Free and Nearly Free in Philadelphia and Beyond

I came across this wonderful blog this morning and thought I'd share it with you. It's called the Family Penny Pincher: Free and Nearly Free Family Activities and highlights all the low-cost, no-cost family friendly events going on in Philadelphia and locations beyond. It's a nice blog perfect for out-of-town families planning a vacation together with the kids and for local families who want to save money while enjoying the city they call home.

On the left side of the page, there is a nifty daily calendar powered by Google. It features only the local events happening in Philadelphia, but the blog posts cover Philadelphia and more.

How many of you are planning a family vacation for the winter holiday season? How are you managing to save money?

A Couple Hundred

Recently, I encountered someone who had claimed to have been doing all the right things and had been able to save a couple hundred dollars each month. He said he brought his lunch to work, drove his 1992 paid off car, and stopped indulging in Starbucks coffee among other things to save. Yet, that couple hundred he saved was not enough.

My comment to him was this:

A couple hundred is a lot more than many people can save in a year...or a lifetime. To me, it seems you're doing pretty well, especially if you're good at not spending the money you have saved. The road to wealth is not always a fast and easy one.

It seems many people still have this idea that if they endure the simple life for just a couple of months they’ll be rolling in extra cash in no time. They look at the road to financial freedom like a drive thru: You order the life you want to have and right around the corner it is handed to you in a bag with minimal effort. They don’t understand that what they are embarking on is a way of living that will change their life, one that requires a great investment of time and a reshaping of one’s attitudes toward money and what it means.

Wealth is also relative. Cumulative fines in the amount of $48,000 would mean little for an NFL player, but for a working class individual, it would mean a lot. People forget that the value of a dollar differs sometimes depending on who is doing the spending. Savings is no different. Being able to save a couple hundred dollars each month means a lot when you look at it from the right perspective.

The man I spoke of here was clearly hoping to get rich overnight. He is still learning that the decision to become financially free means not getting upset about being able to save only a couple hundred every month when he would really like to save twice that much or his whole check. It’s a matter of learning to open up to his own abundance.

The man I described here is living a life of prosperity, but because he is so focused on all the things he has given up, he does not realize it. Do you suppose money and abundance will want to stay with an individual who does not appreciate it? A couple hundred is pretty nice.

Black Friday Shopping

So, did you go shopping on Black Friday this year? In my last post, I shared my thoughts on how we might begin to look at Thanksgiving as a day for hitting one’s financial restart button. Were you able to resist the temptation of the Black Friday sales?

Despite my own post the other day, I have to admit that even I struggled a bit. WalMart had a nice deal on a digital camera and I had been thinking about purchasing one for quite some time. There were also other deals like a handful of appliances going for as little as $3.00. I really had to think about my motives for wanting to buy that camera and the appliances. What I found was that the lure of being part of the crowd was the only real impulse pushing me to buy. I did not need the camera, I merely wanted it, and I wanted the appliances only because they were dirt cheap.

 
For some families, Black Friday is indeed part of a tradition. It is in fact a time when they get together to wait in lines as a family. Shopping for them is as much a bonding experience as the Thanksgiving holiday itself. But for me, Black Friday is purely about consumerism, the lifestyle that I am learning to do away with. So, I didn’t go shopping yesterday despite the temptation.

What I am also realizing about Black Friday is that it is beginning to have no limits. Black Friday doesn’t start on Friday anymore. Perhaps when the trend happens online, it is less invasive to disrupting traditional family time. Amazon, for example, began holding its Black Friday specials not too soon after Halloween this year. That wasn’t so bad. When WalMart announced that it would begin its holiday sales on Thanksgiving Day, it felt like the retailing giant and all its counterparts who followed had taken things too far. I respect Kmart for keeping its hours reasonable this year despite its competition with WalMart and others. It is possible for a business to be successful without merely giving lip service to their commitment to families and communities.

Did you go shopping on Black Friday this year? Or on Thanksgiving Day? Please share your story. I would really love to know what everyone thinks about this sense of consumerism encroaching more and more on all of our holidays. New Year’s Day seems to be the last holiday not tied to some sort of mandatory shopping frenzy. What are your thoughts?

Pushing the Financial Reset Button a Little Earlier This Year

People have a great tendency to overspend during the holidays. Sometimes the spending takes the form of buying gifts for others. Other times the spending comes from a lack of discipline during a time when all the outer stimuli in the world says, “Buy, buy, buy!” It’s hard to stand up to that sort of social and societal pressure. Then on top of it all, spending behavior rather than saving behavior is encouraged for three long months, from the end of October to the start of the new year.

