pocketmint

My partner Jak and I have been together for eleven years now. We blended our money fairly early in our relationship — sometime late in the second year. Ever since then we’ve had a single pool, into which all income goes, and from which all outflows are jointly approved.

Our financial outlooks and spending priorities have always been pretty similar — more alike than most couples, from what I’ve read — but still not identical. Also, they’ve been changing over time, for both of us. In general, I’ve been leading the way down the path of increased frugality, and Jak has willingly followed … about a step or two behind.

Which has made for occasional friction. Nothing major, nothing relationship-endangering, but still not any fun. I would grouse about individual purchases that didn’t match my frugal standards; Jak would grumble that he felt micromanaged and constrained. I tried backing off, but then he’d start coveting some expensive new electronic gadget and I’d get anxious.

I suggested we set category limits, like $30 per month on his coffee shop beverages; he agreed, but by the second month he’d gone over, and he didn’t even feel any less restricted. He tried to only buy things that I agreed to, but couldn’t help resenting the lack of autonomy. At one point he suggested a monthly allowance that he could spend however he wanted, but I couldn’t see that stopping me from fretting about whether we could afford whatever he was buying, or whether it was fair for him to splurge when I was sacrificing.

Last summer, after a lot of reading on behavioral economics and with our particular dynamics in mind, I hammered out a new approach for handling expenses. I made a little spreadsheet, calculated some numbers, and then proposed it to Jak.

He had a lot of questions, most of which I had ready answers for, but a couple required that I refine the model. We haggled over details. He was interested, but cautious; it was a pretty big change, and though the potential benefits were obvious, he wasn’t confident that we’d foreseen all the drawbacks. We agreed to try it for three months, after which he could request a renegotiation.

We implemented the new plan on July 1. The three-month mark came and went without notice. In fact, in the last six-and-a-half months we have not had a single negative interaction around spending. Not one.

I want to share this system here on Pocketmint, for two reasons: one, because it underlies or ties into a lot of other things in our lives that I want to talk about, and two, because I think that — perhaps with minor adjustments for individual circumstances — it could be a good approach for a lot of other families.

However, to explain the idea well enough that someone else could implement it, I’ll have to go into quite a bit of detail, which makes for a whole big pile of text. So I’m breaking it up into three sections. Tomorrow in Part One I’ll describe the plan as we implemented it. Then in Part Two, I’ll go over the results, both expected and unexpected. Finally in Part Three I’ll discuss general principles and ways to adapt the budget for other circumstances. Stay tuned!

On even-numbered years, Jak’s kids are with us for Christmas, and we often end up spending the holiday with his extended family as well. On odd-numbered years — like this one — the kids spend Christmas with their mother, and Jak and I are usually alone.

I wasn’t too keen on buying a whole tree for just two people. Jak and I are both moving more towards an ‘experiences not stuff’ philosophy, which means there wouldn’t be huge piles of presents to put under a tree anyway. I was thinking about going out to buy a locally-made wreath from a farmer’s market, but knew that would probably cost about as much as a tree.

Jak, however, was clever enough to realize that we basically live in the middle of an evergreen forest, and that this might be turned to our benefit. He proposed that we make our own wreaths and was willing to spearhead the required organization.

I’ve never done anything remotely similar before, and frankly, going into this I wasn’t optimistic that we could make anything that looked even halfway decent. But I was surprised and pleased with the results.

So to begin with, Jak and Claire ventured out to the yard and returned with branches of pine, Douglas fir, and holly, plus a pile of pine cones. (That’s our cat Sammy there on the right, inspecting the Douglas fir.) The three of us set up on the cardboard-covered dining table, with the laptop playing a Pandora holiday music station.

First challenge: all the online instructions we found either started with a purchased wire frame or described making your own from a wire coat hanger. We had zero of the former and only one of the latter.

The best bit of luck that we had was when Jak remembered a roll of chicken wire we had in the garage (purchased some years back to patch a hole in the fence of our rental house and prevent puppy escape). Not only did a chicken-wire circle give many more attachment points than the single circle of a coat hanger, but it even happened to be a camouflaging dark green!

In addition to the chicken wire, we scrounged a spool of 30-gauge wire from a craft box (I think a slightly thicker gauge would have been better, but this worked well enough). Our tools were wire cutters and pruning shears. Jak and Claire traded off working on one wreath, while I (being the greater perfectionist) did a second one on my own.

