Coffee heat rising

Frugality

Five frugal things you can do for yourself today

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1. Eat in, not out. Download “101 Simple Salads for the Season” from the New York Times for an amazing list of easy, tasty, and good-for-you summer meals. This not only keeps you out of restaurants, it also gives you a whole cookbook-full of nifty recipes, for free!

2. Declutter a bookshelf or a closet and sell the discards collector’s items on Amazon.com.

3. Go for a thirty-minute walk. Regular walking amounts to free preventive medical care. In addition to the obvious weight-control benefits, it can stave off stroke, gall-bladder surgery, high blood pressure, cardiac disease, and osteoporosis. You should pay God for letting you do this!

4. Brush your teeth thoroughly twice a day and floss every night before going to sleep. Good home dental care keeps the dentist away…and as we know, dentists can be mighty expensive. More than saving on dental bills, though, good hygiene may protect you from heart disease. Daily brushing and flossing prevent gum disease, which is thought to be associated with heart attacks and stroke. Big savings there!

5. Check your local NPR station’s website for listings of community activities, many of which are free or modestly priced.

Woo-HOO! Major estate sale triumph

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Un-freaking-BELIEVABLE! I just scored enough red bricks to build the coveted garden wall at the downtown house and probably pave a couple of patios: for about 15 cents apiece!

The things are selling for 65 cents apiece at Home Depot. They’re practically brand-new: the “estate sale,” as it develops, was actually a foreclosure sale. The evicted owner had planned to build a circular driveway in front of the large tract house that he was forced to vacate. He never got the things on the ground, and so…his misfortune is my good luck.

The sale organizers advertised 1,000 bricks, but when I counted them I came up with 1,448.

Gerardo sent a crew in a decrepit pick-up to load the bricks. I had my van, too: there were so many bricks it took us two trips with both vehicles. The men loaded and unloaded all those blocks, one at a time. While Gerardo was at the estate sale, he picked up another job: some used furniture dealer hired him to transport a heavy, solid brass baker’s rack. So he did OK, despite not asking anything like enough for his and his workers’ time.

For some reason, stucco often doesn’t seem to hold up well to the passage of time. The foreclosure is in a district of aging stucco tracts that once formed an upper-middle-class Scottsdale suburb, now  surrounded by development and fading fast. The houses were built in the 70s and the 80s. Mile after mile of houses, many of them spacious and once upscale, are now tired and run-down—and they’re just not that old. IMHO, a thirty-year-old house shouldn’t look like it’s ready to be torn down. Too many of these houses, which were anything but cheap at the outset, look exactly that way.

A few houses in the tract were built of slump block, and they still look very good. But the stucco affairs have weary and worn-out air about them. And since stucco is the predominant style in all new construction here, I guess that in twenty or thirty years, we’ll be seeing vast swaths of blight where developers bladed an acre an hour to cover the beautiful Sonoran desert with tens of thousands of look-alike fake-tile-roofed stucco “homes.”

So I’m feeling smug about the two sturdy, centrally located block houses M’hijito and I managed to get our hands on. Once we finish the landscaping project, we’ll be done with making the downtown house livable. Now that neither of us has any debt other than the mortgage on that little place, we should be able to ride out the depression, come what may. After the economy recovers, both these houses will be worth a lot of money, because of their location and because of the quality of their construction.

Now…all we need is to find an estate sale where someone’s trying to unload 65 tons of Madison Gold quarter-minus and a pallet of extra-thick flagstones…

Thermostat update

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Yesterday morning Matt the Air-conditioning Tech called to discuss the thermostat issue. By then I had finally managed to figure out the trick of programming the thing, evidently quite the trick, since one of the instructions he gave me over the phone was wrong. If an expert can’t work it, I don’t feel like such a moron taking months to master its “simple” instructions.

Matt said the classic round Honeywell thermostat is no longer being made: mercury. He speculated that before replacing the programmable number with another digital thermostat, it might be worth it to experiment with jacking up the temperature further during the day or simply turning the system off until the house starts to get uncomfortable. That mimics what I used to do with the old thermostat: I would turn it off manually the first thing in the morning and leave it off till I couldn’t stand the heat any more, or, on workdays, until I got home from the office. 

