by $10. I agree the service is worth every penny, but I still know that September is my month to browse CDKeys.com and find that membership for $48. For those of you that have a subscription of a service you know you love, never ever pay month to month. This might be obvious, but I know someone who pays $8 per month for his gaming service because he doesn't notice the little fee monthly. He's paying $96 per year for the same service! It withers my shriveled, tormented soul every month.

6) Host get-togethers before your friends with money suggest going out. I can hear your eyes rolling. The tactful way to do this is the day or morning before Friday night when your buddies are wondering what's going down that night. That way, you offer the cheapest but most intimate default, and only the most passionate will argue their way out of it. My friends are definitely on to me when my apartment is the second or third suggestion, but making fun of dumb movies and consuming adult beverages is a cheap way to chill.

These suggestions are how I navigate minimum wage and keep afloat. I'll have more tips on how I stay ballin' in the future, stay tuned!

August update

July's monthly goal of eating the contents of my freezer and pantry was a bust. The purpose of doing this was to prevent a buildup, keep items from spoiling or losing taste from being frozen, curb food shopping expenses for the month. I didn't quite make it through all of the 6 packs frozen vegetables, and there's a tube of chorizo that I should use pronto. Everything else, like ramen, the 4 cans of beans and tomatoes, and Trader Joe's meals still has a very long shelf life. My girlfriend moved in near the end of the month, and brought her stored food as well, derailing the mission.

I have been chosen to volunteer over Labor Day weekend for PAX! That was a relief, though the position I'll be working is apparently 12-hour shifts, and will probably deal with a lot of noise. This is in stark contrast to last year's position at the Handheld Lounge, where I sat in a chair the whole time, talking with fellow volunteers and chatting with people about Pokemon and Final Fantasy.

The day before PAX will be my last day working customer service at my current job. Lots of people would tell me how irresponsible that is - choosing a 4-day convention over stable employment, but I dare you to work customer service for 8 months after having way cushier jobs, and not make the same call. Quitting the company will give me a much-needed kick in the ass to find higher-paying work so I can get back to saving. Let me add, though, that because of my awesome saving, I have a cushion of "f- you money." I recently sold all of my Apple stock - after 1.5 years of mediocre performance - and will be spending that on necessities instead of reinvesting it. This will buy me time to find a job I want more than simply settling as quickly as possible. So, consider the freedom that a chunk of savings can earn you!

The day after PAX is when I say goodbye to my girlfriend for a very long time, as she has to return to Korea. Her student and work visas have run out after 5 years, and so has the money. The plan is for her to work in her home country, and blow her savings every couple months to visit, but the frugal part of me is shaking my head. I think the best option would be for me to take a limited teaching term in Japan through a program called Westgate, and visit from there. I'll talk more about that in another post, though.

I've seen a little bit of the Olympics, but since I don't have cable, it's been interesting figuring out how to unconventionally watch something that should be free. I think it's a basic citizen's right to watch countries the Olympics, but NBC doesn't agree with me. Also, Rio has done a splendid job of hosting the Olympics, despite all of the concern. We're only a week in, and I wish the greatest luck and appreciate Brazil for hosting.

Gaming update will come separately, of course.

Objective shuffle 2016 part 1

You know, I've been very reluctant to share my 2016 resolution, but we passed the year's halfway point, so no harm, no foul. Just after the new year, I let tradition stress me into thinking I needed a yearly goal to commit to. I spent the whole month of January with that guilt at the back of my mind of not even being able to come up with something. Losing X number of pounds or saving X amount of bucks are nobles goals, and I very much believe in challenging yourself, but I wanted something that would be a bit more interesting to write about.

Then I started getting ideas, so in February, I set out to read as much as possible. I finished a 300-page novel that month, but I didn't actually break my record for pages read until May - 450 of a 700-page novel. The difference came from of course being super engaged in the book, but mostly reading for an hour or so before starting video games, as opposed to games first. Basic prioritization.

I told myself that March would be the month for most trophies or platinum trophies earned. For those of you who don't read the other 90% of this blog, you get a trophy when you do certain things in video games, and these save to your online gamer profile. There are people who obsess over this and don't start playing a title if its trophy list looks too hard, and then there are others who just play a game for its story, regardless of trophies. I fall closer to obsession and always try to get all there is to get in a game. The biggest issue with trophies are that developers put in multiplayer trophies, and lots of games simply lose their online community within about 3 months of release. Considering I usually buy used games to save cash, there have been a few titles that I passed because so many trophies were rooted in online matches. I ended up completing only 2 games that month, which is quite underwhelming. I've actually completed more games in June!

During April, the month after my move, I set out to save as much money as I could. I discovered a local market for Indian, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian (which I call "the brown people store") groceries that happens to sell vegetables and fruit by weight, which saves a shitload of cash. I did especially well at generating cash because I sold my Tesla, McDonalds and Coke stocks for about $1000 profit. I'll write some thoughts on stock in another post.

May was a weird one. I started the month thinking I'd try and release as many blog posts as possible...and released two. This challenge definitely didn't work out, but I had some other successes that I wasn't necessarily aiming for: I biked to work 20 days in the month, and replaced my bike brakes over a 2-week ordeal.

June is almost over, and I started the month by downloading an app called LoseIt. This is a calorie counting app that lets you set a target weight, and will give you daily amount to stay under. You enter your meals at any time, with a live search, and the crowdsourced list is thorough. I found several Korean brands of instant ramen and even made my own entry for Indonesian satay-flavored ramen, called Indomie. I'd initially committed to simply counting calories and set weight-loss to July or so. However, I've been able to stay about 1500 calories under the weight loss recommendation, so that means I should have lost around 5 lbs. Since I don't have a scale, this is all numbers.

