Posted on: July 8, 2009 by Matt
Many of you are probably familiar with the Food Network Show $40 A Day with Rachel Ray. If you are not – the basic premise is that Rachel Ray goes out on a trip to a city and tries to get through the day spending $40 for all of her meals. While I was out of town on business I figured I would see what I could do to stay around her benchmark and still eat relatively well for the 10 days I would be gone.
After returning home I promptly went through my spreadsheet of expenses to submit an expense report to my boss. All said and done I had about $565 out of pocket for the 10 days I was gone and another $1325 or so for the base trip expenses (airfare, rental car, hotel) that my boss picked up on the company card. The $565 I spent breaks down like this:
- $112.45 – Parking for the airport I was departing from or 10 days. I used an economy lot with shuttle service to the terminal which saved about $5 – $10 per day.
- $101.28 – Rental car taxes: I guess these were not covered by the reservation booking.
- $74.06 – Gas: One fill up for my car to get to the airport and two for the rental car.
- $23.50 – Parking in Denver: Parking in downtown Denver can run up to $20 per day. Most uncovered lots are in the $10 – $12 per day neighborhood. I generally parked a few blocks outside of downtown in a lot that ran $2.50 per day. I had to walk about 15 minutes to get to downtown but saved the company about $10 per day here as well.
- $253.26 – Food total: That was all of my meals for the 10 day trip plus coffee, snacks and anything else I ingested. That totals out to about $25 per day which is $15 per day less than my baseline. I did have a couple of dinners that spanned two nights but also treated coworkers to coffee as well as one coworker to lunch. This makes me wonder if maybe I should get a show similar to Rachel Ray’s and search out the cheap eats in a town for people that need to spend less than $40 a day. Of course I am not a fan of cameras and have no interest at all in the idea but it is an idea just the same…
So for the entire trip my total came to about $1890 which is $110 less than the $2,000 I set as my goal to stay under. I am not sure what my boss had in mind for a baseline for expenses or what other coworkers have spent while out of town on business but think I did a fairly decent job of keeping costs low. How about you? Do you have a standard amount that you spend while out of town on business?
Posted on: May 12, 2009 by Matt
Today I am going a little off topic and touching on another issue that I find increasingly important: saving our planet. Last night my girlfriend and I watched Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I had not seen the film before but had always had an interest in watching it due to the critical acclaim and the subject content. What I discovered was that our planet is in much worse shape than I had originally thought (and I had a pretty negative view to begin with).
If you have not seen the film yet please stop reading and head out to get a copy. Order it online, rent it, get it from Netflix, download the audio book from iTunes – just get a copy and try watching it with an open mind. You can also get more information from the web site www.climatecrisis.net in order to take action to reduce your carbon footprint.
Overall – I think it is important for everyone to learn at least a little bit more about our current environmental situation. If we do not take steps to save our planet we could be in for a nasty awakening. In addition – a lot of the steps you can take will also help save you money in the long run as well (hey a little frugal after all). That said here is a short list of my goals to help do my part:
- Replace standard light bulbs in the house with CFL’s: They use 60% less energy than a standard light bulb – enough said.
- Use less hot water: I am going to try to shorten my showers by 5 minutes each day. I am not sure what the current baseline is but I plan to time myself at a normal speed and then see what I can do to reduce that time. We already wash our clothes in cold water.
- Power off electronics when not in use and unplug: This may be a little tricky but I am going to see what we can do to turn off and unplug electronics while they are not in use. I can easily make this change at work without impacting anyone but myself so I will start in the office.
- Walk or bike to work: I live about 1.25 miles from the office I work from. I often am lazy and drive in to work. Follow that with a trip home and back for lunch and the end of day trip home and I am at about 5 miles a day. Walking or biking that would not only help the environment but also help my health!
- Recycle: Our town has a pretty weak recycling program: you actually have to pay to recycle. However my office has a big old dumpster for all-in-one recycling that we can add to. I have set out a paper bag in our kitchen to collect recyclable materials in and will continue to bring them in to be recycled.
- Use the local farmer’s market: I like to support local business and have been pretty bad about practicing lately. However – the local farmer’s market will be starting back up soon and I hope to start picking up some of our produce there. We also have a local grocery store that buys from local farmers as well that I have been shopping at more frequently.
So it is a fairly long list of steps I hope to take and I am sure that I will think of more along the way but I do believe that too often people get caught up in the “but I’m just one person, what can I possibly do?” mindset. For those of you personal finance nuts out there: Think of saving our environment like you think about passive income streams. Each of us can be a “passive income source” for the planet by making just a few changes to our every day habits. Each individual that makes a change adds to the overall total and with enough individuals the change will be massive. Plus – all of the steps suggested should save you some cash as well! I think we have a big win-win situation going here!
