My husband and I have been really saving on our groceries. We’ve been scouring the 99-cent store for dry goods, bread, and even some vegetables like lettuce. We then hit our regular grocery store for meat, milk, and some frozen goods. I have been able to get my lunches down to under $2.00, and my breakfast for under $.25. My weekly meals are pretty monotonous, but it works for me. Here is a breakdown of my Monday – Friday breakfast and lunch menu:

• Breakfast: 1/2 cup of oatmeal, a few dried cranberries, and brown sugar. I put all of these ingredients into a small Tupperware container, then just add hot water. Very healthy. Total Cost: $.20 (my large oatmeal and dried cranberries cost about $9.00, but lasts 2 months- or 40 working days)
• Lunch: 1 cup of Easy Mac macaroni and cheese, one cup of applesauce (no sugar added), one small bag of animal cookies. Somewhat healthy, the mac and cheese is a little high in sodium. Total Cost: $1.59

I also usually have a snack in the late afternoon, like cereal (I am a cereal lover and have always been!) For dinner, my husband and I usually have tacos (turkey or beef, which ever is on sale), hamburgers, spaghetti, chili and cornbread, or something easy and inexpensive. My husband also gets creative with the ingredients we have lying around and will make pizza using homemade pizza dough, or purchase a Bobelli pizza crust, throwing on fresh veggies for the toppings. Last night, to help get rid of the sniffles,  we had hot and sour soup and spring rolls. The spring rolls were frozen, made by the Chung brand, and very good, we were quite surprised.

Queso on the Grill

Eating so inexpensively allows us to splurge occasionally. For instance, my husband loves cooking outdoors. On the weekends, when the weather is sunny, warm, and perfect, he’ll purchase baby back ribs or sirloin steak and marinate them for a full day. After the spices have thoroughly soaked in, he’ll grill them to perfection.  We also include veggies to go with our meal, or a salad.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention cooking myself, not once. That’s because I don’t cook. The extent of my cooking boils down to heating up pre-made garlic bread or making an easy mix corn bread, both side items. Main meals are generally my husband’s fortay. Luckily my husband knew this before we were married, so it’s never been an issue. Thank goodness for frozen meals, too!

I’m the expert on running on fumes. To be more specific, I run on fumes in a number of ways. Let me count them for you:

1. I can go about 3 hours in the morning on a Starbucks coffee alone. No food, just java juice, teaching 5- and 6-year old’s how to read up until their recess time. I run my body on a highly caffinated and sugary drink. (Sometimes this includes a 45 minute bike ride to school on a beautiful day).
2. I work a total of 12 hours a day, if I include my travel time. I start the work day at 8am (no travel included here) and finish around 6:30 pm or 7pm, depending on the day. I teach, I help my husband with his graphic design business, I post daily, and I have homework to complete. I rarely have time to breathe, let alone have a sit-down meal. (There’s a trend building here I think).
3. I can stretch our bank account dollars until our next payment arrives, whether it’s a client we’re waiting on, or my monthly (yes, monthly) paycheck. The most frustrating part of owning your own business is the infrequent payments; some clients pay within a week or two, others pay on a monthly basis, and still others take their time and pay when they feel like it, pushing 45 – 60 days at times.
4. I can hyper-mile our car until the gas light has been on for a full day running on fumes, or ride my bike if I feel like not filling that day. This isn’t as difficult for my husband and me since he works from home and rarely needs our one vehicle, and I enjoy biking to and from work or school.

I’ve always been a very active person, I can’t sit still for very long or remain unproductive. I’m not ADD or ADHD, I know what this looks like, I can actually focus on tasks and complete them. I just like to stay busy. I’ve been like this since I was a child; playing outside until the street lights came on, babysitting when I was a teenager, working two jobs or more jobs when I was attending college for my BA in my early 20′s. It’s very difficult for me to just sit.

Full Speed Ahead

Most friends and family members comment on my fast-walking pace as I zip around the neighborhood, school, or store. I physically can’t walk slowly, it hurts my hips, which you would think would be just the opposite. Whether I’ve eaten a balanced, nutritious meal, or I’ve only had my sugary Starbucks drink, my speed remains the same: full speed ahead.