Hilariously, Matt suggested one way to shut the fancy thermostat off: press the “Hold” button. He believed that would turn it off until the button was pressed again.

N-n-o. What that does is say to the system “hold the temperature at the figure that’s now showing on your display, no matter what the programming says.” So, if your system is set at 80 degrees from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the thermostat reads 78 (meaning it registers the temperature at 78 degrees), and you press “Hold,” the device will keep the temp at 78 degrees. Should you notice this fluke and press “Hold” again to toggle that function off, the thermostat will go back to maintaining the temp at 80.

It now looks like the issues are these:

• The thermostat Matt installed isn’t really a model designed for heat pumps, even though he insists it’s perfectly OK with my system.

• It’s apparently more sensitive than the old round Honeywell number. The formerly oven-like bedrooms have been, it must be admitted, suspiciously balmy. To get them that way, the thermostat runs the unit longer than the old one did.

• Eighty degrees is too cool. I need to set it for about 82 in the daytime and then leave the system turned off until it gets unbearable inside the house. That evidently saves more power than programmed setbacks.

Mercifully, just now we’re having a cold spell. When I got up at 5:00 this morning, it was a fantastic 70 degrees outside, after a night that allowed me to leave the AC off and the window locked in its no-burglar-can-squeeze-through open position. Today is supposed to be cool—only about 90—followed by another 70-degree night. w00t!

Programmable Thermostats: Aren’t they supposed to save on power?

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So the electric bill arrived in the mail, bearing news of a stiff gouge out of my checking account. Comparing this month’s bill, the first of the air-conditioning season, with what I paid for the same period last month, what should I find but that this year’s bill is $50 more than last year’s! And this year we had a fairly cool spring. Andddd….this month was the first time I used the new programmable thermostat.

The power company, Salt River Project, raised its rates 3.9 percent in January. That should have increased my bill by about $13, not by fifty bucks. And the newsletter SRP stuffs into its billing envelopes announced that SRP plans to raise rates again!

Well, the only thing that’s changed has been the advent of the programmable thermostat. During the winter, I didn’t use it at all—the experiment to rely on space heaters to keep warm worked, and I didn’t turn the central heat on more than two or three times, for an hour or two at a time. A couple of months ago, M’hijito came over and figured out how to set the thing so it would run at 79 degrees during the day (I wanted 80 degrees, but he thought that would be too hot) and then drop to 76 degrees between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., so I would at least have a shot at sleeping all night.

About 76 degrees is where I used to set it at night when I had the old-fashioned round analog thermostat. I did keep it at 80 during the day, but it doesn’t seem like one degree should account for a $37 spike.

There could be some user error here: the instructions are so cryptic, I can’t understand them at all. When I try to figure out how to set it, it’s just like reading Chinese—utterly incomprehensible. My son, who uses his own programmable thermostat with ease and success, took quite some time to parse out the way to work mine. And he’s pretty clever with electronic gadgetry. Entertainingly, the AC people said this is their easiest-to-use model. 

The only thing I can figure is that programmable thermostats are not what they’re cracked up to be. Either the old analog model was inaccurate and the temperature in my house was higher than 80 degrees, orrrrrr….. oh yes: the story that leaving the AC off until you can’t stand it overworks your system and jacks up your bill JUST…AIN’T…SO.

Afraid so: that’s actually what I used to do. Because in my dotage I no longer can sleep in a warm room, I would ratchet the thermostat down to 76 (or even…hang onto your hat: 72!) at night. Then I would turn it off when I got up, around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. I would leave it off until I couldn’t breathe any more, which on a normal 105- to 110-degree day occurs around noon. By then it would be bloody hot indoors. At that point, I’d turn on the unit and set the thermostat to 80 degrees. 

Air-conditioning techs will tell you no, no, no, no: you must keep the house at an even temperature at all times. If you don’t, we’re told, the structure will become “heat-saturated” and instead of cycling on and off, the unit will run nonstop. This, they say, will result in higher, not lower, air-conditioning bills. 

