Money Saving Tips For the Big Spender

We currently receive Money magazine here at the BRC household. I enjoy the investment advice; not necessarily tips on specific funds/stocks to buy, but rather info concerning general long-term strategies. I also like to complain about its annual "Best Places to Live" issue. A problem with the magazine, at least for me, is that it unsurprisingly caters to a more affluent clientele. Each month, the magazine has a feature in which it profiles a family and fixes its finances. These families always make well over $100,000, which makes the column less than useful for a working-class guy like me.

This tailoring of magazine content to wealthier readers manifest itself again this month, when Money gave us "103 ways to trim the fat, not the fun, from your budget" (magazines sure love their lists). Here are some of the tips:

• Drop the pet insurance
• Reduce the hours of your gardener (or get rid of him)
• Play tennis at public courts, not the tennis club
• Take a home-swap vacation (not an outlandish suggestion in and of itself, but this one assumes your family spends $325/night on lodging on a normal vacation).
  

I'm afraid these tips won't help us with our budget.

Dip it. Dip it good.

As I always say, a spoonful of dip helps the veggies go down. Okay, I've never said that before but it is true. I've been buying a bunch of veggies and as soon as I get home, cutting them up into nice bite-size pieces, ready to go when I need a snack. If I have a dip made up, I probably eat 3 servings of vegetables a day just by snacking. Without dip, maybe a carrot or two day is all I can get down. I'm sorry, vegetables are just boring by themselves. So I just try to make healthy dips and consider it all good. Here are my favorites and they are both super easy.

Ranch:

• Heaping 1/3 cup sour cream
• Heaping 1/3 cup yogurt (I like to drain in first but again, that is because my homemade yogurt is thin, do what you want)
• Scant 1/3 cup mayonaise (Some day I'm going to try making my own lacto-fermented mayo but for now, store bought it is)
  
• 1-2 t dried parsley
• 1/2-1 t. garlic powder
• 1/2 -1 t. seasoned salt (I'm a Season-All gal myself but I suppose Lowry's would do)
  
• 1/2 -1 t. onion powder

This is my standard base. The ranges for spices are quite large but I usually start with the lowest amount, decide it isn't nearly strong enough and just keep adding, sans measuring spoons, until it tastes right so I was kinda guessing up there. It's always a little different. I've also added fresh herbs when I have them or whatever other spices I think would be good - dill, chives, pepper, etc. If it isn't thick enough, add a bit more sour cream. If you want to use it is a salad dressing instead of a dip, thin it with a bit more yogurt or some milk.

Poor man's Hummus:
I call this poor man's hummus because it isn't actually hummus. I've started replacing the tahini with peanut butter and not only do I like it just as well if not better, it's a whole lot cheaper. If you want to be authentic and make real hummus just use tahini. I've been switching on and off all summer. Or try half and half.

• 1 (16oz) can chickpeas/garbanzo beans drained (some people like to save the juice for thinning the hummus but I hate to save bean liquid because of unwanted side effects so I just use extra oil if necessary)
• Juice of 2 lemons (or ~ 4 Tablespoon from a bottle if you are that type of person, and by that type of person, I mean me)
• 2 Tablespoons natural peanut butter/Tahini
  
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced (if your food processor can handle it just throw it in there unminced but mine can't and I end up with globs of garlic)
  
• 1/2 t kosher salt
• Several cranks of pepper
  
• ~1/4 cup olive oil
  

Combine everything except the oil in a food processor and mix until it's a thick paste. Slowly add olive oil until it is desired consistency. I like mine very thick but it's up to you. You can make it a little more exciting by adding some cayenne or cumin but I like to keep my options open. It's great not only as a dip but a sandwich spread. MckMama recommended trying it on toast with fresh basil, tomatoes and cucumbers and it quickly become a favorite lunch of mine.

Hey Mikey, he likes it! (Well, kinda)

Well, my summer has official come to a close. Last weekend Craig and I had a bit of a planning session to kick off the fall and his classes Monday so the crazy business of fall will begin again right about...now.

I think I did pretty well on my to do list. I didn't get my second set of jam canned, nor any tomatoes but apparently it was too hot for tomatoes this year. All the ladies at work were complaining about the weather ruining their gardens and even the tomatoes at the farmer's market were all cracked. They tasted good enough for a blt but not nice enough to can. Oh well.

I did get my homebinder started if you define started as "made a pretty cover and a list of the things I want to include" but not if you think that means I have to actually have put something in there. I'm started with the latter definition but am not perfectly content with the former.

And I didn't get anything knitted on the sweater because I made the decision to finish my square blanket first. I got three more squares done which means I'm down to one last square. That may not sound like a lot but I'm so sick of squares! I just can't start a new project until I finish this one though, I know I'll never go back if I don't.

At that leaves cleaning the entry. That is really only one little task but it simply must be done. I'll tackle it this weekend and if I'm not to lazy, I'll take a picture to show you exactly why I had to do it.

I also got some stuff done that wasn't on my list. I've perfected my water kefir routine so now it takes practically no time at all. I also added a few new healthy snack/treat recipes to my routine recipes which was an area I feel like I was lacking in before.

Until now, Craig hasn't really had a chance to try my newest creations but I'm happy to report that he approves of water kefir. He thinks it smells yucky (As do others - this is complete news to me but it's not surprising as it is well known that I have a poor sense of smell). Despite the smell he does think it tastes good and if offered the choice of water or water kefir with dinner, he takes kefir. I call that a sucess.

