It's a Blog-iversary and a Giveaway!

Photo: Cellach

365 days ... 112 posts ... the inaugural year of Gratitude. Simplicity. Frugality. comes to an end today.

I was not new to blogging a year ago, but I was entirely new to blogging for people other than my friends, that was targeted around a topic other than me getting cranky about something, and that was (mostly) curse word free. I had started posting entries about using up leftovers and grocery store deals, but save a small handful of my friends, my other blog's readers weren't so much interested. After some prodding by Be, my mom, and others, GSF became a reality and you know the rest of the story (or at least you can find it out by clicking through the archive).

I hope that you've enjoyed the posting here so far. I've really enjoyed writing over the last year, scoping deals, telling you hilarious (and often disastrous) stories of our frugal endeavors, and being a part of the frugal/simple/saver/personal finance/homemaking bloggy community. I have learned a ton about the mechanics of blogging for an audience, and I appreciate all of you for sticking through that learning curve.

In the coming year, look for more coupon strategies, deal alerts, stories of crazy frugality, gratituesdays, and a special spring/summer series coming super soon. If you have any suggestions for material you'd like to see, or questions about ... well, anything, I'd love to get a note from you about them.

Photo: Jen Chan

Now, on to business ... an "-iversary " be it Anni-, Blog-, or otherwise wouldn't be complete without two of my favorite things: cake and presents. Being that it is likely impossible to ship cake without it turning to mush ... and that I don't know that cake would ever last here long enough to get to a post office ... we're sticking with presents. I have a giveaway for one of you, a set of 5 cookbooks from the P Cubed Practical Series. They are quick reads with glossy pictures of all the recipes which always helps me decide 1: if I should try to make it or not and 2: if I screwed it up at the end when it doesn't look at all like the picture. Included are a copy each of Practical Pizzas, Practical Stir-fry, Practical Baking, Practical Desserts, and Practical Chocolate; all are approximately 20-30 pages.

Sooooooo, how do you enter?

1. Post a comment to this entry saying ... well, whatever you want to for your first entry.

2. Include in that comment your favorite part of GSF and/or a question or suggestion for the next year for your second entry.

3. Post the giveaway info to your blog and link back to GSF, then come and tell me you did it (including the link) for your third entry.

That's 3 chances to win for each of you! The giveaway will remain open until midnight EST on Friday, April 17, 2009 so you have plenty of time to get in on the fun. Once closed, I will use a random number generator to choose the winner who will then have 48 hours to respond or forfeit their prize.

Thanks again for a great first year. I'm looking forward to an even cooler second one. Now, quickly, run off and tell your friends about the giveaway so you can get all your chances in and I can send you this stack of yummy cookbooks. While you're gone, I think I'll have some cake ...


Simply (and thankfully!),

Em.

(I'll be back soon with the menu ... )

A Frugal Girl's Dilemma

We are a generally broke people, Be and I. We're down to 1/2 an income since he's still battling the work comp people (almost 2 years) and my coaching job takes a hiatus over the spring and summer. Darn those kids and their not wanting to go to school all year so I can get paid! Ha. Really, though, we don't mind our necessitated thrift all that much. We like being good stewards, paying down the debt from when we weren't so great at that, and trying out creative ways to stretch our tiny budget all over the place. My dilemma today, though, is when is it ok to stop being practical for a hot second and splurge?

My knee jerk reaction, after years of penny pinching and general miserly-ness is to say "Never!". Living a super thrifty lifestyle changes you over time, I think. Most things are no longer necessities, but luxuries cut out to make the zero based budget balance. Every extra penny goes to debt payments, and every money related thought is about how to better utilize current resources for even greater needs. Many, especially in our spendthrift populous, would think us thrifty folk nutjobs. We hear our friends, family, finance experts, and people on the street tell us all about how we just have to have discretionary cash to spend as we please without recourse or we will surely go insane and spontaneously combust. Yet, there are many of us, the frugal underground, who have not turned to self-immolation (and shhhhh, but we're happy about it). I have been one of the few, the proud, the unquestioning frugal for years and years ... until possibly, today.

The backstory here is that we have rewards checking accounts through our bank. They're free, and we signed up for the points rewards program when they started offering it to people who already had accounts instead of only new openers a couple years ago. Then, of course, we forgot about it. All this while the bank has been keeping track of the transactions we've made, and has added points (2/$1 plus bonuses for savings account transfers, opening new accounts, direct deposit, and EFTs) accordingly. I remembered this ... today, and logged in to see where I stood as far as points totals and reward costs were concerned.

Ooooooh, boy!

It's apparently good to forget about your rewards account for ... um ... years. I have something over 35,000 points! Immediately, of course, I called Be to make him log into his account and check his balance ... a whopping 33,000! Each of us is sitting on roughly $75 worth of redeemable value whether we choose giftcards, cash, or something from the prize (read: lame) catalog (who needs another umbrella, anyway?). As I skimmed the pages of available gifts, my pulse quickened when I saw that Barnes and Noble giftcards were on the list.

Ok, I confess ... I am a book-a-holic. A bibliophile who agreed at the beginning of this journey toward good stewardship to use the library instead, making a rule that I couldn't spend any money on books until well after we were debt free. As our budget is often precariously arranged, this rule has not been a problem. I don't have credit I can use anymore, so no money = no risk of spending it on books.

