The Ups and Downs of a Gallon Challenge

[Sorry for the light posting recently. By the time you read this I’ll be in Israel for my sister’s wedding. Mazel Tov, Mindy! Oh and don’t think about robbing my house. We have a house-sitter and she’s a rugby player.]

August is over so let’s take a look at how I did on the Gallon Challenge. Here were the car trips I made in the month*

Date	Purpose	Miles	Gallons
8/02/2012	Dad’s birthday	16	0.8
8/09/2012	Drive babysitter home	4	0.2
8/16/2012	Drive to concert	17	0.85
	Totals:	37	1.85

The bad news is that I used almost 2 gallons of gas, twice as much as I wanted to use.

The good news is that I only made 3 car trips for the entire month! Instead of driving, I did a lot of walking and biking (which is better than free, since it’s free + I got exercise). I also rediscovered the joy of reading a good book on the bus (which is free for me since my employer provides a bus pass), and prevented over 100 pounds of CO2 from polluting the atmosphere.

Instead of all that driving, I biked or walked about 100 miles. This included running errands, commuting, and exercise. By not needing to refuel the car, I spent a whopping $0.00 on gas this month, as opposed to an average fuel spend of $97 per month. If I got rid of the car and permanently invested that $97 every month, it would add up to over $17,000 in ten years (including compound interest). Imagine how much more that would be if I also didn’t need to buy auto insurance, oil changes, parking, etc.

As a side note, I also got my blog idol Mr Money Mustache to join in the challenge. He upped the ante by having his wife join in, and the two of them pledged to only use a gallon of gas combined!

All in all, I’d say the positive aspects of this month far outweigh the negative. Oh, and you should see what biking the boys to camp did to my leg muscles. I’m ripped!

* remember, family vacations are excluded. I also excluded times I kept Venessa company in the car while she was delivering food for her catering business.

George Carlin Talks About “Stuff”

The cost of a Free Concert

My uncle gave our family free tickets to a concert last week. It was Pink Martini, one of my wife’s favorite bands, so we couldn’t pass it up. The concert was a blast (especially for the kids who got to dance around) and I don’t regret going, but the evening came with an important lesson about the hidden costs of “free” activities.

Transportation: it was too far for the little ones to bike, and the bus ride would have been inconvenient with our picnic supplies, so we took the car. This put me over my limit in the gallon challenge, so although it wasn’t a huge deal to drive for the rest of the family, it was a personal defeat for me.*

Food: we were in too big of a rush to prepare dinner, so we ordered a pizza to go (and they forgot to put tomato sauce on it, WTF!?)

Other temptations: the concert was in a park that had a carousel, so the children wanted to ride on that. Only a couple bucks, and well worth the price for the nostalgic fun. Grandma bought the children some treats too. That’s what grandmas are for, right?

The point here isn’t “don’t leave your house” or “never take anyone up on an offer” since that would make life boring. The point is that it’s rare when things are truly free, and it’s important to think ahead about the actual cost of your choices.

* For those keeping score at home, this trip brought me up to 1.85 gallons.

Foundry Goals

Once you’re past Freshman year of Frugal School, you’ll understand the importance of setting goals. What you might not have learned is that one effective way to stay accountable to your goals is to publicize them.

Like the old management quote says, you can only change the things you monitor.

In this spirt, the goals for my family and this website are listed on a new area called Foundry Goals. Just like in a role-playing game, each goal has levels that are more challenging then the previous ones.

You’ll note that there are no dollar signs to be found on these goals. That’s because the amount of money the Foundry makes is somewhat irrelevant. What’s more important is keeping a high savings rate by minimzing spending and maximizing income, which in turn will drive up the amount of investment income our savings can provide. When investment income matches spending, you don’t require paid employment any more, if you don’t want. While it’s important to track and optimize spending/income (which are measured in dollars), they aren’t goals in and of themselves.

I’d love to hear suggestions for other goals, or hear about your goals.

