My first quilt!

I'm designing a window display on Woodward Avenue in anticipation of the Final Four coming to Detroit. My team has 3 windows. Of course, I'm using mine to promote the glamorous life of thrift! The beauty of coordinating my window with my return to frugality and simplicity is that everything will be reused (can't wait to stuff my precious cashmere in the cedar lined hope chest!), recycled (I will re-roll the wrapping paper covering the floors and walls and make dresses from the curtains!) or returned (items from the thrift stores will go right back).

Learning a traditional skill, such as sewing, can have numerous money-saving and -accruing benefits. I could dedicate more than a few posts to this subject. It's all about learning for earning.

Dressing windows is really fun and I'm lucky to find opportunities to do it. In Detroit, there are so many barren and forgotten windows. I think it would be prudent to get more artists, small businesses, non-profits, school classrooms, etc. to use the windows to display their talents. Let's improve the streetscapes. We'll sign the liability forms, we'll clean up our mess (and theirs!). They're just sitting there, waiting for someone to love them!

Clean Slate

I just paid off all my non-mortgage debt, $800, down from $6,000 earlier in 08. Kinda scary. After steadily building a savings/emergency fund, I wanted to keep it above a benchmark number. It made me happy, to see it there, growing. Earlier, I thought I would pay the debt in installments while reaching a savings goal. I surpassed the goal and still owed on this balance. Nonsense. I'd rather not pay a fee while they hold my debt.

Reading a few personal finance blogs was all the motivation I needed. It's great to celebrate and relish in an accomplishment, but I needed to detach myself from the importance of maintaining this account balance and take action. It requires courage. The end result was as satisfying as the monetary goal!

If it's on the card, it wasn't my money to spend. Sure the promise of miles seemed sweet, I managed a trip to Portland for my friends wedding. But when calculated, I received only 1 stinking percent, of what I spent, back! It's just a weapon of mass consumption! Try spending only cash for a week and see if you notice a down tick in accumulation. And don't buy online. It's too easy to click a few buttons. There aren't enough barriers, psychological, physiological, whatev's.

The card will be relegated to exceptional situations or when I plan to quick pay. Now, I can focus on getting the savings back and not be throwing pennies at my debt. Gone. Poof. Hooray! Back in black.

Make your own toothpaste

Using these simple household items will give you a happy mouth! When we ran out of toothpaste as a kid my mom would pull out the baking soda. Just wet brush, dip and apply. When you really need to pinch go with baking soda. It probably costs less than a penny per brush. The taste will take some getting used to. The mild abrasion power of baking soda will leave your teeth feeling good and scrubbed. Worries about lack of flouride should be nil as research confirms, again and again, that flouride actually damages your teeth and is a suspected neurotoxin! Read here for more disturbing information about flouride...

Peroxide makes a good gargle. Mix with an equal part water. Make sure not to swallow any by exhaling slowly as you gargle. It is a strange sensation! Used in tandem, your teeth will be whiter and cleaner. Peroxide not only whitens, but kills odor causing bacteria. You may want to use the peroxide only once a week to see how your mouth reacts.

Notice there is only a speck of toothpaste on the brush. When using store bought toothpaste, that is all you ever really need! Never the amount shown in commercials to get you to overuse product and keep production levels up, up, up. I find myself foaming to capacity halfway through and having to spit and continue.

I could never bring myself to floss regularly until my husband was given a Reach brand dental flosser from a dental hygenist friend. You will become addicted!

Sound eerily familiar...

The Main Causes of the Great Depression. (click for a link, dah-link)
Choose to thrive. It's a cosmic casino, man.

Free Plastic Surgery...

...without the plastic or the surgery!

Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Try it while placing a finger at the point before your chin meets your neck. Can you feel a muscle contract?

If you do it on the daily, you'll keep that muscle active and tight and prevent chicken neck jowls!

For a more advanced workout, contract all the muscles in your face. Mush your face in every which way, puff out your cheeks and suck them in, roll your lips over your gums and teeth, furrow your brow. This will keep your many, many face muscles in good, youthful shape.

And keep out of the sun peach skins...

