Frugality update: Quarantine edition

Proooooobably needs an apostrophe

I'm feeling a bit guilty as I write this for a multitude of reasons. The first is that I haven't posted about frugal stuff for almost a year. I haven't stopped my practices at all, it just felt like there wasn't a whole lot to say. Also is reading about all of the strangers and friends who are in a rough situation right now, and the fact that they just didn't have the same opportunities to save. I always thought of lifestyle and habit blogs like this as a 'take what you can' kinda situation. Sometimes I read advice from people I have nothing in common with, and part of my brain shuts off and I just can't learn from it. I hope that we can all, during this massive time of adjustment, emerge from the 2020 Covid Quarantine period smarter.

First and foremost: You cook. You cook your ass off, Trinity.

Crockpot chili, cheap and requires no skill.

At some point in the past, I shared disappointment finding out that cooking at home isn't always massive savings compared to eating out. I bake cookies as a hobby, and that can be $3 to get a decent chocolate bar and eggs on a good day when I have the other dry ingredients stocked. I'll pass the $2 Oreos or Chips Ahoy and miss out on instant gratification AND no associated cleanup or packaging labor! I also find myself paying more to make tacos at home than getting them from taco buses in the area. Thankfully, these are exceptions to the rule. Now is a great time to try recipes, especially with certain product shortages. Everyone in the world is suggesting this, my only addition is to dust off some of those cans and boxes in your pantry or frozen vegetables and get to work! I've got about 20% of my freezer left before it gets empty, a goal I've had for a while but never could reach. We'll see how I do, but now's an easier time than ever to try and use all the food you've bought in the last year. The quarantine has hit restaurant employees particularly hard, but if you've read any of my posts before, you'll know that I wasn't supporting that a whole lot in the first place. Nothing against them, I just think I should be making a lot more money to afford to be waited on. No one deserves to lose their job, and not everyone has time to cook every meal for themselves, but this blog is aimed at folks looking to make financial improvements, and eating out a lot is one of those lifestyle choices that drains your wallet. Consider it, at least.

Backlogs:

Err...add 4 generations to this stack of N64 games

The one and only release, which I preordered last summer, was Final Fantasy VII Remake. Other than that, I'm working on two backlogs. One is the growing digital mound of 100+ games, most of which were "free" through the totally paid PS+ membership. The second backlog is more recent physical games that still have a resell value, like all of my Switch titles. Once the quarantine is lifted and the games wiped down, it's time to eBay those suckers! Same thing goes for paper books. I enjoy the benefits of digital books, like reading one-handed, the long-press dictionary, and checking out books instantly at my library's website, but occasionally receive paper books as gifts. Well, now's the time to read them before I pass them on.

I'm also clearing out all the movies I want to watch on Disney+ so I can drop the subscription and switch back to Netflix. I miss the documentaries!


Tasks around the house: Some of these are quick enough to knock out during your breaks if you're working at home.

Being home more often means I have to look at all the extra junk I live with. I have leftover flooring, sound panels, and shelving from used lots I bought from Craigslist. Getting that centralized into a donate bag, box or closet means that once donations are accepted again, I can get it out of the house and dedicate the space to something else.

My wife cleaned the refrigerator racks. Not a glamorous task, but it's gotta be done.

I sanitized all the utensils in a bleach bath. Ditto to the window frames.

Caulking and touch up paint. There's a skill gap between when I first moved in 18 months ago and what I know now about some home projects. I'll be looking to redo some of the spackling where I didn't know to sand it down before painting. Leah from SeeJaneDrill on Youtube is a sage when it comes to that.

Clean those drive-thru receipts and food bags out of your car and don't forget to wipe down the inside of your windshield.

Check expiration dates and chuck stuff. Medicine, dry and canned foods. Keep note what you're throwing out this way. Maybe you didn't need that 5-pack of Dayquil if 2 are now purple and one is crusted over.

I gave all of my shoes a bath and air dried them. The better-made pair will get another 3 months out of this while the cheaper ones will get an extra month. Also, we're almost ready to hang-dry laundry outside!

Why is this stuff frugal? A cleaner and roomier house means you stay healthier and aren't paying for things you don't use. Some people rent EXTRA storage to hold things they don't need to use daily. If you're living without it, why do you still need it?

Next is my own plug for khanacademy.org, where you can take courses for free. The courses are built under teacher supervision, and it's a great way to review what you already know or learn some new stuff! I wanted to see what universities were teaching as far as budgeting and personal finance. Personally, I think the biggest challenge to online learning like this is accountability.

Bonus financial crossroads food-for-thought: I bought a used car for cash a while back, and it doesn't do distances very well. My income guided me to a manageable mortgage...that happens to be an hour+ drive away from friends and family, so the rare visits have an additional layer of wondering whether my car is going to make it. The current debate is whether to save enough to buy a newer car, or buy stock that's currently at a discount as everyone shifts their investment priorities. One way to still get in my visits is to rent a car each time. It sounds silly until you realize that I only make that trip a few times a year, and the rentals should equate to $400 or less, versus saving $3-4000 on top of whatever I could get for selling the car. Granted, the 2020 Quarantine is doing the decision-making currently.