Too often it is not until the new year starts that people have the opportunity to breathe and escape the pressures of encouraged spending behaviors. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can push the restart button on your spending and finances any time of the year. And for those feel that they need a milestone holiday or event to help them jumpstart their saving behavior rather than spending behavior, they can look to a holiday like Thanksgiving for help.

Thanksgiving is all about family and friends. It’s all about caring for and being thankful for what little we have. Even millionaires do not own the world and they can be thankful for what little part of it they do have just as the beggar can be thankful for what he has received. More so than New Year’s Day is it a grand opportunity to resolve to reduce one’s spending and put first what is most important in one’s life, those things that we acquire without money and that all the spending in the world could not buy us.

Rather than wait until January 1st to make yet another resolution that will be hard to keep, begin your commitment to being a saver rather than a spender on the last Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day. Start the habit to save just at the point every year when you're tempted to begin spending the most.

Black Friday doesn't have to be the retailer's Christmas. You can take the day back and reclaim it as a day to save. Even if you do go shopping, you can make conscious decisions about how much you will spend and when you will spend it without being cajoled by the marketplace into believing that you have no real alternatives. Take the holiday season back a little earlier this year and begin on Thanksgiving Day to refocus and reset your spending. Go into the new year with money in the bank and a different resolution that will keep you prosperous all year. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

While You Wait...to be Debt Free

One of the biggest problems I've had with my new lifestyle and life change is what to do while I'm waiting. What do I do with my time while I wait to go on vacation? Or buy season tickets for a baseball game? Or buy my niece an iPad for college?

This thinking led me to realize that there is really more to becoming debt free or financially independent than just paying one's bills on time. Being aware of one's money, how it's used, and who it goes to is like a meditative practice. It forces you to levels of heightened awareness. For example, in buying a pair of shoes, you have to stop yourself and say, "Is what I'm about to buy a true need or a want?" The very act of thinking before you buy or, to borrow from another phrase, looking before you leap, draws us into awareness about what our motives are for buying things and causes us always to seek the truth in our financial actions.

What I find is that as I separate the wants from the needs, I find myself realizing that I don't really need all that much. So, whereas with an impulse some might be inclined to buy just anything that catches their eye, I wouldn't because it doesn't fit into my values or my goals for becoming debt free.

So what happens is all that time that was spent in the past doing idle things, like window shopping or buying things out of boredom, begins to go by the wayside. The energy that was left to engaging in those things is now in need of someplace else to go or something else to do.

When trying to become debt-free or even after they've become debt-free, some people turn to home economics to fill this energy gap. They grow their own food. They start canning. They learn to sew. They take up some sort of hobby that fills the gap between excess and fulfilling a need. Most people like this do not need to grow their own food to survive. They do not need to sew their own clothes. Even under the guise of simply saving money, activities like these fall short because there are so many other healthful, fast, cost-effective ways to save money and still get food for one's family or put clothes on their back. A simple look at the opportunity costs versus the financial costs of these activities illustrates this point.

Let's say it takes someone 20 minutes to look through a newspaper to find all the stores within a 5-mile radius with sales on fruits and vegetables. Then let's say it takes 3 hours of yard work on average to grow the same amount of vegetables you might buy from the store. On the one hand, growing the vegetables might be a bit cheaper, but on the other hand, buying the vegetables is faster and likely more convenient. The extra 2.5 hours you spend digging in the ground for a tomato could have instead been spent on taking the kids to the park, going to the gym, or reading your favorite blog (which I hope one day will be Simplify and Prosper). That's opportunity cost in a nutshell.

What drives people to make these choices is the need to exhaust the energy that was once used spending money and instead use it something for else. What that something else is can be a confounding question.

What else besides home economics do you do to replace the time and energy you spent spending money? How do you occupy your time while you wait to be debt free?

Car Sharing With Zipcar

Zipcar is one of the more popular car sharing companies now gaining a large share of consumer interest in major cities all across the country, including at over 100 college and university campuses. You can also find Zipcar in some not so major cities like Frederick, Maryland and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There are also Zipcars in Canada and London.

How it works

To reserve a Zipcar, you just go online and choose the time and location where you’d like to pick up a car. The cars come in various sizes and colors and can fit many driving needs. If a car with your selected criteria is available, you can put in a reservation. If a car isn’t available, you can choose from other nearby locations or different times. When your reservation is over, you return the car on time to avoid any penalties. That’s it.

