Spending Valentine’s Day at Home: 7 Tips for Uncomplicated Romance

The holiday season was rough on everyone, what with stores closing and people tightening their belts.  Families are still paying off their credit card bills; it’s almost cruel to have another holiday just six weeks later, especially one that society tells us to spend big on: buy flowers!  buy jewelry!  go out to a fancy dinner!  No thank you.

Mr. Savvy and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day because our anniversary is at the end of the month and his birthday is at the beginning.  We could throw ourselves a party every two weeks in February, but what’s the point?  I’d rather conserve my resources and put together a single anniversary surprise.  We’ve had some good ideas in the past, and luckily, there are easy ways to create romance without going over budget.  Here are some tips for simplifying your Valentine’s Day and creating romance at home (all tested and approved!):

1.  Leave the store-bought card at the store.  Opt instead to leave notes for each other to find throughout the day.  If you hide them for your partner, it’s like giving him or her a new card every time they find one.  Try sticking a note in with lunch, tucking one in a coat pocket, putting  a caption on a picture and emailing it, and leaving notes anywhere else they normally might look: the toothpaste drawer, the coffeepot, their shoes, tied to your pet’s collar.  The possibilities are endless.

2.  Ditch the fancy dinner and have an indoor picnic at home.  Spread out a blanket on the bed or the floor, pile on the cushy pillows, and enjoy some French bread with Feta and chocolate-covered strawberries.  Bonus: no driving home while under the influence.  This bit of extra effort is a great way to create a little luxury during the day.  What goes better with luxury than romance?  Besides Brie, of course.

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3.  Skip the movie theatre and Netflix one of the great romantic comedies ahead of time.  Watch it in bed. I rarely have the patience to relax in bed in the morning, so putting on a movie and climbing under the covers makes the day even more special.    When Harry Met Sally is my top choice, and The Princess Bride.  Here’s Amazon’s list, if you’re drawing a blank on rom-coms.  Not a big movie fan?  Try the next tip.

4.  No time for a movie?  Read aloud to each other.  Anything sounds romantic when read aloud, even National Geographic.  And how often do we take the time to share our reading materials with each other?  I love it when Mr. Savvy reads me passages from his biographies, and even more when he gets into poetry.  If you’ve got nothing on hand, swing by the library and pick up a Harry Potter book.  Magic and mystery make for an interesting and light read.

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5.  Skip the club and opt for mood lighting at home. Candles can be an inexpensive way to provide ambiance — especially if you light them while eating an indoor picnic!  A few tips: don’t light several different scented candles at the same time, or else you may be overpowered by Fresh Cut Roses/Clean Cotton/Lavender Vanilla.  It’s best not to mix scents.  Also, regular candles are petroleum-based, which means they actually contribute to indoor pollution and release carcinogens into the air instead of making it feel fresher in your house.  Soy candles are a good alternative, and are increasingly common in stores.  Beeswax candles are the best option as they (supposedly) purify the air.  At any rate, beeswax burns the cleanest.

6. Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday this year.  Break the “dinner and a movie” tradition and make it an all day celebration; visit a museum or other fun event.  Most libraries offer museum passes that give you a discounted rate, and some museums have special exhibitions on behalf of Valentine’s Day.  Check the local newspaper for other events in your area, like antique shows, book readings, free concerts, etc.

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7.  Round off the day with a walk and a cup of hot chocolate. Going for a walk is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get your blood moving and to have some quiet time together.  Look for birds and try to identify their calls.  If it’s snowy, bring some mittens and a hat and make snow angels next to each other.  Take the time to notice something you wouldn’t normally.

And that’s what it’s all about, really: taking the time.  Valentine’s Day is set aside so that we can honor our loved ones and spend time together.  It’s a little strange that we need such a reminder, but Americans work so much that maybe it’s not surprising.  Ah, well.  Just keep an eye peeled for things you wouldn’t normally do — anything out of the ordinary makes for a nice surprise (hello indoor picnic!) and turns a regular day into something special.

Common Sense at Work

Pitney Bowes is the devil.  Well, not really, but they’re no fun to do business with.  Unfortunately, Pitney Bowes has a monopoly on the postage meter market, so if you don’t want to run to the post office every time you need to mail a letter, you probably have a Pitney Bowes machine at work.  We certainly do.