Despite having looked at several sets of instructions, I still really felt like I had no idea what I was doing when I started; I went mostly on instinct plus trial-and-error. I started by clipping a doughnut shape out of the chicken wire (I picked up the dog food dish and traced it in order to keep my circles circular). Then I started trimming pine branches and weaving them around the inner cutout, securing with small bits of wire when needed.

I had vaguely thought that I would use the softer, more flexible pine as the base and layer some Douglas fir branches on top (which is what Jak ended up doing with his wreath), but by the time I had a solid base, the pine was looking nice enough on its own that I decided to just keep going with that.

So I added another ring of pine around the outside, tucking the cut edges of the chicken wire under to secure the branches. Then I took some shorter pieces and filled in a couple of thin spots. By the way, it works best if you face all the branches in the same direction.

Jak had only been able to reach one clump of holly berries, so I let him use those and instead dug out a garland of painted wood beads from my tree decoration box. Still making this up as I went along, I wrapped it around the wreath and tucked the extra ends along the back. The spaces in between cried out for pine cones, then, so I threaded those in.

(In a bit of a cheat, I used pine cones that I purchased from a craft store sometime in the nineties as tree decorations, just because they were already wired. If I’d not had those, with just a bit more work I could have used pine cones from the yard and attached the wire myself.)

So there’s my final wreath, hanging on the front door. I’m pretty proud of it, especially for a first effort. Jak added fir, holly, and a bow to his and hung it over the fireplace. Originally he thought he might try a garland, but we were pretty well crafted-out by then, so he just laid sprays of fir and pine cones across the mantel.

Total cost: zero — we used only materials we already had. I ended up enjoying the creative challenge much more than I’d imagined — so much that I would like to make it a new tradition for every at-home Christmas. Even if at some point we move away from the Pacific Northwest and all its evergreens, I will still be looking for ways to forage for holiday decorations.

The calculations are complete. Total cost per person for our Thanksgiving meal (one generous serving each of six dishes and two desserts): $3.50.

Note that I didn’t skimp on quality of ingredients — I used such expensive items as pine nuts, heavy cream, whole vanilla beans, and real maple syrup. I also did nothing different from my usual shopping habits here — although we don’t usually eat this much, we do eat this well, and this cheaply, all the time.

I also cooked a lot more than we needed. I regularly double-cook for dinners — I like the efficiency of ‘cook once, eat twice’ — but for Thanksgiving I pretty much go at it like I’m feeding an army, instead of (in this case) just four people. So we all ate various permutations of this meal for the following three days. (Each dish ranged from 8 to 16 servings, and for what it’s worth my total expense for these quantities was $41.11.)

With only two people eating meat, cooking a turkey seemed like a waste. Jak said he wouldn’t miss turkey so long as we had cornbread dressing and pumpkin pie. So I decided to make an entirely vegetarian meal.

However, I did make note of what a whole turkey would have cost, since I know many people can’t imagine Thanksgiving without one. Essentially, adding a roast turkey serving to the existing meal (for a total of nine dishes instead of eight) would have added .49 per person, for a total of $3.99. (This was a special Thanksgiving sale price, not likely on a non-holiday.)

That means you could serve this meal plus turkey to ten people for under $40.

What isn’t included: energy cost to run the oven, microwave, and so forth. Butane for the creme brulée torch. Water from the tap. Everything else is accounted for, including the cost of items I already had in the pantry.

Below is the menu and the cost breakdown by dish (you can see the first six on this plate, clockwise from top; desserts are separate). Where applicable, I have linked to recipes, with the following caveat: I almost never follow recipes exactly as written, so I may have made liberal adjustments.

NEW: I’ve ported my spreadsheet over to Google Docs, so you can see the breakdown of cost by ingredient.

Maple Sweet Potatoes with Pecan Streusel
$5.65 for 10 servings
$0.57

Made this one up on the fly: mashed sweet potatoes flavored with butter, maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice, covered with a streusel made from ground pecans, flour, butter, sugar, and cinnamon. (Pecans and real maple syrup account for 57% of the cost.) My only regret is that the streusel made it brown instead of vibrant orange; I wish I’d had a clear dish to bake it in.