Alright folks, thanks for reading and don't spend all your stimulus checks in one place!

June update

It's been a while since I posted! Part of it is that I've gotten some new tasks at work and classwork is as engaging as ever. I'm studying adult learning theory and there's a load of stuff to learn...about learning.

I've also been up to various house projects! It's been so rewarding investing time instead of money into little projects. Then, something unfortunate happened with OfferUp. I switched out my SIM card to test it on another phone, and the app suddenly required me to verify my account through phone number. Well, you might know that I use Freedompop, a carrier that gives you a 200MB data limit and phone number free every month. The caveat is that the phone number isn't recognized by services like Uber and certain verification services like this one. After a week of exchanging emails with Offer Up's customer service and no helpful suggestions how to get back up and running, I had to close my account. So unless I want to lie about my phone number, I'm out of luck for Offer Up, one of the less-flaky FREE person-to-person selling methods.

Another reason I haven't posted is because of conflicting feelings. I'll come right out and say that I failed one of my major commitments of avoiding spending money on games. Almost monthly, at this point. Luckily, that's averaged out to about $25 per month, but I still feel conflicted about dispensing advice that I can't follow. Another thought was the responses to frugal decisions in eliminating joy from your life to save money that reaches vegan and crossfit levels of annoying. But I have to remember that this is a blog post and readers have chosen to come here. Also, the satisfaction I experience of doing what I can to put money elsewhere outweighs the 'little joys' brought by having an underpaid person prepare my coffee, food, or wearing the latest cheaply-made brand name clothing. So, take what you will from my frugal habits if you haven't already, and you might be surprised how easy some of this is to make into a habit.

I've still been economically and ecologically sustainable in my normal ways:

Cooking for myself. Sundays, I put 3 cans of beans, tomatoes, spices and whatever cut of meat in a crockpot all day, and by the night I can freeze at least 4 days of lunch. I've been eating this chili 4-5 days a week for about 6 months. Food variety comes for the other two daily meals and on the weekends. I order pizza (carryout!) and eat out twice a month. There is room for improvement, here!

With the exception of screws, a new bathroom motor and cover ($30 total), all of my home improvement has been through secondhand methods. Through OfferUp, I bought some tools for about what they'd cost to rent as well as some custom-ordered cellular blinds that turned out to be the wrong size for the seller, but the right size for me. I basically got 4 for the price of one.

House parties with friends. You get control over the drink selection, and there's no need to shout over air horns!

Hang-drying laundry. This works out to about $10/month in savings, but the smaller eco-footprint is where it's at. Clothes last longer and it's easier to follow up with proper organization than just loading everything into a basket and forgetting about it.

Live on bus lines. I walk 10 minutes to a bus stop that drops me off 10 minutes from work. 350 sqft studios downtown are $1050 per month. My mortgage and HOA dues are roughly the same for a unit twice as big. I'm building equity, too. When I was looking at the place, the bus route was a qualifying criterion for my move. One look out the window on any given day at the daily car accidents remind me that I don't miss driving.

Don't compromise if you have time! I'm writing to my supervisor about why we shouldn't use certain business accounts for office supplies. The argument against me is that they save money on some things and spend more on others in a giant compromise. The problem is that I'm looking at data that we still come out spending 40% more than necessary. You can either spend time working to pay for things, or spend time saving money. This applies to me for groceries: I know what's worth it at Costco vs other stores, and visit 3 different places to get the best prices. Then again, I have the time to do so, and get to torment my wife along the way with fart sounds and car sound effects and everything.

March Ballin

I had to invent my own theme song for how paid I'mma be this month. This is a PSA that if you got paid Friday March 1st and you're on a bi-weekly pay schedule, you will get THREE checks this month and one other month in 2019. I also filed taxes this last weekend and am expecting another paycheck and a half. Our orange leader's tax reform shafted a lot of people who were planning on their usual tax return numbers, but us frugal folks aren't too roughed up. Disappointed, but not in financial crisis, right?

I have two thoughts on tax refunds. One is that a refund means you overpaid taxes the whole year, and the federal government got an interest-free loan from you. If you have unlocked the key to the universe and know exactly how much in taxes to have withheld over the year to end up at $0, then investing that money is better. In my case, if I knew the secret, my $1800 refund would be $1980 if I had invested every cent into my Vanguard account at 10% in 2018. The other thought is that I respect people who take the more convenient option of having extra deductions during the year and do impactful things with their yearly refunds. Well, more impactful than our blinged-out Moet-pourer at the top of the post.

image from johnlund.com

If my refund is what the software said it would be, half of it is going to an extra mortgage payment. The remaining money will go towards upgrading the house. The fan was $30, but labor to install it could be $400. I just paid $100 for over $1500 worth of eco-friendly cork flooring for my whole living room, including gas to pick it up. If I'm patient with OfferUp and Craigslist, I can get better blinds for the two windows in my unit for < $100. So far, all of these pursuits are investments and will add value to the home. You may be rolling your eyes at my corny dedication to investment with the windfall, but I also spent a large chunk on something super frivolous: a PS4 Pro. My current system works fine, and this new one won't allow me to play new games or anything; it's a graphical upgrade and runs quieter.

