Throwback Thursday: Mavis Asked, I Answered

Five years ago, I answered the challenge from fellow blogger, Mavis Butterfield of 100 Dollars a Month, to share ways my family saves money without sacrificing our quality of life.  

I don't know whether my family would agree or not, but I just think that we have had an amazing life, and frankly, I don't think my children have ever wanted for anything, in spite of the fact that,  we are pretty frugal.

Most of the things in the article are things we still do, and in many ways, we've even gone further down the path of frugality than where we were when I wrote this article.  For instance, I still don't purchase commercial cleaners, but I also learned to make soap.  So, the savings there is even greater, because I don't need to purchase those expensive Dr. Bonner's products anymore. 

Here's the article from 2016, which was posted on Mavis' blog.

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Like more than two-thirds of Americans, I didn’t grow up on a farm. Both of my parents did, and like most people of their generation, they hoped to give me and my sisters a better life, which, for them, meant one where I would go to college so that I could get a good job with which I would earn enough money to support a middle class, suburban lifestyle with the goal being that I wouldn’t have to struggle or work as hard as they and their parents did.

Like many people in my generation, however, I grew up feeling something was missing in my life, and while my parents had worked very hard to get me off the farm, I wanted nothing more than to get back on it. Unfortunately, because in my early adulthood, I’d followed the standard American Dream (college, a career, a house, cars, kids, and pets, i.e. loans, mortgage, credit cards and debt-up-to-my-eyeballs), I was kind of stuck with a mortgage and a lifestyle that I just couldn’t, easily, walk away from.

So, I took Teddy Roosevelt’s sage advice, and I started doing what I could with what I had where I am. At first, part of my motivation was to make my life more eco-friendly, but ultimately, my goal was to live more simply, which would translate to needing make less money, which would translate into not needing to struggle so hard in a job I hated (in William Wallace’s words, FREEDOM!). In short, most of our lifestyle changes were all about saving dough to get us out of debt so that we could quit working for “the man” and focus on doing what we loved.

To be honest, most of the time we don’t feel like we’re saving any money. Most of the time, it feels like we’re right on the edge, and so I don’t, often, feel like I have any great how-to advice when it comes to pinching pennies, but when I read articles on money-saving tips, I realize that my family also does a lot of the things that other people do, and in some ways, we go a step beyond. So, I thought I would give it a shot.

As an intro, I live on a quarter acre suburban lot in southern Maine. I share my life with my ever-patient husband, who works full-time as an Engineer in Maine’s small, but growing, technology industry. He would rather be sitting by our fire pit, carving chess pieces and boiling maple sap to syrup, or walking through the woods hunting mushrooms. We have five children, two adults who have kids of their own, and three younger daughters, who’ve made this lifestyle transition with us, mostly happily. We share our small home with four big dogs, three cats, seven rabbits, and a flock of suburban chickens, who keep us supplied in eggs and eat all of the ticks in the yard.  (update: all the kids are, now, adults, and the animal count has changed - fewer dogs, fewer rabbits, and a Parrot).

We have several beautiful walking trails near our home. We like to take the dogs out for long walks.

I’m thankful to Mavis for challenging me to take a good, hard look at our lifestyle choices. This has been a very fun exercise, and I hope it’s useful to someone else, too ;).

1. How do you keep your food budget in check?

We pinch pennies for a lot of the things we buy, but for the most part, our food spending is not one of those areas where we choose to save money by buying the cheapest food. We like food – good, quality food – and we have a food sensitivity, which means we have to avoid certain food additives anyway. We almost never purchase pre-packaged or boxed foods, because too often those foods contain ingredients that don’t meet our personal standards and/or they contain ingredients we can not eat. When we shop for food, we look for items that are local, “in season”, organic, whole food, and/or contain no GMO ingredients. Keeping spending under control is a real challenge when what we buy is often a lot more expensive than some of the other choices out there.