Huh. That appears to be the exact opposite of empirical experience. Another emperor has no clothes, eh? 

Images from Wikipedia Commons:
Analogue thermostat by Flicker user midnightcomm 
Programmable thermostat by Stuuf 

To renew or not to renew…

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…that is the question. Whether ’tis better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous costs, or to read my favorite magazine online for free. 

Actually, the cost isn’t outrageous: Atlantic Monthly is trying to get me to re-up my subscription, telling me the regular price of $25 I’ve always paid is some sort of special “alumni” discount. As though they really could get new subscribers to pony up $60 for twelve issues. Twenty-five bucks is only two dollars apiece to have the magazine packaged up and delivered to my door by the U.S. Postal Service. That can’t possibly cover the cost of mailroom staff, mail list management, packaging, and shipping. It’s a bargain, really.

I do enjoy The Atlantic. But the problem is, oftentimes I don’t read it. Sometimes a new issue will arrive and I’ll realize the old issue is still sitting on the bureau in the bedroom or on the desk in my office, scarcely ever opened. My life is so fractured and so gestalt that I rarely find enough time to focus on anything longer than a few minutes. Unless…yes, unless I’m in front of the computer. These days, the only time I focus on anything for any length of time is when I’m sitting in front of a monitor or trapped on the light rail reading page proofs.

And oddly, The Atlantic is online! Apparently the whole thing is posted, free of charge, cover to cover. Not only that, but it’s got videos, it’s got slideshows, it’s got blogs…all sorts of extra content. And all free. 

So…why would anyone even think of sending a $25 check to get a paper version—a lesser version, really—of all this splendid stuff? It’s hard to come up with an excuse.

One reason, I guess, is the impulse to try to help keep journalism alive. It’s like a charitable contribution. Too bad it’s not tax-deductible.

Would I pay $25 to read it online? 

Nope. As a medium, the computer screen doesn’t give me what I’m looking for in leisure reading: the tactile sensation of pages turning, the portability…with a high-speed cable connection, you can’t carry a computer to the backyard, to the breakfast table, to the bathtub. And what could be more uncomfortable than craning your neck to read a laptop monitor? That’s not my idea of leisure reading.

On the other hand, as a practical matter I’m not reading the magazine in those places.

I do occasionally pick up on ideas from Atlantic writers for this blog. If I read every issue online, I probably would engage more of those ideas in my own writing, more often, because FaM’s dashboard would be right at hand. Instead of putting down an article with the thought that I must blog about it—and then forgetting it—I might go directly from the author to Posts > Add New.  

Hmmm… Maybe I should void this check?

What say you?

Do you cling to your hard-copy, snail-mail subscriptions, or have you abandoned them in favor of the Internet? Why? If we all stop reading print magazines, what will that do to the world as we know it? And what will happen come the Revolution, when all us proles are knocked offline, or, as in China, our online choices are censored?

A little frugality goes a long way

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Well, I was about to say “I amaze me with my frugality,” but the truth is, I haven’t been pinching pennies any more rigorously than usual. That notwithstanding, despite almost $1,000 in “extraordinary” (read “not in the budget”) expenses, I’m only going to have to pull about $245 out of savings to cover this month’s charges. 

dcp_2529Yes. This month I ran amok with the extraordinary expenses. To kick off the budget cycle, a Talbot’s junket racked up an $86 debit when I succumbed to the lure of the Sale! tag. Got a cute little top at B’Gauze, also allegedly on sale at the bargain price of $47. Then we chose this month for Mrs. Micah to migrate Funny to BlueHost, which was quite the project. Her fee was amazingly reasonable, but it also could be viewed as outside the realm of ordinary costs. Next, nothing would do but what I had to harden the security on my office right this minute, in light of the swarm of burglaries the neighborhood has seen: $295 for purchase, delivery, and installation of a solid-core door plus $281 for purchase and installation of a pick-proof, drill-proof lock and metal door guard. (Gulp!) Moving on, the locksmith profited further when Bila the Painter couldn’t figure out how to remove the (very involved!) antique Baldwin lock from the front door at the downtown house: $150 for two visits, one to get it off the door and one to put it back on. All these added up to an astonishing $969.67 in extraordinary expenses.