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.

Shape-up your security, folks!

Part of frugality and financial fitness is more than smart spending, folks. I shrug off horror stories all the time about suckers who got got by blatantly poor decisions or planning. I feel like I am above it all. This viewpoint, however, is ignorant as hell, and someone out there will be laughing hard when I land in hubris hot water. However, some of my confidence is well-founded because I take steps to protect myself the best I can. Here is what works for me:

Freeze your credit! Employment, house loans and (don't do it unless necessary!) car loans require a good credit history. Freezing your credit means telling Equifax, TransUnion and Experian not to open a new credit card or loan account without your consent to lift the freeze. This was another one of those things that I laughed off, thinking it would never happen to me. It still hasn't, but this extra layer of protection can be done in just a few minutes. Wells Fargo got busted for creating fake accounts (and subsequently spent millions of dollars asking for our forgiveness via commercials--the audacity of those crooks!) In February, Seattle ICE was caught in identity fraud.

I didn't have luck with TransUnion's website, so I called 888.909.8872 and it was an automated call. Same with Equifax; 800.685.1111, option 3 or say "freeze." It's free in Washington currently and at least 7 other states. Experian was the only website that actually worked for me, though their number is 888.397.3742.

If you have a fraudulent transaction, don't forget to tell your credit card company and let them do the leg work of investigation. I experienced some drama with Frontier Communications (may the company lose all business and collapse into nothingness!) over a bill that was $150 more than expected. I ended up waiting 5 months for it to be corrected (it wasn't) and ended up calling again when I was reported to collections. I should have paid the whole thing with my credit card and sicced my credit card company on them!

Art by dougdougmann@deviantart

This credit report security is especially important because I've been shopping for condos this summer. At first glance, you'd be right to question my frugality in addition to my longing to live overseas again. However, once I can sweet talk a bank into a loan, the monthly payment towards a condo loan (unit+HOA dues) is $100 or more less than rent in the area! You have to go in with a good down payment and good credit, but we're all masters of wise financial decisions, so this is no problem! This doesn't apply everywhere, and I'm leaving out the massive detail that I'm currently in an apartment with sliding scale rent. However, the going rent in Lynnwood is currently $600 for a room in someone's house, $1000 for a 1 bedroom, and $1200+ for a 2 bedroom. One of the banks I asked offered me just over $1100 monthly on a 2br condo. Consider it, folks! To keep with security, a condo means that you can't be suddenly evicted!

Also, as a person who doesn't use cash, it's amazing how more than 99% of my income is digital. That said, to limit liability, I suggest paying your cards and accounts from your bank account. The alternative is to login to Chase, Capital One and Citibank and link your bank account to each individually, creating 4 vulnerabilities instead of one. However, this is a lot of important information to have all in one place, so make sure your password isn't worthless. Make those hackers work to rip you off!

You'll want to put some thought into your password, but not too much that you can't remember. I like to use catchphrases with numbers instead of letters. "Hasta la vista, Baby!" from Terminator 2 is long, but memorable as #4st4l4v1st4b4by. I guarantee you know 10 lines or their approximates that would work very well as passwords.

Two Reddit accounts. One for NSFW, one for general browsing that leaves comments.

That's all I have for now, folks. These are all steps that take a minimum of time and energy.

Update: It's only poetic justice that I get fraudulent charges on my account a week after posting this! It seems some rapscallion used my card via Uber Eats, which you know I'm too frugal to pay for a) a phone that would be able to run the app and b) someone to deliver food I could make or go get myself! It's all good, though. I called credit card customer service, who connected me to their fraud department, and the entire phone call took 3 minutes and I'm not liable for anything. This is a great example of why I use credit card over debit cards, as the week it takes to replace your credit card is a lot less traumatic than having your bank account locked.

Tax Day frugal update

Filing taxes presented two challenges this year. The first was finding a service that would do them for free, which required some in-depth searching. The complication for me was that during last year's hard times, I'd sold some of my investments and most of the free services think that this extra form calls for an upgrade to their $40-70(!) premium services. Luckily, FreeTaxUSA stayed faithful to its moniker, unlike the other dopey sites.

The other challenge to paying taxes this year is where that money is going right now. At the city level, when my car was vandalized last year and the thief left blood and a knife at the scene (in an apartment complex with children), the Lynnwood PD took a look, told me that they rarely catch the suspects in these cases, and promptly left. Also, calling the public works department was fruitless in asking if I should be concerned about my orange bathwater. At the state level, the governor punched Comcast in the face with a super-strict net neutrality law, so that's a bonus. Also, Washington state healthcare benefits when I was unemployed were awesome to have and easy to sign up for, so no grudges there. Taxes at the federal level? That was the biggest barrier to not filing an extension or just mailing the IRS a recycled envelope with a photocopy of my middle finger (black and white, of course, it's cheaper.) I don't recommend running from the IRS, but it's hard not to ignore the fact that the highest office in the land won't release taxes (because he didn't pay them,) and big douchebag companies like Apple and Google haven't paid a cent in corporate taxes for years. I'm going to stop there because this blog is supposed to be about frugality, Japan and video games. I'm also simplifying something I don't understand and I want to keep some integrity in this blog.

