Frugal in the Fruitlands

I won’t lie – this year has been a tough year for me and my husband. In May, I lost my job in market research, and I still have not found full-time employment. Many of our financial goals have fallen behind as a result, and we have unfortunately been reduced to living more or less paycheck-to-paycheck, something I deplore.

On the other hand, this year has brought me many joys. In not having full-time employment, I’ve found ways to fill my time productively. I spent most of this year free of addictive gaming. I picked up new hobbies. My various freelance jobs taught me much about web design – those much-needed ‘best practices’ that I’m ignorant of, since my way of learning everything web-related is just to jump in and make things work.

In measuring the success or failure of my goals this year, I’m using two things as a yardstick – both my 101 Goals in 1,000 Days list, as well as my more specific 2009 collage.

Goals Attained This Year

• I finished League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students, the LARP I was writing, for Intercon I in March 2009, and ran it again at Festival of the LARPs in April 2009. (collage)
• In August 2009, I finished reading the last of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction. “The Whisperer in Darkness” was the last story I read, and it became one of my favorites. (collage/101 goals list)
• In November 2009, I successfully completed NaNoWriMo, writing the first (very rough) 50,000 words of Viktory Empire, a new novel. (101 goals list)
• I successfully built my emergency fund up to my goal of $5,000. In fact, I had close to $10,000 in it before I lost my job in May. Sadly, it has since been diminished, but it did its part in getting us through some of the toughest months.  (101 goals list)
• I finally established a compost pile. You would think that creating a pile of rotting food waste wouldn’t be very difficult, but I was plagued by uncertainty about the best way to do it. I really didn’t want to build a structure to contain the pile, so I ended up repurposing a large plastic tote for the job. So far, it works great! (101 goals list)
• I completed a paid freelance web design/development project. Several, in fact. (101 goals list)
• In transitioning from full-time to contract employment for most of my income, I reduced my work week to less than 30 hours. It’s a bittersweet accomplishment. (101 goals list)

Goals Attempted But Not Attained This Year

• My husband and I did not attend WorldCon, due to finances, and as a result we did not finish the costume we intended to make for it. (collage/101 goals list)
• The whole “losing my job” thing meant that I didn’t make an additional $10,000 this year, despite my best visualization attempts. (collage)
• My habit of daily exercise – and my “personal best” of 19 out of 30 days of a month with exercise – was not bettered during this year, despite getting a Wii Fit for Christmas 2008! I’ve found that I most enjoy outdoor activity – but I live in a place with frequent inclement weather, so I often use the weather as an excuse not to exercise. (collage/101 goals list)
• Biking around town is still a faraway goal. By a combination of walking and riding my bike, I managed to top the Hill o’ Doom (in October 2009), but doing so is still a major undertaking. (collage/101 goals list)

Goals of Questionable Status

• Do I have a new career? Here in the last days of the year, I’ve started another contract position which has the potential to turn into full-time. When I think back, a lot of the work I’ve done to pay the bills during this six months of semi-employment has been web development-related, rather than research related. So in some sense I have a new career, even if I don’t have a full-time job will all the benefits I want… yet. (collage/101 goal list)

I’m working on putting together a 2010 collage, and I’ll share that as soon as I finish it. In the meantime, how did your year-long goals or New Year’s resolutions turn out?

No Comments »

I just upgraded WordPress to version 2.9. It’s a bit trickier than can be handled by Dreamhost’s one-click install – as I started this blog in one directory and moved it to another – so I had to do a manual install.

And yet, I seem not to have broken anything! Please poke around the site and confirm that this is true?

3 Comments »

So, all those blogs about blogging say that if you take a hiatus in posting, you shouldn’t do anything to draw attention to your absence.

Here I am, breaking that rule – and also confirming I’m still alive.

A lot has changed in my life since my last posting. The most significant is that I was laid off from my full-time job in market research. I didn’t sit idle long, though; within a couple of weeks I had a part-time freelance gig as a web programmer for a marketing firm in New Hampshire.

I’ve been supplementing this income with a couple of side projects. For one, a friend hired me to write and program the product tour and introductory email blast for a piece of software he’s trying to sell. Secondly, a former coworker, who had recently become VP of Research at a different company, hired me on as a contractor for a phone survey her firm is conducting.

To be perfectly honest, losing my job was probably the happiest thing that could have happened to me. It has taken me on the path toward self-employment, which is ultimately where I want to be. Right now finances are tighter than usual, but I am hoping to fill out my time with more freelance work. I also still look at (and have interviewed for) several full-time jobs; but it seems a lot easier right now to get part-time work.

