pocketmint

Three years ago, in October 2008, the stock market crashed and — not coincidentally, as I was then employed by the brokerage arm of an international bank — I promptly lost my job. The following month my partner Jak took a 10% pay cut, as the market continued dropping and layoffs and hiring freezes broke out all over.

The long hiatus in Pocketmint came about largely because during the ensuing period of unemployment I founded a software startup and then had no time to spare for blogging. After about a year and a half, the startup stalled out and I had to shut it down and walk away from it. (I’ll share more about that whole experience later.)

Jak and I have now spent three years with an income of less than half of what we had in 2007 and 2008. We’ve had some setbacks, but overall have been lucky enough to keep our noses above water — one or the other of us has been working full-time for all but a few weeks of those three years, supplemented by the occasional small freelance check. But our lives have undergone a slow seismic shift, even so.

In Pocketmint’s earlier incarnation, you can see that I was already leaning pretty hard toward a frugal lifestyle; I’ve continued along that trajectory, and now have three years’ more practice at making every dollar count. So going forward, you can expect to see a lot more stories and ideas about living cheaply-but-well.

But beyond that: since I last wrote in Pocketmint I’ve completely changed our budgeting plan, most of our purchasing choices, and our investment strategy. We’ve altered the way we handle health care and housing and our plans for retirement.

So there are a whole lot of practicable personal finance concepts that I’d like to continue to share. But moreso than before, I find myself also wanting to cover the theoretical side of things.

I’ve done a lot of reading in the last few years — hooray for public libraries! — much of which has been pointed at unravelling a specific conundrum. Put briefly: over two decades of adulthood I’ve collected a heaping pile of personal, empirical evidence that the world does not operate, economically speaking, in the ways we have been told it does (‘we’ meaning roughly ‘middle-class Americans of my generation and beyond’).

So I’ve been chasing a greater understanding, studying not just economics but also history and psychology and sociology. I’ve found it fascinating, and that reading has often been the impetus for the practical changes I mentioned above. I hope that I can both provide a window into ‘what’s really going on here’ and tie that understanding back to the question of ‘yes, but how do I get through the week?’.

In addressing the full economic context, I’m certain to piss some people off, so I’m bracing for that. While I’m not likely to write anything that is political in a direct, party-affiliated way (not least because I myself do not feel closely affiliated with any extant political party), my writing will certainly on occasion come across as political, because you simply can’t talk about larger economic issues without also bumping up against politics. And I believe that the larger economic issues are too important to be ignored.

So that’s a bit about where I’ve been and where I plan to go next. If you were a Pocketmint v1 reader, thank you and welcome back! I hope you’ll like the new stuff as well. It’s good to be sharing again.

(Photos by David Chess and Sarah Gilbert.)

This entry started out as a comment to Kris’ potluck post on Get Rich Slowly, but it soon became too long for a mere comment, so I moved it over here.

In addition to being frugal-minded, I’m also an unabashed foodie. When I was lucky enough to have three friends nearby who also liked to cook, I enjoyed a sort of cross between a potluck and a dinner party that we called a ‘supper club.’ It involves a lot less ‘luck’ and allows for more coordinated and ambitious meals, but maintains a similar thriftiness and community spirit. Here’s how it worked:

The four of us agreed to meet on the same night each week for dinner. But unlike a dinner party, where the host does all the cooking solo and in advance, for the supper club everyone arrives prior to the start of preparation, and the cooking itself is a social event.

There are two rotating positions: ‘chef’ and ‘sous chef’. The chef hosts the dinner, plans the menu (often around a particular cuisine), and purchases all ingredients in advance. The sous chef is on call in the kitchen for whatever needs doing at the chef’s instruction — ‘chop these’ or ‘stir that’.

So two people chat over food prep in the kitchen, while the other two relax with a drink in the living room — or converse with the chef as a group if space and attention allows. (Some people can carry on unrelated conversations while cooking; others can’t. Me, it depends upon how many things I have going at once.) After dinner, the chef and sous chef relax and talk while the others clear up the dishes.

The supper club works best, I think, with four, five, or six people. More than six and it starts to get unwieldy; fewer than four and the ratio of exertion to relaxation climbs too high. One tip: if couples are involved, be sure to mix it up — don’t let your spouse sous-chef for you in your own kitchen.

And of course this is really an idea for the foodie set — if you’re wanting to include people who don’t know how to make toast, then a potluck provides more diverse options. But if you have a few friends who love to go out for expensive restaurant meals, this might be a great alternative: you can do ‘Thai night’ or ‘steak night’ or whatever, and have a restaurant-quality meal at home. You never have to cook alone — you have a guaranteed helper and as much conversation as you want. And someone else always cleans up!

Now that I’ve been reminded of this, I’m thinking about whether I know people now who would enjoy this. Because it was great, and I’d love to start one up again. Hmmm …

(Photo by Zeetz Jones.)

For the past few months, my newfound love for easy homemade bread got sidelined by my difficulties with excema. Even easy bread sort of requires being able to use both hands. So it was back to the Costco multigrain loaves for sandwiches and toast.