When my husband and I visit our families, we become restless while the television is blasting in the background and our relatives are in a vegetative state on the couch. We fidget and squirm until we finally get up and leave for a bike ride, or a drive to the store, or a bar for a drink (not that I’m a big drinker – I’m always the designated driver, a complete tee-totatler). With the holiday season coming up, we’re making our plans and dreading the family visits. We love our families, but we don’t necessarily like how they celebrate the holidays, in front of the TV! So, we must decide how we are going to keep busy, active, and productive over the holiday season, whether I’m running on fumes or a full tank.

I’ve recently been reading Jonathan Kozol’s Shame of the Nation as an assignment for one of my teaching credential courses. Lately, I’ve only had time to read books that have been assigned, and not so much for pleasure. However, I find Shame of the Nation intriguing and pleasurable to read. One particular chapter described how state testing and test results have molded school curriculum’s, primarily in urban schools, towards a utilitarian type teaching model. Meaning, the students were being taught in subjects that would eventually employ them in specific industries and businesses. The curriculum was also limited to what would be on the state test, so many children were lacking common knowledge of history and science. What particularly sparked my interest was Kozol’s opinion that these children were being boxed into a certain career path and had very few choices. Basically, they weren’t being taught how to think independently or creatively. His explanation of this method of teaching inner-city children, is that there worth was viewed as less important factors in the overall economy. (I’m summarizing his view point in this statement).

This lead me to thinking that these school-to-work programs, as they are called, are formed upon a consumer-based economy. What would happen if our economy changed and it wasn’t so consumer driven? How would these school-to-work programs succeed if there wasn’t a need for so many restaurant cooks at the Hilton (one particular school-to-work example in the book). My thought behind this is what is to come of our future generation if we gear them towards a specific trade, but then that trade doesn’t exist in the future?

Unemployment Chart - Google

Today,  I read an article in the Los Angeles Times that our nation’s unemployment figure is 9.8%, however, this may not truly reflect the entire unemployment rate. They estimated it could be as high as 17%! The article also went on to describe how our economy may be coming out of this recession, but the employment will most likely lag behind for some time to come. Our current economic model is based on consumers purchasing items. If consumers are out of work, or scared because they might lose their jobs, they aren’t spending their money on frivolous items. This ultimately affects our economy.

If people’s spending habits change, due to this recession, what will the future economic model look like? Will our economy shrink? Will people, who have lost their jobs, have to become creative thinkers and start their own business or freelance permanently? What will the students, who are enrolled in the school-to-work program, do once they graduate? If they haven’t been taught how to think independently, or creatively, or lack the skills outside of the trade they have been taught, what kind of future do they have?

I obviously have many questions and not many answers. My obvious solution to educating our future children is allowing them to think outside the box, be creative, get those higher-thinking skills in place. This is something state testing doesn’t test, nor is it something that can be measured in a standardized test. Of course students need solid reading and math skills for everyday activities and tasks, but they also need to be knowledgeable in history and science, and ask thought-provoking questions about things that interest them. If we want to continue to be a prominent country in a world economic model, we need to prepare children accordingly.

What are your thoughts about the future of our economy? Will our economic model change or shrink? Are there other successful economic models to compare ours to? Should children be viewed as assets and taught specific trades if they are viewed as not being capable of far greater things? I’m curious to know what other’s think, feel free to share your thoughts.

Our Current Water Level - Yikes! We're almost out of H2O

Most of my life I’ve lived in Southern California, a fairly arid region. We hardly ever experience thunderstorms, or summer rain showers. From June through late November or December, our precipitation is minimal to none. Over the past few years, however, we have experience prolonged periods of dryness (prolonged meaning it stops raining in March and doesn’t rain again until the following January!), so that officially puts us in a state of drought. Our municipal department of water and power has put us on alert and is limiting how much water we can use. They are prohibiting spraying off sidewalks and driveways, limiting our garden and lawn watering to twice a week, and sending out tips on how to conserve water in the home.

My husband and I have been very good at conserving our water. We have stopped watering the lawn altogether; it’s really very hard to have a beautiful green lawn with a minimal watering schedule, so we’ve given up on the lawn for now. We have purchased drought-resistant container plants, we only have to water them twice a week. We have reduced the amount of laundry we wash, I’m trying to get better at wearing pants that aren’t dirty twice instead of only once and drying towels in the dryer instead of immediately throwing them in the laundry if they are still clean. We’re even doing the whole, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” routine in one of our bathrooms. Our toilets are old, and since we live in a rental, we aren’t replacing them anytime soon. Our water usage over the past few months has been below our limit (28 HCF), which makes me feel like our efforts are paying off.