Aside from work, I have been working intermittently on my garden, (which is doing very poorly this year, alas), planning an RPG campaign for friends, and, after six months of WoW-freedom, volunteering my time to help other gaming addicts find a way out.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting my first substantial post in a while: Reigning in the Dining Out Budget.

1 Comment »

The first part of my review of The Two-Income Trap was featured in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted at Mighty Bargain Hunter.

These were two of my favorite articles from the carnival. I totally did not pick them because of the blog names – but I probably should have:

• Learn How To Get Rich From a Video Game @ Monevator. Despite the title, this is not about selling gold in World of Warcraft! In this article, we explore how one becomes a fantasy business mogul in Fable II, and its similarities to real life. Hint: passive income rules in a medieval fantasy world, too.

• Five Things To Do If You Get Laid Off @ Monogamoney. Kyle at Amateur Asset Allocator wrote a similar post several weeks ago, but I have to admit, I like this one a little better, if only because it also deals with the emotional side of getting laid off.

1 Comment »

I’m heading off to Thanksgiving dinner with some friends in a few hours, but right now it’s carnival time!

My post Visualizing $10,000 Extra in Your Life was entered in the 180th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Living Almost Large. Here are some articles I particularly liked:

• Note to Family and Friends: I Prefer Cash. Mengmeng of Just Thrive argues that gift certificates, rather than being gifts, are the equivalent of “reaching into my wallet and taking forty bucks.” To me, the only thing better than receiving cash is not having to exchange gifts at all!
• Studenomics talks about the Adversity Quotient, or how likely one is to bounce back from failure, and asks us to consider how that affects our financial life.
• I like Ron @ The Wisdom Journal‘s thoughts on 7 Ways to Make a Quick $500 in 30 Days. There are tons of these articles floating around the blogosphere, but I feel Ron’s are genuinely creative. His resources for freelance writing are ones I might try out myself.

Eco Joe presented the Festival of Frugality this week, picking his choice of 18 articles out of hundreds and hundreds. A couple I liked were:

• A Real Christmas Tree vs. An Artificial Christmas Tree @ SavingAdvice.com. This is something I’ve struggled with myself, especially since I may have an allergic reaction to evergreen sap. In the end, my husband and I decided we would get a real tree this year, for many of the reasons the commentators listed: it supports local business, it’s sustainable, and, frankly, it really does add to the holiday experience.
• Fowl Visions teaches us to how to make a fall wreath for the birds in Decorating for Fall and Feeding the Wild Birds. It’s already winter here, but this is something to consider next year!

1 Comment »

I’ve added a few new blogs to my blogroll recently. Just to highlight them:

• Frugal Pursuit has, I believe, been reading my blog for some time, but I recently spent some time discovering hers. I read with interest her post about the end of the no-furnace challenge, as my husband and I have a similar challenge. I was able to hold out until last night, when it was below freezing for the first time this season and the wind was cutting. I returned home from my class to see it was 53 degrees inside (my house holds heat well!), but I just couldn’t tolerate it – I turned the heat up to 60. Such decadence!

• I finally discovered Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Lots of valuable stuff here from an avowed frugality hater :) I am loving his “Save $1,000 in 30 Days” challenge and am following along avidly. So far my favorite tip from the challenge has been Use Gas Prices to Become Your Own Hedge Fund. I calculated how much I had spent per week on gas while prices were high vs. after prices dropped, and using that, was able to put $20 extra per paycheck – $40 extra per month – into my emergency fund. This means that in total $95 per paycheck, or $190 per month, is going into the fund.

• I recently added Money and Such after reading his article about leaving your job in a tough market.

• I added Sentient Money after Chad left an insightful comment on one of Retired Syd’s political posts. I like his analyses of charts and graphs from other sources, such as in More Debt Destruction: Credit Cards.

But really, I’m writing this post because I want to hear about you. Yes, you. You’re not one of my close friends who reads this blog just to humor me (hi Nat!). Maybe you don’t even have a blog of your own, and RSS confuses you. You don’t leave comments, ’cause what do you have to add, right?

It’s you I want to hear about.

• I want to know who you are, where you live, what you do.
• What originally led you to this blog?
• Are you here for the frugality tips, the personal finance posts, the economics articles, or just my weak sense of humor?
• What topics do you care about?
• Are you struggling financially? Are you facing bankruptcy or foreclosure?

You matter, and I want to make you a FitF celebrity.

5 Comments »

For current readers: I was recently featured on Fox 25′s “Family Coop” segment, talking about sharing resources in your social network as a key to frugality. Ahhh, my three minutes of fame.