Membership benefits

For an annual fee, you can become a Zipcar member. The membership allows you access to rent cars in any location around the world. This means that if you are a Zipcar member in Florida and take a trip to DC in July, you can get a Zipcar to use while you are on vacation. It would be good for a weekend trip from DC to Fredericksburg, Maryland, for example, since commuter buses and trains to that area do not run on the weekend.

Being a member of Zipcar also affords you additional benefits. People who use Zipcar a lot can save money by registering for one their frequent user programs. If you know for example, that you will use a car often enough to spend $125 each month, you can enroll in one of the programs for that rate and receive discounts every time you rent a Zipcar. Members are also privy to special discounts at area businesses. In San Francisco, you can get discounts from the Bend Yoga studio, Fog City News, Lombardi Sports, SixFlags Discovery Kingdom and more. Each city has different offers.

Despite all those benefits, the best perk about renting with Zipcar is that there are no hidden fees. Let me say that again: There are no hidden fees. Included with your rental is insurance, roadside assistance, and gasoline. That’s everything you need. You don’t have to worry about maintenance fees, oil changes, or keeping air in your tires. The vehicles are kept clean and they run well.

Is there a downside?

While Zipcar is terrific, I will admit that it would be nice to have the vehicles vacuumed a little more often (I always seem to get the cars with pet hair left in them), but really I can’t complain. Besides, buying a hand vacuum cleaner to carry with you is a lot cheaper than buying a whole car. I can live with that.

What Is Car Sharing?

Car sharing offers all the benefits of owning your own car without all the burden. The concept is like renting studio space. You have 24 hours in a day, and people can sign up to rent that space in 30-minute increments. You can rent the space for as long as a day or more. Then when you’re done, the space is free and open for someone else to reserve. The difference with car sharing is that the “space” you’re renting is not just space but an entire vehicle that you can use to drive as far and long as your time permits.

Sharing vs. Renting

Getting a rental car differs from car sharing because rental cars require you to pay for your own gas and insurance and limit the time you can rent a car to full-day increments. You could not just rent a car for an hour or two, and those items that are included with car sharing—insurance, roadside assistance, and gas—are additional costs when you rent with a rental car company.

Car sharing can save you money if you need to have a car only sporadically. Taking day trips or using a car to transport heavy purchases or moves are ideal uses for a car sharing rental. These are trips that take only a few hours to complete and no more than 24 or 36 hours at the most.

People who will need a car to drive around for an entire weekend or more are better off getting a rental car. The savings generally begins to level out after the first 24 hours. Then the cost of car sharing becomes more expensive than renting. It is likely that the car sharing system was designed that way on purpose. It is best used for local and shorter term trips.

Pros and Cons

The benefits of car sharing are its convenience and low cost. However, because you are sharing a vehicle with hundreds of others, you do run into the following problems:

--Not having a car available at the time and place you prefer
--Ending up with a car that is not up to your own standard of cleanliness

The workaround to these obstacles is, of course, planning. Reserving a vehicle well in advance reduces the likelihood of not being able to reserve a car when you need or want one. Brining a hand vacuum or some baby wipes to spruce up a car before you drive it can resolve the cleanliness issue for most people.

Car sharing is catching on with a lot of people, and those who remain flexible can enjoy the benefits of it the most.

Life Without a Car

Since my last post, I did actually sell my car. The process was relatively simple. This is not to say that going without a car has been all cherries and roses. I've had my fair share of feeling too lazy to walk from a bus stop to a friend's house on more than one occassion, but all in all, I feel great about not having the extra burden of car payments, parking fees, maintenance costs, and the like each month.

Yesterday, in particular, was a moment of truth for me. I was to meet a friend at a location in the city that was not readily accessible by public transportation. I had agreed to do it, and I knew in advance that it would require me to walk about a full mile. I was up for it...until I actually started walking.

My trip was set for midday, at the peak of high summer temperatures and high weekend traffic on city streets not designed for pedestrians. As I walked, I thought about how much faster I'd have gotten to my destination if only I had driven a car. I doubted for a moment whether selling my car was actually the right thing. I complained internally about the heat, about the food I was carrying that had to be refridgerated, about the sweat dripping down my back, about how terribly foolish I must have been to sell my car. I could have avoided all the discomfort and worry if only I were driving.

When I spotted a 7-Eleven, I went in for a Slurpee. Then I realized that I was at a crossroads. I was at a six-way intersection and I didn't know which way to turn. I was lost in a way. I knew the street I wanted was just one block away, but I didn't know which one to take.

My thinking about how I sold my car was like being at that crossroads. I had two options:

--Accept and embrace my decision to sell my car.
--Fret and go back into debt to buy another car.

