Since many of us take care of laptop batteries, cell phone batteries, PDA batteries, MP3 batteries, and since batteries are pretty much the reason electronics get busted, I thought of you all when ran across this link:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/

Some of it is technical, but the how tos are pretty clear.

Other than that, its been a quiet vacation at home. Bought a black printer cartridge $36.98, so I can refill the old one at the mall. That way, I'm not caught short.

I do like to step outside (vacation after all) with a library book and get a little coffee at the local coffeeshop during the day, then at night dip into what Netflix has sent me. If I can't save a buck by not using the service, its also quite frugal to use the he-double-hockey-sticks out of what you've bought.

I did my grocery shopping at Larry's Markets, which now has a buyer. Fantastic deals on red & green grapes, peaches, milk, salad in a bag, potato chips, radishes, tomatoes, cheese. 2 large bags and the gallon of milk for 16$. DH got salmon for 1.97/lb. That's an unheard of price even for Seattle. So it will be grilled salmon and the leftovers which will turn into salmon salad and salmon cakes.

DH and I both saved our tickets from the family visit to the artshow at EMP. Turns out that those tickets entitle us to get in free to the Henry Art Gallery where we saw Maya Lin's show Systematic Landscapes. Picked up the other half of sister's birthday gift in the gift shop for $27.20.

Well, we were the redneck carport of the week since the first week of April. And when DH got his mom's white Buick, we were breaking the lease by having 1 good car and 1 busted car on the concrete pad.

DH's front end smashed car is now finally gone, leaving the white Buick. Whew!

DH kept the smashed car out of pure stubbornness - he insisted that "I'd get it fixed" which then segued into "but what about the bumperstickers?" (Note to anyone: here be $1.75 bumper stickers.) and then finally "I want to get some money out of this."

He put an ad on Craigslist, a guy called, drove by, made an appointment with DH and towed it away. DH didn't make any money, but he didn't have to pay any either. And now we are in keeping with our lease.

Added 3$ to the tip box; spent for a $1.75 coffee and an $8 lunch.

Normally I eat lunch alone, so I can do my dividing, but lately I've been eating lunch with lawyer friend's partner to cheer her up and calm her down a bit. There's frugal, and then there's cheap and mean. Lunch on the high end until our nerves settle down.

$3 more in the tip box

Spent $1.75 for coffee, and $8 for lunch. The price per lb of salad rose .50/lb to $5.49/lb. Bummer! Although they still have mango slices, baked salmon, fried mushrooms, and tofu with black bean sauce, so .50 more is still worth it.

Saw the chiropractor checks online, which was a treat in each sense of the word; last week my bank "upgraded" its site. I couldn't get into my bank account so I couldn't reconcile my checks. It could have been worse. I don't use online bill pay, thankfully - that was completely knocked out during the "upgrade". Welcome to the icky side of the digital life.

Worked out at the gym by myself today. Because I'm in the fitness challenge, I have to get weighed and measured. Another personal trainer did the deed, and I got another piece of rotten news - no weight loss or inch loss. To be fair, a bad before number means that its easier to win.

And tonight, I joined a night out party put on by the Seattle Police & Fire Dept to promote block watches. The block in question wasn't my block, but the block on the next street over. We live on a high traffic street so we had no ability to block off our street. No matter - there were at least 3 parties within 2 blocks of us.

Not that much saving going on.

I made two pitchers of gazpacho this afternoon. Gazpacho seems to be the summer recipe for cleaning out the produce section of the refrigerator; minestrone the winter one.

I threw out two heads of romaine and my pound of green beans. That depressed me tremendously, but for my gazpacho I did manage to salvage two half heads of romaine, a few leaves of raditchio (sic), a carrot, green onions, several radishes, and a whole lot of tomatoes, 1 bunch of parsely, 1 bunch of cilantro, grind everything up along with 1 can of chicken stock, 2 cans of tomato sauce (paste tastes metallic--blegh), salt, pepper, lemon juice, hot sauce, 5 garlic cloves, olive oil.

It'll be the all-liquid fiber diet this week.