Saving Karyn by Karyn Bosnak: Book Report

Do you only pay the minimum balance on your credit cards? Do you know what your interest rate is? Do you have spending amnesia? Do you charge it now and conjure a way to pay later? Do you make excuses why you need, deserve, require a thing? This book might give you some hope, some direction, some peace. It's time to get off the merry-go-round, woman!

While on my sickbed the past 3 days (called off again so I wouldn't backslide), I managed to get in some reading. I picked up some cheap paperbacks at the corner Salvation Army. For this post, I'm reviewing Saving Karyn by Karyn Bosnak purchased for $.59, not bad. You can get it for a penny on Amazon but the shipping costs would put it at almost $3.

This is an actual account of Karyn's experience with out-of-control revolving debt (credit card with interest charges's, we all got em). Sound familiar? Midwestern girl moves to NYC to find herself. Gets in over her head trying to keep up in a status driven world, ends up slumming in Brooklyn with rats and roaches, subsisting on tortilla chips and pickles at one point, while trying to maintain employment during the 9/11 tumult.

You may have heard of her story a while back. She made headlines around the world for launching a website asking people to send money to help pay off her debt. And would you believe, it worked! If only it were that easy! You come to see that it totally sucked and gave her mad stress. As I read, I couldn't help but feel sick as you followed her into a chasm of careless spending. She feels the all to real consequences in less than 1 year in town. Karyn is so ashamed of herself she keeps it hidden under her "chipper attitude". An attitude that, although, allows her to keep a job and the book interesting, eats away at her self-respect and confidence that all those shoes and purses could never replace. Which she, ironically, hawks on ebay.

At first, her voice is a little gosh, shucks. Also, she comes off as gullible and non-confrontational, all very midwesterny traits I must say;) I mean the makeup counter guy totally sized her up. He subtly digs into her insecurities to heap endless products upon her under 30 skin, that she diligently protects. When the final tally hits $600 she doesn't have the guts much less incredulence to pull out. Meanwhile her debt is at a staggering $15,000 within 4 months! I'd break out in hives if I paid more than $5 for a mascara.

Before each chapter, we get a peek at her unrelenting credit card bills. She buys a couch with store credit. If you look closely within the 5th month, 1 month after the no-interest falls off, her late first payment only covers the interest and late fees. Aurgghhh! She makes complex calculations while trying to stay ahead of her American Express card debt, even giving it an acronym worthy only of the financial sector. She could just as easily applied her mathematical wizardry to saving money under no duress whatsoever.

Her accounts of people's charity and goodwill is a welcome testament to the humanity of people, of which, she humbly points out. Luckily, it takes the edge off the death threats and mean-spirited copycats! There is a happy ending, but this is a cautionary tale. Her website SaveKaryn.com is still up and running. Make sure to check out the original website for her greatest hits.

It was a quick and breezy read. I wish I could say I can't relate. I've seen it happen to people close to me and in my own life when a business went bust. It is no fun and unnecessary! As we watch our economic system capitulate, we see the absolute folly of spending more than we earn - on a global level! In an intoxicating race to live some imaginary lifestyle, as seen on tv, we cashed out the future. By some accounts, we are earning just as much as we ever did, but our value system has morphed.

Cheers to the simple life!

*I'm offering this book, free-of-charge and free shipping, to my first subscriber!

Sick days : What to do when your down...

I'm a little sick. I had to call off work on a Friday night, I may have to tonight (*update: just did. So glad!). The weekends mean big money in waitressing land. Now I can't enter income on my budget worksheet. Waah! Until yesterday, I've not called off at this job. I hate calling off. It gives me anxiety. I had to give myself permission to call off. I had to get advice and encouragement from my friends and hubby. Who, by the way, is a fine nurse. I take pride in my work ethic. I fairly enjoy the work and my coworkers. I just got put on both weekend nights and I can't even be reliable, but I feel like absolute crap! I'm sure they can handle it without me...

However, the sickness has not affected my brain - it was already this way;) So, it is my laptop, me and the couch. This is a great opportunity to write about the budget worksheet in action. Once you see saving money as spending money on yourself, you might find a little more excitement in it all. Stacking dollars, pennies if you got 'em, is a great pastime, woo wee!