Charmoula Green Beans and Carrots
$4.33 for 12 servings
$0.36

I was seduced by the gorgeous photo on Kalyn’s blog into trying this for Thanksgiving. The charmoula sauce is an amazing discovery. I am going to be putting it on everything now. It was crazy-awesome.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
$2.62 for 12 servings
$0.22

No recipe here — just roast a huge wad of garlic cloves in olive oil in the oven, then mash and add to potatoes along with generous amounts of butter, cream, and salt. Potatoes are so cheap that even with the dairy this is still a bargain.

Cornbread Dressing
$4.40 for 16 servings
$0.28

This is a permutation of the cornbread dressing I grew up with in Texas. First you make homemade cornbread, then crumble and rebake with sauteed celery and onions, eggs, milk, broth, and poultry seasoning. Not the most attractive dish in the world (especially since I used whole wheat flour in the cornbread, making it darker) but yummy all the same.

Cauliflower & Brussels Sprouts Gratin
$10.49 for 16 servings
$0.66

I’ve been running variations on this Epicurious recipe for about a year now, to universal acclaim. Usually I make it with just the cauliflower, but this time I wanted a second green vegetable on the table, so included Brussels sprouts — albeit not in the proportions of the original recipe.

This dish is pricey (relatively speaking) because of the cream, Parmesan, and pine nuts. But OH MY GOD is it good. Just ask our twelve-year-old, who was begging to eat more at every meal including breakfast for the next three days. (Yes that’s right, my child eats Brussels sprouts at breakfast. Booyah!)

Spiced Whole Cranberry Sauce
$4.51 for 16 servings
$0.28

Classic fresh cranberries + simple syrup, flavored with allspice, cardamom, and ginger.

Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream
$3.76 for 8 servings
$0.47

I was willing to buy pumpkins and bake them, but took Jennifer Reese’s word that canned pumpkin is actually better. I used her recipe — more or less — for the filling. I did, also on her recommendation, bake the pie crust myself. My very first pie crust attempt ever, so I was worried, but it was actually good! I used Elise’s recipe for the crust, because her directions are specific enough for piecrust newbs. Also: real whipped cream with sugar and vanilla. None of that Cool Whip crap. (Note that my $3.76 includes the whipped cream; without topping the pie would have been $2.82 — cheaper than Jennifer’s $3.68.)

Vanilla Bean Creme Brulée
$5.35 for 8 servings
$0.67

This was Jak’s contribution to the meal. He doesn’t normally cook at all. But he loves creme brulée and so a few years back I got him a torch set and a creme brulée cookbook for Christmas, in hopes that he would be tempted. Well, it finally paid off.

This is the other relatively expensive dish, but like the gratin completely worth it. He picked this Martha Stewart version for his first attempt, and I’d say it was a tie with the best restaurant creme brulée I’ve ever had.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend (well, those in the States, anyway — I hope everyone else had a great ordinary weekend). We had an awesome dinner, if I do say so myself. I am almost done with the cost calculations I promised; I just need to get a few prices from Costco for some pantry staples that I already had on hand.

I did not for a moment consider doing any sort of shopping on Black Friday. Even before my recent focus shift towards non-consumption, when my thrifty streak manifested as Serious Sale Shopper, I never waited in the wee hours of the morning to fight other people for … well, whatever they’re fighting for.

And frankly, I was deeply appalled and disgusted by the news reports. Pepper-spraying your fellow shoppers, really? Did we not learn anything from the poor guy who was trampled to death a couple of years ago? How can anyone imagine this whole consumerism thing has not gone way, way too far?

What did we do instead? We worked on a new 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle that I bought at Goodwill for eighty-two cents, and ate lots of leftovers.

We did participate in ‘Small Business Saturday’, however. Despite it being basically a marketing gimmick for American Express, I support the concept.

Jak and I made dinner plans with some friends, and since I didn’t particularly want to cook again just yet (after the all-day marathon of Wednesday and Thursday), we met at a little family-owned Indian restaurant. The proprietress is this sweet older Indian lady who barely speaks any English; she waits tables while her husband and son do the cooking.

We used to get takeout from there pretty regularly, back when we were both working full-time, but in the last couple of years we’ve cut back sharply on our eating-out. I checked Mint to see the last time we were there, and it was nine months ago.

I know that they’ve struggled; they’ve moved three times since we first discovered them, and their restaurant is often nearly empty despite the excellent food. So in addition to getting my masala fix, I feel good for helping them out a little bit — something that no one in line outside a big box store Friday morning (or Thursday night) could say.