January 2009

 January - a New Year in a new place! Well, not that new, we have now been in the suburbia house for two months (December and January) and we can't wait to go back to the camper. The house is OK, but we are not eating right in the house, going back to bad habits and eating out more often. But we knew that when we decided to move into a house. At least the expenses are not as high as December.

In December and before that too, I had shown a price list to my Mom and my Aunt Tina (in New Jersey). I have this one sheet of paper, set up in Excel, that shows every thing that we buy, with each item on its own row. The numbers are separated out by how much it costs, how many ounces/pounds/liquid ounces or liters it is, what the cost is per unit and what the cost is per pound (solid) or gallon/liter (liquid). Everyone was so impressed by it that they wanted me to mass produce it. So I decided to try to make it more of what others might want.

I got the first side done, the one with the groceries. The second side is a little harder to do, as it is for things like toiletries, paper products, and vitamins and other supplements. We hardly buy any of that because during my time as a geologist and trainer, I travelled a ton, and got things like soaps, shampoo and conditioners and we go real cheap on toilet paper and paper towels. We don't buy paper plates or paper napkins as it is not economical or environmentally sound. We don't have a dishwasher as we wash dishes by hand. I have not bought dish soap for a long time as when I volunteered at the cabin camps, people left their dish soap, and I scavenged it. I guess one of the perks of volunteering!

So the second page is taking some time. I think though, that I am going to get the first page out anyway. What is cool is that you can fold it in such a way that it can go into your checking book, yet you can take it out to see the things that are most important.

I have it sorted by dry - Non-refrigerated foods, (ton of those), breads, dairy, caffeine products, soups and sauces, Condiments, spices (only a few), produce, frozen food (only a few of those), meat (again, only a few), and then alcoholic beverages (beer and wine).

The prices are paid without sales or coupons, so that you know what the base price is for an item.   That way, if an item is on sale, you can stock up. I did not put the grocery store on the sheet, as most people would not have it in their area. But the overall price would be the same. I have found going to Wal-Mart or Costco, the prices are the same all over the country for normal items.

Also note, NONE of the items are processed foods, no ready made stuff, except things like processed cheese and soups or sauces. I think the only real processed food I have on there is mac and cheese. We ate tons of that stuff until I did the numbers, and found that making elbow pasta with Romano cheese was more cost effective than getting 7 ounces of pasta and some orange stuff that was not very nutritionally good for you. And if you add frozen veggies, you have a perfect meal. If you like warm tuna or chicken, you could add that as well. Then it becomes a balanced meal. Have an apple or orange for desert, and you are golden!

Oh, well, we did have a few fun foods, like pretzels, tortilla chips, fig bars and sugar cookies. I found that getting pretzels and tortilla chips, you get more bang for your buck that potato chips. The tortillas are less broken and work well with Salsa, there-by almost being healthy.

Just so you can see a sample, here is two from the sheet, one we get all the time, and one we NEVER get, which is ground beef: (Of course, in HTML, it is much harder to show a table than in Excel, so this is my best effort!)

The Oatmeal is 9 lbs at a time, for $6.59; per ounce it is $0.05 and per pound it is $0.73. You can not get boxed cereal for that price! So it is very economical, and very nutritious. Spice it up with other stuff on the sheet, and you have a very yummy breakfast.

My Mom wanted me to put meat on the list, because many of her contemporaries eat meat. So I did. But I put the cheap meats on there, so ground beef but not steaks, ham steaks and kielbasa, but not hot dogs or pork chops, because first, I don't eat hot dogs (nutritionally unsound) and pork chops are expensive. Obviously, there is no lobster or shrimp on the list, but there is tuna and chicken in cans. I found it is easier to eat chicken if it is in a can, than in a whole chicken. If nothing else, you can see what the price is in a can and use that number per ounce to see how little you can go with a whole chicken.

The biggest and scariest part of this all is the portion sizes. You may have noticed it especially in Tuna: the cans have stayed the same size, but the amount in them has changed, now it is 5 ounces, while before it was six. So I've changed that in the sheet.

Right now, I have two prices, one is for me mailing the list to you, so I need your address to do that, and the second is for Emailing it to you, in a PDF format, so that you can print it out yourself. I will need your email address.

Expenses: Hopefully not as bad as December.

The food expenses were not too bad, considering we got bought lots of food for Sasha for work. I really believe that this price will go down once we are away from this area. We'll be able to eat together and not eat out as much. That expense also was a bit high, again because we are not in a place where we can cook our own food without the stench of smoke, so we tend to eat out more often than not.

Transportation was high this month because, partly of prices and partly because of our baby-sitting the Batal kids. Sasha had a longer commute to work. We also went more places this month, checking out a couple of shows: RV and Motorcycle. So there was driving to the shows. And of course driving up and back to NJ, we did that in the truck.

Fun Stuff: We definitely had fun this month, going to motorcycle shows and RV shows - using coupons and other things, managed to keep the costs down, but still, it is there. We also went to NJ this month, it was great to see everyone - and we saw my entire family, which was fabulous. We got my cousin Denise a couple of scratch-off games, so that was what the gift was for. All in all the NJ trip was great. 

Utilities: So no utilities this month as we have paid rent back in November for December, January and February's rent. The rent includes utilities.

Camper Services included the rental space for 6 months for the trailer and camper, once we got them back from repair. Of course, we also had some expenses in the beginning for winterizing the camper, but I paid for them through working at the campground.

Communication this month was a little high, because we both put more time on our phones, and we were selling things on eBay and I put in a bunch of applications. So postage was high and so were the cell phones.  

Health: We have started to use the HSA money - going to the dentist and other stuff as much as possible. Since we do not have the gym membership we have to do other things to get healthy. Unfortunately, I did get sick with a nasty cold that lasted about 2 weeks, with a bad cough. Had to just let it run its course, but at least I had a few drugs and doc visits to make sure I was on the right track. Sasha got some herbal stuff to try to fix his toe, he will go to the doc next month if it is not healed.

The Recreation stuff was, fun! We went to the RV show in Chantilly, VA and checked out some rigs, none that really were exactly what we wanted but there were a few toy haulers there. But what was cool was that we took my niece and her friend as well as my nephew with us to the show. We got to see the RVs from a kids' perspective, and that was neat. We also went the motorcycle show, that was in DC. The show was definitely not as big as it was last year. Sasha thought he'd have to make two days of it, we managed to do everything and see everything that we wanted in 4 hours. Just goes to show you what is going on with the economy right now, people don't want to look - and it still cost you money to go see the stuff.

And of course, beginning of the month, I went to Costco and I had to re-up for membership at Costco, but we went with the regular price rather than the "Executive" price. We really do not spend as much at Costco as when we had the house, so the extra price is not worth it anymore, nor do we get enough back to pay for the membership (something like if you $5000, you get a cash back of 2%, which would equal $100 - which would pay for the membership.) Last year I think we may have spent less than $1000 at Costco, so the Executive membership did not give us anything in return.   

Check out Next Month: February, A short month, with hopefully some answers about a job with the National Park Service.