Seattle this summer has a 'literary latte' deal. Read three books and you get a 4$ Starbucks card, and your name is entered into a drawing. I made it to the library tonight in time to submit my sheet and get the gift card.

Starbucks is not my favorite but it'll be useful for the end-of-the-month drill. I've noticed that the Starbucks card seems to be Seattle alternative currency. You can get one for a prize, as a reward, for recommmending someone for some such. If you look in any Seattleite's wallet, you'll find at least a couple. Too bad there's no easy way to manage the cards. I wish there was an easy way to figure out how much you have on a particular card.

We are having a heat alert in Seattle tomorrow, so I expect to have another not-so-good night of sleep. Last night our 19 yr old cat kept hurking up, so his food is being cut back a bit.

Today I spent stupid money. I left my bus pass in my yesterday's pants pocket, I had to beg to get on in the morning and pay $1.50 on the return trip home. Lunch out with lawyer friend, but at places charging only 6$. Compared to 10-11$ a month or two ago, we are making progress.

Last night I was going to change a bit of information on my Treasury Direct account. I was so clever a year ago answering the security questions. Too clever: I locked my account. I highly recommend their customer service - no hold, no hold music, just a nice guy who answered the phone on the second ring, asked me some security questions and unlocked my account in all of five minutes.

I've still been doing gym. I haven't been measured lately, so I think I will ask next week. My large gym shirt is comfortable (It'll be years before I become a medium), the upper ab bulge is disappearing and the shirt is not creeping up. Yippee! My trainer is now working with my two co workers, who are now gym buddies and come in nearly every day. I'm excited for them, too.

Spending log - $1.65 coffee + $6 lunch + $1.50 bus ride.
Saving log - $1 tip box, scheduled a $2000 transfer from ING to another 4 wk T-bill, moved $1000 into another DRP.

Scraped up 48$ from the tip box and put it into savings.

Ate the footlong sub over 2 days to save a little bit. Ordered up DH's gift from Think Geek , DH's birthday card, and sister's birthday card. So $1.65 (coffee)+ $5.72 (2 cards) + $29.00 (DH birthday gift).

Our workplace is talking about converting vacation and sick leave into PTO (paid time off). I tend to accrue beaucoup amounts of sick leave and I'm not terribly interested in starting a family, so it'll be an okay deal for me. The COO had mentioned that there were about 30 people who he felt might be abusing sick leave. I didn't think it was that many, but then again I work for a living.

I read this while I ate my Friday curry special. Nearly put me off my food. Kudos for the anarchists not being black hooded and smashing up stores, but I think it takes group frugality just a tad too far. And actually, group frugality and those rules just make that shared house seem like a joyless experience. Guys, the revolution has to be attractive, because to the average American, living well is the best revenge.

Put another 3$ in the tip box. Did the gym and the chiropractor. I'm getting my routine going and it feels good.

Word from sister: Sister and I are still waiting for the WiDNR final proposal. I have to remember that this is a government entity. Its not like they can just hop on an opportunity in a matter of days.

Put another 3$ in the tip box, and as I was stuffing the bills in, I saw that the top one was stamped with

www.wheresgeorge.com so I registered the bill for giggles and grins, just to see what would happen to it after I put it in the bank.

Got a huge stack of work in my inbox over yesterday. Waaa!

Did a frugal good deed. I went back to where I got my glasses to tell them of my many compliments and thank them. I caught the woman who helped me pick my glasses out so that was especially nice. She was thrilled to hear from me.

Not me, apparently! DH told me about a mutual fund analyzer at the nasd.com site:

http://tinyurl.com/8sr3n

Even with TIAA CREFs relatively low fees (2-3X the lowest Vanguard fee) and the small amount of money I'm going to move, its still worth it. I don't even dare to put in the fees of the mutual funds in my current 403B from Merrill Lynch. That would really, really disgust me for no good purpose.

I sprained the back of my knee a little on the roman chair, so the trainer had me doing that rise up movement on the air dome, then turn over on my back for the ab crunches. After a little rest, my knee is pretty good, so its back to the new bus route and the mile walk home. Working on the posture now.

