Thrift Week, Day Three: Food

The topic for day three of Thrift Week is food, glorious food. The average American household spends $6,443 a year on food, plus another $444 on alcoholic drinks. Together, they account for 13.7 percent of the household budget.

Food is another area in which the "eco" part of ecofrugal can sometimes come into conflict with the "frugal" part. Not always, of course. In many cases, the most sustainable food choices are also the cheapest. For example, the biggest-ticket items on many people's grocery bills--meat and prepared or processed foods--are also the ones with the biggest environmental impact. Replacing meat with beans and processed foods with whole foods will save money and help the environment at the same time. But in other cases, the sustainable choice can cost more. An obvious example is organic foods, which can cost anywhere from 20 percent to 100 percent more than their conventional counterparts. A much less obvious one is local, seasonal produce. Logically, if it's the middle of winter, then apples that were grown at an orchard less than 100 miles away and stored in a cold room for the winter should obviously be cheaper than nectarines, a summer fruit, that were shipped all the way from Chile. Yet thanks to the vagaries of supply and demand, it doesn't always work out that way. Here in the so-called Garden State, the big supermarkets (which tend to have lower prices) are more likely to carry imported produce rather than local produce. Thus, you can buy imported nectarines for $2 a pound in February at the Mega-Mart, but to get local apples, you have to go to the natural food store the next town over and pay $2.50 a pound. In a situation like that, what's the frugal choice?

My approach, as with transportation, is to look for the middle ground. Since organic foods cost 60 percent more than conventional foods on average, I've set that as my arbitrary limit on how much more I'm willing to pay for them. If the price differential is less than 60 percent, I consider the organic food to be a good value. If it's more, I'll choose the conventional version--with a few exceptions. For foods with high pesticide levels, like peaches, strawberries, grapes, and peanut butter, I'll always buy organic. The same goes for foods for which conventional growing practices are especially damaging to the environment, like sugar, coffee, and cocoa. (Actually, for coffee and cocoa, the working conditions are a bigger concern than the environment. So I buy Fair Trade, which usually means buying organic as well.)

For most people, eating 100 percent virtuous food may not be practical, or even possible. If you live in an area with a short growing season, there may be no way to feed yourself year-round with only local, organic foods. There are always compromises to make, so I guess it comes down to a question of deciding what you can live with. For me, that means striking a balance between the financial cost and the environmental cost--a balance I continue to adjust over time as circumstances (my own, and the world's) change.

Thrift Week, Day Two: Transportation

Welcome to Day Two of Thrift Week. Today's topic is transportation, the second-biggest item in the average American budget. For the average American household, transportation costs $8,604 a year, or 17 percent of total expenses. That includes the cost of automobile purchases, gas and oil, maintenance and repairs, and public transportation, plus a few miscellaneous expenses like drivers' licenses and auto registrations.

Transportation is a tricky area for the ecofrugal. On one hand, most forms of mass transit, like buses and trains, have a lower carbon footprint than driving--especially driving alone, as so many commuters do. But if you already own a car, it's probably cheaper to drive it than it is to take the bus or the train. After all, you've already paid (or are still paying) for the car itself and the insurance, so all you save by not driving it is the cost of gas. And gas has to get pretty expensive to make driving more expensive than transit, at least around here. As an example: back when I was single and living in Princeton, I used to ride a little train called the Dinky to my job in Princeton Junction. The trip was only a couple of miles each way, but it cost $3.75 round trip--$16.25 per week. At the time, I owned a very fuel-efficient compact car that got about 36 miles to the gallon, so driving that 40 miles per week instead would have used up a little more than a gallon of gas. At the time, gas was only about $1.50 per gallon, so I was paying about $14 extra each week for the privilege of riding the train. (I was willing to pay it because I found the 35-minute commute by train, which included a one-mile walk to the Dinky station and ten minutes of reading or doing crosswords on the train, so much more pleasant than the 20-minute commute by car, which included about 10 minutes of actual driving and 10 minutes of sitting in traffic and fuming.) Taking the Dinky might have been an economical option if it had allowed me to give up my car entirely. But I relied on the car to get me to places where I couldn't go by bus or train--places that literally had no bus or train stop within 5 miles. And this was in New Jersey, a state that has a better mass transit system that most.