As such, being able to save in other ways on our food budget is incredibly important and so we’ve learned a few tricks a long the way.

a. We trade convenience for quality. A local farmer has raw milk for sale on his farm. The caveat is that we have to actually GO to the farm and pick it up ourselves and supply our own containers (buying right off the farm is a legal option where I live in Maine). Raw milk pre-bottled at the health food store can cost as much at $10/gallon. We get it for a lot less, because we’re willing to take the less convenient route by going to the farm.

b. As long as the food meets our standard, we don’t pass up the opportunity for free or cheap food. Last winter, my daughter saw a deer get hit by a car. In Maine, the person who hit the deer can, legally, take that deer home, after it has been tagged. The driver, in this case, did not want the carcass, and so we were able to take it. We paid for butchering (although in the past, we’ve butchered it ourselves), and ended up with 100 lbs of “organic” meat for under $2/lb. In addition, we are often offered free, locally-grown produce when someone’s garden is over producing. A few years ago, a co-worker offered my husband plums. He said that his plum tree was producing like crazy, and there was more food than he could use. We ended up with several 5 gallon buckets full of plums and made jelly and wine.

c. We try to be as self-sufficient as possible. We live on a quarter acre in suburban southern Maine. We raise most of the vegetables we eat during the growing season, plus chickens for eggs and meat, and rabbits for manure for our gardens and for meat for us.

d. We store what we harvest. There are a lot of ways to preserve food, and we’ve tried most of them. I didn’t start canning until I was in my 30s, but since then, not only do I can everything I can get into a jar. I’ve also salted fish, cured meats, fermented both vegetables and fruit juices (wine), and dehydrated herbs, fruits, and meats. When we first started storing food, preserving was a seasonal thing, and I had to make a decision about what I was going to do with it right when it came into my kitchen. Now, I know that I can take some time. I can freeze the excess of berries now, and later, when life slows down (Ha!) I can make preserves. I can take thinly cut meat from the butcher out of the freezer and marinate it and dehydrate it anytime I want. It takes some of the pressure off of getting it all done at once and has really expanded our ability to save money, because we can purchase more, in season, freeze it, and then, deal with it all later, to make room in the freezer for other things.

e. We buy local food in season. During the summer, we spend a lot of time at local farm stands and Farmer’s Markets. We also purchase meat we can’t raise in bulk from local farms in the form of a pig share or cow share. We pay the farmer for the animal (not the meat), and a local butcher to process the animal for us. It’s a flat, per pound rate for every cut, and so we pay the same per pound price for hamburg that we pay for filet mignon. It works out to a pretty good deal, and it gives us a nice variety of cuts to choose from.

f. We learned to accept the gift of nature’s bounty. There is a plethora of wild foods, and over the years, we’ve learned to identify, harvest and store what we are freely given. Our first wild food of the calendar year is maple syrup. We started almost ten years ago with three taps, and we now tap more than twenty trees – some on our neighbors’ land (with their permission – and we share the syrup). Maple syrup is incredibly expensive, and we save a significant amount of money per year by harvesting this wild food ourselves. We also harvest and eat: wild greens, wild game (like turkey, which my husband bow-hunts), fish, clams, berries, invasive plants like Japanese Knotweed, milkweed, some wild mushrooms (chanterelles, black trumpet, and lion’s mane), hazelnuts, and a few others. Many of those wild, free-for-the-taking foods are gourmet delights that cost a great deal of money in the store.

g. We barter. We taught a class on tanning rabbit hides and earned a bagful of local produce and some loaves of artisan bread. We traded rabbit for goat cheese. We traded duck eggs for homemade granola.

h. Finally, we don’t waste food. We use every part of everything that we can. A chicken is cooked and eaten for several meals and the bones are cooked into broth for soup later. Apple peels are made into vinegar. Pumpkin seeds are roasted and eaten. Seeds that aren’t eaten are saved and replanted next year.