After ceasing to worry about the money I was not making this weekend, I was able to find strength from my budget worksheet. Seriously. Since keeping track and putting my all into saving, I created a nice cushion, or emergency fund, to protect me in times I couldn't count on making money or a crisis came up. Getting sick is exactly what this should allow for.

Additionally, I can look through past expenditures to see where I can cut spending to maintain a fairly decent savings total at the end of the month.

I recently splurged on a 25 lb. bag of rice for $11.99, that's $.47 a/n lb (I did just spy a 20 lb bag for 8.99 which brings the price down to $.45 a/n lb). Long grain white because it stores indefinitely. This contradicts the high priority I place on health through diet, but I digress. I could slice spending on groceries by making a lot of rice and beans meals and spice them up with veg and herb. Rice makes a good, filling brekky too. Cutting into my grocery bills won't be too hard because I have been making some bulk staple purchases. I am just starting to keep track and build my price list (more later), while experimenting with recipes from the depression, albeit with more health promoting ingredients.

I can also say no to nights out. Lately, I enjoy seeing my friends in the day, when I can see and hear them. Besides being waaay cheaper, it is much more efficient. I know, I know, what a soulless way to look at it, but loud, smoky bars just aren't cutting it. Stopping by to dish over a few cups of teas is definitely more rewarding. Although, I have less hilarious drunk and stoopid stories to tell. Ha!

Now, if only I could cut down on my cell phone bill...it doesn't hurt to dream. Maybe if we all banded together we could make the phone companies stop ripping us off! I'm going to look more into their feckless pricing scenarios. The New York Times recently did a story on how text messaging costs next to nothing for phone companies but, oh, how they charge. I have been able to lower my cell phone burden by texting more therefore enabling me to move to a cheaper plan. Alas, I am still not satisfied! Considering adding my mother to my family plan, is that a mistake?

*I'll post a link to the article soon-soon. I know I posted it to my facebook.

The nurse just brought me my blueberry waffles. Gotta nosh!

Begin at the Beginning: Your Budget Worksheet!

It's fine, really. I've come to terms with being a little obsessive about saving money. It's kind of my hobby. The more I talk about it, the more people I meet who want in.

In the past, I've kept track of my spending in calendars that we're gifted to me. For two years straight I entered anything costing a $1 or more. This was back when I was going out religiously. So I wasn't shocked at the tally's rung up under "entertainment". Truthfully, I was the cheapest of the bunch regardless. I just got to a point where I wanted to see where all that hard-earned money was escaping to!

As a waitress working towards bachelor's degree, I also wanted to track what days and months were particularly flush and take holidays and cram on the not so flush. With my new found frugality, I pursued a system that didn't require so much work. I was crunching all the numbers myself. So last week, I learned excel. Online. For free. I downloaded free office software, OpenOffice, and set about creating my personalized budget worksheet. It adds everything up AUTOMATICALLY! Yeah, didn't major in computer science, as an artist I focused more on graphics programs anyways.

My latest challenge, has been getting my husband to use the budget worksheet. I will blog about using charm to slay your mates financial defenses. I do not know yet why he resists so much! He probably doesn't want to know!

I am posting my blank budget worksheet that you can personalize! Break it down as little or large as you need. I recommend rounding to the nearest dollar and then half-dollar with more experience. Don't worry if you miss a few. Just start getting acclimated to the idea. You might even start writing expenditures on scrap paper to keep track. So much can happen in a day. I can't emphasize enough how powerful this tool is for understanding your individual spending habits and how to establish discipline. Just knowing that every purchase you make has to be entered causes a pause before buying. Discovering where you really spend money can be eye-opening. Once you have a little history to work off of, you can start slicing into each category. With a little more history, you can set realistic spending caps in each category and stop yourself from going over.

For a good time, imagine ways to add more categories to your income section...

Download Budget Worksheet HERE! Enter the Captcha, Click "Download Now", wait 40 seconds and click "regular download. Copy the file into your own excel software if it opens read-only. Let me know if and how this helps or if you have any problems!
Enjoy!