Grocherie Costs, Week 2

Since last week I overspent, I had a goal coming into this week of staying below $16.  Well, I stayed below $11.

I bought butter (the biggest cost item), some more black beans, frozen peas, eggs, and my experiment item for the week: apple cider vinegar.

From last weeks haul I still have my lentils uncooked, half a can of tomato sauce, a head of broccoli, about half the bag of black beans, and half the loaf of bread in the freezer.  The menu for my dinners next week will be "asian" fried rice with peas and brocolli and the other night will be my famous spaghetti.  If called upon to make a third dinner, it will be eggs, with oatmeal made with my homegrown peaches that I have frozen.

Looks I am going to be taking the full poverty plunge for lunches, however, and eating lentils and rice for my lunches.

Groceries Goal: Under $21 a Week

Early Retirement Extreme in a nutshell: your biggest expenses are 1) housing 2) transportation and 3) food.  Through some intelligent planning, and adding skills, you can drastically cut these big 3 and watch your savings rate soar above 50% to something like 75%+, or you can take my route and be semi-retired at much earlier age than most would think possible.

I am trying to challenge myself to make all of my meals $1 or less.  This means my meals will be home-cooked and mostly meatless, though eggs are still going to play a major role, and cheeses will will certainly show up.  That makes the weekly benchmark $21.  This week I messed up a bit and spent $26.  I wanted to try out making a vegetable lasagna and black bean burgers from scratch, so my curiosity made me buy more than I am going to use this week.  I'm not completely certain I'll be able to keep next week's purchases down to $16 to make up for the overage, but even if I don't, that still puts all of my eating in the range of one "nice" meal out (paying for my wife as well, and don't forget the tip!)

On LESS

I have been getting into The Archdruid Report, a blog on the implications of living through the decline of the industrial age.  I got turned onto it through early retirement extreme.

In one of my favorite pieces the Archdruid writes: 

Any attempt to walk the talk that we’ve been discussing here, in other words, has to begin with the individual, and has to start with the acceptance of a very significantly lowered standard of living. To return to an acronym I’ve proposed here already, any response to the future that doesn’t involve using LESS—Less Energy, Stuff, and Stimulation—simply isn’t a serious response to the downside of the industrial age. The toolkit of the Seventies organic gardening and appropriate tech movements, which I’ve discussed here at some length, is among many other things a very effective way of responding to the need to use LESS in a humane and creative manner.

By growing a garden and raising chickens in your backyard instead of buying packaged and processed vegetables and eggs that are shipped halfway across the continent, conserving energy relentlessly and getting as much as you can from local renewable sources, and sharply downscaling the pursuit of material excess in favor of a life that’s rich in experiences, relationships, and meaning, it’s possible to get by very comfortably on a small fraction of the energy, stuff, and stimulation that most Americans think they need.

I couldn't say it better myself (which is of course why I quoted it).

I think I have less stuff down pretty well (though it is certainly arguable).  So that leaves me working on less energy (hence typing this in a house with the AC set at 78 degrees at night and 82-84 during the day (I foresee a time when it is possible that is not enough).

The last one is stimulation.  I think a good step is to make stimulation practically free.  In a big way that is the project of this blog

Next is clearing the mind with things like meditation, spirituality, and moving through nature (walks, hikes, and gardening).  These are many of my favorite things in life, it is important to keep them in the front of my mind.  But they are so quiet that they can easily get lost.

But at least I can say I am working on all of these dimensions of LESS and it will help me to be ahead of the curve in the future.  I urge you to consider doing the same.

Groceries

Writing in Dvorak has slowed my writing and my posts are certainly more terse than they would ordinarily -- so my apologies for that.  

I just got back from getting groceries.  I was bummed about spending $34, but then I realized that I had bought two weeks worth of stuff.  I am stretching my canned soup out by bringing some glass containers and eating it over two days -- 180 calories each day.  So that's lunch.

For dinners, most of the staples I need are still in the house from previous purchases.  That's a great thing about cooking from staples.  All I had to buy was some chicken and some more cheese and tortillas.

I should be covered in the food department until I buy supplies for Nationals.

Walk to Work

It is well known that I love the site Early Retirement Extreme.

I wish I could do more of it.  For example, today I walked home from work.  It'd be nice to do that every day.  If it were feasible, I could get rid of a car (saving thousands of dollars in the process) and I'd be much more physically fit.  

Those thousands of dollars aren't exactly chicken feed.  Once my house is paid off, the biggest expense I will have will be transportation.  Or at least, this is true considering I do know how to cook and garden, and will continue to expand my skills over the summer.  In fact, I should get chickens and use those transportation costs as chicken feed.  

Anyway, I really could lower my yearly costs to something like $3,000-4,000.  Which I know sounds crazy, but I honestly believe holds up.  I'd be healthier, less cluttered, more spiritual, and possibly happier.  

And a cost basis like that makes it so much easier to find a way to achieve goals like active employment that pays my bills in 8 hours of work a week (because I am only half as smart as Tim Ferris, of course).  It also means I need a small fraction of the same reserves to have enough passive income to live off as well. 

That's enough talk about that.  For now, I'll just do what I can.

Dao Yourself a Favor

Read this translation of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) of Laozi.

There are certain passages, including my core 5 favorite, that I like rendered better in other translations, but the scholarship of the one above is just fantastic.  Some of the passage that make no sense to me finally do through this translation.

How I'm So Cheap: Modified Navy Shower

Here's a video on how to take a modified navy shower, a concept I first read about at Early Retirement Extreme.




The only tweak that (as far as I know) I can take credit for is squirting the water on the soap.

I like the experience of it being a quick, cold shower, and I have now learned to find those invigorating.  I try to make this my default shower nearly every day, with a "luxury shower" on Sunday where I take my time with some hot water.

I must admit sometimes I take a regular shower when I just don't feel like taking one of these modified navy showers, but it's one of those things where doing the best practice 90% of the time still makes you better off then nearly everyone else.