It’s always pained my frugal soul that a certain amount of every storebought loaf is wasted; the younger kidlet balks at crusts, and nobody likes the heels, me included. I tried saving them for breadcrumbs but … I just don’t usually cook things that require breadcrumbs.

Until I got the brilliant idea a couple months ago to try them in bread pudding. Now, I can’t be the first person to have thought of this, but it was quite a leap for me, as I only ate bread pudding for the first time a year or two ago, and had never tried cooking it. (For those of you who, like me, are new to the idea: it’s not actually pudding, but more of a custard. The bread gets very soaked and … un-breadlike in the process.)

I wanted to share my bread pudding technique. I can’t call it a recipe; I tend not to follow recipes unless I’m baking (and sometimes not even then), and I rely more on looks and taste than measurements. Bread pudding is perfect for this, as it’s one of the most forgiving dishes ever.

Bread pudding recipes call for white bread, preferably French, which we don’t eat. But whole wheat and multigrain crusts and heels work quite well. (Not rye though — flavor’s all wrong.) We go through bread quickly enough that I can usually keep the crusts in the fridge, but if you’re worried about mold just keep a container in the freezer and thaw when you’re ready to make the bread pudding.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to get extra vegetables into my family, I went for a pumpkin variation. (I always have canned pumpkin around — I pick up extra when it goes on sale around Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

Pumpkin Bread Pudding Ingredients:

• bread crusts and heels, torn into small-bite pieces
• dried cranberries or raisins (optional)
• butter
• canned pumpkin
• eggs
• cream, half-and-half, or milk
• sugar, brown sugar, or Splenda
• spices: any of vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and/or allspice

I’m not including quantities here because you’ve got a huge amount of leeway in the proportions. If you have fewer eggs, or less milk, or only a partial can of pumpkin, no worries! It’s almost impossible to mess this up.

This latest time I had about ten cups of bread crust bits, which completely filled a 9″x13″ baking dish, so all my listed amounts are relative to that. You could go with as few as four cups of bread or maybe even three, in a smaller dish.

With the ten cups of bread I used an entire 29-ounce can of pumpkin (more vitamin A!), but a 15-ounce can would have worked fine too, or anything in-between. I used four eggs, but you’re safe with anything from two to five. I used two cups of half-and-half, then (because I had so much pumpkin) thinned the mixture with a little extra skim milk. If you’re worried about fat content, use milk alone, or all cream if you want it really rich. Again, the actual amount is highly flexible — ultimately, all that matters is that you can pour the resulting mixture … more like a batter than a dough.

We try to keep a low-glycemic diet around here, so I used pourable Splenda. White or brown sugar also works, of course. One cup made for a lightly sweet pudding, but you can adjust to taste. I also prefer the slight tartness of cranberries over raisins. Generously add spice — whatever from the list above you have on hand, to taste. This last time I used some of everything except the allspice, including fresh minced ginger (because I had roots but no powder).

Preparation couldn’t be easier:

1. Melt some butter in a shallow baking dish.
2. Put the torn bread bits in, tossing them around a bit.
3. If you’re adding dried fruit, sprinkle that on top of the bread.
4. Mix everything else in a separate bowl and pour it evenly over the top.
5. Bake at 350° until the custard is set — probably between 20 and 40 minutes.

I like it warm with just a touch of maple syrup drizzled over the top. I guarantee even the pickiest kidlet will eat their crusts when served like this!

(Photo by minjungkim.)

We’ve done a pretty good job of cutting back on unnecessary expenses during this period of reduced income. ‘Magazine subscriptions’ seems like an obvious category to eliminate, right? Yet I kept mine. Here’s why: they save me way more money than they cost.

Consumer Reports

My first-ever magazine subscription, when I was 19 years old, was to Consumer Reports. Other ones have come and gone, but I’ve been a loyal nonstop CR subscriber for twenty years now, and I read every issue cover-to-cover. (The complete lack of advertising makes this a remarkably pleasant experience). I also pay extra for full access to their web site, because the search function is darn handy, and keeps me from having to store and sort through years of back issues.

A lot of what they report on is not of immediate use to me, of course — for example, we buy one car every decade or so. But every time we are ready to make a major purchase, I check CR. About 80% of the time they have a ratings list including feature and price data, plus a detailed explanation of how to assess quality of models not listed. In the past four years I’ve used CR to choose an oven, two televisions, a washer and dryer, a computer printer, a digital camera, and a gas grill — all of which have performed beautifully. That’s not even counting the small stuff, like comparisons of laundry detergent effectiveness, or — in the most recent issue — condoms! Plus they have frequent articles alerting readers to issues like credit card traps and health insurance pitfalls.

Cost: $42 per year ($23 print, $19 web).
Savings: several hundred dollars per year.

(If you want to be extra-frugal, get the web-only CR for $26 per year. I happen to enjoy the print magazine enough to warrant the extra $16, but the important information is all available online.)

Consumers’ Checkbook

A little over a year ago I added Consumers’ Checkbook to my arsenal. They’re sort of like a regional, service-focused version of Consumer Reports, offering both ratings and in-depth reports on various services. They’re only available in seven metro areas, but fortunately for us, one is Puget Sound.