Dun dun dunnn....

We refill the meter once every two weeks or so.  Every time we refill it, we have to pay a fee of $8.00.  The fee is always the same, no matter how much we refill it with.  And not only that, but we do quite a few mailings, so sometimes we refill the meter more often.  It would make more sense (cents?) to put more money into the machine every time.

No one here thought of that.  At least, not until last week when we refilled the meter twice in three days because of a mailing.  (In all fairness, my office consists of three people, some of us more entrenched in our ways than others….)  As the newest employee, it took me a few days to buck up the courage before I asked my boss about it.

“Is the fee the same no matter how much money we put on the Pitney Bowes machine?” I asked.  It must have seemed out of the blue to my boss, because she gave me a funny look.

“Oh!” she said, and shuffled her papers, “Yes.”

“Well… wouldn’t it make more sense to refill the meter with $200 instead of $100 so we don’t have to pay that fee as often?  We’re just going to use the money in the meter anyway,” I tried to sound smart and reasonable.

She gave me a considering look, then said, “Yes.  Let’s not give Pitney Bowes any more money, shall we?  Put $200 on it the next time it gets low, and tell Lisa [my coworker] to do the same.”

And with that, our conversation was over.  Sometimes all it takes is a deep breath and quick reminder that there are other options available.  It helps to have a new perspective on the situation as well.  Think of all the money we could have been saving if we had refilled it half as often with more money last year.  $8.00 x 13  refills = $104.  That’s how much extra we could have had in our budget last year — and when you work at a nonprofit like I do, you realize just how far $104 could go.

Lesson learned?  Ask yourself WWTPD: What would Thomas Paine do?

Image courtesy of Pitney Bowes

Book Review: The Paradox of Choice

I’m all about learning how to simplify, so I was excited to read the book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz.  I figured I’d pick up a little rhetoric about how having too many options available makes life more complicated, and some good tips for reducing what I need to do every day.  I guess I didn’t read the back of the book very well –  Schwartz spends the majority of the time evaluating the factors that affect each of our choices  including social comparisons, adaptation to current situations, and even something as simple as the way questions are worded.  In other words, it’s not just about which jar of jelly has the prettier label — and he has the research to prove it.

Schwartz argues that Americans are less happy when we have more choices to make.  It’s disconcerting to learn that even though we enjoy having many options available, researching every decision detracts from our time spent chasing more enjoyable pursuits.  I’d be skeptical, except Schwartz’s information is based in peer-reviewed research, and he gives several examples of the different studies done.  This allows the reader a chance to do some self-evaluation — but not while we’re reading; we have to wait until the end of the book to get to Schwartz’s 11 step action plan:

1. Choose when to choose
2. Be a chooser, not a picker
3. Satisfice more and maximize less
4. Think about the opportunity costs of opportunity costs
5. Make your decisions nonreversible
6. Practice an “attitude of gratitude”
7. Regret less
8. Anticipate adaptation
9. Control expectations
10. Curtail social comparison
11. Learn to love constraints

Each choice is broken down into more steps.  For example, if you thought it would be beneficial to satisfice more and maximize less (step 3), you might follow these steps:

1. Think about occasions in life when you settle, comfortably, for “good enough”;
2. Scrutinize how you choose in those areas;
3. Then apply that strategy more broadly.

In other words, making a good enough choice instead of searching for the best choice allows us to free up our time for more important things, and so we need to learn when to settle for “good enough.” It makes sense, right?  Especially considering that each of these choices corresponds to a particular section of the book, and so the terms and details are explained more fully elsewhere.  Once I learned about my tendency to search for the “perfect” instead of the “good enough,” I was able to recognize that I was using that method of choice in my every day excursions and change to a more efficient method.

Is it worth it to read this book?

Yes and no.  It’s frustrating to read this book because it’s organized in a non-intuitive way: The first 45 pages or so are all lists and examples of choices we make.  It’s repetitive and overwhelming, and instead of breaking down this information into manageable chunks, Schwartz throws it at us right away in an attempt to shock us into realizing just how many choices we make – good plan, poor execution.  I was so exhausted from reading all the lists and studies done that by the time I reached the 11 steps at the end of the book, I had no motivation left.