See the Foundry’s Goals here.

Hang Dry Your Laundry: Just Do It!

Speaking of laundry… Hang-drying your laundry is so easy, it’s something everyone should do! The sun is just sitting out there waiting for some laundry to dry for free. Even in Seattle, we keep the clothesline up year-round (though it doesn’t get much use from October – May).

We hung some rope from the house to a spare bamboo pole, and then back again, to provide two lengths of clothesline from which to hang clothes. And we added a drying rack for increased capacity. You can also see stuff hanging from chairs and even toys.

We’re blessed with a large deck that has Southern exposure, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do this inside, or on a small scale if you have a smaller yard.

There are plenty of other tips to increase the space on the clothesline: hang clothes from hangers or even an old umbrella frame.

And the proof is in the financial pudding. Dryers are one of the biggest energy consumers in the house. We just got our electricity bill for June/July (when we’ve been able to hang-dry almost exclusively). We used 387kWh per month.

According to the Government, “In 2010, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 11,496 kWh, an average of 958 kilowatthours (kWh) per month. Tennessee had the highest annual consumption at 16,716 kWh and Maine the lowest at 6,252 kWh.”

So we’re at about 1/3rd the national average. Granted, energy costs are lower for us in the summer, so let’s look at our family’s yearly average (the Seattle City Light bill gives you a nice graph of your yearly consumption), 811kWh per month. Lower than average, but we still have some ways to go before we can beat Maine! In February, our most electricity-consuming month, we use over 4x the amount of electricity we use over the summer!

Not only are you saving money, by hanging your clothes to dry you’re also helping save the earth. I love when those two things go together!

PS: Washington state enjoys the 2nd lowest energy costs in the nation (probably due to all our hydroelectric). But that doesn’t mean you can waste it!

A Supposedly-Frugal Thing I Actually Did Try Again

I previously tried a powdered laundry soap recipe, and concluded that it was too much effort and not worth the trouble for the minor cost-savings. As a footnote to that post, I mentioned a different, liquid recipe that looked promising.

When the homemade powder ran out, I decided to try that liquid recipe. Now that we’ve been using it at home for a few weeks, I’ve concluded that it’s great!

The recipe is from The Duggar Family, and is as follows:

• 4 c water (heated in saucepan)
• 1 bar of soap (I recommend Trader Joe’s oatmeal soap, it’s $1 and mostly free of weird ingredients)
• 1 c washing soda*
• ½ c Borax
• 5 gallon bucket
• Empty liquid detergent container (or any large-ish container with top)

1. Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves.
2. Fill 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved.
3. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken. (You’ll either need a very-long-handled ladle or a brave, clean arm)
4. Next morning, stir well.  Fill a laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water.

Shake before each use, as the mixture will gel. Use ¼ c per load in a front-load/HE washer or ½ c in a top-load/conventional washer.

Cost Savings:

The recipe yields 320 washes for top-load and 640 washes for front-load, so you might want to half (or even quarter) it as a trial run the first time. The ingredients cost about $6 total, so that’s less than $0.02 per load.

We used to use Trader Joe’s powder detergent which is $0.16 per load. We do about 200 loads of laundry a year and I estimate the recipe took about 30 minutes of my time, so I’m saving about $28 for a half-hour’s worth of work, or $56 an hour (more than I make at work). Plus, I know exactly what’s in the detergent and that all ingredients are safe, which is a plus.

In conclusion: totally worth it!

* To make washing soda out of baking soda, bake it for an hour at 400 degrees.

Update: This batch of laundry detergent lasted exactly one year for our family of 5.

Gallon Challenge: All Used Up

That’s a wrap, folks! Last night I drove the babysitter home and used the final few drops of gas in the gallon I gave myself for the month. Now I have 3 full weeks to not drive, otherwise I’ve failed the challenge!