So far this year I’ve used their ratings to select a veterinarian, a dermatologist, and a car repair shop. Checkbook doesn’t have a full report on doctors, so the dermatologist didn’t come with a price comparison or savings. But their feature on ‘doctors rated highly by other doctors’ did help me get someone good. I don’t know anyone locally who visits a dermatologist, so without Checkbook it would have been a crap shoot.

The vet and auto repair ratings, however, have arguably saved us hundreds of dollars this year alone.

Veterinarian:

I know plenty of people with pets, so finding a good vet has never been a problem. What’s harder is finding one that’s both good and cheap, relatively speaking. Here Checkbook’s price comparison between veterinarians was stunningly useful. It would have taken me many hours to do that research on my own. And look at the range!

There are big vet-to-vet price differences. For example, for spaying a 25-pound, seven-month-old dog, charges we found at local vets ranged from $90 to $532. Many of the lowest priced vets rated very high on our customer survey. It is possible to save money and also get top-quality care for your pet.

The vet I selected with Checkbook’s info turned out to be not just great but also very reasonable in cost. When our cat developed alarming symptoms earlier this year, it was worth a lot to know that I wasn’t going to be hemorrhaging money in tests and treatments.

Auto Repair:

Over the last couple of weeks, our trusty little 1999 Honda Civic has been exhibiting some alarming behaviors, such as a sudden loss of electrical function while going 60 mph on the interstate.

Car repairs scare me, because I know very little about automobiles, so it’s very easy to take me for a ride, so to speak. Fortunately, we have a car mechanic in the family — too far away to fix our problem, but at least he could make a long-distance guess at the cause and give me a rough idea of a reasonable charge for repairs.

His assessment: either the ignition switch (~$125 retail part) or the distributor ($450-$500 retail part). Either one would take, he guessed, about one to one-and-a-half hours of labor. (His shop charges $80/hour for labor, for comparison.)

Again, Checkbook reports wild variation in local costs:

There are dramatic price differences. For example, to replace the water pump and timing belt on a 1999 Ford Contour, we found prices ranging from $393 to $950. Hourly labor rates range from $60 to $140. There are many top-quality, low-priced shops. Indeed, we found no relationship between the prices shops charge and the quality of their work.

(Are you seeing a pattern here?)

Checkbook listed ten repair shops within five miles that earned their top recommendation for both price and quality. (Hourly labor charges in our immediate area ranged from $73 to $110.) Jak picked one on a direct bus route that had a $75 rate and customer comments extolling their ‘honesty and service’.

As Jak was the one to take the car in, I didn’t interact with them directly, but the results were impressive. The diagnostic mechanic couldn’t quickly determine whether it was the ignition switch or a distributor problem, but rather than suggest we replace both — which would mean more money for him, and the tack many shops would take — he persevered.

Ultimately he was able to confirm the fault was in the ignition switch, which he replaced. He charged us for one hour labor and — based on the information I got from Bill — something that must have been very close to his own cost on the part. Total charge: $120. It could easily have been double that at another shop for the very same repair; a lazy or dishonest mechanic might have tried the distributor and charged us $600 or more.

Cost: $14 per year (print and web).
Savings: several hundred dollars per year.

(Note that Checkbook subscriptions are for 2-year periods, and cost varies slightly among locations.)

(Photo by Manchester City Library.)

Alert readers may have noticed that lately the frequency of posts here at Pocketmint has been somewhat reduced.

One reason is that some of my recently personal-finance writing has gone to Get Rich Slowly instead. In addition to the aforementioned discount grocery store adventure, I did a post on Discovering — and challenging — your financial values, which might just be my personal favorite for the year. A third post, this one about furniture, will be up on GRS soon.

But the primary reason I’m spending less time writing here (or anywhere) is that since mid-August I’ve been working hard on a new project — one that I hope will ultimately be of interest to Pocketmint readers. I’m not ready to announce a lot of details yet, but I will say that it’s a web-based application (like Gmail, or Facebook) which will help people save money on a regular basis.

We’re building a prototype now, and in another month or two I expect to be ready to enter an alpha-testing phase. If you’ve never been involved in software development before, alpha testing is where a small number of people — in our case perhaps around a dozen — use the app and tell us what they like and don’t like about it. We attempt to change the things people dislike or find confusing, and let the alpha testers try it again. After a few rounds of that — maybe another couple of months — we move into the beta phase, where we open the app to the public.

Alpha testers are a huge help to software designers and developers. In return they get a few unique perks: they get to see the app before anyone else, and to have a major voice in what the finished product is like. In the case of this specific project, alphas will also get a permanent free account to the software. So down the road, when we’ve added a bunch of cool extra features that everyone else has to pay for (and believe me, there are some very cool things on our drawing board), alphas get a free pass to all of it. Think of it like trying out a very early version of Flickr or Evernote and getting a permanent Pro/Premium account.

If this is something you’d like to try, and you live in the greater Seattle metro area — roughly Everett to Tacoma — email me with ‘alpha tester’ as the subject. I’ll write back with a few questions and if it all works out, add you to our alpha team.