I knew I did not want to go back into debt, so I just accepted what lay before me. I embraced my decision and came out on the other side of that day alright. I made it to my friend without any trouble (using my GPS) and I freed myself from having to feel any regret.

After having lived through the process of selling a car and continuing to live by that decision today, I wholly recommend going carless to everyone who lives in an area with good public transportation. I'm living the life to tell you about it...with no regrets.

Selling Your Car Can Save You Hundreds Each Month

It's been a while since I've written. That's surprising really because I've been thinking a lot about this blog and all the great information and ideas I want to share with you.

Recently, I finally got around to thinking about selling my car again. I've been toying with the idea for several years, but when living in the nation where the automobile was built, it is sometimes difficult to garner support for such a move from friends and loved ones. I know Americans are dependent on their cars because we're still buying gas like it's free-flowing tap water. It's nearly $5.00 a gallon, and many people have yet to break their stride or their dependency on oil and gasoline.

I have been dependent on my car for a long time, too, but I'm beginning to make more use of public transportation, car sharing, biking, and dozens of other alternatives to owning and driving my own car. If I think about it and remain honest with myself, the only time I use my car these days is when I'm feeling lazy or when I want to do something at the spur of the moment. Yet, as I continue to research alternatives to driving, I am beginning to find that there are even options available that can counter both my occassional laziness and the impromptu errand to the other side of town.

The next few posts will explore the journey I'm taking to sell my car and whether at the end of it all I'll actually do it. I think I will though, and I'll walk you through the process.

The most compelling reason for my considering the sale of my car, of course, is all the money I'll save. I am very excited about not having to pay $5.00 for a gallon of gas and not having to make car payments, insurance payments, parking storage fees, etc.

Now, as I go through this journey, I'd like to hear from you. Have you ever thought about selling your car? What was the defining factor for you that made you decide to keep it or sell it?

Evaluate Your Hobbies and Save

One step toward achieving a more simplified life is to examine your hobbies. If one of your major interests is something that requires expensive memberships, high-priced gadgets, or large amounts of time with little intrinsic return, then you may need to reevaluate how you spend both your money and your time. There is a saying that the best things in life are free. There may be some truth to that, and it could be, for many people, the key to living a simplified and prosperous life.

While many people may already be familiar with this concept, it is much harder to implement than preach because it requires thinking of and adapting to alternatives to things that you may have grown accustomed to doing in a certain way. Let’s take exercise, for example, and our hefty health club memberships.

The alternative to exercising at a gym is exercising at home or outdoors. The principle is simple enough, but why don’t more people do it?

One reason is that fitness machines make the work of exercise a lot easier than it is real life. People accustomed to jogging on a treadmill sometimes comment how much harder it is run on asphalt. The conveyer belt we run on in the gym gives us a little boost of speed that we don’t get when there’s nothing between us and the ground.

Another reason is that people feel like they’re not exercising alone when they exercise with others in a gym. Just being on the elliptical next someone makes people feel they are in a crowd even if they are exercising alone, isolated by the music blaring from their iPods.

Adapting to the alternatives to exercising in a gym requires more thought and effort. People who feel a little slow running on asphalt might try modifying their exercise program to develop their speed rather than giving up or going back to the gym. People who would like to exercise or run in the company of others can join a free outdoor running group, walking group, or yoga class.

Exercise and gym memberships are just one example, but people whose hobby it is to buy the latest techno-gadget, collect stamps, or download the latest novel to their reading device all have options and alternatives to excess spending. Perhaps a common theme to many of these alternatives is the power of collaborating with others.

The alternatives are out there, but it does take some time and effort to make them work.

About Debt

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about finances. Essentially, I was trying to convince him that the whole mindset most people have about debt being “natural” and okay is hugely flawed. Even Shakespeare advises against it. In Hamlet, he writes:

Neither a borrower or lender be

For loan oft loses both himself and friend

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry

We all know how the stress of debt changes people. It eats away at them like a virus, especially when the amount they owe seems insurmountable. Debtors also risk losing their sense of self-sufficiency, of being able to save for things, of developing a dependency on a system that discourages the accumulation of wealth. Similarly, lenders of credit must be cautious against greed, against the loss of humanity, against the root of all evil.

So, this one friend I have says he’s content with debt. Of course, he’d rather not have it, but he accepts his condition and is working to get out of it. But getting out of it is not one of his biggest goals. When I confide that getting rid of my debt is crucial to me and that I think it should also be crucial to him, we end up arguing about it.

