Budgeting and Being Frugal

Budgeting, careful and controlled spending, being debt free, and becoming more self-reliant are huge topics right now. Well, there is a new blog with great ideas about how to save money, set up budgets, and how to stay out of debt, etc. It is written by a mom and two of her daughters. (I've been reading the daughters' individual blogs for quite a while and thoroughly enjoy them.) They give easy to follow guidelines - mostly good common sense - and some extra hints that maybe not many know about.

So without further ado, I'd like to direct your attention to a new blog:
Frugal Wife = Wealthy Life

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Lessons

The other day Bart posted an accounting tip that cured a headache.  This information was rattling around this scrambled brain, but I needed to have it spelled out to me.  Explanation:  We are having to value everything in Mom's estate.  Bart's advice answered a question.   Bless him.

In handling my mother's estate, here are some things I've learned:

*Have a will made.  BUT, make sure it is SO detailed that everyone knows who gets that sliver of soap left in the soap dish.  Oh, yes, it is extremely important for the will to be almost that detailed.  Putting a sticker on each item is great, but make sure it is also written down somewhere - preferably in the will.
*Any extra notes/wishes not in the will should be in your own handwriting.  DO not have someone else do this unless it is signed and witnessed by about 6 people.  (An exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

*Depending on which state (laws, taxes vary state to state) you live in and the size of the estate you might wish to make a Family Trust or something similar.  Sometimes this has be done a certain number of years before you pass away!

*Keep your financial records up to date even if your finances aren't.

*Keep a detailed "paper trail" so that someone can walk in and take over for you.  With the computer, so few people do this.  This can be a simple notebook kept in a kitchen drawer.  List the who, what, what, when, where, why and how.  This rule doesn't just apply to good journalism.

*It is extremely important to have someone who doesn't live with you know where life insurance records are kept, where the combinations to safes are hidden, in which bank(s) you have safety deposit boxes and where the keys are, where passwords are kept, what the names of your computer files are, in which banks you have accounts, etc etc etc.

*Have a family member be able to sign checks and/or transfer money from accounts in the event of an severe illness or death.

*Give others power of attorney, but make it so that others can't willy-nilly commit you.

*Having a living will.
*Have a minimum of $10,000 life insurance.  Preferably much more.  It will take the full $10,000 for a simple casket and funeral.  Cemetery plot, headstone and engraving are separate expenses.
*Have your cemetery plot picked out and paid for.  Do this through the cemetery people and have a written receipt.  And, check about once a year that this is still on record.

*Hire a trusted attorney.

*Hire a trusted accountant.

 

*Know that even with everything spelled out for you and the rest of the family, someone will probably be or get PO'd at you or another family member.

*Know that you will probably get very angry will some of your family members. 

*Know that someone else might try and probably will try very hard to run "the show" for you and/or pass themselves off as the only one that has the right to say or do anything.

*Know that there are going to be gaps in knowledge about how things should be handled.

*Know that if there is one person that has always "had an attitude" (to put it nicely) that attitude will rear its ugly head with a vengence in this time of stress.

*Know that if you think/know all these things couldn't happen in your family, they're probably going to anyway.

  

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If one knows ahead that they are going to inherit an estate (large or small), try to be prepared as possible. Maybe you aren't going to inherit anything, but will have to handle the the final details of a friend or loved one.   Either way dealing/handling/taking care of all this is extremely expensive.

-First there is time off work.

-There is often travel/motel/eating out expenses.

-There are often long distance telephone bills.  (We maxed out our time on our cell phones.)

-There are often medical bills to pay.

-If there is a house/property involved, mortgage payments, electricity, telephone (no cell phone service at my mom's), utilities, insurance, possibly lawn care, etc. still have to be paid until the house is sold or rented.

-There may be repairs or improvements that will have to be made in order to rent or sell. 

-There is often a car that has to have at least one payment made before being legally able to sell it.  You may have to pay for another 6 months of insurance and maybe even renew the license plates/tags.

-In our case, the homeowners insurance and property taxes came due, too.  OUCH

-There are miscellaneous expenses too numerous and unexpected to list.

I don't know about other states, but in Idaho if the estate doesn't have the money to pay these expenses the inheritors have to pay them.  If the inheritors don't, these debts go against the inheritors credit ratings and/or the inheritors will lose the property due to foreclosures. 

If the deceased was on Social Security, the benefits should stop immediately.  If any SS money comes in after, don't spend it unless it is the final reimbursement.  (There will be a form that comes first - there is always paperwork.)

There are attorney and accountant fees, but their advice is invaluable.

In the state of Idaho, it can take 6 to 9 months for a will to be probated.  YES!  And guess who pays all the bills in the mean time - the inheritors.

This was long.  I'm sorry, but maybe some of this will help someone else someday.

How We Started The Pantry

This is how we started our pantry. I need to restart this process to figure out what needs to be added or eliminated. And, it would help create a food budget.

