Coffee heat rising

Handy li’l Quicken hack

by

By accident, I discovered that if you right-click on an entry in Quicken for Mac, you bring up a menu with several options. One is “report on [name of payee]” and one is “report on [category].” So you can create an instant report on a single category.

If you’re curious about how much you’ve spent in one category or how much you’ve been forking over to a single payee, this is very convenient. You can customize the dates to give you a view over a specific period, allowing you to see what’s been going on over a few weeks, months, or years.

Trees and the frugalist

by

The orange harvest is about consumed. I think two more oranges are left, out of my reach-tomorrow morning I’ll have to drag the step stool into the back yard and retrieve those. Arizona sweets, the two trees each bore at least a couple hundred fruits this winter, ripe in February and sweet as candy. For the past three months, I’ve been eating a half-dozen a day.

What a wonderful bounty!
apr19olives

I can’t imagine ever having a house without at least one fruit tree. My last shack had two Arizona sweets, a grapefruit, and a fig tree. This one, in addition to the two orange trees, has an amazing Mexican lime (pictured at right) that just now is covered in fruit and two young Meyer lemons, both of which blossomed in gay profusion this spring.

Manny, the current owner of SDXB’s former abode, has added plums and peaches to the existing grapefruit, orange, and tangerine trees. He insists he can get these to thrive here, and indeed, one of my colleagues has managed to grow edible peaches, apricots and plums in our scorching Valley of the Sun.

How frugal is a backyard fruit tree? I don’t know. The fig certainly was frugal enough: nothing much had to be done to it to make it bear. Citrus, though it’s fairly drought-hardy, needs plenty of deep watering and three doses of fertilizer each year to produce juicy, sweet fruit. If the tree bears a lot of fruit in a season, probably it’s a savings over buying that many oranges or grapefruit. And at 99 cents apiece, a lemon tree doesn’t have to make many lemons to be pay for itself. Lemon trees are notoriously fecund. At the grocery store, 99 cents a Meyer lemon does not purchase!

My water bill last month was $102. The lowest bill of the year, when hardly any water runs on the landscaping, is $70. The base rate is around $60. So all of the landscaping, including flowers and the pool, is costing around $32. Let’s guess the trees cost about $20 of that. Say the oranges bore 200 fruits this year. That’s a conservative guess; in fact, 6 oranges consumed per day x 3 months = 540 oranges, and I gave a bunch of them to friends in addition to the half-dozen I ate every day. But for the sake of easy math, let’s figure $20 ÷ 200 oranges = 10 cents apiece, roughly, per month, over about six months: 60 cents apiece.

That doesn’t figure in the fact that the water also goes on the lemons, the lime, the tomatoes, and the herbs. Still, the savings is probably not great…unless you figure that each orange tree actually bore about 270 oranges…. I was too busy picking and eating to count.

Tree-ripened fruit is so wonderful and so much better than grocery store produce, I’m actually dreading having to fall back on cardboard strawberries and barely ripe watermelons. Clearly, though, if the fruit falls on the ground and spoils or gets eaten by birds, it’s no bargain, neither water nor fertilizer being free. You have to have a way to preserve them.

Some people preserve citrus juice by freezing it in ice cube trays and storing the solid cubes in plastic freezer bags. You can make marmalade out of just about any citrus, and lemons lend themselves to lemon butter. Soft-skinned fruit can be canned or turned into jam, jelly, or butters. It’s a lot of work and I’m not sure I’d want to do it. That’s why I’m glad I live where citrus grows.

SDXB discovered that if you have a certain number of fruit trees on your lot-say, your house was built in an old grapefruit orchard, as many now centrally located 1950s Phoenix tract houses were-and you sell some of the produce, your lot qualifies as a farm and you qualify for an agricultural subsidy. You not only get a bunch of not-quite-free fruit, but you get a break on your taxes. Now that’s frugal!

Figs in Brandy

Wash a bunch of fresh, ripe figs. Prick them in a few places with a fork. Place them in a French canning jar with its rubber gasket in place. Cover with inexpensive brandy. If desired, add a little cinnamon or nutmeg. Store in the refrigerator.

Serve over ice cream.