What is wrong with wanting to be debt free? What is wrong with wanting to keep the money you earn? This isn’t even about wanting to become a millionaire, but if it happens, what is so wrong with obtaining such a level of financial independence?

Part of simplifying your life includes getting rid of the shackles. Debt is a shackle, a hindrance. So, why on earth do people cling to it?! Why do people when made consciously aware of the dangers and limitations of having debt continue to hold on to it? Why don’t they fight for their lives back?!

My friend holds a belief that I am supposing many other people (and our government) subscribe to. Whether they voice it or not, their actions show that they are comfortable with debt and that in some cases, they have no intention of paying it off anytime soon. In fact, they would just as easily accumulate more debt than look for ways to pay it off faster or pay it off at all.

I don’t have a solution for them, but I do know that for me, controlling and conquering my debt is a top priority. I realize I will not have everyone’s support on this (and by “everyone,” I mean society and friends and family who believe that having debt is okay), but in an earlier post, I talked about how sometimes a person just has to be willing to go out on his or her own. It looks like I will have to do more agreeing to disagree in the miles still left in my journey.

Planet Home -- Book Review

On a whim, I began reading Planet Home in the hopes of learning a thing or two new about simplified living. There are so many books on the market these days about simplicity that it is difficult to find anything comprehensive or anything that ventures to offer something you did not learn from another green guru several books back.

Imagine how delighted I was when I found that Planet Home was not only a fine compendium of best practices in green living, but it was also one with new tips and ideas that I had never come across before. Granted, I am a novice at all this green business, but the book truly has a lot to offer. For example, in the chapter on food, Hollender includes a section about buying local and/or organic produce. The common-knowledge benefits of buying local and organic are addressed, but there are also guidelines about what produce to buy when you cannot find these options in your area. He gives a list of the "dirty dozen" -- produce you should always buy organic and the "clean fifteen" -- produce with the lowest pesticide residue. Tidbits like these separate Planet Home from a lot of other green books I have read.

What also separates Planet Home from other books is its understated philosophy about the environment and our relationship to it. Holland writes:

"There are plenty of resources available for people interested in 'eco-friendly' living. And primarily, Planet Home provides a road map for anyone who wants to green and clean a home. But the following pages go well beyond offering typical 'go green' advice. This book is an attempt to inspire us all to open our minds, expand our collective consciousness, and think without compartmentalizing."

In essence, he is writing about being green or, as others may call it, having a simplified life. It goes beyond thinking about something small like using energy-efficient bulbs to thinking about why saving energy is worthwhile in the first place. Is it anything more than the latest fashion in home accessories? Or is it a political statement, a social stance, a new way of thinking about one's part in the world in making the earth sustainable. Holland says all this without being preachy. Rather than proselytize, he gives reference to resources throughout the book. So, when you are ready or so inclined, the knowledge is there for the asking.

Planet Home's organization is useful because it makes the book a resource that you don't just want to stick up on your shelf. As your own green journey evolves (growing from changing one's light bulbs, for example, to changing one's habits of energy consumption), you will want to reread passages and follow up on leads to resources that perhaps you had not tried on your first reading.

Planet Home is a book I read after checking it out from the library. However, after reading it, I know I want a copy for my own collection. It is that good and that useful.

Strawberry Jam -- The Gateway Preserve

Recently, I have stepped into the forays of canning. It started with a simple purchase of strawberries. They were on sale, and I just could not walk away without buying some. When I got home, I realized that one problem would be that I would not eat them fast enough. I had already had strawberries from a previous purchase and I was still trying to eat my way through those. After a bit of searching and thought, I decided to use those extras to make strawberry jam.

There are dozens of recipes on the Internet, but the gist of them is the following:

--sugar

--hulled strawberries (cut off the tops)

--lemon juice (optional)

Another option is to add a bit of vanilla bean, but for me, this additional ingredient seemed like a bit of overkill. What more do delicious strawberries need than a little love and a few shakes of sugar?

Making the jam is simple: toss the berries in a saucepan over heat, mash to a pulp of your desired chunkiness, add sugar, and add lemon juice (optional). Then cook for 15-20 minutes until the sauce thickens. Pour the hot jam into canning jars and process in boiling water for 15 minutes.

If you plan to eat the jam right away, you do not even have to process it. Just wait for it to cool and spread over some hot buttered biscuits.

My one container of strawberries yielded a small jar with half a jar left over. The jam is not as thick as I would have liked, but after having made it once, I know I need only increase my cooking time next time to get it the way I want. With a process so simple, it is baffling why more people do not make their own jam.

The hugest expense is the startup cost. I did not have any jars or any tongs to hold a hot jar with, and I did not have a pot large enough to boil my jars in. After making an initial investment, the only other costs are ingredients.