I'd post pictures of our pantry, but it is completely disorganized not to mention really dusty. (Time for a major overhaul. Note to self: Drinking water needs to be used up and replaced.) Our pantry is basically several sets of metal shelves that are set up in a U shape in the corner of what was the rec room.

In my previous post where I explained why I keep a stocked pantry, I don't think I mentioned that I'm also worrying about the country's state of affairs. I think stocking up is a really good idea. I've been adding more prepared foods to the pantry - things that if the power goes off they wouldn't have to be cooked before eating (canned meats, vegetables, etc). They may be expensive and not taste the best, but we wouldn't go hungry.

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When we started our pantry we were really poor. If we were really lucky, we'd have a couple of dollars left at the end of the pay period. Sometimes we'd have only 50 cents left. A few times we were down to 10 cents when the next pay check arrived. (For two years, we didn't go to a movie, go bowling, or do much of anything that cost money. We didn't drink alcoholic beverages. There was seldom juice, ice cream, soda pop, candy, coffee, or tea in the house.)

After running out of food a few times, my husband figured out that with his erratic schedule we had to buy more food when we went shopping. We didn't know when we'd get to go again. To do this, we needed to know how much we could spend at the grocery store, how much food we needed, and how much it actually would cost to buy it.

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We lived in a single wide mobile home. The floor plan was rather unique in that it had a small room off the kitchen. This room had a coat/broom closet and a space for an upright freezer. (It even had a door to the outside. This room was an amazing feature for those of you who are too young to know about mobile homes.) The manufacturer called it a mud room. We called it our pantry.

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*Dh made a list of all the different foods, cleaning supplies, paper products, and grooming aids we had on hand. (It wasn't much. This was before we had stocked a pantry and before we had a deep freezer.)
*To the list, we added what we were out of that had to be replaced.
*I figured out a menus for each meal for a month.
*I then figured out how much food we would need to make up these for just the two of us.
*We added to the list what we absolutely had to have to get by until the next shopping trip and what was needed to make up the meals that were on the menu. (I have always kept a grocery list on the refrigerator and/or by the phone.)
*Then we added what we would like to have (juice, jelly, fresh produce, lunch meat, ice cream, chocolate chips, pop, etc).
*This all was written down a single column on a few sheets of school notebook paper. (I can't remember now if like items were grouped or if the list was alphabetical.)
*Dh added columns across the paper: package size, price per oz/ea/pound/whatever, store name. I typed this up using carbon paper so that we had several copies.
*Then we took our list and went product and price shopping.
*Actually, this took a few shopping trips to get a good idea of which stores consistently had the best prices. (We seldom could go shopping when what we needed was on sale, so we looked for the best over all prices.) We filled in the columns on our list. We bought by comparing, changing brand and/or store, or duplicating an item if the price was right. We'd buy larger containers of non-perishables.
*We kept track - to the penny - of what we spent. If a needed item was on sale, we'd add an extra to the cart until we reached our spending limit. Sometimes we'd have to decide if we really, really needed an item. Sometimes we'd go over budget just to get the bare necessities. Sometimes we had enough money to add some extras.
*Somehow, slowly our pantry was being stocked.

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The menu planning kind of went by the wayside, but we kept this list updated for probably 15 years. (It's kind of ironic that when we could have put it on the computer is just about when we quit keeping track of prices!)

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If I remember correctly, we finally mostly shopped at two stores - one was Safeway and the other (I think) was locally owned. We'd only go to the other stores if a sale was good enough to make it worthwhile.

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Even with all our careful planning we'd still sometimes run out of things. A piece of meat would be half fat or gristle. A recipe that said it made 6 servings would barely feed us one meal. I'd forget to write something on the list or forget to take the list when we went shopping. We'd have unexpected company. Sometimes there just wasn't enough money to buy everything we needed.

No such thing as FREE Shipping

This message is from someone who runs a business and who has worked in the mail order business - from pulling orders, to shipping, to taking orders, to customer service, to working the financial end of it. Recently.

Please don't complain about paying regular shipping costs. Please, DO complain about paying excessive shipping costs and/or handling fees. However, expect a handling fee if you return a used/dirty item that you just decide you don't want any more.

You can look up rates on USPS.com (US Postal Service) and UPS.com (United Parcel Service). Shipping is based on weight, package size, merchandise value, and where the package is being sent.

Remember, if you get "free" shipping, the shipping costs just get added on to the price of the merchandise to cover the retailers expenses. Shipping is expensive now. Period. (Shipping to Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, and Mexico is incredibly expensive. Shipping overseas can cost hundreds of dollars.)

Also, please note that if a company sends something by US Postal Service and the item gets lost, the retailer gets stuck for the cost of the lost item - even if it is insured. The Postal Service almost never pays on a claim. If they do pay it can take a year or longer for the sender to be reimbursed.

Shipping is a huge expense to a company. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch - oops - free shipping.