He is not, however, a fan of bean brownies.* Of course he didn't tell me this until after he had eaten two, approved them for public consumption and we had served them to the friends we had over for a game night. Apparently he decided on his third taste that he didn't like them. I wish he had decided that earlier but all's well that ends well because I get to eat all the leftovers!

On the bright side, he describes my hummus as "edible". That's pretty good for someone who doesn't like hummus. I think we are really making progress on healthy eating for husbands 101. Yah for me!

I'm thinking about replacing my summer to do list with a fall one but haven't decided for sure. Craig probably hopes not, but I think it will happen.

* I update my bean brownie recipe as I just recently noticed I had inadvertantly left out the eggs when I posted it before. I'm really sorry if you tried to make it and it tasted gross but you didn't tell me cause you didn't want to hurt my feelings. You can try again and you might still think it tastes gross but lots of people like the original so obviously I'm not a total freak for liking them. I think it is all about expections. If you are expecting a ghiradelli brownie, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting a chocolately treat to get you through a craving for dessert without leaving you feeling sick from excessive amounts of sugar/white flour, you will like it.

Two Days, Two Town Halls

As I indicated yesterday, Texas Rep. Chet Edwards had a town hall meeting last night. I attended via the internet. You can read about the meeting here.

My observation was this: Edwards refuses to take much of a stand on anything. He makes statements that sound unequivocal, but are really meaningless. He says "I won't support a Canada-style health bill." Well, that's not what's being proposed (maybe it's the eventual goal, though). He also says "I won't vote for a bill with death panels." There aren't any of those in this bill (boards that regulate allowable treatments - maybe). So while it sounds like he's taking a stand against the more extreme Democratic ideas, he said nothing indicating he might actually vote against the bill.

Whenever questioners expressed opposition to government health care, he would lean on the Medicare crutch. "Oh, Medicare's popular. Who here wants to get rid of that?" He probably expected nobody would raise their hand, but people did, and he said he disagreed with those people. The fact is, though, that Medicare will go bankrupt in 10 years, and Medicare is consuming an ever-growing portion of the federal budget. He did not touch upon these problems.

As a final House vote approaches, people will have to keep the pressure on Edwards, and try to get some statement from him on his intentions. Edwards needs to take a stand on this.

Tele-Town Hall

My Congressman from my North Dakota days, Earl Pomeroy (I've been gone for 10 years, but he's still there), had a telephone town hall meeting on health care Monday night, and I got an e-mail about it, so I decided to listen in. I wanted to participate in this town hall craze that's been sweeping the nation.

Pomeroy is avoiding real town halls, but this was his 5th phone version. When I called in, I was asked for the secret password (health care), my name and hometown, and whether I support or oppose Obama's health care ideas. "Oppose," I replied. I was then given some bad jazz to listen to while waiting for the meeting to start.

Pomeroy said that the town halls happening around the country are a "full demonstration on American democracy" for the world to see, and that this issue is as complex and personally important as issues get. He said he's doing these meetings by phone so that he can reach more people and so citizens don't have to drive. He didn't say anything about avoiding getting yelled at.

Before taking questions, Pomeroy stated his general views on the subject. He said:

• We need to "provide certainty that people can get health insurance."
• We need to get rid of denials based on pre-existing conditions or ratings schemes.
• The North Dakota primary-care centered model is a good one (not sure what he's referring to here).
• He will not support a bill that covers illegal immigrants, funds abortions with tax dollars, or has death panels (the invocation of which he called absurb).

With that, he went to the callers. The way this meeting worked was, one could get in line to ask a question by pressing *1, then apparently calls were taken in that order (it didn't sound like any screening would be done).

Here were some highlights from the questions:

• The first question was, "When will you guys forget about getting GOP support?" Pomeroy said it was not yet time for that, and he cited his ND colleague Sen. Conrad's participation in the Finance Committee's gang of six that is negotiating a bill. He cited Conrad a lot during this meeting, almost as if Conrad was a sponsor of the town hall ("this next call brought to you by Senator Conrad!).

• Pomeroy said to the second caller that he supports the current employer-based system of insurance provision. I haven't heard a lot of people say that, but I guess it is the Democratic plan to tax employers that don't provide it. As I've stated, I think we need to move away from this model.

• He mentioned several times that ND has one of the lowest Medicare reimbursement rates in the nation, meaning that ND doctors get paid less than docs from other states for seeing Medicare patients. He brings that up in this article. To some extent, that makes sense, because ND has a lower cost of living. I'm not sure, on the whole, how big of a problem this is, but Pomeroy says if the eventual bill bases payments to doctors on the Medicare system, he'll oppose it.

• The illegal immigrant issue came up once or twice. A lot of people bring this up, but I think it's a minor issue, because anyone who goes to a hospital will get care, whether they are officially under the new system or not. This bill is not the place to address illegal immigration.

• His solution for how to pay for this bill: tax "Cadillac" health plans, tax people who make over $1 million per year, find savings in the system, and "bend the cost curve."

• He supports the idea of an insurance mandate, but he never said the word "mandate." The implication was obvious, though.

• There were a lot of callers from Bismarck, which was strange, because Bismarck is not the largest city in the state. It is the capital, though, so maybe you have more political types there.

• On the public option, he supports one if it's "fair and square," not if it has the aforementioned unbalanced payment rates, or if it has a stacked deck against private insurance.

After about an hour, I got bored and left the meeting. Since it was over the phone, I didn't even have to sneak out the back. I think it's hard to pin down how Pomeroy will end up voting, and I'm sure it depends on the final bill. But it also will depend on political considerations.

In other town hall news, Chet Edwards is having a town hall meeting here tonight. I could go, or just watch on the internet. We'll see how I feel. Either way, I'll file a report.