The full article is available here.
Photo Credit: chefranden
I found this earlier this week, and thought that while it is a departure from thinking about frugality in terms of dollars and cents, it brings up another facet of frugality that I often see overlooked: frugality with time. Yes, time is money.
Sometimes, it’s really easy to overlook how much you can squeeze out of just a few minutes. When looking at a task, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the surrounding tasks. Next time you walk by one of these tasks, give it a try. Focus on nothing else but the small task, and see how much easier the big picture is.
So, check out About.com ‘s take on 30 Second Chores.
I am mentally debating focusing a few more articles on frugality of time. Let me know if you think this is a good idea.
What’s on Sale Right Now?
May 14
Photo: rakspassion
Some Background
This is just an idea that I have been kicking around. I think it might have legs. I actually searched for two whole minutes to see if it had already been done. I found one, but it wasn’t what I really liked. Rather than bore you all with a design spec, I will tell a little story.
I’ll Tell you a Story
This evening, I was cleaning up my office, and I realized that I needed some plastic storage totes. I see them all the time in sales circulars for dirt cheap at local stores. Unfortunately, I don’t remember when I saw them last. I don’t know which store. I do know that I can find the flyers online, and go through each of them. Although it’s totally awesome to be able to get all the flyers at once, this still seems like only half a solution.
After mulling this around, I decided to go ahead just buy them at the first place I hit tomorrow, and dream up a solution in the meantime.
A Possible Solution – In English
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a website that did the following?
- Pull all the sales flyers and circulars from the internet.
- Index them.
- Allow users to search those indices based on geographical location.
For instance, I need plastic containers. My profile would know where I live, and spit out a listing of all plastic containers in my area. I could also do the same search with “pork chops”, “oranges” or whatever.
That way, I could quickly find the best deal at the time on the items I am looking for. For things I buy all the time, like milk, I could set up an alert that would tell me where milk goes on sale each week.
While I am still in the “I’m thinking out loud” mode, I really think this could be done. Sadly, it would take more than just one guy (me) to do this. I could handle the coding, but not the design or the social engineering of the site. If you are interested in what I am talking about, read the next section.
A Possible Solution – In Dork
Just about everything about this site is simple. No one is going to bust a brain stem on this. There is, however, some work that would need to be done.
Without doing much homework, I am guessing that most store sites (CVS, Walgreen, and the like) do not have an RSS feed of their weekly sales. I don’t really have any interest in figuring out where the sites host their sales, then either scraping their site, or indexing their pdf (well, this might not be too bad.. yeah.. it will). Meanwhile, you would have to monitor each site for any changes in how the code their sites and where they store their info (yick!). It might be better to work out a deal with the store to get access to an RSS feed. I would imagine that the companies would be more than happy to sit down and hear out the pluses on them doing such a thing.
The other problem is that, once a deal is struck and the RSS feed is a reality, anyone else could step in and do the same thing. I also don’t know how I would feel about getting exclusive rights to an RSS feed. That just feels sleazy to me. Be that as it may, I still have bills to pay, and have to have some income coming in. On the other hand, the site could rely on ad revenue.
Anyway, I am still thinking out loud, but I would love to open a discussion on this, and possibly make it a reality with the help of one or two other people.
Let me know what you think.
Home Cooking – Does it pay?
Apr 26
Some Background
photo: NuriKharah
Okay, over the past few weeks, I have been flooded with requests for my meatball recipe. To type this thing up, I have to find time to sit in front of my computer, open up a text editor, and bang away. I have decided that while I am at it, I might as well write an article I have been promising myself that I would write soon.
If all you’re looking for is the recipe, it’s at the bottom of this article. Feel free to scroll past the breakdown.
How Much to Dine Out?The main reason I wanted to look into this is that I saw a story on TV stating that it was cheaper to eat out than to cook dinner. In all reality, they were eating at drive throughs and buying off the dollar menu, but it really did make me wonder how much it cost to feed my family a good nutritious meal. My test meal? Spaghetti, meatballs, and garlic bread.