If you’re determined, skip to the chapter about satisficing and maximizing (part II, chapter 4, I believe), and go from there.  But be warned: this book isn’t the typical self-help book.  It’s more of an academic study than a how-to guide, so it doesn’t take you through the steps .  Good luck and happy satisficing!

Do you have a book about simplifying that you want me to review?  Let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best!

Image courtesy of Textbooks R Us

Happiness is Still Homemade: Sugar Pie Edition

My grandmother died a week ago today.  Five days ago, I went down to Connecticut to be with my family for the wake and funeral.  It was emotional, as these things are, but nice to see my 45 first cousins (no joke!).

After the funeral, we went over to my grandmother’s house to visit with some relatives.  I wandered around, taking in the sights of my grandmother’s empty house.  And then, right as I was feeling lonely, I saw a pillow perched on top of the sofa that read, “happiness is still homemade.”

That little pillow cheered me right up.  Thanks, Memere!  Like many people who lived during the depression and World War II, Memere was a fan of frugality, keeping her fridge well stocked, and not buying Stuff if you could make it at home; a quick reminder that happiness doesn’t have to involve consumerism.

I hadn’t seem this pillow before.  I also hadn’t had a chance to tell my grandmother about my new blog.  I have a feeling that she would have approved of the subject.

Memere liked to cook, and one of her favorite foods was pie: happiness in a crust.  She was known in the family for her raspberry pie and her sugar pie, best eaten together to balance out the tanginess and sweetness.  In honor of my Memere, I present to you her recipe for Sugar Pie, written in her own words:

Sugar Pie

• 5 Tbsp. butter
• 5 Tbsp. flour
• 2 Cups brown sugar
• 1.5 Cups milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla

“Brown butter a little bit, mix brown sugar and flour — mix ’til dissolve slowly and then put liquid and vanilla — cook slow ’til thick then pour in pie crust.”

For those of you who have trouble deciphering vague pie instructions, please allow me to clarify: brown the butter a little bit.  Mix in brown sugar, flour, milk and vanilla and cook until it’s dissolved and thick — about the consistency of applesauce.  Pour in the pie crust, cover with the second pie crust, and bake at 400°F for a half hour.

The pie crust, you ask?  Do as Memere did, and buy a box of Jiffy pie crust mix.  Hey, she might have been frugal, but she also had simple savvy; pie crust is a cinch when you make it out of a box!

Image courtesy of Ginny’s Needlepoint.

How I Lowered my Credit Card APR

I just renegotiated the APR rate on one of my credit cards.  It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be; the only hard part was getting through the automated telephone menu — and working up the courage to call and ask.

I had to read the I Will Teach You to be Rich and Get Rich Slowly personal finance blogs multiple times in order to make sure I had the steps down.  (I don’t always think quick on my feet, which is probably why I write well and make new friends slowly.)  Once I had the basics in mind, I did a little research and figured out the difference in APRs between my two credit cards — would you believe I was paying a higher APR for the credit card that I’ve had for the longer amount of time?  I’m talking twice the APR of my other card.  Part of it was due to a fluke: I had paid late two months in a row, and my APR jumped up to penalize me.  A stupid mistake with a simple fix — I switched over to automatic payments.  I hoped this wouldn’t jeopardize my chances of lowering my APR.

Next, I read some other articles about renegotiating the rate. Here are the basics:

• Try not to ask yes or no questions because it’s easy for them to say no (i.e. Can you lower my APR? No)

• Back up your request with all the good deeds you’ve done for the company like paying on time, paying above the minimum every time, or having a long history with the company

• Be polite

• Do your research and get rates from other comparable credit card companies, and then threaten to switch to another credit card if things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped

I didn’t have to resort to that last bullet point there, but I did stick with the first three.  Once I called, I spoke with a very nice man and made sure to call him by name, which I always think is a nice touch.  He lowered my APR to its original rate upon request — he called it a “one time courtesy,” to threaten me, I suppose into paying on time forever and ever or else. Then I asked if he could do any better, and I started telling him about how awesome I was as a customer and how I have a lower rate on a different — and much better — credit card. He either didn’t want to hear it or realized I wasn’t going to give up easily, because then he lowered the rate even more.