Faced with the choice between cashing in my points for more practical giftcards like those for the gas station and CVS or the entirely splurge-tastic (new word! ha) B&N, I am paralyzed. On the one hand, I should be a good steward. I should be practical, always. I should do the right thing and add to my family's budget with a smile on my face. On the other hand, it's free money ... money we would not have otherwise had anyway ... and money I would absolutely looooooooove to spend on books. Oh, my dear frugal friends, what is a girl to do? Be, with his cool exterior told me to do whatever I wanted to do. Ugh. That means nothing when you have a competition going on between wants and probably shoulds.

So, my lovely readers, I'm taking suggestions. What would you do if you could choose a $75 gift card? Would you splurge? Would you be ascetic about it? Would you have to write blog posts about it, and hope the comments helped you decide? Help a girl out here, pretty please?


Simply,

Em.

The Pinocchio of Bloggers ...

You know how Pinocchio asks all the time about being a 'real boy'? That's how I feel about blogging today. I never set out to be a 'real blogger'. I mostly wanted a place to share this crazy frugal life with a handful of my friends who both a: think me crazy for washing out ziplock bags and b: secretly want to be frugal-cool (... or not so secretly as in the case of my buddy WesO who thinks my breakout calculations of what dinner ingredients cost are fun ... nerds unite!). I never thought I'd be bloggy friends with a bunch of amazing people, or that I would participate in regular features like today's Gratituesday. Today brings the next big step ... a blog carnival.

If you follow me on facebook, you would have seen my status about entering the carnival yesterday. I entered the 164th edition of the Festival of Frugality hosted this week by Broke Grad Student, and my entry on the (not-so-traditional) way we reused our holiday wrapping paper this year was accepted for inclusion. If you're looking, it's second from the bottom, haha. Now, I'm not entirely sure how these bloggy carnivals work exactly. I have a small inclination that they accept everyone that writes anything at all related to the topic. I am ridiculously proud regardless.

Someday, I'll be a real blogger.


Simply,

Em.

New Year, New Goals

I don't really like to make "resolutions".

To resolve, really, is to determine purpose or intention. Is it any surprise then that the average New Year's 'resolution', scribbled hastily and abstractly in the wee hours of a socially lubricated holiday, is often in the trash before you can make it through a round of Auld Lang Syne? I can make many a statement about my purpose or intention without ever actually doing anything about either. Inaction and failure to progress only frustrate people (and me) further, leading away from what could be positive change and back down the road of old habits. For fear of that same old fallback, I don't really make 'resolutions' at the stroke of 12 amid the bubbly and streamers.

I am still, however, a list maker at heart. I like to make goals and have action plans with steps and checklists for me to track my progress along the way. The beginning of a new calendar year is a helpful stop/start point for new goals, and evaluating new goals around this time of year helps me stave off the urge to create random (and oh so popular) "I will lose 50 lbs" or "I will save $10,000" statements that I will inevitably not act on or will forget in the coming weeks. Yes, goals. Goals are objectives with plans to get to them, and I much prefer them to inclinations or determinations.

On Gratitude ...
For the gratitude I have for this life and this world, I've put all of my personal (read: health) related goals under the gratitude category. How better can I give thanks, then by making the very best out of exactly what I was given? I've not paid as much attention as I likely should to the 'body as temple' concept in the past, and I'd like to slowly but surely make efforts to change that.

1. Carve 15 minutes of quiet time out of my day for contemplation, meditation, and devotion.
2. Add 2 Nalgenes (my favorite tried and true reuseable water bottle) of water to my day.
3. Eat 3 meals everday.
4. Take my vitamins and medicines.
5. Find flexible and fun options for 90 minutes of movement every week.

On Simplicity ...
January makes me think that we own too much stuff. Every. Single. Year. January is the month that we make the people at Goodwill the happiest because I get all antsy about the clutter (which there really isn't that much of), and decide to start passing on stuff left and right. If you lived near by, you could have first dibs. Usually, I think I need to sort through every single thing in our house in ... oh ... the next 12 minutes. It always starts our frantic and obsessive, and by about the second room I want to do nothing but climb up on top of the pile of no longer needed clothes on my bed and take a nap. I'm always exhausted, everything is a disaster, and it ends up worse than it started.

This year I am welcoming the Room a Month plan. It may take me the entire year to sift through what we have, but I won't be collapsed in a pile under a shelf in the basement by the second day and perhaps we'll finally get to the bottom of the hidden treasure trove called our basement. We have 11 rooms ... now to figure out what order to put them in.

On Frugality ...

1. Create a menu in an attempt to prevent dinner time spaz-outs. (We used to have a menu, but I let it slip when I went back to school ... I know, I know, the worst possible time.)
2. No more real money spent on fast food. Gift cards earned from points and the like are fine, but can't be purchased by us.
3. All lunches for school and work will be brown bagged.
4. I will challenge myself with a new, much lower grocery budget of $120 for my family of 5. Yay, challenges!
5. We will be debt free by 12/31/2009 (except the student loans and the house) if I can find $156 in extra snowflakes every month for debt. I cannot even believe I can say that, as we have long been convinced we wouldn't be debt free for another 100 years.

Now, before you think I'm going to launch into all of these at the same time, I much prefer the Goal A Month program. It takes the brain 21 or so days of continued effort and repetition to create a new habit, and as such I will focus on only one goal from each category at a time, and intend to blog more specifically about them as they arrive. There are only 5 goals in two of the three categories because I both want the flexibility to take more time if necessary, and the chance to reevaluate as I go. They're goals, remember, not resolutions!

Did you create any goals for the new year? Have you thrown out those crazy 'resolutions' yet?


Simply,

Em.