So what are the ecofrugal to do? Well, there is some middle ground. For instance, the Troll and I can't make do without a car--but we can easily make do with just one car for the two of us. At my old job, I could commute by train, so I didn't need a car most days; now that I work from home, I need one even less often. His job allows him to commute by bike in nice weather, which, unlike mass transit, doesn't cost any extra (the cost of maintaining the bike is only a few dollars a month, which is offset by the savings on gas) and offers a cheap, healthy alternative to joining a gym. Carpooling is another useful option. These days, our car makes very few trips of more than a few miles with only one person in it; usually it carries both of us, or the two of us plus a friend. This lowers the cost-per-person of driving, both in dollars and in pollution. And finally, living in a walkable community saves us money on transportation. We might have been able to find a cheaper home in a suburban area, but by choosing to live in a town with a real town center, we put ourselves within walking distance of the library, the grocery store, the drugstore, the post office, and most of the other places we might need to run errands in a typical week. So the extra money we spent on housing comes back to us in transportation savings, as well as health benefits and a better overall quality of life.

Anyone else want to share ideas about ways to be thrifty with transportation?

Happy Thrift Week!

Did you know that this is National Thrift Week? Well, OK, not officially. The holiday hasn't been officially recognized in over 40 years. But for half of the twentieth century--from 1916 to 1966--the week of January 17 through January 23 was celebrated as "Thrift Week" to encourage Americans to save. There were even special themes for each day of the week: Have a Bank Account Day, Invest Safely Day, Carry Life Insurance Day, Keep a Budget Day, Pay Bills Promptly Day, Own Your Home Day, and Share with Others Day.

Thrift Week began on January 17 because it was the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, the most frugal of the Founding Fathers. Since this happens to be my birthday as well, I thought it would be appropriate to host my own celebration of Thrift Week here on the blog. However, it doesn't seem to make much sense to celebrate the individual days, like "Have a Bank Account Day," since I would imagine anyone reading this blog already has these matters pretty well in hand. So instead, I'm going to spend each day of the week focusing on one of the top seven categories in the typical American budget: housing, transportation, food, health care, entertainment, insurance, and clothing. I'll talk about ways that we're thrifty in each of these categories (meaning not just spending less money, but using resources as wisely as possible), and I'll invite you folks out in cyberland to share your ideas too.

But first, a quick aside: if you visit the website linked above, you'll notice that the "thrift expert" cited on it is David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, whose other big issue is the promotion of "traditional marriage"--meaning mommy, daddy, and kiddies, with the kiddies definitely not optional. Although a self-proclaimed liberal, he has publicly decried same-sex marriage because the "true purpose" of marriage is to provide a stable environment in which to bring up children, and a same-sex partnership is, according to him, inherently unsuitable for this purpose. I wish to stress that my support of Thrift Week does not in any way imply that I also support Mr. Blankenhorn on this issue. I agree strongly with him about the importance of thrift; I disagree equally strongly with his views on marriage. So I'm focusing on the message and doing my best to ignore the messenger.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's turn to our topic for Day One of Thrift Week: housing. According to the 2008 Consumer Expenditures Survey, the typical American "consumer unit" spends $17,109, or 34 percent of its total budget, on housing, making it by far the largest expense for most Americans. Housing expenses include shelter (owned or rented), utilities (gas, electricity, water, phone), household furnishings, and "housekeeping supplies," which includes cleaning products and office supplies such as postage and stationery. Pretty much anything that you use exclusively in your home falls under the category of housing.

Here are a few of the ways in which the Troll and I are thrifty in our home:

• We didn't buy more house than we needed. Actually, some might question whether a couple without children needs to own a house at all. An apartment or a condominium would certainly cost less and use less resources. But on the other hand, many of the frugal things we like to do, like gardening and line-drying our laundry, are things you really can't do without a yard. So we decided that we did want a house, but just a small house--not one where the two of us and our cat would rattle around in all the space. We also decided we were willing to do without a lot of the amenities that many people think of as necessities, like a dishwasher, central air conditioning, and a garage. It took us over a year to find a house in our price range that we were happy with, but it was time well spent. A smaller house meant a smaller mortgage, which meant that our finances weren't strained during my long stretch without work last year. And it saves us money on utilities as well, since there's less space to heat and cool.
• Anything that we can do ourselves, we do ourselves. If a room needs painting, we paint it, rather than hiring a painter. We don't have a cleaning service; we don't have a lawn service. (In fact, our attitude towards our lawn is pretty much one of benign neglect. We cut it only when it gets long enough to lose small objects in, and we never fertilize it, because if it grew faster we'd just have to cut it more often.) This means that things don't always get done around our house as fast as they might; for instance, we've been in the process of refinishing our basement for over two years now, and there's still a good bit left to do. But after all, we're in no hurry, and when it finally is done, it will be much more satisfying to be able to say we did it ourselves.
• In wintertime, we keep the thermostat at 67 degrees during the day. (I know some people turn it even lower, but I'm a wuss.) At night, we turn it down to 56. In the summer, we use the A/C only on the hottest days (when it gets above 90 degrees in the house), relying on fans to keep cool the rest of the time.
• Most of our furniture is secondhand.
• We keep the place clean with a few basic, inexpensive (and nontoxic) products, such as vinegar, baking soda, and ordinary soap. We use rags in place of paper towels.
• Here's one that might not be obvious as a household expense, until you remember that "housekeeping supplies" included office supplies: we do most of our banking online, including paying bills. This saves paper, postage, and time.

The one thing we don't skimp on? High-speed Internet. We rely on it for too many things, including my job and the aforementioned online banking. However, you could make an argument that this, too, is a frugal choice. The $50 a month we spend for our cable modem takes the place of many other things we might otherwise have to pay for, like TV service (we can watch TV online with our new media spud) and newspapers (we can read the New York Times online). It also gives us easy access to sites that help save us money, like the Dollar Stretcher, MyPoints (which gives you "points" when you shop online, which you can then cash out in the form of gift cards), and Coupons.com. Perhaps for a later entry, I'll do the math on all this and figure out to what extent our high-speed connection actually pays for itself.

How about you, fearless readers? Any thoughts you'd like to share on the subject of thrifty housing?

Winter warmer-upper

Much as I would like to keep the heat turned down in the winter (both to save money and to reduce my carbon footprint), I'm just too much of a wuss. I'm all right at night when I can pile on the blankets, but during the day, when I'm working at my computer, I can't manage anything lower than 67 degrees. Even at that temperature, I find myself shivering under three layers of clothing (plus a hat, plus wool socks and winter boots).

So, as the cold weather set in last November, I was actually considering dropping 40 bucks on a Slanket (a higher-end version of the Snuggie, star of so many TV infomercials. I never considered the Snuggie itself because, according to reviews I've seen, they're no bargain even at $15.) However, when I spotted fleece throws on sale for $2 apiece at Walgreens, I got to thinking that maybe I could make my own blanket-wrap from those. After some experimentation, I found that I could wrap one of them around my torso like a towel, then drape the second one over my shoulders like a cape.

With this double blanket over top of my regular clothes, I can stay toasty warm with the thermostat at 67 degrees. Now if I can just work up the courage to bump it down another degree or two and be a little less toasty....

MediaSpud

It started a few years ago with me hauling my 17" LCD monitor and my Dell notebook into the living room so that we could watch videos on the computer while sitting on the couch.  The advent of an LCD television made this process easier, as the monitor no longer had to travel, the notebook connecting nicely via TV-out S-video.  A new notebook for work allowed the old notebook to stay attached to the TV full time.

Until it died, that is, whereupon I realized that I had created for myself a need that had not existed before.

I needed a media PC.

Well great.

So I tried to replace it with various computers I already had.  This turned out to be a learning experience.

From my desktop machine, an AMD 64-bit (2.8 GHz) monstrosity that looks and sounds like a garbage truck, I learned that there is such a thing as too large and too loud when it comes to a piece of machinery that's going to spend its time next to your TV and stereo.

From the Dell notebook that I cobbled together from a scrounged machine augmented with parts from my recently deceased notebook, I learned that there is such a thing as a computer that is too dumb to play video.

And from the lovely Mac notebook that I tried as an experiment (as a work computer, I couldn't consider using it for that purpose), I learned that there is such a thing as a computer being too expensive if its sole purpose is to play video.

So, if I was going to acquire a dedicated media PC, what did I want?

1) It had to have a brain big enough to play video well.
2) It had to be quiet.
3) It had to be cheap...or rather, inexpensive.
4) It had to have low power consumption, as it might get left on for extended periods of time.