I realize now I should have said something like, “thank you, but I was really hoping to match my other credit card’s APR. How can we make this happen?” but I got too excited and said thank you and goodbye instead. Whoops! I still got a much better rate. Would I have reached that shiny goal of a matching APR? I guess we’ll never know….

This Could be me

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I Stumbled on this article today, about a woman named Carol Sue Snowden who died last June and left all her money to the local library and schools.  Why is she so amazing to me?  Perhaps because she devoted her entire life to reading, and lived frugally — and she was worth more than $1 million when she died.

“The daughter of parents who survived the Depression, Snowden — who never married or had children — was the picture of frugalness.

That’s why 50 friends and library colleagues who gathered late last month for her memorial were so stunned to learn that she was a millionaire.”

That’s an impressive figure, especially for someone like me.  I have quite a bit of edebt because I wasn’t smart about going to college — I didn’t apply for enough scholarships, and didn’t manage my expenses well.  Before I can even think about acquiring $1 million, I have to pay off my debt.  Thank goodness this week is National Thrift Week.  Now all I have to do is throw a Keep a Budget Day party.

Bonus!  Enter the National Thrift Day contest to win a $100 National Savings Bond.

Enjoy your thrift this week!

How to Eat Well on Weight Watchers

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We come from two different approaches, Mr. Savvy and I.  I support the slow food movement, while Mr. Savvy is on Weight Watchers.  Our approaches aren’t opposites, but they certainly make for some clashes in the kitchen — over butter, for example.  I know that butter is expensive in terms of Weight Watchers points.  He knows that eating butter is better than eating spreadable chemicals.  What’s a weight conscious foodie couple to do?

Eat well, of course.

By eat well, I mean pick the best of both worlds: as a consequence, we eat whole foods (for the most part) that are low on  points (for the most part).  We follow a few basic guidelines for our meals.

• Lots of vegetables. I treat meat, if we have it, as a side dish, and pile on the veggies to make for a filling meal with fewer points.  Humans absorb nutrients from vegetables better when we eat them with some fat, so now’s not the time to eat steamed broccoli with a side of salt.  My favorite way to serve it?  Baked, with lemon juice and Parmesan.

• Do it yourself. Food just tastes better when I’ve prepared it myself.  Sure, it takes longer to cook a whole meal than to order in, but it’s worth it.  And there are some foods that don’t take long at all: Homemade bread in less than an hour or Butternut Squash Soup or Bruschetta with Tomato and Basil (add some goat cheese and you’re in business).  By making the foods at home, I can control exactly what goes in and manage the point values that way.

• Eat your beans.  Beans are a great source of lean protein, and I try to work them in as many dishes as possible (though not every meal, as the saying goes).  The great part is that beans are cheap, store well, and there are so many varieties that they go with everything: black beans with Mexican food, chickpea hummus on sandwiches, ham and vegetable soup with white beans.

• When you’re eating, just eat. It’s a heck of a lot easier to pick out the different food flavors when all I’m doing is sitting down, eating my food.  I’m guilty of reading while I eat — a bad habit because if I concentrate on my book, all food tastes the same; I can’t tell the difference between homemade  and store bought.  When I finally set my book down, I realize that my local pizza place’s pizza is rather one-dimensional compared to homemade.

• Experiment. Find a cookbook or a food website that has some good, easy recipes, and play around.  When I don’t know what to make, I fall back on my trusty Betty Crocker, and the Nigella Lawson website.  Neither Nigella nor Betty Crocker is particularly concerned with weight, however, so I tinker with their recipes until I come up with something that satisfies both Mr. Savvy and me.

• Listen to your body. Some nights I’m just dying for a bucket of french fries.  There’s no need to restrict myself; if I want some french fries, I can have some french fries — but I’m realistic about it.  I know that eating too many french fries gives me a stomachache, so I don’t do it often.  The key is listening to your body.  With a little practice, it will tell you when it wants to stop and when it wants more.  There’s an entire movement based around this philosophy, called Health at Every Size that I recommend checking out, even if you’re on Weight Watchers or another type of diet.