Saving money on food could be difficult for us, because we like to eat well, but by making conscious choices and taking a little more time and care, we can eat well and not break the bank.

Any tips on saving for saving entertainment costs? Preferably ones that don’t require you to sit at home alone like a shut-in…

We love the theater. My youngest was a nursing baby when we saw Stomp! live. Her sister was four when we took her to see Cats. We took our girls to see the Cirque de Soliel, twice. My children have seen the Nutcracker Ballet. We bought tickets for a series of plays based on children’s books (including Curious George and Imogene’s Antlers). Two of my daughters and I even saw the production of “Anything Goes” (starring Colin Donnell) at the Stephen Sondheim Theater on Broadway in NYC. Unfortunately, tickets are incredibly expensive and going to the theater is not something we can afford to do as regularly was we would have liked.

Luckily, we discovered the perfect solution. We became volunteers. Our community theater is always looking for volunteers for a variety of jobs from set building and costume designing to hanging promotional posters. Volunteers are paid in comp tickets. They also need ushers, and as part of the usher staff, we are allowed to stay and see the show, for free. Our community theater does four shows per year, and for the last three years, we have seen every show in every season, except one. My entire family volunteers. The people at the theater call us “The Browns”, like we’re a collective, and we joke that we run in a pack. If you see one of us, we’re probably all present. My youngest daughter has been a volunteer usher since she was ten.

Being willing to work as a volunteer has opened up many opportunities for us to enjoy local entertainment venues. As a volunteer at our local food pantry, I had the opportunity to attend the Blues Festival, for free, because the pantry had a donation booth that I was working during the festival. In the fall, our community group hosts a haunted hayride. We volunteer to work as actors in the hayride, and we get free tickets so we go on the ride, too.

Every year there are dozens of agricultural fairs here in Maine. One of the biggest and most well attended (by people from all over the country) is the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine. One year I found out about an opportunity to volunteer to man a booth that was sponsored by a local foods group. I had to “work” for an hour, and our admission to the fair for the day was free.

Every community has volunteer opportunities, and sometimes spending a few hours working will yield an equal amount of free entertainment.

How do you stretch your dollar when clothes shopping?

First, let me admit that I hate shopping. I hate the flash and shiny of the stores that are designed to make me discontented with my beautiful life. After fifteen minutes of looking at all of the colors and patterns and too many choices, I get a niggling headache.

What really irritates me is after I’ve checked out, because these days, there’s always that note at the bottom of the receipt that tells me how much money I’ve saved. Um, no, actually, I SPENT money. I tried explaining that to a cashier, once, who was very excited to show me that I’d saved $50. I said, “Actually, I spent $30. If I wanted to save money, I wouldn’t be shopping.” She didn’t understand.

Unfortunately, with five children (two of whom are adults, now), I’ve had to learn to push through the discomfort and get the job done. There was a time when we looked for the cheapest clothes we could find (again, dressing five kids is expensive), but what we found was that the less expensive brands meant that we were replacing clothes and shoes more often, and so we had to change our tactics.

After many years of being disappointed and spending a lot of money, I figured out how to be smarter in our buying choices. The first thing I did was to avoid shopping centers except when we absolutely needed something, which means that we don’t impulse shop, which means we have more money for things we actually need.

The second thing I did was to learn to shop at the best time, which is when no one else is. My children joke about February 15 being “candy day”, because it’s the day after Valentine’s Day and all of the candy is on sale. The same wisdom applies to clothes shopping. If we wait until the end of September to back-to-school shop (and because we home school, we don’t really need to back-to-school shop), we can get some great deals on clothes. Just after Easter, my daughter needed some new clothes for the theater (black dress slacks or a black skirt and white top). Winter clothes were marked down to 85% off the sticker price, all of the Easter dresses were on sale at half off, and many of the spring clothes were also at bargain prices (30% off or better). We were able to stock her up on shirts and jeans for the upcoming warmer season, AND find a new ushering outfit for less than $70. The receipt said we saved $60.