Back to the update: I have socked away $2150 of the year's $8000 goal so far. That is about $500 behind schedule, but if I put most of my tax refund into the market, that will sync things up again.

Frugal steps taken in 2018, in no particular order:

I have only spent money in a cafe once, using a gift card. The balance is that I spend about $30 per month on my favorite coffee from LaVazza and Costco espresso beans.

Comcast emails me a few weeks before my actual billing, and I noticed that my premium was going to jump from the usual $60 to $80. They restructured their speed tiers and were about to charge me more for the same level of service. I spent my first work break clearing that shit up. By the way, the speed boost is a silver-plated crock of shit, I have speed test screenshots to prove that this company is lying and tried to take my money. Anyway, stay on top of those subscriptions, folks!

I've been using Movie Pass, a service that's $10 per month and lets you see movies in theaters. Big flicks, multiple viewings of Black Panther, get you one!

I've been cooking dinner at home, having 10-cent oatmeal for breakfast on weekdays, and mostly brought lunch. I'm not completely boring and joyless - I've broken down and bought lunch at work less than 10 times this year. It's that...there's just...there's an Indian buffet 3 minutes away!

Hosting friends instead of going out. Putting that big ass TV and uncomfortable furniture to good use!

I live 20 miles from work and take the express bus instead of driving. People really wrinkle their nose at taking the bus, but the commuter ones are really comfortable, plus I can goof off, read or just look for hot drivers of other cars. The last time I put gas in the car, frat boys and sorority girls were puking green beer in celebration of a dude who got rid of snakes!

To tack onto living so far away from work: Seattle rent sucks, the apartments are old and small, and it's loud as hell. Sure, there's a 10-minute walk on both sides of the trip, and the rent is a lot more affordable, $800 for a 700 sq ft apartment. In the city are $1000 150 sq ft micro studios without kitchens! Lots of people are gearing up to move: factor transportation into your rent and see if the next neighborhood away could ease your financial burden.

2.50 per month for my phone. I read books and listen to music in my spare time outside of home, neither of which need a $40 data plan.

I sound like a broken record because these are habits 4 years in the making. Anyone can do it, especially if you start with one change at a time. Start with cutting out the Starbucks and making your own drinks...those people don't pay their taxes, anyway!

Still Cheap in March

K-Mart Jimmy Smits reacting to Loudmouth 45
(mercurynews.com)

For those of you in warmer climates, Seattle is still scooching along with 40F/4C degree days that are deceptively sunny. For those of you who recently invested, you might have gotten a recent shock when our illustrious president flapped his mouth about the economy and trade deals, and confused his Koreas. The news, as usual, blew the falling stock market out of proportion, and, while the cowards panicked and withdrew, the steadfast survived the...week that it took to recover. The more opportune took that window of vulnerability to buy some stock at a discount! Then everyone woke up and realized that when it comes to Wall Street quakes, people like us who don't need their investments until decades later should completely ignore the newsfolk who speculate on a hiccup in the market. I'm not calling it fake news, mind you. All of that shit is irrelevant until you need to draw on your investments.

Weakness!

My man here has the right idea
(ngopulse.org)

How have I stayed frugal lately? Same old story: keeping on top of subscriptions, knowing good alternative brands, cooking for myself, making my own coffee, and inviting friends over instead of going out. Same old story, right? Well, I've been putting in more time with friends and driving more as well as changing snacking habits to nuts, which are much more expensive than sugary stuff from the overstock grocery store. I also went hog-wild with the latest PSN sale, spending a whopping $60 on games to stock my Women's Games Months (Jan and March). All of this is overshadowed by $100 heating bills for the last 5 months, and that can shake the faith in frugality a bit.

The point? Just like cheat days on diets being necessary to go longer, you're going to have periods where you feel like you're hemorrhaging money. If you're already pretty good at saving, don't feel too bad; just try and limit it. I was raving all about triple-paycheck months, and these are definitely the best times to have a little fun. This might run a bit contradictory to a previous post, but the point here is that you should also have fun adding some of that "extra" cash to your investments, too. Just don't blow the whole check on silly shit.

Fill your belly in the house and heat that home!

2018 set your goals now!

I spent most of 2017 with unpredictable income, due to both unemployment and a sporadic work schedule. I closed the year with a full-time job and now I have a steady paycheck. For those of you who are fortunate enough like my recent self to have predictable income, you should set your sights on some financial goals for the year. I'd set my goals quarterly, rather than waiting until the gifty Christmas/Chaunnakuh/Kwanzaa season to try and tally everything for 2018. So, if you've never saved before, and make $15-20 hourly, start with $100 by the time your favorite flower blooms in April. Double it for the quarter after that, and build up to 10% of your annual income. The average person in my age group saved -1.8% in 2017, so you can be that much better off! I'm personally aiming for 30% this year, on the $2000 monthly (Seattle minimum wage), but I've been living frugally for 3 years. Two years ago, I saved $3000 of my total $17,000. That was 17%. You can do 10%.