What made me think about our limited amount of rain are the trees around our house. Lately, they have been shedding their bark, splitting and cracking right though the branches, and looking like they are in distress. These aren’t immature trees, they are older trees that we have never, in our four years of living here, had to water individually. I’m beginning to think that the lack of rain, and our limiting the amount of water we are using around the house, is causing them to die.

One particularly stressed tree is a huge shade tree in our front lawn. It basically shades the whole front of our house. Its branches reach over our roof. One large branch, that leans over our roof, has a huge, gaping crack down the center. I’m afraid that in our next big wind storm (fall is the season for wind here in Southern California) that branch is going to crack in half and topple onto our roof! My dilemna is should I water the trees deeply and hope to reduce the amount of damage that’s been done or wait it out for the rain to come? What if the rain doesn’t come? Perhaps Southern California will turn into a desert in the coming future and all the large trees will eventually die out due to lack of water. Obviously, to resolve the current distressed trees, I think I can use a little bit of our water and give them all a deep watering this weekend!

My husband and I have been really good about paying off our credit cards and saving some money. We’ve also revised our budget for the coming months that will take us into ‘savings-mode’ as we start the new year. Our budget is looking great, we can pat ourselves on the back. However, we still have a couple of really large bills that we now have to tackle.

To begin with, we took out a line of credit a few years back to get our business through the slower summer season. We had recently hired a full-time employee and we really wanted to keep him. We originally thought we’d only use half the amount of the line of credit and pay it back within 6-12 months. Well, sometimes if you open a can of worms, you get a rotten smell, and that ‘s exactly what happened. Instead of only using half the line of credit, we gobbled up the whole thing and at a horrible APR. (Maybe my analogy isn’t the best one, but you get the picture!)

We made the monthly payments in the beginning, which were a whopping $275 a month, then I fell behind. I was able to get them back on track within a couple of months, but with an APR of close to 30%, the finance charges and late fees had added hundreds of dollars to the original loan amount. My husband was able to work out a deal with them and reduce our APR for a limited time, it allowed me to catch up on payments and reduce the total due back to the original loaned amount.

We are now at square one again, meaning I’m looking at a $9,000 loan with payments averaging $275 a month. So, our new strategy is to pay this sucker off as quick as we can. Our first step, which we are taking this coming month, is to pay off $1,000 of the loan. This will reduce the total to $8,000. The $1,000 will most likely be coming out of our savings OR an outstanding invoice that we are waiting on (click here to see our outstanding client invoices.) In November, my goal is to then pay another $500, or close to $1,000 if I can, to reduce the loan amount to $7,500 or less. If we can get this monster of a loan down to a more manageable $6,000 or less by the end of this year, we will be looking pretty good.

Our other two large items that we owe money on, which aren’t that unfamiliar to most people, is a student loan, totaling $10,000, and a car loan, totaling $11,000. Both of these loans have decent APR’s and affordable monthly payments. We’d like to tackle the car loan in the beginning of next year, but this will largely be due to our success on paying down our line of credit. My husband and I both think that we will be able to get approved for a mortgage if we have a car and student loan. Although, a mortgage broker may not look so kindly on the line of credit.

Some readers may think we’re crazy to be thinking of purchasing a house when we still have close to $30,000 in outstanding debt. However, our rent alone is $1,800 a month, which is affordable in Los Angeles. I’ve used a few mortgage calculators and if we can actually find a house for $250,000 – $270,000, our mortgage payment will be less than our rent. Even once I add in property taxes and home owners insurance, our total monthly payment should be close to what we are paying in rent. So, my thought is, “Why throw this money to my landlord, and watch as he uses it to improve his house next door, when I could be paying it toward something I own?” Literally, every time we pay rent, my slum-landlord (who lives next door) does something cosmetic to his house within two days of receiving our payment. That really irks me.

Does anyone have thoughts on my debt repayment plan? Obviously, I still have a way to go over the next few months, but any suggestions are helpful. What about purchasing a home even with our outstanding debt?