Having had such a meal in restaurants infinity times, I let’s break this down for a family of four:
| Entree | $9.99 |
| Drink | $1.75 |
| Total | $11.74 |
For four: $46.96 + $9 (tip) = $55.96
This excludes dessert and grown up drinks. Add those, and your bill can really skyrocket.
How much to cook in?
Let’s price out the recipe below. Your mileage may vary, but I am gonna say you should have enough for dinner one night, and lunch for someone the next day (we cage match over the leftovers.. just sayin..).
| Spaghetti – 1lb | $1.09 |
| Green Bell Pepper | $0.50 |
| Onion | $0.30 |
| Can of Sauce | $1.20 |
| Sausage | $1.50 |
| Ground Beef | $1.50 |
| Eggs | $0.17 |
| Tomato Paste | $0.15 |
| Parmesan | $0.30 |
| French Bread | $0.63 * |
| Total | $7.34 |
*I am making the assumption that you are making bread from scratch, according to an old post I wrote on baking. This also includes a whole full sized loaf of bread.
So, let’s pretend we are being really tight, and we go through the drive through, and everyone gets one item. This would be a total of $3.96. In other words, for $3.38 cents more, the family could eat a great meal.
Let’s also pretend that instead of eating leftovers tomorrow, that one person bought another burger for lunch. That means it’s only $2.39 more. If, at any time two people want fries, the difference is now only 41 cents.
So, eating off the dollar menu doesn’t sound so good anymore does it?
Conclusion
while feeding everyone (1) one dollar hamburger might sound cheaper up front, it’s really only marginally cheaper, and horrifyingly less nutritious.
Post Conclusion – Is this doable?
The big question that people are going to ask: where do I get the three hours to cook? The quick answer would be to make a triple batch, split it into three parts, and freeze two of those parts. Then, at mealtime, all you have to do is thaw, boil some noodles, and eat!
There are more solutions, but we can hit them in a later article.
The Meatball Recipe
Okay, here goes. The first part is for the sauce, the second is for the meatballs. This is the base recipe. It will easily feed four people. You can multiply this recipe from here.
The Sauce
- One half green bell pepper, chopped
- One half white onion, chopped.
- One clove of garlic.
- Half a teaspoon of fennel seed
- A sprinkle of cayenne.
- 1/2 tablespoon of oregano
- 1 15 oz can of your favorite sauce – I use Hunt’s.
Into a blop of olive oil, toss the fennel seeds. Heat until they start to sizzle. Toss in the peppers and onions. Enjoy the smell! As soon as the onions start to go translucent, toss in the garlic. Cook for about thirty seconds, stirring. Drop in your can of sauce. Lower the heat and cook covered, as this stuff will splatter on your kitchen and clothes and make a mess.
The Meatballs
While your sauce is heating, hit this:
- Half Pound of Italian Sausage
- Half Pound of Ground Beef
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 water
- Half a small can of tomato paste
- 1/2 Parmesan. Get real parmesan and grate it. Not out of a can!!
Mix the sausage and the hamburger together. Mix it well. You can do it by hand, I use the paddle on my stand mixer. When mixed, add the rest of the ingredients. Mix only well enough to combine everything. Don’t mix the hell out of it. Just make sure everything is well combined.
Using wet hands, make egg sized (but round) meatballs, and place them into the sauce. Make sure they are all covered.
Simmer for about 45 minutes with NO STIRRING. This will allow the meatballs to form without getting mushy. Cook another hour and a half or so.
Enjoy!
Some Background
photo: _Teb
I see this idea batted around constantly. That we spend utterly too much time bathing ourselves, and sending all that water and heat right down the drain. We should be reclaiming the water, reclaiming the heat, and that by bathing, we are strangling mother earth and smiling (and smelling squeaky clean) as we do it.
One of the reasons I decided to do the math on this one is that someone on a forum called me out for shaving in the shower. I thought that he was just being finicky, so I decided to do the math, and let the chips fall where they may.