If you are wondering how you can put aside that much money, click on the label 'frugality,' on the right side of this blog, and you'll see all my posts with suggestions how to live dat frugal life. Some of my favorites that I actually live by are: cooking for myself, driving minimally, eliminating unnecessary subscriptions and buying a year at a time instead of going monthly, knowing good 3rd-tier brands, making my own coffee, and regulating my hobby by completing more games than I buy. Also, if you get paid every 2 weeks, there are bonus treasure months with 3 paychecks. That does not mean shopping spree, unless it's splurging on a decent coffee maker to ween off your thrice daily $4 coffees, or some good tires to make driving safe.

The last huge financial decision is that I live outside of Seattle proper. This means I get to take advantage of the $15 minimum wage, which is about 30% higher than my local suburb. This means that I am a good 15 miles from work, and take the bus because parking is unreasonably high ($20 per day). The commute is roughly 8 hours per week, which is a lot of reading time. Another advantage of dat suburb lyfe is that there's a supermarket right across the street that I don't need to drive to. I'm also not paying downtown rent in my food prices, so things are cheaper in general.

The finest brrrrick wall! I've ever seen...

I usually put people to sleep talking about this stuff, and yet others will brick wall me and say that saving $8000 in a year is impossible, or that they can't make sacrifices. Okay, so save $1000 this year and you'll still be ahead! That statistic of millenials going 1.8% further into debt last year was for people making $52,000 ($26 hourly at full time)! Avocado toast indeed! If you're in this income bracket, I double-dog dare you to do the $8000 that I am shooting for. Even if you're raising a family, I think you can still follow some of my suggestions and come out ahead.

A little patience paid off immensely

What to do with your nest egg? I strongly urge you to do some research on investing. Investopedia allows you to create a fake stock account with $100k that simulates investments on the actual market. I did this for 3 months before determining which stocks I'd buy with real money. I've personally had great luck investing in Vanguard S&P 500 stock and I'm not the only one. My thoughts are that if American businesses are as ruthless as they are, they'll know what to do with my money. Worrying about market crashes is silly because if it happens, we're screwed anyway, but temporarily. Don't invest money you need now; that way you can be patient with the returns. 4% may not look like much, but once you make it to your first $10,000, that's a brand new yearly PS4 Pro you've earned yourself (though hopefully you'll just add that money to the pile.)

Cold, hard, cash-saving

Time to dust off the space heaters and buy that bucket of Swiss-Miss! If you haven't already, you should completely ventilate your house once a week so all your cooties and heating system junk can go play outside rather than in your lungs. The 25 cents or so to heat your space back up is worth what you'd spend treating your sick self. Make sure to check your windows and sliding glass doors and tell your landlords ASAP so that your expensive heat isn't all seeping out. I still have to remind my girlfriend to wear a hoodie around the house if 65F isn't warm enough. You all must think I'm a monster, but I am a firm believer in the human body's ability to adapt, rather than needing certain comforts. I am also frugal af.

In terms of energy efficiency, one major difference I made was buying curtains. Most apartments are cheaply made and come with a set of white blinds. With a few screw and nail holes, I installed additional curtains, most of which I got at my local secondhand shop. For $50, I covered 3 large windows, controlling light and screen glare, and more importantly, temperature. I did this last year and have since had less issues with the sun heating up the place, and the cold freezing the place. While you wait to get curtains, you can at least make sure to open your blinds for heat and close them at sunset to get the most of natural energy. This might be obvious info, but lazy me always left them closed and ended up needing to crank that baseboard heater a little more.


We're also in hot drink season, folks. My workplace is connected to a Starbucks, which rakes in all the extra business of lazies who don't take the 2 minutes to make their own cup of their favorite hot beverage. Taking time to make your own drinks lets you step away from your workspace for a moment yet continue to be productive. You may even surprise yourself by making something you like more than what you'd buy.

Bad choice to have to make at 7am...

Also, the worst part of those cafe trips is the glistening, perfectly-cooked pastries that charm another $4 onto our cards. Then, there's the $6 yogurt, economizing your guilt; the 'healthier' option (until you read the nutrition label) is more expensive. I avoid this by eating two (2) packets of instant oatmeal, which currently totals 20 cents. I am far from immune to the charm of a good breakfast, though, as the weekends always bring something more elaborate. Once a month I hit breaking point and just have to go to a good local diner and over-eat myself into blissful oblivion. But $6 yogurts and $10 salads is just something you should only get in absolute desperation, if you're on a budget.


And finally, Christmas. It's a barrage of should-I, shouldn't-I emotions and the guilt of giving cheaper gifts or no gifts just might not be worth it for some of you. I would say that in the very least, make sure your Thank Yous are genuine or practiced. If you're in a situation where you receive but not give, the givers probably want your positive reaction more than to simply exchange stuff. As a side note, I personally think the majority of gift giving should happen on birthdays, rather than this predictable season.