Lemon Cream

Grate the zest of three lemons and then squeeze and collect the lemon juice. Next, beat five eggs plus five egg yolks until they are light and fluffy; then slowly beat in a cup of sugar, beating until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. In a large mixing bowl, whip four cups of heavy cream. In the top of a double boiler, pour the lemon juice over one tablespoon of gelatin. Allow the gelatin to soften and then stir over hot water until the gelatin dissolves. Stir the lemon-gelatin into the eggs, and then fold in the heavy cream. Chill in individual glasses or dishes and serve with whipped cream.

Lemon Curd

  • 2 yolks of extra large eggs
  • 2 extra large whole eggs
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 ½ Tablespoons minced lemon zest
  • 1/3 cup lemon juice
  • 2 ½ Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

In a saucepan (about a quart size), whisk the ingredients together. Stir over medium low heat until the mixture coats a metal spoon, about 8 minutes. Pour the lemon curd into a bowl or French canning jar, cover, and store in the refrigerator. This can be spread on good bread or coffee cake, or served over ice cream.

This recipe can be doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled. Larger amounts require somewhat longer cooking, up to about 20 minutes. Of course, it can be made (to excellent effect) with Meyer lemons.

Meyer Lemon Marmalade

Thinly slice about six Meyer lemons, discarding the seeds and ends. You should have about three cups of sliced lemon. Place these in a bowl and cover with water. Let stand overnight.

Then bring the lemons and water to a boil and boil them uncovered for 10 minutes. Again allow to stand overnight.

Measure the lemon-water mixture and add an equal amount of sugar. Bring this mixture to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Then lower the heat but cook rapidly for about 45 minutes, until the marmalade sheets off a spoon. Pour the hot marmalade into hot, sterilized canning jars and seal the lids. This makes about six cups.

Drunken Orange Slices

Peel one or more ripe, fine oranges. Slice horizontally into quarter-inch-thick slices. Layer in a wide stoneware serving bowl or enameled pan, and cover the fruit slices with Grand Marnier or brandy. Chill for several hours, or let stand at room temperature for an hour or so and serve. Makes a great dessert as it is or served over ice cream.

Amber Marmalade

Take three oranges, three lemons, and one grapefruit. Halve these and seed them; then slice them very thinly. Measure the amount of fruit this produces, and place the fruit in a large nonreactive bowl or pan. Add three cups of water for each cup of fruit, and let soak for 12 hours.

Then place the fruit and its water into an enameled pot. Boil it for 20 minutes, and again let it set for 12 hours.

Sterilize some canning jars and lids.

Again measure what you have. For each cup of fruit and juice, add three-quarters cup sugar. Cook this combination in small batches, no more than five cupfuls at a time, until the fruit is clear and the syrup falls off a spoon in a sheet. Remove it from the pot, let it cool a few minutes, stirring. Pack the marmalade in the sterilized canning jars, seal them, and store them in a cool place.

Lime Marmalade

Thinly slice limes to make about one quart. Add 1 ½ quarts water and let stand overnight. In a nonreactive pot, cook the limes slowly for 2 or 2 ½ hours, until they are tender.

Measure the lime and juice. Add 2/3 as much sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil; turn down the heat and cook rapidly until the marmalade sheets off a spoon, 30 to 60 minutes. Pack the marmalade in hot sterilized jars, seal them, and store in a cool place.

Ceviche

Cut about five pounds of white-fleshed fish filets, such as halibut or sole, into small pieces. Place in a glass or stoneware bowl. Add three minced onions, 2 cups lime juice, and 1 Tablespoon olive oil. Stir together; be sure the fish is covered with lime juice at all times. Add some minced hot peppers. Cover tightly and marinate in the refrigerator for one to three days.

Jicama con limas

Chill a jicama in the refrigerator. Wash it, peel it, quarter it, and cut it into quarter- or eighth-inch-thick slices, or into slender sticks. Squeeze fresh lime juice all over it. Sprinkle with salt and eat as a snack.

Quite Possibly the Highest and Best Use of Limes

Quarter a Mexican or key lime. Open a bottle of pale beer, preferably Triple-X or Corona. Squeeze the lime into the open bottle and then push the lime quarter down the neck into the beer. Consume. Repeat.

Cheap Eats: Polenta

by

I’ve decided to rename the Friday Frugal Crafts department “Cheap Eats,” since it’s more likely to include recipes and cooking crafts than paint-and-fabric projects.

Here’s a kind of comfort food that’s fast, easy, and cheap. You can top it with sauces, tomatoes, or cheeses (or all of the above) and have it for lunch or dinner, or you can pour some cream over it (hey!!) and eat it like hot breakfast cereal.