The chiropractor is having me come only 2X/week, so that will help my budget tremendously. I talked things over with the trainer and she's willing to work with me. But I know that to keep making progress, I'm going to have to go to the gym at least 3X/ week - perhaps use the routines that the trainer wrote down 1-2X/week and have her come up with something fresh once/ week.

Got a BOGO coupon from a guy handing them out in front of the sub shop. Lunch today and tomorrow!

Spending log - 1.75 coffee + 7.50 lunch
Saving log - 3$ tip box

Ordered a box of checks today. Yep, I do a fair amount of online bill paying and use the debit card, but sometimes you just need a check. The last box lasted me almost 4 years. I wonder how long this box will last.

Got some more info about the rise in TIAA CREF fees, and the installation of a 12b-1 fee. Ick.

http://tinyurl.com/pqbqo
(Love the tinyurl.com site)

I plan to move my TIAA CREF money to Vanguard; still I'm loathe to pull the trigger. Sigh. It was my 403B when I was a post doctoral fellow almost fifteen years ago, so to move the money out feels like its my last break with my former academic career. Not many of our money moves are purely rational.

Spending log - 445$ rent + 1.65$ coffee + 9$ lunch
Saving log - 35$ Drp + 5$ tip box

I found out last night that one of my literary heroines died last night, a casuality of that stupid ice storm on Friday.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/260959_butlerobit26ww.ht...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/obituaries/2002831388_...

Some of us are frugal because we want to see our net worth increase. Some of us are frugal because we want security. Some of us are frugal because we would rather have more time than money.

And some are frugal because they know that their talent is going to service a project, goal, or idea that is going to be un-mainstream, unloved, and unpopular. They bravely go and use their frugality to soldier on and avoid selling out.

And when a frugal writer of that stature actually gets something like a genius grant, it goes to buy a little house. Not even a car. A little house near a bus line.

R.I.P. Octavia. You're one of the last brave writers who made a poor but honest living strictly on their writing. No Harvard teaching gigs, no journalism, no upper-class parties where a writer tweets for his supper. Just you and your writing and your infamous wrestle with your writer's block.

A little weird today. One of the data entry staff got fired today and was escorted out of the building. He apparently threatened another of the data entry staff (via blog, deep irony) and that was that.

At one point I had thought that I might reveal to my lawyer friend (also co worker) that I had this blog (who has a blog), but you know that this journal is strangely intimate because its so detached. As soon as anyone at work knows, I'll be holding my thoughts, fearing comments and this journal will lose a lot.

Of course, I can have a little bit of fun. If anyone really wants to know what my lawyer friend looks like:

http://hoquiamhouse.blogspot.com/

He's the one holding the filthy underwear in the first picture from 1/20/2006.

Got the sewer/water bill.

Sister figures that if the medical creditors don't show by the beginning of February, the four months will have passed. Worked out at the gym today with the new personal trainer - she's funny and I think we will get along well. She does more stretches, which I think are very useful.

The spinal adjustments have been working pretty well too. I've never done a decent squat for a couple of months; I've always pulled from the left, my right knee had always buckled and my right foot turns out. Today - perfect squats, Straight up, straight down.

Grocery store deal joy - fresh pineapple for .67/lb, dried spaghetti/fettucine/linguine for .50/lb, mixed nuts for $1.79/lb. All beat what I'd seen in North Seattle in two years, based on my price book. I've stocked up, but now what I have do is eat what I have and stop buying!!!

I found a tax estimator:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/calcs/n_tax/main.asp

Not that its perfect, but it should be able to tell me if I owe or am going to get a refund. With the IRA it looks like this year I will get a refund - first time in about 5 yrs. I aim with my withholding to owe a little, about $100. The estimator is giving me a refund of about $450. It gives me a little impetus to get all my forms together.

of why we are all here:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/253544_grayingpoverty27....

As a woman, I feel for her. As a woman, I know that our biggest financial tool is our brains and our self-awareness.