If you are going for purchases, remember that you can switch over to https://smile.amazon.com and donate a portion of your purchase to a charity of your choice. I chose one of the Internet rights advocate groups, since the bored FCC decided to stop doing their jobs and sold us out. You can just as well choose animal shelters or help sick kids. Anyhoo, switching URLS (to smile.amazon) will preserve your cart, too, so you can do it just before checkout. Amazon didn't pay me to say this, I just figure you can support a good cause with literally 24 keystrokes or a mouse click.

Grey Friday: Know your brands

Dudes. Chicks. Calm that consumer rush. This is a hard one, cause I try harder than the average Joe to be frugal and not financially wasteful, but I do get an extra blood rush during November's consumer push. It's no secret that Black Friday deals are businesses' chance to get rid of old inventory. While that's no problem in itself (that's a good frugal direction to be headed,) be careful of overloading on junk.

My best advice for thriving frugality is to know your good third party brands. Spend a few minutes on Amazon or CNET to learn some known flaws with big brands or product lines. For example, none of the LG tvs I've seen are not very good at handling black levels...shadows, facial hair and the letterbox lines all look "neon black," instead of having varying levels of depth. Samsung has a track record of terrible customer service. Stores used to use different types of cables to sell different tiers. HDMI (the current standard) for Samsung and Sony, and component cables (extremely limited in color depth and resolution) for Vizio and Spectre. I haven't seen this practice for at least 5 years, though. The stores may have realized that some people don't have the $200 extra to get the name brand; or maybe they realized it was a shitty underhanded practice. Ultimately, custom settings can make your cheapie TV look much better.

And please, please adjust your picture settings...a 2nd-tier TV is very capable of looking like the picture on the left.

Sometimes, foreign brands are as cheap as third party, but have amazingly high standards. For headphones, Beats are overpriced and bass-heavy, and you're better off getting the German-engineered Sennheisers and spending the extra cash on something else. Logitech, Swiss, makes great, affordable products that last forever. In the realms of computers, Acer and Asus, Taiwanese, sells laptops with better hardware than HPs that cost almost half as much.

I won't weigh in on fashion-related Black Friday sales because part of my frugality means I'm crisp, but not current *brushes off shoulder.* I also won't say what stores to avoid, though 'doorbuster' sales make me imagine the worst, and I'd personally just order online at my own pace. Our favorite retailers are doing sales all month long, so there's no need to skip out on your loved ones Thursday night after the Martinelli's is still washing down the third piece of pie you crammed down. We aren't drinking and driving, after all.

If you're only looking for a few things, the amount you save in not paying tax on Newegg.com, or the free shipping from many sellers might cancel out the lower-priced local deal if you factor in your personal time, gas, and hospital bills associated with stick fighting over the last SNES classic at store price. (Damnit, Nintendo, just make more; it's not that hard of a concept.) Year-round, consider DealNews, TechBargains and woot for daily deals; there's no reason to pay big box retailers' rent, line Shell Oil's pockets with money, and miss out on your cousins' cracked-voice rendition of Poker Face when you can have stuff sent to you.

Muh-muh-muh-mahhh

Last warning, stores will probably try and getcha with one of their store credit cards that gives you 5% cash back or 10% off every purchase. Often, you can find a better deal on the items themselves online with a little bit of searching, and just not spend the 5 or 10% in the first place. That means you're not paying interest on it, or forced to spend said rebate at that very same store! Besides, I have a hard time cancelling unused, unneeded lines of credit, and that doesn't help anyone! As always, keep your spend demons in check, and think about that debt you have to pay back at the end of the month for that chocolate robot frog that was 30% off. Have a good Black Friday, but more importantly, a great Thanksgiving.

early Oct updates: money edition

On a recent post on credit cards and the data breach, I advised readers to freeze their credit. Since millions of smarties went to do this responsible thing, the three big companies, Equifax, Experian and Transunion haven't made it easy. (Warning, that link has a video that autoplays, but it's relevant.)

Servers were definitely congested, resulting in dropped forms and lots of frustration. I finally paid for the services for 2 of the 3 to freeze my credit, also not neglecting to spend a good 10 minutes looking over purchases in 2017. The only advice is to keep trying, especially the further we get away from the incident. One warning is that if you don't answer your background questions accurately, they may tell you it can't be done online, and ask you to mail a request to them with your name, address, social sec...PAHAHAHAHA. Keep in mind these people are supposed to be experts in security. They want me to mail all that in a letter than anyone could intercept?

Easy money.

Poorly-planned protocols aside, making it so that you have to take an extra step to open a credit line is the prudent thing to do; just don't lose that unlock code!

Also suggested is https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ to stop receiving those pesky pre-approved credit card offers that are littered with your personal info. The stoppage is supposed to last 5 years if done online.

Another update is that my filing with Unclaimed Property of the WA State Treasury went well! I got a check in the mail 2 days after sending the form!

Also, with Fall weather encouraging more indoor activities, you all should consider a Movie Pass. This lets you see one movie per day, any movieThis company mails you a debit card, and you use an app on your phone that shows you local theaters and play times.

When the company first announced the price drop to $9.95 per month, it took a lot of patience to navigate barely-informative webpages and sign up forms to get one. I got lucky, and mine arrived a week later.