Polenta is really nothing but cornmeal. Instead of buying the pricier boxes labeled polenta, just get yourself a box of plain yellow cornmeal. Keep it in the refrigerator to discourage any little six-legged critters from moving in.

Memorize this: the proportion is one to five. One part cornmeal to five parts liquid, give or take. The classic recipe is just cornmeal and water, but you get a lovely creamy effect-and add nutrients-if you combine some milk with the water, in any proportion you like.
apr18polenta

Pour about five cups of water into a large pan. Bring the water to a boil over fairly fast heat. Sprinkle one cup of cornmeal into the boiling water, a little at a time, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, large kitchen spoon, or wire whip. When the cornmeal is fully mixed in to the liquid, turn the heat down and allow the polenta to simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes. Cover with the lid slightly ajar, so steam can escape but bubbling cornmeal doesn’t splatter on the stove. Stir several times during the simmering process.

When the polenta is cooked, you can do any of several things with it. I serve up enough for the meal at hand, and then pour the leftover onto a plate so that it spreads out like a flat pancake. Allow this to cool, then cover it and put it in the refrigerator for later use (see below).

To serve hot polenta, try one of these:

  • Top a serving of polenta with a generous pat of butter and shredded or grated parmesan cheese. Sprinkle a little chopped parsley over the top. Season with salt and pepper.
  • Top polenta with hot spaghetti sauce.
  • Chop up a tomato. Add a little minced garlic, some fresh or dried herbs, and a bit of salt. Mix well and use this to top the polenta; then drizzle a few drops of olive oil over the top and add a generous sprinkle of parmesan.
  • Stir-fry some fresh chard with a little chopped garlic in olive oil. Serve over the top of a mound of polenta with plenty of parmesan cheese.
  • (This is very bad for you!) Place a serving of hot polenta in a small bowl. Pour heavy cream over it and sprinkle on some fresh or dried tarragon. Oh, what the heck-add a little butter, too! Season with salt and pepper.

Now, what to do with the polenta pancake?

Slice the refrigerated pancake, which should set up very much like a cooked pancake, into quarters or eighths or even into strips, depending on your purposes.

Melt some butter in a frying pan (you can use olive oil if you feel virtuous). When the butter or oil is hot, gently slide a piece or two of the polenta into the pan. Don’t overcrowd the pan. Cook the polenta over medium-high heat until it’s browned and starting to get kind of crisp on the outside; turn and brown the other side.

You can top this with any of the above (or anything else you feel like putting on it). Or you can cut it into 1/2-inch-square pieces and add it to a Caesar-type salad in place of croutons.

Clean-up:

Some of the cooked polenta will stick to the bottom of the pan, especially if you added milk. Fill the pan with cold water and let it soak for a couple of hours; the stuck-on stuff will lift right off.

Should college students have to study personal finance?

by

One of the groups in my Writing for the Professions classes is proposing, as their semester project, that the university offer a course in personal finance and require it for all incoming freshmen.

No, they don’t know about this blog.

It’s an interesting idea, made more interesting by the fact that so far the students haven’t shown they know how deep the problem really is. They’ve given no indication, for example, that they know the average student loan indebtedness of a typical young college graduate, or that they know how much credit card debt the average undergraduate student racks up. Apparently they just feel a general angst about the whole issue.

Frankly, I think a required two-semester course in personal finance would benefit students a lot more than the commonly required freshman composition.

I say that as one who would be put out of work by the absence of required writing courses.

A person who has not learned how to express himself adequately in his native language after 13 years of schooling is not going to learn it in two reluctant semesters. Such a person is not interested in writing, can not and does not read or write, and is not even faintly interested in doing so. Freshman comp, by and large, is a waste of time. It’s a waste of time for the students who can’t write, and it’s a waste of time for those who can. Neither category of student profits by sitting in a class that reiterates material that should have been learned years before. Freshman composition as a required course should be abolished.

But a personal finance course would benefit almost every student who took it. And it would benefit the society at large: widespread formal training in personal finance skills would reduce indebtedness and improve savings rates. If, over the past two decades, college students in general had been taught the basic facts about mortgage lending, for example, we might not have the real estate crisis to deal with, or at least not to the extent we see-more people would have been savvy enough to avoid wacky mortgage instruments.

I can envision a two-semester course: in the first semester, the principles of budgeting, credit, mortgage lending, and how banks work; in the second, a wide-ranging view of saving, investing, and real estate.