Christmas dinner: Marinated a duck with soy sauce and oolong tea, then stuffed it with a chopped orange and a chopped onion, and roasted it. Yummy, but you really couldn't taste the tea.

The latest little thing from sister is a stock certificate she found in the attic bought, apparently, by a great-great uncle in 1919. She was wondering if the company got bought out and whether it was worth a little something. The company is The Burnrite Coal Briquette Co.

A quick google search gave me some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the company went bankrupt before 1927. The good news is that the company was part of a Supreme Court decision in 1927.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...
If its fairly pretty, it might make a nice framed collectable.


Spending log - $1.65 coffee + $6.00 lunch
Savings log - $6.00 tip box

Thank you retire@50!

Took a look at the official IRS publication for IRAs

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p590.pdf. I made under $40,000 this year, including dividends and interest which right now isn't that much. I'm at the high end (it appears that $45,000 is the cutoff), but the traditional IRA is what I'm looking for. Since I can do it - I'm going to the limit at $4,000.

I asked Vanguard to mail me some info. I have a little time and I want to pull it from my ING account, which is going to the de facto antechamber for the family gifts and the inheritance. It'll be the first project that my inheritance money is going to. I decided that the big lump of money will go to Vanguard unless they mishandle the little IRA, so it will be a test for them too.

Speaking of ING, I figured out how to make a sub account so now I have the family gifts and the kiss my a** fund separated. Its important to me - otherwise its the family kiss my a** gift fund. That was 10 years ago. Thanks to mymoneyblog, I found out what the routing number of ING is. I'm not really interested in pulling 4000$ back into my checking account.

Got back to work yesterday. Felt like I got hammered with requests (grrr), but I managed to get a fair amount done. I just have to take it slow, mix it up (easy project, hard project), and remember my predecessors magic words, "no one dies if it doesn't get done today."

Today was a lot better after about 9 hours of sleep. I went to the gym for the first time ever. The trainer was very nice - we did mostly the weigh-in, the measurements, the setting of goals. A revelation to learn what an ab crunch actually is. It'll be quite the little project to get my weight down.

On the other hand, three years ago it was quite the little project to get my finances in line. I never balanced my checkbook; I had two little 403Bs, 1 little, 1 medium, 1 large credit card balance, and about $1500 in student loans. It was a turning point for me when DH gave me my PDA for Christmas. Three weeks later I found a free, really good checkbook program

http://www.freewarepalm.com/financial/mycheckbook.shtml and put my info in with a quavering hand. I had a positive net worth, at least, but barely. This, at 40.

I started with the basics. With the PDA, it became important for me to reconcile my checkbook and to put what I spent in. I learned how I spent my money. It became very important that my credit card balances and student loan balances went down and my 403B contributions went up. When my student loan finally got paid off, that letter stating so was almost as valuable to me as the degree that I got with it. I made small investments, put little amounts and whatever bonus I got into a savings account which grew a little.

I wanted to cultivate some savings and a little investment so I knew what to throw extra money into after my debts were paid.

I learned about the debt snowball, and hit my accounts one at a time (although I did manage to put more than the minimum in each of the others). My worst one with the worst interest, which the cc company refused to lower, I transferred to a $0 balance offer. The debt didn't quite fit--so I made payments on the leftover debt that had to stay on the icky card, while paying low amounts on the balance offer. It was a bit dangerous, the 0$ interest after six month was okay compared to the icky card, but I was lucky. I had a couple of 500$ emergencies, not several $1000 ones.

I paid off my debts and now I'm manipulating my savings, tinkering around the edges.

It leads me into gramma's gift. I feel somehow that this is a dress rehearsal for the inheritance to come. Do I shore up my savings vehicles or go in a new direction? Do I throw it all in at once, or do I dollar cost average and spread out my payments into things?

from debtfreeme: how do you buy a stock one at a time?