With such success at my first attempt at canning, I know I have just made it very unlikely that I will ever buy another jar of jam from the grocery store again. I also hope to try other flavored jams and even other foods like relishes.

At first, I am sure it seems that going back to making food from scratch is like turning back the clock and taking a huge step away from simplicity. However, if simplicity means ridding your life of excess (like chemicals and extra fats found in prepared foods, for example), then cooking at home means less waste and less of the things you want in your foods.

Investing an extra 20 minutes to cut, chop, and heat just seems like a very simple way to become healthier and have a simplified life.

Simplifying Requires a Lifestyle Change

Simplifying one’s life requires a lifestyle change if you want to make it last. Lifestyle changes are often the hardest to make when you do not have social support. It can be difficult to say to friends who know you as someone who does one thing and tell them that you are trying to change your life to another.

Without trying to trivialize things, I liken the process of trying simplify one’s life to that of a substance abuser trying to stay on the straight and narrow. She has made up her mind that she will no longer resort to substances and old ways of thinking to solve her problems or find emotional or physical relief. So, instead, she works hard to set up her life for success: putting in place mechanisms that she can default to in times where she feels like she wants to go back to the old way of doing things.

Having social supports like friends who do not use substances and family members who will encourage her to stay on track are critical. The same is true for someone trying to make any other sort of lifestyle change.

Part of developing a simple lifestyle requires thinking about things in a different way. If a simplified life is to include elements of financial discipline, then one must begin to think differently about money. If it includes elements of reducing clutter, one must think differently about “things,” all the stuff surrounding a person that when left unchecked becomes a massive stagnating pile. If it includes being better about one’s impact on the environment, one must think differently about waste.

Having supportive friends and family can help you make the transition to a simple lifestyle. What makes things most difficult is when you have well-intentioned folks in your life who have not made the same commitment change as you have. These are the people who, for example, remember you as someone who did not recycle. They now think you are being a fanatic when you refuse buy yet another bottle of water and choose instead to refill old bottles and carry them with you everywhere.

“Stop being cheap and just buy another bottle,” some will say. “Look, I’ll even buy a bottle for you if you can’t afford it today.”

While well intentioned, these people, who may well be or have been your friends, fail to realize that it is the principle of not buying another bottle of water that helps you stick to your commitment. It will not always be easy to say no to friends and other acquaintances, but it will be worthwhile in the end.

There is also something else to remember. Like-minded people tend to find each other in a crowd. So, while for a season or two, it may seem that you are the only person in the world who wants to live a simplified life, the truth is that there are thousands, if not millions, of others who are living that life successfully. Just live the simplified life—shop where they shop, eat what they eat, do what they do—and soon you will find more than enough kindred folk who are equally as passionate about simplifying their lives as you are.

One major tenet of having a simplified life is having a supportive network of others who also share your goals and philosophy.

Ensure a Healthy Diet with an Open Mind

Recently, I began a challenge to see whether it were possible to save money at the grocery store with coupons while also maintaining a healthy diet. The journey also led me to think about other ways I ways could save.

First, stay away from packaged goods. This principle was, in fact, the impetus for beginning my coupon challenge. I found that most coupons advertised discounts on foods that were packaged rather than fresh or natural alternatives. Staying away from packaged foods keeps you away from the high sodium, high fat, and loaded “preservatives” in foods you often find a box.

Next, be open minded about what you eat. By now, most people realize that cooking at home is healthier and cheaper than eating out at a restaurant or buying packaged foods. An extension of that principle is opening one’s food palate to include a broader range of meats, grains, and vegetables while cooking. The concept is simple enough, but, unfortunately, many Americans are afraid to try new foods. They spend more and have poorer diets.

Lentils, quinoa, chickpeas, and other hearty but seldom used foods are great additions to a healthy diet and, for now, they are cheap. Grocery stores in many areas carry these items, and those stores that do not are a short trip away from those that do. The convenience of online grocery shopping also makes it possible for people in remote areas to have access to these foods.

Some people might say, however, that even with access to better food options, they still would not try new foods because they do know how to cook them. My response is that learning how to cook comes with practice. It can begin with a simple trip to the library. Trying a new recipe a week starts by just pulling a book from the shelf.

Upon finding a recipe you like, write it down on a card and create a home library of recipes. There really are no excuses for not experimenting with foods, cooking with new foods, and adding them to your diet.