It would be a lot more useful than freshman comp. Bet most of the students would keep their textbooks, rather than selling them back to the bookstore for a few pennies.

That alone would tell you something.

Comments from iWeb site:

squawkfox

I WISH college taught applied personal finance skills. It’s unbelievable to me how we can go though life studying calculus and physics and yet never study how to buy a house or how to invest for retirement. Perhaps start earlier in school? Studying personal finance in high school is an even better idea!

Thursday, April 17, 2008 – 09:24 AM

vh

Back in the Dark Ages, the California school system required that girls take three semesters of home economics and boys take three semesters of shop to graduate from high school. You had to take a year of the stuff in junior high and then a semester in high school.

It was obnoxious because it assumed that girls were bred up to be good little wives and boys would make themselves useful by changing oil in the car and doing light carpentry around the house. The home ec courses mostly were about sewing and cooking foodoids that came out of boxes. But the high-school semester had units on smart consumer buying, how to find out about products, how to compare prices and quality, and household budgeting.

Nevertheless, I knew absolutely nothing about mortgage lending when, thirty years later, I bought my first house as a single woman. When I was a kid, it was assumed the man would deal with deal with those matters, so there was no reason to trouble a girl’s pretty little head.

Really, there’s no good reason a grown woman–or a grown man–should go into a complicated transaction that will leave her or him indebted for thirty years without some knowledge of what it all means. A high school kid is capable of understanding this stuff. Yeah: it ought to be introduced to them.

Taking Stock: Money, stress, and Funny about Money

by

It’s been a little more than three months since Funny about Money came into being. During that time, several changes for the better have happened in my life, some of them having to do with the very issues of stress and finance that the blog was built to address.

I’d like to look back over the past few months to see how some of the things I’ve been blogging about have changed. While much has improved, it’s not all beer and skittles: some positive changes have involved trade-offs, and some new developments are not pure golden sunlight.

The Poison Poppy of Stress, as you may recall, sprouted five petals:

  • 1. Money
  • 2. Vandalism of my house and ensuing harassment campaign
  • 3. Dogs
  • 4. Workplace stress
  • 5. Financing and renovating the Investment House
  • 6. My own house and its questionable neighborhood

Let’s look at how each of these has evolved.

Money

The immediate cause of the stress attack that landed me in the hospital was the Great Desert University’s switch from bimonthly to biweekly pay. The smaller biweekly checks were projected to result in a net bimonthly pay cut of $220 for me. At the same time, the administration announced it was jacking up the cost of parking exponentially: disabled parking would go from $440 to $770 and then to $880. Just a few months earlier, the state legislature had voted in a 6.1% pay increase for state workers. These two changes would reduce my net income to less than I earned before the pay increase, which was arranged because legislators recognized that we are among the country’s worst-paid state workers.

To compensate, I increased my federal exemptions from zero to four, eliminated the extra $50 federal tax withholding, and canceled my parking pass. The city where GDU resides, as it develops, allows drivers with disabled placards to park in any metered parking for free. It meant a walk of four blocks instead of one and a half, but most of the time that’s tolerable. A lot more tolerable than having eight or nine hundred dollars ripped out of my paycheck!

A month or two before the biweekly announcement came down, the PPO plan I’d subscribed to decided to quit covering the Mayo Clinic, where my doctor practices. In response, the state held a mini-open enrollment, allowing employees to switch plans. I changed to the only other plan that would cover my doctor, an EPO. The result was a cut in monthly premiums from $240 to $23, an enormous and much-needed saving.

Meanwhile, at the same time the university made the change to biweekly pay, our admired administrators decided to change the payroll system to PeopleSoft, with no testing or any kind of intelligent planning. The result was a horrific fiasco. Many people didn’t get paid at all; others were double-paid. During five nightmarish months, no two of my paychecks were the same and, as far as I could tell, not one was correct. PeopleSoft quit crediting my vacation time and tried to argue that I was not entitled to vacations. It failed to make my 403c contributions or failed to make the university’s matching contributions. It screwed up payment of my long-term care premiums so badly I had to cancel the payroll deduction for those payments and arrange to pay the insuror out of my checking account. The mess never seemed to end, and as you can imagine, that didn’t help the stress levels.

After half a year, the situation finally settled down. Once I knew how much my paycheck was supposed to be (apparently), I changed my exemptions again, from four to two, and reinstated the extra federal tax withholding, which was there to cover freelance income so I didn’t have to do quarterlies on top of my salary withholding.