For new readers: If the Fox segment is how you’ve found me, welcome! Here are some articles that will give you a quick introduction to this blog and what it’s about:

• About Me and About This Blog
• 10 Ways I Simplify; 10 Ways I Complicate
• The Spendthrift Sunday series, which provides my own brand of “consumerism vigilantism.”

Feel free to comment below and tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re hoping to find here!

For new and old readers alike: I’ve just added an email newsletter to this blog. Enter your first name and email address below, and I’ll update you a couple of times a month with site updates and bonus frugality tips. As an additional incentive to sign up, I’m offering my 8-page e-book (e-pamphlet? e-brochure?) “3 Ways to Shave $300 Off Your Monthly Expenses Without Feeling Deprived,” free to anyone who subscribes to the newsletter. This e-book outlines some of the methods I talked about in the Fox segment in greater detail, such as:

• How to decide what monthly expenses to cut
• How to set up a “supper club”
• Resources for finding rideshares in your area
• Bonus tips on frugal cleaning

And, as always, you can sign up for my feed, which will deliver each of my articles directly to the RSS reader of your choice. (An Introduction to RSS).

Happy reading!

No Comments »

A friend forwarded me this NY Times article about frugality in rural France vs. New York City: 6 Cents Is 6 Cents, but Time? That’s Something. I shamefully admit that, despite living in France, I’ve never heard the “porcupine in pockets” euphemism for being fiscally-conscious, but this whole story is true of the French shopping experience. I’ll also add that you bag your own groceries in a French supermarket- no one is there to bag them for you.

My favorite from last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance #177 (yes, I’m behind the times) was this article by Shadox of Money and Such: Now May Be A Good Time To Quit Your Job. I have several friends who have been laid off recently who may not agree! Nonetheless, I loved this quote:

If you realize that you will not be able to excel in your position and attain your life goals at the same time, you must accept the logical conclusion that the position is not for you.

1 Comment »

I just wanted to point out a couple of articles from the last two weeks that caught my eye:

America’s Income and Wealth Inequality by Andy of Saving to Invest. Andy takes the Economist’s recent figures on income distribution in different countries one step further, extrapolating the net worth distribution in the U.S. The bad news: the poor in the U.S. are just as poor as those in Turkey or Mexico. Much as I suspected, countries like France lead the pack in terms of wealth equality.

Getting the Buy-In From a Partner by Childfreelife. This article talks about getting your partner involved in your financial adventures. While focused on childfree couples, it is widely applicable.

More on Tuesday or Wednesday, when the carnivals are out!

No Comments »

September was a goal-less month, but I covered a lot of ground, nonetheless. The number of subscribers to Frugal in the Fruitlands grew to around 40, and I visited topics as diverse as productivity, price comparisons, identity, local eating, and fashion.

The most popular post this month was Identity: The Problem Money Can’t Solve, thanks in large part to Paid Twice’s kind referral. Some of the other popular posts from this month were:

• Coupons vs. Generics, Round One: Contact Solution
• Interview with Nick Pagan on Establishing Alternative Income with Limited Energy – if you haven’t had a chance to review this meaty article, I invite you to do so now. Nick’s wisdom is worth your time.
• Shopping in the Fruitlands

I also talked a lot in the past couple of weeks about the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and why I was against it. With the Senate backing the bill, the outcome is looking more and more certain, but the bill still does not address what I feel are the biggest issues with the credit markets – the need for re-regulation. To quote this Mother Jones article:

Perhaps, the greatest lie resides at the very top of the proposed plan: that the bailout will somehow “[assist] American families in preserving home ownership, stabilizing financial markets, and protecting taxpayers.” The only way to protect citizens is to re-regulate the industry along the lines of Glass-Steagall: divide its players and their books into understandable, less risky, more transparent entities… The Democrats inserted a lukewarm provision into the bailout legislation to have the government aid in renegotiating borrowers’ mortgages to better terms, but they didn’t include any enforcement measure requiring lenders to comply.

That said, and my opposition to this bill in its current wishy-washy format registered, the American Housing Institute presents a cogent discussion of pro-bailout thinking. I understand where they’re going, but I reject the assertion that most of these bad debts the government is buying up are “real Vermeers.” I also don’t believe that this bill will encourage the credit industry to reinvest the proceeds in the economy – at least not in a non-toxic way – without credit re-regulation.

And with that thought, I leave you to pursue Day Two of Web Browing Reduction Month. (Day One: Success!)

No Comments »