Posted on: April 9, 2009 by Matt
The area that I live in is cluttered with small antique shops and many of them offer a range of items from inexpensive to higher priced rare items. I tend to like to find time to browse through the shops and see what kind of deals I can muster up. Most recently on Sunday I was helping my sister move into an apartment over a small antique shop and I took a stroll through.
I was not looking for anything in particular but when I walked by the jewelry case I noticed a decent looking silver ring with multiple colored stones in it. The price tag was set to $9.90. I figured it was probably glass or plastic set into the ring but upon further inspection noted that it was not plastic and was probably a material worth more the $10 they were asking (the silver in the ring was 925 sterling, easily worth more than $10). I asked them to hold it and opted to take the ring as a surprise gift for my girlfriend as she has been looking for a multi gem stoned ring.
She was pretty excited when I gave her the surprise gift and even more surprised at the cost. She is a bit of a jewelry nut (makes her own and such) and immediately began inspecting. She was not certain of the exact make up but noted that the “stones” looked like they were probably crystals of some sort if not the actual gem stones they appeared to be. All said and done – I was pretty happy with my surprise find.
I used to associate antique shops with over priced junk from another era but really enjoy walking through and finding what kind of deals I can find (occasionally leaving pleasantly surprised). Have any of you had any surprising finds at antique shops? What kind of deals have you picked up?
Posted on: March 11, 2009 by Matt
Every once in a while my girlfriend will randomly come up with some new method of using leftovers or a method of doing something frugally that I am not aware of. Last night she opted to make spaghetti pie out of left over spaghetti noodles we had saved from the night before. I have to admit that I was a bit skiddish about the dish just from the description: “It’s like all your left over spaghetti mixed with a bunch of eggs and you cook it kind of like a big spaghetti omelette”.
However – given that it was a new and created use of leftovers that I had never even heard of before I figured why not? The result was surprising – I really enjoyed the meal! It turned out looking something like the picture to the right here and tasted just excellent. We had it with some left over garlic bread, sausage and leftover veggies as well.
If you are interested in giving it a shot here was the process from my observation:
- Put leftover spaghetti noodles (we had about half a pound) in a large bowl.
- Add a lot of eggs. We used 7 eggs but my girlfriend noted it would have been better if we had used a dozen.
- Heat a large skillet on the stove, add some light cooking oil (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan).
- Add the spaghetti and egg mixture.
- Cook until eggs start to firm up and brown on the bottom (like an omelette).
- Flip over and cook on other side to match.
- Remove from pan and cut into wedges.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and top with your favorite sauce.
It may not suit everyone’s taste but we tend to have leftover noodles around fairly often and I am pretty excited to have a new way of using them up. As an additional note: my girlfriend also said that the dish tastes really good cold with sauce. I have not tried yet but hope that next time we might have some leftovers so I can.
Posted on: February 15, 2009 by Matt
Since the crazy spending spree of the holidays my finances have suffered a bit. I figured that one month of overspending probably would not affect me all that much and that I could handle to splurge a little bit. I did not account for falling back into blowing off my normal financial habits for the easier to follow do nothing approach though.
As I stated – I have not been putting money back into savings (I had no problem taking it out for my spree though) and am not balancing my spending back out. However – I am grateful that I have a good job and I have not fallen behind on the essentials. My family has a place to live, my bills are all paid every month and there is food on the table.
In order to start moving back out of the paycheck to paycheck model I will need to start up all my good habits again. Anyone that has been on a gym routine and stopped for a week can probably relate to how hard it can be to pick the good habits back up. Currently my get back on track plan includes:
- Writing my monthly budget: I started slacking off here and it really hit me hard.
- Tracking my expenses: If I track the areas I am over spending on I can look into ways to cut back.
- Plan weekly meals and shop with lists: We spend a lot at the grocery store, largely from lacking a list.
- Work to increase my income: At work I am in the midst of starting a new division. The more I develop and expand the division the better my bonus checks become.
- Cutting back on luxuries: We have been letting little purchases add up over the past couple of months. If we want to get out of the cycle of feeling like we never have money we need to all agree (as a family) to give up a few luxury items.
- Get my tax return done early: I expect I may owe Vermont some state tax (still need to look into this) but my federal return should kick start my savings and debt repayment again.
All said – I am hopeful that we can get back on track in March. There are not any special holidays that require presents or spending and I think we have a lot of the house settled now. Hopefully we will start to get back ahead in the next month.
Tags: Budget, Budgeting, Debt Reduction, Expenses, Extra Income, Relationships, Savings Filed Under: Budget, Debt, Debt Reduction, Expenses, Frugal Living, Goals, Planning, Recession, Relationships, Savings, Student Loans
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