Also, my phone battery is on its way out after 5 years, so that caused me to go on a pricing spree. The last time I tried to swap hardware on an Apple device went poorly, so between that and wanting to give Android another try, I went ahead and did some research. I ended up paying about $50 for a brand new Moto e4, a decent phone, with its own phone number. While it's not an iPhone 8 or Galaxy S7, it has a bright 5 inch screen, fingerprint scanner and is very fast and responsive. It also costs 1/16th what an unlocked top-of-the-line phone does and has a headphone port.

How'd I get such a deal? I unlocked a brand new prepaid phone and swapped SIM cards.

So, Walmart.com will let you pick up a Verizon Prepaid Moto E4 for $39.99 and "activate it" before you leave the store. Except they don't actually turn it on. So, I added another FreedomPop line by ordering a $1 LTE Sim, which always seem to be on special. The code to unlock the Moto e4 was $2 on eBay. Before turning on the phone, I swapped out the Verizon sim and turned the phone on and entered the unlock code. There's one more step before everything works: Set a custom network, which is 3 clicks in the Setup menu. An added bonus was that the Verizon prepaid phone didn't come with too much bloatware - all those free silly apps that slow down your phone.

All in all, Frugal Fall is working out pretty well!

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.

Credit Cards

Well, folks, we got Equi-f***ed. I read somewhere that 130 million Americans' info was vulnerable in September 2017's data breach. SSN, addresses, names, the whole shebang. If the population is 330m, then maybe it's a time to revamp the system? A social security number is basically your national ID (since not everyone gets a passport) that has no photo attached, stays unchanged and has no letters or special characters to mix things up. Your email password is more secure, and you even give part of this number over the phone pretty often. My immediate thought was how ridiculous it is that we spend trillions of dollars on 'defense,' yet the average US citizen isn't protected from information security hacks. These thieves can do a lot with your SSN, name and address because of the convenience of electronic forms. Think about how many important things you've signed up for without a photo ID and it gets pretty darn scary.

What to do? The FTC says to check your credit reports for free, monitor your accounts, and consider a security freeze, which makes it harder to open accounts without your consent. Freezes for the big three credit report agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) will cost you up to $30 (fees depend by state), but you'll be that much more secure. As of 9/15/2017, the websites are overworked and I'm getting errors, but it's worth it to keep trying.

Now that we're all secure and confident to continue our lives (with a weekly check of our spending), let's talk about the borrowing part of credit. I know people that are super proud to always use cash, never have debt, and avoid loans like the plague. They are all super lucky but are missing out on a few major benefits of using credit cards.

The biggest and most obvious double-edged sword is the deferred payment: if you need a car/bike repair and payday is far off, you just have to wait. That might mean you can't get to work or school! (I can't use hospital emergencies in this case because even if our healthcare system is a crisis, it's pretty standard that they bill you after setting you right.)

Next obvious is that credit card companies protect you from fraud, and this is taken for granted until it happens to you. It's happened to me twice so far. I've had my card info stolen before and Capital One was on that ish like fur on a mouse. Credit card companies make so much money off people who neglect (or unfortunately can't keep up with) payments that they can afford to have our back at the drop of a hat. Those banks also often credit your account before they roll up their sleeves and go after the fraudster or company that shafted you!

Except when they don't. Story Time! A few years ago, I found a debit card on the street and called Chase customer service. I gave them the digits and told them I'd found a card on the street, and that they should close it because it's obviously not in the owner's position. Well, Chase bank, whom we so generously bailed out in 2008 asked my name, city and phone number in response. I got about 5 digits in when it occurred to me to ask why I was giving them my phone number. The associate told me that they were going to give the card owner my number and have me meet them to return the card back. This resulted in me closing my other Chase account and moving over to a credit union because of an absolute loss of confidence. Security means nothing to those people.


Anyway, it was a debit card that I'd found, and here's an important point about credit: since it's magic money, you're not completely screwed over when Klepto Chris cops your card. Cash can blow away in the wind, and debit cards are directly connected to your bank account. You might not be able to pay for your internet connection and read my blog if your debit card is compromised.

The last reason credit cards are dope is the permanent discount you get when you get cards like Capital One's Quicksilver that give you 1.5% cash back. Until they recently added a 2.5% charge, I paid my rent and utilities with this sucker, which was basically a free $100 per year!

So, while your peace of mind in not borrowing and always using cash on hand could be worth more than these benefits, think about each of these points and consider getting yourself a credit card. Check out nerdwallet.com for recommended cards.

Ohh snap! I need money...

We've all done our best to avoid frivolous spending and to politely decline "sales" of stuff that was originally marked up 400%. Even with a few hundred in your savings account to maximize interest (my credit union gives 6% on your first $500), and hopefully the rest invested in a Vanguard ETF, sometimes you have emergencies.