I also learned to love second-hand, which was no small feat. Growing up in the suburbs during the late 70s and early 80s, thrift stores, like the Salvation Army Store, had a reputation of being for “poor people”, and at that time, being “poor” was viewed as a moral shortfall. My mother avoided second-hand stores. We were even loath to accept hand-me-downs from friends, even though we weren’t wealthy and could have benefited from some quality clothes. These days thrifting is an art form. Everyone does it, and everyone brags about their incredible thrift-store treasures.

The first time I voluntarily purchased clothes second-hand was when my, now, nineteen year old daughter was a baby (which, roughly, coincides with the beginning of the shabby-chic movement). I had just relocated to Maine and my very practical and thrifty Yankee in-laws introduced me to Goodwill. I was an immediate convert, and I’ve enjoyed browsing the thrift stores ever since, and I know where every Goodwill within a 20 mile radius of my house is located. I even have a 10% discount card to Goodwill. For someone who has the time to look a little more closely, there is an opportunity to find high quality, designer label clothes at rock-bottom prices. My favorite find is my 100% wool coat that I have been wearing for six years. I paid $5. It’s still in perfect shape. I usually pair it with the dog-fur scarf my daughter knitted for me out of, yes, fur we collected when we brushed our dog, and we had spun into a super soft, beautiful chocolate colored yarn.

Of course, even buying new-to-me clothes still costs money, and the best way I’ve found to save money on clothes is to wear the clothes until they just can not be worn anymore, which means learning to repair them. I love my Merino wool socks, but one pair costs over $8, and I can only wear them for a season before they get holes in the bottoms of them. A season, for me, is seven months of continuous wear, because it’s cold where I live, and I wear socks most of the time. I learned to darn my socks so that they last a little longer. I repair clothes that can be repaired, like ironing a patches in my ten year old jean jacket so that I can keep wearing it, dying shirts that have stains instead of relegating them to a rag bag or “work clothes”, and having shoes resoled instead of buying a new pair (resoling my Birkenstocks cost me $40. A new pair costs more than $100).

And, finally, there is something to be said for learning some skills associated with clothes making, like sewing and knitting. My daughter knitted my dog-fur scarf for me, and I’ve been wearing it for six years. Our dog passed away in 2012, but I still have that scarf, which serves as a beautiful reminder of our companion and pet. While I don’t knit very much or very well, I do sew. For my first two pregnancies, I made all of my own maternity clothes. For many years at Christmas, I would make pajama pants for my husband and daughters. I’ve made dance costumes, toys, and quilts. I’ve made play dresses and dress-up clothes for my daughters. I’ve made skirts for myself. Last summer, using some old shirts, I made a pair of underwear and a new skirt. The best part of making my own clothes is that I can tailor them to fit my body, which is just a half size wrong for most off-the-rack clothes, which are usually just too tight or just too loose.

What are your tips for being a gracious host to family and friends without breaking the bank?

I love to host parties. We have an annual “Brown Summer Party”, which can have as many as fifty invited guests. Having parties during the summer is perfect, for us, because we keep the guests outside, which means that we don’t have to do a lot of decorating, because my garden, full of blooming flowers, provides most of the décor.

I never ask my guests to bring food (although many of them will, and it’s fun to see the wonderful and eclectic selection of food). We will provide the main dish. The food we provide is usually home made, often from stuff we’ve grown or gathered. We love to cook fancy tasting and sounding food, that’s actually super cheap. One of our favorites is Naan (which is grilled flat bread, and bread is just flour, water, yeast, sugar and salt) served with grilled vegetables and meat on a skewer (Shish Kebabs – super fancy!). With a couple of pounds of inexpensive meat cubed and marinated in a home made marinade, seasonal vegetables cut into bite-sized pieces, and some bread, we can serve all of our guests a super-fancy, super simple, super inexpensive, super delicious meal. For beverages, we serve iced tea (home brewed for pennies, even when we use organic sugar), hand-squeezed lemonade, and our home brewed wine or beer.