Though my net income has now returned to about what it was before the payroll change, the timing of paychecks no longer can be relied upon to cover my bills. The second paycheck of the month sometimes comes in after all my monthly utility, insurance, and yard maintenance bills are due.

I’ve dealt with this by designing a weekly budget. Budgeting by the week gives me a lot more control over how much is in my checking account at any given time. Also, realizing the university might not pay my salary on time or to get it correct, I went to the credit union and arranged overdraft protection in the amount of one month’s pay.

These two strategies have effectively relieved the worry about whether I can pay my bills without bouncing automatic funds transfers.

Vandalism

Tapr16signhe computerized surveillance camera system that M’hijito installed demonstrated that, contrary to three pool repairmen’s insistence that the pump pot lid could not work itself loose, the thing indeed was doing exactly that. The discovery that no bogeyman was hopping the fence into the backyard was a vast relief.

Since then, the disturbed Son-in-Law has disappeared from the scene. It’s been months since I’ve seen the guy around. In his absence, that situation has dwindled to nothing and is no longer a problem. Other members of the clan are rarely seen, and I’m even thinking of removing some of the thick shrubbery the landscaper planted to screen the view between my front yard and Other Daughter’s house.

Dogs

Walt the Greyhound is still missed, and his demise was a sad thing. But the truth is, one dog makes for a lot less care and expense than two.

After I explained to the vet that I cannot get Anna the Superannuated German Shepherd into the car by myself and that the only person who can help me lives 20 miles away, he agreed to prescribe her thyroid and eye medications without the twice-yearly exams. This saves me $800 a year plus a great deal of hassle.

While Anna’s health and frailty (and amazing stink) are still worrisome, half as much clean-up and feeding plus the savings in medication and food have really cut the stress level in the pet department.

Workplace

I reneged on my resolution to cease keeping the office log demanded by our HR representative. Instead, I finally did what she and my boss advised: rode herd on my personnel problem until the woman finally resigned, effective February 15.

This has changed the landscape at our office and in my life. Apparently My Bartleby was the most serious source of jaw-clenching stress for me.

The entire atmosphere in our office has changed. Staff members, who had taken to arranging their arrival times to avoid this woman’s presence, now show up during the morning. They actually engage in conversations. We no longer have to arrange staff meetings at restaurants so as to deal privately with problems created by Bartleby. I no longer have to waste hours keeping track of her antics, putting out fires she starts, or redoing her work. And I come and go at will, with no further worries about what she might say to my boss about my presence or absence.

Her line was replaced by a fourth editorial assistant, and so we will be able to grow our empire. I expect we will take on another two client journals over the next few months. Our office will look more indispensable, and this will enhance my shot at staying put until I reach full retirement age.

And in my personal life, the day Bartleby exited I felt like a hundred-pound weight lifted from my shoulders. I still feel that way.

The Investment House

apr16menworkingM’hijito and I are now in the process of refinancing, a strategy that will combine our two mortgages into one. The 5.3% interest represents a savings of around $200 a month.

The appraiser estimated the house’s worth at $270,000, twenty thou more than it was allegedly worth 18 months ago and $35,000 more than we paid for it. This eliminated the worry we both felt that our investment might be dropping in value.

The Workman Waltz is over. Most of the renovations are done, except for the landscaping. With the interior livable, we can work on the outside a little at a time.

M’hijito got a raise and a nice bonus, allowing him to pay off the last of his debts (!). He is putting money aside to replace the air conditioner, relieving me of having to figure out how to pay for that.

I have snowflaked the $25,000 Renovation Loan down to about $23,000 and meanwhile, by dint of ambitious savings and taking on a couple of overenrolled classes this semester (and so getting paid to teach four instead of two sections), I’ve managed to set aside $13,000 in the money market as a fund to pay off the loan. I expect that fund to cover the balance on the loan by the end of next year, at which time I will decide whether to pay off the loan or to put the money into mutual funds with higher risk but a better return.

So, although a mortgage payment is always a nagging worry and you never know what will break next, the most immediate sources of stress associated with the Investment House are either resolved or well on the way to it.

My House and the Neighborhood

This is the only Poppy Petal that remains a problem.