I first learned about buying company stock and dividend reinvestment plans (DRPs) from my DH, who bought me my first share of Coke 7 years ago. Here's the deal. Many blue chip companies that pay a dividend offer to sell company stock to shareholders through a transfer agent who operates like a bank (most transfer agents are banks). You then send money to the transfer agent, who then buys however amount of shares with the amount of money you gave them. In addition, dividends that your stock generates can be sent to you or can be reinvested to buy more stock. Many of these plans are free, or nearly so. The ones I have officially charge a fee, but the company pays the fee for me.

To read more about them, here are some links...

http://www.fool.com/School/DRIPs.htm
http://www.directinvesting.com/Drip-Information/DripInfo5.cfm
http://dripinvesting.org/drips.htm

The biggest hurdle of DRPs is starting a DRP and getting that first share of stock. You actually have to own that share, it has to be in your name - its different than actually buying that share from a broker, who buys it for you but the broker owns the stock and tacks your name on it. A broker will transfer a share into your name for a fee. If you have a friend who owns a share of a company you want you can ask them to transfer a share to you. Sometimes you can inherit shares and convert them.

After you get the share, you have to send that share to the company's transfer agent with paperwork. That's time, hassle, and other fees.
That's why I used The Temper Enrollment Services for my other two DRPs, here: http://www.directinvesting.com/ Click on "DRIP search" in the top bar. Its a great place. You can type in a company symbol and it'll tell you a bit about the drip.

For the price of a share + 10% of the share (in case the price goes up!) + $30 to $50 on-time-only fee (depends on whether its a big popular DRP or not), Temper does the whole thing for you - buys the share, contacts the transfer agent, has the transfer agent set up the DRP. In my mind, its money well spent. It just takes awhile to set it up.

After Temper sets it up, they leave and you just send money to the transfer agent. Depending on the DRP, you can send big amounts too.

Paid $350 on the credit card; now I have $280 of debt left. Chipping away at it - my only purchase on it last month was a Katrina donation. I shudder to think that I'll be making Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma donations, too. Baring all that death and destruction, I should be able to clear it next month.

Popped the signed waiver and consent in the mail. Sister told me that the next piece of paper was a certificate that I'm a legal heir(ess) to the estate, to be signed in front of a notary. We have a notary at work, so its a hop up some stairs. Now all I have to do is find the time.

I made some comments on another frugal blog about grocery shopping and how to select produce. One thing led to another and suddenly I was part of an email interview about how to keep vegetables fresh. If you're curious, here's the link:

http://money.happyhumans.com/2005/09/21/save-on-produce/

Spending log - $1.65 coffee + $7.00 lunch (bought enough for dinner, too) + $3.00 bubble tea + $350.00 credit card
Saving log - $5.00 tip box

I read this essay/prose poem in the middle of last week, and there's a thread on it on this site. The link is here:

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.html

I've been thinking about it all week.

Most of the essay above was in an urban setting, but the connotation carried it; reading it brought back a flood of memories. Sister and I grew up on a farm, as a matter of fact, the farm that we now inherit. Our family had no money, just cows and crops and land. Times bounced around from being bad to being really bad.

Being poor is more than just a lack of money. Heck, being frugal means you either have no money or you have less money than you'd like. Fifteen years ago, as a grad student, I lived on $600/month. While it truly, truly sucked, and yes I was poor, and yes I despaired about it, it felt different than being straight poor like in my childhood.

Being poor is also a state of mind. Its despair, its depression, its the pessimism of the same dark grayness, and that grinds on you more than the lack of money does. Being poor means you think that the future is going to be the same as the present - gray and terrible - and that you deserve only what have and what life and fate throws at you.

The dividing line between poor and not poor, I think, is optimism. During grad school, I was working toward a goal, and was optimistic that I would succeed. Being frugal is also a sign of optimism...you're saving money for a plan, a purpose, for something better in the future. If you have a lack of funds, being optimistic means that you accept help when you need it, and allow people to help you. Most optimists are aware of choices, ask about them and go after them. You believe you have a better future.

Before you start thinking that I'll spout the take-responsiblity-freemarket republican line, I want to let you all know that I'm, if anything, a yellow dog democrat. (It used to be that a yellow dog democrat would vote for a yellow dog in the road before voting republican; truth be told, that yellow dog is looking good all by itself.)