And let me tell you folks, there ain't too much at the intersection of that particular Venn diagram.  Even the Mac Mini, probably the best option I could find at first, was (at $600) more than I cared to spend.

And then I read about the NVIDIA Ion.

To put it briefly, the Ion is the Intel Atom processor (a tiny, somewhat feeble processor) souped up with high-end NVIDIA graphics processing unit, i.e., lots of graphics power in a small, energy-efficient package. 

So I took the plunge and started building the MediaSpud:

The motherboard is a Zotac IONITX-A-U (purchased from Amazon) with 4 Gb of compatible dual-channel DDR2 RAM.  This was connected a Western Digital 320 Gb hard drive (2.5", 5400 rpm) and a DVD burner.  To top it all off, I added a combination wireless mouse and keyboard - probably the trickiest part, as both keyboard and mouse had to operate properly at a distance of at least eight feet from the receiver.  After reading a number of reviews of such products, it became painfully apparent that manufacturers' claims about range were a bit, well, optimistic.  I did manage to settle on a combo from i-Rocks that was both well-reviewed and relatively inexpensive.   And I'm happy to say that it has worked as advertised.  The computer communicates both video and audio to the TV via HDMI.  A serviceable HDMI cable can be purchased on Amazon for less than $5 (most of which is the shipping).

All these components came to about $325.  The IONITX-A-U comes with a wireless card and with a built-in power supply, so there was no need to purchase either.

The enclosure is made mostly of 0.5 cm-thick plywood and measures 37 cm wide by 21.5 cm deep by about 8.5 cm tall (including the little cork feet that it stands upon).   I had originally planned to make the case as small as possible, but decided that having a little extra space would make the whole project much easier to execute.  I was right.

The power button I got from Radio Schlock.  I soldered it to a connector wire that I happened to have lying about so that I could turn the machine on without having to short across the power pins in the motherboard with a screwdriver or paperclip.  There are none of the other front-panel connectors and indicator lights that we've become accustomed to having on our computers, but I figure if I need any, I can just add them later.  I have a drill.

Proper (I hope) ventilation is performed by the CPU/GPU heat sink fan, which blows out through the hole in the top of the case.  Air is drawn in through several holes drilled low in the sides of the case.  This fan is the only part of the MediaSpud that makes any appreciable noise - having no variable speed setting - but is still very quiet when running full-tilt.

Both the hard drive and the DVD burner are SATA-2, so the internal cables shouldn't obstruct air flow much.

 

 

The four corner posts are cherry and help rigidify what would otherwise be a rather flimsy box.  The motherboard rests on four small posts that are also made of cherry - these pieces are tiny by necessity and the hard wood can take screws without splitting.  The DVD burner and the hard drive are affixed to the case with pieces of steel corner bead which have been snipped to size.  The hole in the top of the case is protected with a bit of screen.  The shortest wood screws I could find at the local Home Deplowe's were slightly longer than the plywood was thick, so I tried to use washers where I could, but the occasional screw does peek out on the outside surface of the case.  It's not pretty, but it does the job.  I will tell everyone that I eventually plan to replace it with a more elegant, better constructed case, but to tell the truth, I'll probably just stain this one and Case version 1.0 will be Case version Only.  Not too bad for under $10.

My mother-in-law having gifted us with a Kill-a-Watt, I decided to see how the various computers around the house fared.  My desktop machine pulled 100 watts when idle and about 130 when playing a Hulu video full-screen.  By contrast, Lobelia's souped-up G4 Mac runs at about 40 watts when idle and a little over 70 when under load (running a Youtube video, which is about the most intense thing it is ever asked to do - we don't dream of playing Hulu vids on it).  The MediaSpud running Windows XP, however, comes in at 22 watts when idle, 25 when running Hulu full-screen, and still only 30 when running the World of Warcraft free trial (which it does quite nicely, despite its tiny brain).  Of course, our 26-inch LCD TV pulls 120 watts, so make of the likely overall power savings what you will...

We're still exploring this computer's capabilities, but I can say that it does everything that I expected it to.  It can handle both 720p and 1080i HD video, though I find I like it better in 720p.  It can't handle streaming HD from Youtube, but I expect that's because those videos are CPU-intensive rather than GPU-intensive.