Now, I am confident that any expensive emergency is going to be able to wait the week for you to cash out a portion (and not a cent more) of your investments to cover it. Right? No hospital on this planet is going to refuse to stuff your jutting bone back into place until seeing cash first. This is why I ignore the common advice to keep a big savings account; also, the piddly interest is insulting. Money is constantly losing its value: why the hell would you keep it around and not put it to work? Also, unless your jar of change has a specific goal like gas money or one month of health insurance at the end of the year, it's also uselessly taking up space. You can usually avoid the ~10% fee at Coinstars by getting a gift card for the local store or Amazon, which hopefully has something you need. However, whether it's unplanned dental work, a minor car accident, or Nintendo selling its limited edition mini classic system and their deliberate BS underproduction is causing the street price to quadruple, sometimes you need more money than you have that month, but not enough to disturb your investments.

There is a lot of advice on how to make money quick that depends on luck, unpossessed skills, or illegal activities. I offer two suggestions that can get you money within a month: Amazon Flex and Unclaimed Property.

Amazon Flex is when you deliver items for the retailer, using your own car. After you download their app and consent to a background check, you're good to go within a day. This won't work for every major city in the US, but Amazon is expanding rapidly, and this will work for Seattle and Everett. I wrote a separate article about my first experience Flexing.

My advice for Flex? Phone charger and extra battery. Also, your initial package loading is important. Next time, I will make quadrants where the passenger seat is 1st - 50th street, the rear passenger is 51st - 100th street, trunk is large packages, and so on. However, you'll have a different breakdown every day: maybe it makes sense to organize them by zip code. Lastly, get a help phone number from the attendees because the app either doesn't provide it, or only provides it while your delivery route is open. All in all, I can recommend Amazon Flex as some great extra income that pays weekly. Uber customer service failed me when I got an error after signing up that 3 emails later, they still couldn't solve for me. Door Dash wanted me to complete registration in a city 30 miles away, so that's why I can't personally promote those other options.

The first celebrity name I could think of. Sorry if I exposed anyone...

Unclaimed Property (via the WA State Dept of Revenue - search for your own state) is old bills and rebates that never made it to you because you moved or fudged the address. You enter your name, create an account, and upload some documents that prove you were at the previous address. Old driver's license, utility bills, old bank statements and tax documents are the most common types. For me, the addresses were so old that I had to use the comments section to appeal to them for having no proof I lived there. I'll let you know how it goes, but I should have a claim for ~$150 processing.

Think of these suggestions as the monthly equivalent to lifting the sofa cushions or raiding your car's ash tray (does anyone smoke anymore?) and scrounging for pizza.

Out with August!

It's been a while since I talked about good money habits, and school month looming is as good a time as ever to start preaching! A few months ago, I joined a gym, and it's been going really well. An ideal balance between frugality and practicality would be if you can work within walking or biking distance and get some good exercise every workday without thinking too much about it. The problem for me was that the work I've been doing since February changes location daily, and walking long distances got to be boring with the same starting point. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind when joining a gym.

Reading my kindle for an hour burned off that burger!

Math: My public gym charges $4.75 per visit, and most gyms (that arrogantly call themselves clubs) have an ugly, disgusting and painful $50-100 initiation fee. I hate this. This was the number one barrier for cheap ol' me. LA Fitness wanted that $100 startup, and $30 per month to use their gym. The monthly part is fine, but the rationale for the startup fee is completely unraveled when you take the option I took: 4 months for $129. While a yearly option would have been even more of a savings; I still pretty much dodged that silly initiation fee. Math tells me I have to go at least 27 times over 4 months to make it worth it. Luckily, I've used the gym 3-4 times per week and got my value about 2 months into the membership. I think I'm at the point of my life where the desire to stretch my dollar is enough to get me out of the house and into the gym, unlike previous attempts. Also, the gym is a 20-minute walk to and fro.

Guru of gainz: While I'm not an expert, I have some advice: slow the hell down! While there are dozens of techniques and workout plans, it's pretty universal that you need to wait between sets. Most of the advice points to a whole minute, but perception of time is funky. Setting a watch every time is a bit annoying, but a minute is longer than you think. A rule I use is the time between choruses of whatever song is playing. Most pop music is 3 minutes and has 3 choruses, and if you're listening to something more sophisticated *adjusts tie and brushes off shoulders,* the choruses are probably spaced even further apart, which is good for your resting.

Also, slow your rep roll. Quick, jerky motions don't help as much as long, confident, even strokes; I follow the advice to do one count up, two counts down on bench press, for example. Other than that, follow your plan to your heart's content!

This is all I need...substitute the gnarly sponge for a carafe and half and half, dho.

Lastly, since school is starting for some of us, let me remind you that your habits are about to change. Check those subscriptions before you start the next chunk of the year with a lot less free time and trim the fat! Game of Thrones is over, and that HBO.com subscription is $15 per month that could go into something else. Well, make sure you've watched The Wire, first. Also, pumpkin spice lattes are around the corner: you've done without them for most of the year, why start this $5 per drink habit again? Now is a great time to grab a bag of beans/grounds (I prefer LaVazza), dust off your coffee maker or espresso machine, and wake up 5 minutes earlier. You're saving yourself $50 per hour of labor after cost of good coffee and your favorite accouterments (<--spellcheck told me its spelled that way).