It seems that there are a great many variations on this topic, and I decided to crunch some numbers and see where the truth really lies. I am going to look at two different takes on daily bathing: mine, and that of the ‘navy shower.’ My guess is that your bathing method lies in the middle somewhere.
According to Wikipedia, a Navy Shower goes like this:
- Turn on the water
- Immediately wet the body
- Turn off the water
- Soap up and scrub
- Turn the water back on and rinse off the soap
- Turn off the water
That same article states that a navy shower uses about 3 gallons of water.
My shower is as follows:
- Turn on the shower
- Hop and and scrub up
- Warm up while listening to the radio
- Shave
- Rinse
- Hop out
Total water time: 15 minutes.
How to Make the Calculations
I then read an article that stated that shower heads manufactured after 1992 were limited to 2.2 gallons per minute. This is at full pressure. I take my shower at less than full pressure. To make this number a little easier to deal with, let’s say that the average is 2 GPM.
So, this being the case, by shaving and listening to the radio in the shower, I use 30 gallons of water. About ten navy showers worth. This number is starting to hurt.
How they Bill you
The water department doesn’t bill you by the gallon. This number would be way too hard to measure, and would cause everyone to freak out as that number climbed sky high. The number that they bill you by is “Hundred Cubic Feet.” Imagine a cube 1 foot on each edge. Each hundred of those is what they bill you for.
You will have to look at your water bill to get the exact number. In my case, I had to back calculate. The interesting thing about my water bill is that I get billed for water coming in, and water going to the sewer. Both numbers are 12. What if I filled up a swimming pool? Would the sewer number be smaller? I really doubt it.
Anyway.
After all is said and done, I get charged $7.73 per hundred cubic feet of water.
The amount of water in a daily shower is tiny compared to a hundred cubic feet, so let’s make another assumption. Let’s assume that we bathe every day. A friend of mine says that is a sign that I am obsessive compulsive, but I will take that moniker in exchange for feeling clean and fresh in the morning.
That means that each month, I dump 900 gallons (!) down the drain bathing. That seems like alot. Let’s see how much it costs me.
Once cubic foot = 7.48 gallons
So each month, I use 1.2 hundred cubic feet (ouch) for a total of $9.28. This is a great deal more than I expected.
The same month in navy showers would cost less than a dollar.
Now, to heat that water!
There is really no way to accurately guess this number, but follow my logic here:
In the summer, my gas bill is about $30. I would guess that 1/4 of that is for cooking, which leaves $22.5 for heating water.
There are three people in my house showering daily. That means about 4 hundred cubic feet are used for bathing (they use more water than me).
That means 1/3 of the water (remember, I used 12 HCF per month) used was for bathing. That means 1/3 of $22.50 was used for heating shower water, or $7.50.
Taking that number again, and dividing by three to get my total, I used $2.50 to heat my water.
The Final Analysis
Each month, taking a fifteen minute shower each day, I spend $11.78. While this number is based on several assumptions and approximations, it is very close.
Taking a ‘navy shower’ each month costs $1.18 per month. An order of magnitude (and a real number!) cheaper.
Now, multiply this over the number of people in your house, and you can see that these are actually real numbers, and add up to some serious cash very quickly. I am now left to think really hard about this. I really like taking my warm shower in the morning. I don’t think i could go navy on this one, but if i only stayed in for 7 1/2 minutes, I could save almost six bucks.
If I were to shave in the sink after the shower, I could easily shave 5 minutes off my daily shower time. Think about it this way:
According to my calculations, I spend about 79 cents for each average minute in the shower. If I shave in the sink, I will save $4 a month. $48 bucks a year!
If I could get my family do do the same thing, we would have enough money left over to: go out to the movies an extra time a month, go out to dinner an extra time per month. Then again, it could rain hundred dollar bills for 40 days and 40 nights, and we’d all be rich.
Just sayin’..