Here are the final results:

Date	Purpose	Miles	Gallons
8/2/2012	Dad’s birthday	16	0.8
8/9/2012	Drive babysitter home	4	0.2
	Totals:	20	1

I’ve picked up some car-free tips in the past 10 days. For the days I don’t ride my bike to work, I can take a city bus (though it takes almost twice as long). Also, Venessa and I went on a bike date last night (hence the babysitter). The weather was perfect, and riding to and from our destination made the date seem longer.

It’s strange to visualize a gallon milk jug filled with gasoline, and know that I used it up in just 10 days of trying not to drive. Multiply that times everyone in the world and you can see why we’re headed towards a fossil-fuel driven catastrophe! I’m still optimistic about infrastructure and technology improvements saving us before it’s too late. Let’s all do what we can!

Mini Book Review: Spent

I usually don’t write book reviews before I’m even done reading the book, but this book is blowing my mind so much I’ll make an exception. It’s called Spent and it’s about how our evolutionary instincts to show off reproductive traits are exploited by marketers. For instance, here’s why high-end fashion ads always look so weird:

The typical luxury ad includes a highly attractive model dressed up as a high-status heiress, wearing an expression of contempt and disdain for the viewer. The ad does not say “Buy this!”; it says, “Be assured that if you buy and display this product, others are being well trained to feel ugly and inferior in your presence, just as you feel ugly and inferior compared with this goddess.”

The ads aren’t designed for trying to get the average person to buy the product. They’re designed to remind the relatively few high-class buyers that the purchase (and display) of this expensive product will signal wealth to the rest of us.

Seriously, so much more of my previously-unexplained shopping behavior makes sense now. Especially the junk I bought in college, when I was subconsciously most concerned with displaying signals of my reproductive fitness to those around me.

FOMO and Facebook Stock

I couldn’t help but hear that tiny little violin playing while reading these first-world sob stories about people losing money by buying Facebook stock:

Some blame themselves for embracing the hype over a company whose underlying value likely didn’t merit the price at which it went public. But many accuse Facebook and its underwriting banks of setting the price too high and for trying to sell too many shares.

Others are pointing fingers at the Nasdaq stock market for botching buy and sell orders on opening day. Or they’re angry over brokers who pushed them to buy.

In fact, the article serves as a pretty good guide of now NOT to invest, and how to blame everyone but yourself for your own money mistakes. Let’s take a look:

• Don’t invest in individual stocks, including Facebook (FB). It’s fun to play around with picking stocks, but it should be done with spending money (i.e. money you’d use for gambling at a casino), not investment money. Trying to beat the stock market is gambling. Instead, invest in low-cost index funds.
• Don’t fall victim to emotions, especially FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), when it comes to your money.
• Don’t pay someone to manage your money, since their motivations aren’t aligned with yours. Unless you want to pay me to manage your money. I’d be glad to do that for you, skimming 1% off the top.

One Gallon Challenge: Update

It’s one week into the month so let’s see how I’m doing so far.

Trips: 1
Miles: 16
Purpose: Dad’s 60th Birthday Dinner

(I also took a family camping trip this weekend, which was very fun, but doesn’t count for the challenge.)

So with just one trip, I used almost all of my 20 miles. This is going to make the rest of the month even more challenging! It was worth it though, to celebrate my dad’s 60th birthday with the rest of the family. Had I been better prepared, I could have taken the bus to the restaurant and then caught a ride home with the rest of my family, saving half the mileage. Or I could have suggested a restaurant closer to my house, but I thought that would have been selfish. My dad only turns 60 once!

On a brighter note, I’ve managed to do the camp drop-off by bike every day, with only a few minor setbacks. At least I wasn’t ever late. Venessa and I also rode our bikes to a BBQ/pool party Sunday evening. I pulled Lillia (and all our gear) in the trailer*. It felt pretty awesome to get there all warmed up and then jump right into the pool. (Seattle had unusually hot weather this past weekend).

How’s your August challenge going?

* Another great craiglist find. We split the cost of the trailer with a neighbor family that has a son Lillia’s age