The B*** tribe has settled down, Carlos the Knife has quit chasing his wife over to my front door, and Biker Boob seems to have lost the chopper or at least to have given up letting it idle in the driveway for 15 to 30 minutes at a time. However, Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum is again hip-high in dandelions and milkweed. The other day the sheriff came by to serve poor Dave with papers, and so I imagine he’s still quarreling with his ex-wife.

The city slum abatement office got after Dave about the Weed Arboretum and made him park some of his rolling stock elsewhere than in the front yard. Also, one of the wacko neighbors has been issuing death threats against Dave over the mess in front. So, Dave has at least been trying to clean up the premises.

The results are mixed.

Meanwhile, and far more dangerously, the City is about to trash our neighborhood.

The City’s absurd light-rail train will go right up the middle of the main drag to the west of our tract. This road, a conduit of blight, serves as a permeable barrier between the middle-class housing on our side and the tenements and gang-infested slum directly west of us.

Tenements, bear in mind, are businesses. The City of Phoenix historically has favored businesses over residents-in the past our City Parents have changed the routes of freeways to avoid demolishing businesses but thought nothing of ripping out homes by the square mile and trashing the neighborhoods flanking the freeways.

Light rail is no exception: the City plans to tear out the access road that gave the houses along the main drag some nominal distance from the traffic and the bus riders. Not only that, but unknown to most residents, the City’s right of way goes about three or four feet inside every property along that access road. Walls, trees, and landscaping will be ripped out and replaced with asphalt to accommodate an alignment that spares businesses and apartment houses on the west side of the road. Several houses will be torn down and replaced with noisy equipment. And a three-story parking garage will be built on the corner where a train station replaces a tacky strip mall, further enhancing our view to the west.

One of the neighborhood grocery stores has already closed; the other has announced it will close before light rail construction begins. This leaves us with no neighborhood grocery shopping except for a small Sprouts, which doesn’t carry anything like all the goods one needs to run a kitchen and a home. The three doomed houses are locked behind hideous storm fences, and the City is allowing the weeds to rival those in Dave’s Weed Arboretum.

These developments will not help our property values. Construction is expected to take as much as four years, during which trucks and diverted traffic will roar across our neighborhood streets. The result will be a trolley that plods through town at an average speed of 15 miles per hour, hardly a crowd-pleaser for busy commuters.

My property value has already dropped $75,000 off its Bubble high of $375,000. At $300,000, it is about where it should be if no bubble had ever happened. If prices in the neighborhood continue to drop, I will lose money on my house.

And drop they will. Faced with a full understanding of what this project means to the area, homeowners have flocked to real estate agents. Houses are on the market at figures well below $300,000. And four houses that I know of are in foreclosure.

How dire is this?

Well, I think it’s fairly dire. Yes. Pretty dire.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. So, I guess the best course is to resign myself to the fact that you can’t fight City Hall, get used to loud noise and construction dirt and hellish traffic, and hope the long-term increase in the Investment House’s value offsets the loss on my home.

What Worked?

Five out of six of the stress sources (three of which are associated with personal finance) have improved since I started Funny about Money. How did I manage to get the best of so many of my stressors?

Number one: Write down everything that bothers you. This was the key to success overall. Brainstorm all the issues that might remotely be called stressors. For each, write down:

  • 1. Why is it bothersome?
  • 2. Is it really significant, or am I blowing this one out of proportion?
  • 3. What can be done about it?

Next: List the significant issues in order of importance, from most to least urgent.

Then: Work on each issue a little at a time. Some issues will have to be tabled while you deal with matters that seem more crucial.

  • 1. Don’t expect your problems to go away instantly. Realize that something that’s been making you nuts for a while will take a similar while to figure out and solve.
  • 2. Work at identifying your part in the stressfulness of each issue, rather than blaming someone or something else. After all, you’re the person who is in the best position to resolve most of your issues.
  • 3. But don’t blame yourself for situations or conditions you can’t help or you didn’t bring on yourself.

Listen to what people who are in a position to speak intelligently are trying to tell you (but ignore those who talk for the sake of hearing themselves talk). For example, it took me a long time to register what my boss and my HR representative were urging me to do about my personnel problem. If I’d paid attention sooner, I wouldn’t have had to suffer a major stressor as long as I did.

Take positive action to resolve each issue. Identify strategies that may help to relieve stress or eliminate situations that cause stress, and follow through on them.

If an issue has no solution, try either to move away from it or to accommodate it psychologically by resigning yourself to it. Exception: Do not, under any circumstance, remain in an abusive relationship!