Gasp!
😯

My de jure budget now has me spending $1,200 on ordinary, day-to-day expenses, such as gasoline, food, household goods, and whatnot. That amount should cover one or two out-of-the-ordinary costs, such as a visit from the plumber or a trip to the veterinarian’s office. Against the desired $1,200 limit, I’m actually $396 in the red. But the de facto amount that goes into the credit-card piggy bank (a money market checking account earning a little interest) is $1,500; anything that doesn’t get spent out of that sits in the account and serves as emergency back-up. Against the $1,500, I’m “only” about $245 in the red. As a practical matter, the accrued cushion in that piggy-bank account will cover it, so I really won’t have to transfer a dime from savings to pay for this month’s spending extravaganza.

Could I have exercised some restraint?

Well…yeah. I needed some summer clothes, but you know, there’s no law that says just because a store is advertising a sale you have to run right in and buy stuff. The clothing purchases could have been deferred to the end of the month, at which time I would have been out of money and so wouldn’t have bought the shirts at all. Staying out of Talbot’s and B’Gauze would have cut the deficit by $133, leaving me a modest $112 in the red. 

But some of these things really needed to be done now: I wanted to install the door and lock while I still have an income from the Great Desert University. And theoretically the locksmith’s work on the downtown house could be included in the cost of the paint job, which is coming from a different piggy bank. The project to monetize Funny needed to start soon, so I would have some time to learn how all that works and possibly to improve earnings from the site before I’m out of work. Eight or nine months seems like a pretty short lead time, really: that was a sooner-the-better proposition.

So, I don’t feel too bad about all this. Riding the train (and taking two weeks of vacation time, eliminating a bunch of endless gas-guzzling commutes) eliminated one gas fill-up. Thanks to the stash in the freezer, I haven’t had to buy much food. And the stockpiling strategy allowed me to put off purchase of a few household items into the next budget cycle. 

Once I’m retired, of course, $1,200  will have to be the real maximum expenditure limit, and not a pretend “can I really live on this” figure. As a practical matter, I’ll have to come in well under $1,200 in most months to get by. That will be a challenge as inflation rises. But right now I’m spending significantly less than that in ordinary, day-to-day expenditures. If I spent about $970 in extraordinary expenses and overdrew the $1,200 budget by only $400, that means regular, routine costs consumed about $570 less than budgeted ordinary expenses. (I think: arithmetic is not a science that serves me well.) 

Whether that figure is right or wrong, it’s pretty clear I can eat, drink, and make merry on less than $1,200 a month. Meanwhile, with the Renovation Loan now paid off, recurring monthly bills drop from $840 to $670, a figure that will drop another $30 when I cash in a whole life policy in January (because I have to pay taxes on the proceeds, I’ll need to put that off till I have no earned income to speak of). 

So let’s say I can expect to spend maybe $1,000 a month on routine living expenses. That plus the remaining $640 in recurring bills comes to $1,640 a month, or $19,680 a year. Think of that: a retired person can (in theory) live on less than 20 grand! For me, investment income alone will almost cover that.

Of course, we still have my share of the downtown house’s mortgage: $9,600/year. The net on $13,944 in Social Security benefits should cover that, but if not, I’ll earn more than $9,600 teaching at the community college. So, even after taxes, any freelance income will be pure gravy.

Although some observers might regard my lifestyle as ascetic (I refrain from spending on cable TV or a cell phone, for example, and I rarely go out to eat), I don’t think of myself as extremely frugal. I never clip coupons, I don’t pursue freebies from CVS, I buy my clothes new, and any day I’d  rather own a book than borrow it from the library. I eat like the Queen of Sheba and do not stint on wine and beer purchases. 

The trick is to get out of debt, including mortgage debt. Once the house and the car are paid for (and you’re not trapped under a load of revolving debt), you’re home free—given decent retirement savings. Without a huge cost for the roof over your head, a very moderate level of frugality will allow you to live quite comfortably.