I could talk about food all day, particularly the benefits of Health at Every Size.  As a culture, we’re so in love with convenience foods and so out of tune with our bodies that we forget how to eat.  Michael Pollan talks about this a little in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, about how we’re evolved to prize sweet foods because they mean a carbohydrates-rich food.  Carbohydrates = energy, and now that we live in a culture that has an abundance of carbohydrate rich food (especially processed foods), that’s all we eat.  Michael Pollan manages to break out of the cycle of eating processed foods and finally hunts for and cooks his own slow food meal:

“I prized, too, the almost perfect transparency of this meal, the brevity and simplicity of the food chain that linked it to the wider world.  Scarcely an ingredient in it had ever worn a label or bar code or price tag, and yet I knew almost everything there was to know about its provenance and its price….A meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted” (411).

Now that sounds like eating well.

4 Simple Lessons Learned from Wedding Planning

I never thought I’d be able to apply what I learned about planning our wedding to my life.  Yes, Mr. Savvy and I are getting married.  We’ve had a (relatively) short engagement, and that in itself has led to a a new way of looking at things.  Everything that I’ve learned over the past few months about finances and having a relaxing home has been magnified by the wedding planning.  Perhaps it’s because a wedding is a huge event that we create from scratch.  There’s only one chance to get it right instead of perfecting the technique over the course of months or years the way I would with my finances.

I’ve picked up a few tips while planning our wedding so far, ranging from financial advice to organizational tips:

1.  Spend less than you earn. We picked a modest number for our wedding budget — $7000 — and we’re sticking with it.  We could probably afford to spend $10,000-$11,000 on a wedding, but we’d have nothing left for fun money or a debt snowball.  This translates well into real life; I never spend my entire paycheck every month — I wouldn’t have anything left for expenses that don’t budget well into monthly payments, like my quarterly renter’s insurance payment, and emergencies.  Not spending everything I earn makes me feel more secure in my finances.

2.  Set something aside for emergencies or miscellaneous expenses. I would have liked to set aside $500 or so for emergencies into the wedding budget, but I didn’t think of it when we got started.  And now here I am, about to go over budget on catering, and I’ll have to cut back something else to make up for it.  Luckily, it’s just a wedding, so if everything isn’t perfect, it’s only one day.  But what if I needed to spend my snowball money on an emergency car repair?  Or worse, add to my credit card debt because I didn’t have any extra snowball money?  That’s a sure way to set back my plans to be debt free.  No, it’s better to save up in case of an emergency than be confronted with it later.

3.  Keep it simple, silly. The smallest details can get out of hand at a wedding.  Sure, it’s no problem folding one origami crane, but how about one for every guest?  Does each guest get a favor as well?  Do the cranes count as place cards?  If not, do the place cards need to have calligraphy or can they be typed?  Little decisions like these can ruin the fun of getting married, and likely, no one will notice if their place card crane favor isn’t letterpressed.  The same idea applies to real life; there’s no need to expend energy worrying about the small details that no one else notices.  By simplifying, I have more time to spend on the stuff that really matters instead of getting bogged down by the little things.  For example, I no longer need to think about when my library books are due or if people will judge me for reading Harry Potter for a fourth time because I go to the library every Monday and check out a book I’ve never read before.  I made this decision once and never had to think about it again — and now I spend my spare time reading.

4.  Be flexible. I had planned to sew my own wedding dress.  Then we decided to have a less formal wedding, so I didn’t need a dress with fancy beading and changed the design.  When I started sewing a mock-up dress to test out the fabric, I realized I picked a difficult fabric to sew (it kept bunching funny and getting stuck in the machine).  Although I pouted for a minute, I moved on and switched to less temperamental fabric.  Because I didn’t need to have a particular wedding dress, I was able to shift my idea and accommodate what I could do comfortably.  Being flexible allowed me to keep my stress level down.

I’m sure I’ll pick up more tips as the wedding draws closer.  Right now, we’re on the verge of booking our caterer, and we have little thought for anything else.  The big push for details is about to get started, including save the dates, invitations, hotel reservations, flowers, etc. A lot of detail goes into a wedding — all the more reason to get organized and keep it simple.

Car Donation Update

I wrote about starting the car donation process two weeks ago.  If you recall, I had decided to donate the unfixable second car to the National Kidney Foundation and take a tax break instead of selling it.  Last week, I got down to it and filled out the application.  As promised, here’s the first update on how the process works.