Week 4: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

The final week of the coupon challenge is here at last. I set out to discover whether it was actually possible to have a healthful diet while primarily using coupons to help you save money on your grocery bill. As it turns out, using coupons is definitely effective at saving people money at the checkout. However, their utility lessens as the need to stock up on food decreases.

Last week, I noted that the only foodstuffs I needed to buy were fresh vegetables. This week, I managed to get by without going to the grocery store at all. Using canned and frozen vegetables, dried starches like rice and bulgar wheat, and a smattering of fruits, nuts, and cereal, I had a full week of meals without needing to head to the market.

While my case may be unique, it seems that using coupons is effective mostly when you have lots of groceries to buy on a regular basis and less effective once a stockpile of dried goods has been accumulated. For me, this outcome suggests that the use of coupons will be relevant for me only about once a month. That period could be even longer if I temper my food consumption.

Can a person eat healthy while using coupons? Yes. Are the savings sustainable? Only if you need to buy in bulk or stockpile tons of items.

SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 1 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

This third week of my coupon challenge has revealed some interesting findings. I set out on this challenge to see whether it were possible to have a healthful diet while using coupons. The first week showed I realized tremendous savings as I stocked up on healthy dried goods. The second week showed I needed to buy only fresh foods to complement the dried foods in my pantry. This third week is showing that the use of coupons is almost unnecessary.

With a stockpile of healthy foods on hand bought with coupons, the need to use more coupons this week was slim and almost nonexistent. Only 1 item I bought was gotten with a coupon. Snapple 6 packs were on sale and I had a coupon for a dollar off. I bought the Snapple because I enjoy drinking them from time to time, not because I needed them or would use them in preparing an inexpensive meal.

In fact, though using coupons would save me money in the short term, the continual use of coupons for preparing meals would seem to suggest that I would spend more than I had to. Simply not being lazy about cooking meals from scratch probably saves about $20 to $30.

A good cookbook with recipes you can trust is an invaluable asset for people who want to save money and have a healthful diet. However, the two things to remember are:

1) The amount of time you will have each day (or each month or week) to prepare meals.

2) The availability of ingredients found in the cookbook recipes.

A star chef with a cookbook that includes meals with unrealistic prep time and/or expensive and hard-to-find ingredients will cause more frustration than help. For example, while I enjoy watching Bobby Flay and others on the Food Network, the recipes in one of the cookbooks of his I bought included too many ingredients that were hard for me to find. At the time, I needed a cooking resource that made use of common ingredients found in my own neighborhood grocery store.

Two good series I do enjoy are those by I Rachel Ray and Southern Living. The cooking and prep times on the recipes in these books fit my lifestyle, and the ingredients rarely include items that would be hard to find in an average grocery store.

It seems so far that coupons are unnecessary. Unless you use them weekly to stockpile, they provide only minimal savings. The key seems to be using coupons to set up a pantry and then making wise choices about cooking and food selection to ensure lasting savings.

SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 1 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 2: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

It is the end of week 2 of my coupon challenge, where I set out see if it is possible to maintain a healthy diet while using coupons. This week I found that I did not need to use any coupons at all to complete my grocery shopping. I had enough staples like rice, beans, canned tomatoes, and the like to be able to pull together healthy meals for a week with just a few fresh vegetables.

Vegetables themselves can be rather expensive, especially when you buy them out of season. At the start of my coupon challenge, I wrote that condition of the challenge would be that I was not going to run around to multiple grocery stores in search of the lowest prices. I have a favorite grocer with prices that I find reasonable; I stick with that store. However, buying vegetables from that grocer is not my preference.

The grocer I visit to buy my vegetables does require some driving to get to, but I usually try to plan it around another trip to make the gas expenditures worth it. On my last visit to vegetable store, I bought tomatoes, onions, green and red peppers, strawberries, bananas, and chili powder (which it turns out I did not need). The strawberries happened to be on sale for a dollar. They were not on my list but seemed to have a good price.

Results from the coupon challenge this week suggest that once a stockpile of staples is bought with coupons and stored, the grocery bill for subsequent weeks reduces even further. With only fresh vegetables and fruits needed to make a healthy meal, you avoid the regular expensive purchase of boxed goods.

All over the Internet, there are website authors touting how much money they saved each week buying packaged goods with coupons. They say things like, “I saved $35 on last grocery bill” while never detailing whether the items on that bill included anything that was actually worth eating. It would be a shame to find that these families lived exclusively on packaged goods.

Are you following along with my grocery challenge? What is your take on my results so far?

SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 1 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 1: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

Last week I undertook the challenge of seeing whether it would be possible to live a healthy lifestyle and eat a healthful diet while clipping coupons. My observation that most coupons are for packaged goods, which are usually high in fat, sodium, and fillers, led me to see if I could save money clipping coupons while purchasing only foods that I chose to include in my diet—healthy foods and foods that I enjoy.

My first shopping trip with the challenge mind gained me a savings of $12 with a total original cost of $37. Using a combination of grocery store sales and grocery store and manufacturer coupons, I picked up apple juice (from concentrate), frozen vegetables, packaged salad, peanut butter, whole grain bread, salad dressing, cereal, frozen perogies, and frozen pizzas. Of all the items I bought, the pizzas were likely least healthy.  

Despite having to use coupons, resisting the urging to buy junk food and needless items on sale was the hardest part of my shopping trip. Doritos were on sale: buy one, get one free. In the past, I would seize upon a sale like that without thinking twice. I would have picked them up and thought I had made out like a bandit. Is it any wonder that obesity in America is an epidemic?

Food pricing like “buy one, get one free” on chips and “buy one for $3” on veggies discourages the eating of healthy meals. However, this week’s experiment with coupons suggests that healthy eating is possible even if you are on a budget.

 As I move on to week two, my main concern is whether a regular savings of $12 or more a week can be expected.

SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Coupons and Healthy Living

Many people know already about the benefits of using coupons. Manufacturers buy ads in local newspapers and include cut-out discounts (coupons) to encourage you to try or continuing buying their products. The concept is simple enough, and the savings you reap can be significant. Hard core coupon users boast oftentimes about using coupons and discounts to get items for free. Others brag about their low grocery bills. One woman I read about bought groceries for a week for only four dollars.

Impressed by the results that others have had, I looked into couponing myself. On my very first shopping trip with coupons I saved thirty-five dollars. That's a pretty good ROI for just knowing how to use a pair of scissors and shopping purposefully.

As weeks passed, I also learned the down side to using coupons: Many of the items are prepackaged goods. Items like these are typically chock full of sodium, fat, and fillers. If you typically buy foods that contain those ingredients (as most people do these days), you will be able to reap high savings at the grocery store nearly every week. Coupons for chips, cookies, fruit cups drenched in sugary syrup, and no-nutrient white bread come in abundance in the weekly coupon circular. Anyone trying to have a healthy diet and save money at the same time will likely find it difficult.

But not impossible.

Beginning this week, and for the next 4 weeks, I am going to test the ability to use coupons while sustaining a healthy diet. Given that healthy does not mean sugar-free, fat-free, or taste-free, I should be able to do this and still have delicious meals.

Some people will argue that unless I eat raw or have meals amounting to the inverted pyramid and such that I will not really be eating healthy. That will be true to some degree. However, I am not going to change my eating habits to fit the confines of this test. I am not being paid to do this, so I'm only doing as much as feels comfortable for me. And this will likely include some junkfood, but not as much as if I were to buy all my groceries with coupons.

The other rule to this test is that I will not be traipsing around the city from one store to the next in search of the lowest deal. There are three markets near my home, and if I cannot get what I need from there or if I do not feel like walking to the next store just to buy an item cheaper, I won't. This test, for as much as it is about saving money, is also about being realistic and not modifying my behavior to start something I will never maintain.

If you already use coupons, have you been successful at having regular, healthy meals while trying to save money?


SEE ALSO:

Week 1 -- Living Healty with Coupons

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Welcome

For a long time, I have thought about starting my own blog. I have written for BellaOnline.com in the past as the MidAtlantic USA editor. There I would write about travel-related topics and my travels in the United States from New York to West Virginia. While I found the site and all the topics I wrote about interesting, it really was not enough to sustain my interest for long. I knew I would likely have to go out on my own to really find what I was looking for.

Initially, my hesitation was due mostly to my inability to settle on a topic other than travel. I needed something that really seemed to grab my interest long enough to warrant writing on a regular basis. Some days finance would be at the top of my list. Other days, food and cooking. Even more varied topics like relationships, media, fashion, exercise, theater, and even gardening would make it to my list of ideas.

Then it dawned on me that among all those themes was a passion for living well and making the most out of life. I have learned from good friends that simplifying one's life is the best first step toward achieving this goal. The remarkable thing about simplicity, though, it is that in addition to providing the basis of a good life, it also often leaves you with more time, more resources, and more of anything and everything you need. Thus, when you simplify, you also, quite amazingly, prosper. This blog is one of the many expressions of this principle in my life.

I hope you enjoy reading Simplify and Prosper as much I know I will enjoy writing it. Please comment, share, digg articles, or do whatever you do to connect great information with friends.