Declutter. This is a positive action in its own right. Simplify your daily life, get rid of unnecessary paperwork, and throw out or give away junk you’re not using. It’s amazing how much better this will make you feel.

Turn off the ambient noise. Shut off the television. Turn off the cell phone. Do not listen to local news broadcasts that dwell almost exclusively on stories of the bizarre and the terrifying. Never listen to talk shows while driving. Make your external life quieter and your internal life will quiet down.

Be patient. Don’t feel you have to solve all your problems at once. There’s a limit to how much you can deal with.

  • Identify the issues that feel most important and work on those first.

Engage in an activity that relaxes you and takes you away from your cares. This is huge.

  • One of my friends paints to distract herself from the stresses of her job and her life. I have found that blogging relaxes me and keeps me entertained for hours. Find something you like to do and do it.

The Incredible Lightness of Stress-free Being

The quality of my life has changed over the past few months to an extent that I would call almost weird. Things that used to set me off — aggressive drivers, endless traffic signals, ninnies in the grocery store line who feel compelled to argue with the cashier over every penny — no longer seem to matter much. Time itself seems to have slowed down. Where before my days never seemed to have enough hours to accommodate all the things that needed to be done, now I get things finished and have time to sit down and read a book, go for a bike ride, or just sit and enjoy a lovely afternoon.

I’ve stopped drinking, which a) saves a chunk of dough and b) has caused me to lose six pounds over the past month or so. My blood pressure has dropped into the amazingly healthy range and my blood sugar is down to normal.

And thanks to the biweekly budget and the improved equanimity, I no longer worry whether I can make ends meet from month to month or from year to year.

This is not to say I have achieved the calm of a Buddhist monk. The sound of George W. Bush’s voice still causes me to fly into a rage. A mistake in Quicken can drive me to tear my hair. I’m not at all happy about what the lightrail promises to do to my neighborhood. And the prospect of putting the dog to sleep worries me a lot.

But it’s better. Much better.

Five ways to fight inflation at the grocery store

by

With real inflation at around 12 percent (more about which later, when I feel like thinking), we’ve all noticed grocery prices have reached orbit somewhere close to the moon. Here are a few ways, beyond the obvious advice to use coupons and shop for sales, to save money on real food (as opposed to packaged stuff containing artificial chemicals, stabilizers, flavors, and various “enhancers” whose names you can’t pronounce).

  • Serve smaller portions of meat. A porterhouse steak, for example, contains three servings: the tenderloin equals one serving, and the sirloin strip side can be cut into two pieces. A ribeye steak similarly can be cut into three smaller servings. Make a full dinner by adding a serving of rice, pasta, or beans; a serving of green, yellow, or orange vegetable; and a serving of salad. All these items taken together are enough to satisfy any appetite.
  • Learn to butcher meat yourself. Some years ago I stumbled upon Merle Ellis’s Cutting Up in the Kitchen, a user-friendly guide to DIY butchering large pieces of meat and fowl. A whole chicken, a whole turkey, or an entire set of beef ribs is invariably cheaper than neat packages of prepared servings. Turns out that it’s pretty easy to reduce a large chunk of meat or fowl to meal-sized portions, given a sharp knife and a few minutes of your time. This saves a surprising amount on your meat bill.
  • Plan one or two vegetarian days into your weekly menu. Most people enjoy beans, which are easy to fix and incredibly cheap. A dish of polenta or pasta topped with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and parmesan cheese is satisfying and cheap. Got a half a loaf of French bread that’s starting to go a bit stale? Run it under the tap, wet it with cold water, wring it out, cut it into cubes, add some cut-up tomatoes, garlic, little green onions, a few herbs, a bit of olive oil, and a dash of lemon juice or vinegar and voila! Italian soul food.
  • Use your slow cooker to make a stew or roast that will last for several meals. Pot roast, chicken, or beans cook wonderfully in a slow cooker. The key to making meat or chicken taste like stovetop is to brown it before putting it into the cooker.
  • Buy veggies and fruits at ethnic markets or farmer’s markets. In my part of the country, farmer’s markets are no bargain, but bloggers in other regions report they find good buys at these outdoor events. However, even though prices at ethnic markets have shot up, they’re still cheaper than mainstream supermarkets. Check out these stores for good buys on basic vegetables and fruits, and while you’re there, explore the offerings in herbs and spices.