The online application is straightforward and simple at one page of required information.  As expected, they ask for the car’s VIN and mileage, and the general condition of the car.  They also gave me the option of requesting that the process be expedited.  I could have had the towing company call within two days of submitting the online form instead of waiting for me to mail in my title.  I chose not to do this, in part because I still need to clean out the car, but also because I don’t want the Foundation to go through extra trouble (read: more money) to secure my donation.

They also have several reminders of what to do with the paperwork once it’s all filled out, including sending an email that details the remaining steps — smart! — although it would be more helpful if their link to the IRS page about car donations wasn’t broken.

One (minor) surprise at the end of the process is that the Foundation would like a photo of the car mailed in with the title.  It’s not required, but it would certainly be helpful to know about in advance.  When was the last time we got physical photos instead of digital?  This could be a good motivator for going through my pictures and seeing which ones I want developed.

All in all?  Not a bad way of doing things.  It certainly doesn’t strain the person donating the car.  Now all I have to do is quit dragging my feet and send out that title.  The towing company should call within five days of receipt, and away we go!

Freecycle vs. Craigslist

I have two end tables left over from my college days.  They were a hand-me-down, as most college furniture is, and they were probably handed down to the person who gave them to me.  Their 1970s faux wood finish is beat up and bruised. They’re too low for my current couch.  The only thing they have going for them is that they function as miniature cupboards, thereby giving me more storage – except I haven’t used them once in the past 14 months.

“What if we need them in the future?”  Mr. Savvy says.  This is his argument: don’t get rid of them because we might need them someday.  In ten years?  Sure, I may be glad we kept them around.  But that means we’d have to keep storing them and moving them and shuttling them to our new apartments for the next ten years.  That costs more than just physical space.  It means we’ll have to clean them and clean around them and look at them and realize we’re never going to use them and think about getting rid of them but then deciding not to.  That’s a lot of time and emotion invested in some end tables

“What’s the point of keeping them around in case we need them, when we need end tables now and we’re still not using them?”  I’ll admit this was a stroke of brilliance for me.  I’d been dying to get rid of these squat beasts for months, but I couldn’t come up with a logical enough reason.

And that’s how we decided it was time for the tables to go.

Now how best to dispose of two obviously worn in tables?  Two options come to mind: Freecycle and Craigslist.  I’ve never used either service to declutter anything so far, but I troll them on a regular basis.  Each has its pros and cons.

Craigslist Pros:

• Free
• Reaches a wide audience
• Has the option of either selling or giving away stuff

Craigslist Cons:

• Tends to attract the crazies/no-shows
• I could end up on this blog
• Tables might not sell, and then I’ll have to put them up for free and feel ridiculous for trying to sell them in the first place
• A wider audience would see my contact information

Freecycle Pros:

• Free
• People are saner/more responsible than on Craigslist
• Has a distinct and anonymous method for responding

Freecycle Cons:

• Does not reach a wide audience
• Everything must go for free

I decided to go with Freecycle, after realizing I value my personal anonymity more than the $20 I could potentially make on Craigslist.  The small audience means I may have to wait a little longer to be rid of the tables, but we’ve stored them for over a year now – a few more weeks won’t make much of a difference.  If we were moving quickly, or I needed the spare bedroom for something else in a hurry, I would post the tables on Craigslist for free and be done with them.

Week 1 Update

Someone sent me an email right away asking if the tables were available.  I sent him some pictures.  No response.

Week 2 Update

Nothing yet, not even from the person who asked last week.  Even though it’s the week of Christmas and people might not be checking their emails, I feel like I should call this a failure and move on to Craigslist.  I don’t expect anyone to respond after it’s been a few weeks.

Week 3 Update

Success!  A woman emailed me and asked if the tables were still available.  We arranged for a pickup, and then the tables were gone.  Thank goodness!  It was a bit more emotional letting go of the tables than expected.  At the last moment, I had the panicky thought, What if we really do need them in the future? I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that Mr. Savvy and I agreed to get rid of these tables when we were both feeling doubt-free and rational.  And it was certainly a better experience than tossing the tables in the trash.