Damn, bruh, slow up! Instant ramen ain't fast enough...

Another side effect about counting calories and not the more detailed nutrition is that I've eaten a lot of instant ramen. I bought a case of each ramen I mentioned for $20, and have so far been able to keep other grocery spending to about $80 this month, $20 of which was high quality coffee grounds. I took May and June's savings this month, and it went to $800 of dental work, so the investing went into my pearly whites!


My goal for July is to eat my pantry and freezer. This is easy because I've only lived in the new apartment for 4 months, and don't have much of a backlog. This should also minimize the grocery budget, as I'll just be shopping for chicken, veggies and fruit at the brown people store. I'll report back later!

Cheapass wins...flawless victory. Frugality!

Hey, y'all! I wanted to give an update on how I'm living cheaply. My 2 games in, 1 game out strategy has gone well. I paid $48.99+tx (NOT full retail price) for StarWars Battlefront, and have completed Titan Attack, and I am almost finished with Crimson Dragon, a free title via Xbox Live Gold.

Sistema is made in NZ, and durable as hell.

Since March, I've lived with a family I'm very close to, which is cheating, frankly. Lots of you who are looking to save money don't have this option, but as more 1-bedroom apartment rents soar north of $1000, you might start to make nice with old neighbors and relatives. The family gives me access to their car, but I still walk 20 minutes to the transit center, and bus in to work, like a good boy. Another cheating point is that the family cooks for me and hates leftovers, meaning I get to bring my lunch to work everyday. If you decide to go that route, forget traditional tupperware. Sistema microwave/freezeware is the real deal. I've used mine for a year and a half, and there's no peeling or melted plastic scarring. The seal comes out, and all the plastic parts are easily washable.

Just need to plastic wrap them suckers

Breakfast, however, is where I can contribute. Barring some unfortunate allergy, I would suggest peanut butter (or another kind of--don't laugh--nut butter) balls. Take a buncha oats, mix in a pinch of cinnamon, an even tinier bit of salt, some chocolate chips. I currently use about a tablespoon of maple syrup or honey for a sweetener for every 1 cup of unsweetened PB. Boom! Then I wrap a heaping tablespoon with plastic wrap in my palm and make into a ball. These balls are the calories you need, and beat pastries (my weakness!) in the health department by a longshot. I make 1cup into 4 balls, and that's 3 breakfasts and a pick-me-up on the days with long shifts.

$5 per kit. I still want to add another type of candy.

Speaking of shifts, I'm taking advantage of the holiday season and working two jobs for the month of December. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who isn't relatively strong, but have found that I can do just about anything for a month. At work, I've resisted the Keurig, and clung to sharing the pot with co-workers or using the single-cup aeropress.

These cute paper/cardboard boxes are $1.50 each at Daiso.

Tadaa! I may add some filler, like tissue paper or paper confetti.

I'm hearing a lot of creative Christmas gift ideas for keeping it cheap. My favorites include homemade fudge, hollowed-out false books, and a toilet-paper roll with cash stuffed inside. I've also gone some shopping at Daiso (Japanese dollar store - everything is $1.50+tx, but the selection is a cut above your typical dollar store) for my younger gift recipients. As a person who has moved and traveled a lot, I'm a huge fan of giving consumable gifts, which won't take up more room while someone feels obligated to keep something they may or may not actually like. I like gift cards, but I'm sure a lot of you who give those wonder how big a gift card is good enough?

Stuff I eat here in Japan

The McDonalds 'Goovy Beef' - McDouble with gochujang(spicy red pepper paste) and jalapeno-mayo sauce, with a side of Classic fries, topped with cheese and bacon bits 720Yen/meal.

Pear ice cream! Decently sweet and very pear-y!

Mango-white chocolate

Sweet-ass sparkling peach soda

McD's Funky Beef, with 'bacon,' relish, 2 patties

Sugary lychee gummies

Beer and wine at Wendy's in Roppongi...no big deal.

This is a Y900 cup of iced coffee, but is by far the strongest I've ever had. You might budget an hour to 90min to sit down to have one of these bad boys.

Kiwi soda is the bomb diggity!

This was the Brazil Burger, available for 2 weeks during the World Cup: 2 beef patties, cheese, green and yellow peppers and barbecue sauce.

The Japan burger, available for 2 weeks during World Cup: a deep fried pattie of ground beef and cheese, topped with lettuce, onions and a flavored ketchup.

*panicked driving* OHH NO! OHH! (gets one in mouth) Ohh that's raspberry-OHH! OHH NO!

Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon malts with no sugar added, and a sweet raspberry malt.

Cakey-bottomed, bready cupcake with chocolate puffed rice on top. As a side note, the milkfat percentage is listed on the carton and the range is enormous! 4.6% goes amazingly with coffee and into baked goods.

Pan-toasted chocolate marble bread.

Strawberry croissant-donut.

Oreo-cheesecake cupcake. I died three times eating this.

Green-tea icecream bar coated in crunchy chocolate.

Japanese McDonalds sells hot, deep-fried chocolate pies. Yes. Believe it. The gooey center is worth it.

Some kind of flaky roasted-yam pastry. Great with tea!

Frozen alcohol. I call it a Lush-ee

Double-thick, taste like crunch corn soup!

Katsu teishoku (Japanese meal set) $8 at Ootoya.

IT HAS A LIGHTSABER ON IT

Order ramen from this.

This is from a tsukemen (dipped noodles) joint in Hiyoshi.

This tsukemen is from my favorite ramen shop in Japan - Menya Koji (Kashiwa, Chiba) Lookit how thick dhose noodles are! The dish I'm holding is spicy garlic, and the pork melts in your mouth.