All who are hungry, let them come and eat

As an ecofrugalista (if that isn't really a word, well, it is now), I don't eat out very often. Eating at home isn't just cheaper; it also gives me a lot more control. If I want to choose local produce, or Fair-Trade coffee, or free-range eggs, eating at home is generally the easiest way to do it.

But not, it appears, the only way. As it turns out, my little town of Highland Park is now home to the Better World Café, described as a "community café"--the fifth of its kind in the country. It serves up local, seasonal foods at reasonable prices. It lets customers choose their own portion sizes--and also the size of the bill. While the cafe will give you a "suggested price," you can pay less if that's what you can afford, or pay more if you'd like to make a donation. If you don't have any money at all, you can instead volunteer an hour of your time to pay for your meal. So no one goes away hungry. Cheap eats, living-wage jobs, no disposable dishes--how could I not love a place like that?

I'd been meaning to give this place a try since it first opened back in October, but I kept forgetting about it--or at least, forgetting about it during the lunchtime hours (11 to 3) when it's open. Today, as lunchtime rolled around and I realized that there were no leftovers in the house, I decided this was the perfect time to check it out. I wandered in and found a cheerful crowd eating and a server chatting away with one of the customers. She explained how it all worked and pointed out that day's menu on a white board, with suggested prices. I got a bowl of mushroom broth with tofu and veggies, a chunk of bread to go with it, a carrot cupcake with cream-cheese frosting, and a cup of Fair-Trade, organic coffee--all for a suggested total of $5.28, which I rounded up to $6. The soup was hot and savory (though a bit on the sour side), and the carrot cake moist and tasty. It didn't look like a big meal when I sat down, but by the time I finished my coffee and bused my tray, I was stuffed. Yet I didn't have to feel guilty, because it was all nutritious (hey, carrot cake is a vegetable, right?) and locally grown. A hearty, healthful meal for six bucks--from a place that helps feed the hungry, supports local farmers, and strengthens the community. How cool is that?

The thought that counts

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions for 2010 is to update this blog more regularly--at least once a week. I also think that it would be good for the blog to have a clearer theme, instead of just picking up on whatever random thoughts fire across my brain synapses. So I've decided to focus on this concept of ecofrugality that I introduced back in May. There is already another blog out there that goes by the name of "The Ecofrugal," but since it was created in May 2009 and still boasts only one post, I doubt I'll be treading on anyone's toes by picking up the idea and running with it.

So, with this new focus in mind, I'd like to say a few words on the subject of holiday gifts.

Looking back at the presents we gave and received this past month, it seems to me that there was no correlation whatsoever between the cost of a gift and how much it pleased the recipient. The most expensive gift we gave was a $50 Home Depot gift card for my sister and brother-in-law, and they did like it--although my sister actually argued that it was "too generous" a present to give in the middle of a recession. On the other hand, my mom seemed equally happy with the Puzzle Lady mystery I got her from the library book sale. (She likes crossword puzzles, and she likes mysteries, so it seemed like a pretty sure-fire choice.) Of all the gifts we gave our nieces and nephews, the best received was the "jungle adventure" tent that we picked up from our local Freecycle group, which didn't cost a cent.

Likewise, the gifts we loved the most weren't necessarily the most expensive ones. For instance, I was quite pleased with a book of crossword puzzles from my sister-in-law that she candidly admitted had been re-gifted. She said she found the puzzles too hard for her and wanted to pass them on to someone who could handle them; how could I not be flattered by that explanation? The biggest present we got was a check from my in-laws to put toward the purchase of a new fridge, and while we were naturally happy with the check, what really delighted me was the packaging:



So what's the moral of this holiday story? Is it really the thought that counts? I hesitate to say yes, because so many people seem to use that phrase as an excuse for not really thinking about the gifts they give. If you don't care for the present they selected more or less at random, they'll say, "Well, it's the thought that counts," as if that phrase meant "I remembered to get you something, and that's all that really matters." So I'd like to suggest instead that what really matters is the amount of thought that goes into a gift. The best gift will be one that you clearly chose with a specific person in mind, one that really shows you were thinking of that particular person's tastes and interests. In other words, the thought that counts is not "I need a Christmas present for Aunt Mary," but "I know this will make Aunt Mary happy." And if you can't find the gift that fits that thought, a token gift--or none at all--is better than an expensive present that could just as easily have been chosen for a complete stranger.