We save a ton of money on dishes and napkins, because we always use real plates, canning jars for glasses, metal forks and spoons, and cloth napkins instead of one-use paper or plastic. All of the dishes were bargains. They were either given to us over the years by friends or family members who were cleaning out, or purchased cheaply at thrift stores specifically for our parties. We keep them in a plastic bin in the back of a closet, and they don’t take up any extra space in our kitchen cabinets. We also have extra cloth napkins and table cloths, and special table decorations (like candle holders). These things make our parties extra special, and because we can reuse them over and over again, have saved us a lot of money over the years.

We hosted my son’s wedding reception on our lawn. It cost less than $300, most of which went to pay for tables, chairs, and the tent. I purchased a script for a Mystery Dinner, and his wedding reception was a completely unorthodox Mystery Dinner party with a three course meal, including a Leg of Lamb (in our freezer from a lamb we’d purchased from a local farmer) that was served by his younger siblings and their friends.

Last fall, my daughter was cast in a our community theater production of Jekyll & Hyde. After the show one night, she invited the cast and crew over to our house for an impromptu cast party. We had all been at the show – my daughter was on stage, and the rest of us were ushering – and suddenly, I had a dozen people to feed. I hadn’t had any time to plan for a party at my house, and so I took a quick inventory, and then, started slicing. I made a plate with apple wedges, sliced cheese and pepperonis, crackers, and kalamata olives (pitted). We also served chips and salsa, and popped a couple of bowls full of popcorn. Everyone had a blast, there was plenty of food, and it didn’t cost me a thing, because it was food that we already had in our pantry.

When it comes to parties, what I’ve found is that cooking my own food is so much easier than trying to plan around ready-made food I can buy. Veggie trays from the grocery store are very convenient, but for $15, I can purchase twice the food from my local farmer, and a simple dip using a mayonnaise base with a splash of red wine vinegar and a couple of teaspoons of herbs, is much better, and much healthier, than the preservative laden concoctions that come with the veggie trays.

To vacation or not to vacation? That is the question.

I live in “Vacationland” two miles from the beach, within five miles of four amusement parks, and mile and a half from the drive-in movie theater. There are three campgrounds in my town, if I really want to pay someone, but for no extra money, I can pitch a tent in my front yard and have the exact same experience without having to spend half a week packing, and then another week unpacking and cleaning.

There’s cross-country and downhill skiing, snow-tubing, and ice skating in the winter, hiking year-round, canoeing on huge inland lakes or kayaking on the salt marsh tidal river (or if I’m feeling adventurous paddling out to one of the islands off the coast, or even more fun, to the old Civil War fort out in the bay).

There are lighthouses to visit. I can think of six different museums right off the top of my head – half of which I can get to by bicycle. We even have several “period” villages where we can experience “life as it used to be.”

I live a couple of miles from the train station where I can ride the rails from Brunswick, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts, and then, take a bus to South Station in Boston and head down to NYC or even Washington, D.C. for a day trip (sleeping on the train on the way back).

The short answer is that I don’t vacation, because the only place I could go that wouldn’t have something that I already have where I live is to visit family.

All of that said, I know that everyone doesn’t have the same environment or amenities that I have. I live in a tourist-centric community, and my entire community caters to having people visit here on vacation. I can feel like I’m on vacation and not spend a dime.

But I also think we tend to ignore what our own communities have to offer because we’re always looking across the fence at that green grass over there, and ignoring the verdant growth beneath our feet. I homeschool my children, and when they were young, as part of our study of geography, we traded flat travelers with other homeschoolers around the country. The point was to “host” the flat traveler, taking him/her on adventures around our community so that the other family could see what was here, where we live. They did the same with our flat traveler. What I discovered is that there are so many amazing things to see and do in every community, and I think most people don’t realize that, right around the corner, there’s a very cool thing. We often can save hundreds of dollars, just by “stay-cationing” and exploring what’s in our own backyards.

List the top things you can do without, WITHOUT sacrificing quality of life.

As I was compiling my list of things we do without, without sacrificing quality of life, I realized that they all start with the letter C. What’s great about all of them is that, not only am I not sacrificing quality of life, but I’m actually improving it, because by not having/using any of these things, we’re saving money.

There are probably a lot more things we eschew without suffering, but these are my Top Cs:

a. Cable. I know a lot of people are dumping their cable service, because it makes sense. With online streaming options, like Netflix and Hulu, the only benefit to having cable (for non-sports people, like us) is that the shows are current. We don’t mind being a season or two behind everyone else. Some people still use cable for their home-based Internet service. When we disconnected cable television, we were using a DSL service through the phone company. When we disconnected our landline phone service, we also discontinued DSL, and we are now using mobile Internet service. The overall savings (allowing that we were also paying for cell phone service, and the landline was redundant), per month, is more than $70.

But there was an additional, often overlooked, benefit to cutting cable. When we discontinued cable, we also gave away our television set and all of the peripherals. We have laptop computers and LED computer monitors (which use very little electricity, comparatively), and so we can watch DVDs and stream online programming. After we stopped using our television and permanently disconnected the ghost loads from the DVD player and the VCR, our electric bill was noticeably lower.

If we discontinued Netflix, and borrowed movies from the library or used the free streaming service from our local library, we could save an additional $15/month with no loss of quality of life.

b. Clothes dryer. I put up my first clothesline in 2007, bought an indoor drying rack a couple of years later, and gave away my electric clothes dryer more than five years ago. We line-dry/air dry all of our clothes, all of the time, even during the winter, and yes, on clear, sunny days (especially those precious blue-skied days following a severe winter storm) with two feet of snow on the ground one can drive by my house and see clothes freeze-drying on my line. We save a lot of money both on the electricity it costs to operate a clothes dryer, but also on wear and tear on our clothes. The dryer heat is tough on clothes and causes the fiber materials to break down more quickly. Our clothes last longer, because they aren’t exposed to the extreme heat of a clothes dryer.

c. Commercial cleaners.  I can’t remember the last time I purchased a product geared specifically toward cleaning a toilet or a bathtub. Most of the time for cleaning, I use baking soda or vinegar and a good scrub brush. The closest I come to a commercial cleaning product is Dr. Bonner’s liquid soap, and I’ve been known to use it for everything from washing my hair to cleaning the toilets. For washing clothes, we make a powder detergent with washing powder, grated bar soap (usually Dr. Bonner’s), borax powder, and some essential oil. It works just as well as a commercial detergent, and costs much less.

d. Cosmetics (i.e. toiletries like shampoo and deodorant).  The best deodorant I’ve ever used is baking soda and corn starch mixed with coconut oil and an essential oil (like lavender or Patchouli). I store it in an old commercial deodorant container, and the only draw back is that I have to store it in the refrigerator during the summer because the coconut oil liquefies. I also don’t use commercial shampoos or conditioners. I use the same soap on my hair that I use on my body, usually Dr. Bonner’s and almond scented is my favorite.

Instead of perfumes, I use an essential oil. I’ve made my own lye soap, which I really liked using. It’s on the list to make more soon.

When it comes to saving money, the best thing one can do for oneself is to learn some skills. Cooking, sewing, gardening, and soap making are all fun projects, and really, it doesn’t take much longer to lay-out, cut-out, and stitch up a simple skirt than it does to hop in the car, drive to the mall, find a parking place, pick through the hundreds of choices, none of which are ever exactly what we want, pay for the purchase, find the car, and drive back home. It really is less a matter of time than it is a cultural habit that tells us we are better if we work to pay for things that we could make ourselves, if only we took the time. In the end, the best way to save money is to do-it-yourself rather than paying someone else.