October of Opportunity Recap

I set some October goals back in my October of Opportunity post, and I'm here to report back on how I did with those goals. 

My first goal was to be a more patient wife.  I think I did pretty well on this.  It's obviously not a measurable goal, but I think my self-assessment of my overall satisfaction with my marriage is up, so that's good.  Not to imply that I was dissatisfied with the man in September or anything.  I just wanted to report that I feel happier since trying to become a more patient and supportive wife.  Aren't I just the greatest human who ever lived?

My goal of sticking with Weight Watchers more was sort of successful but sort of not, but mostly not.  To refresh your memory, I reported at the beginning of October that my general tendency was to start the Weight Watchers week on Monday, full of discipline and willpower, but to fall apart by Wednesday.  My goal for October was to at least stick it out until Thursday of every week.  Except, I at some points in October I found myself randomly turning on the willpower on Fridays, but losing it on Mondays.  Point is, I didn't stick with my everything-starts-fresh-on-Mondays pattern, so it was hard to say if I stuck with my "keep it together until Thursday" goal.  But obviously my goal was to go 4 days in a row without a Weight Watchers mishap, and that did not happen.  And my weight is up.  So I'd mostly assess this goal as a fail.  I remain dedicated to improvement, but honestly I'm just tired of talking about Weight Watchers, so there will not be a weight-based goal this month.

I also said I was going to log 20 workouts, but I forgot to keep track.

I said I was going to drink more tea, which I did.  Easiest goal ever.

I had a goal of getting a new job, and that didn't happen, but I am working on it.  I do think that in October I clarified my goals a little more in terms of what I want to do with my career, namely that I need to accept that it might be time to get a full-time job again.

Oh, and I was supposed to finish up my murder mystery script for the community theater, but that show got canceled, so there goes that goal.

My most successful goal in October was the one about tightening up our budget.  As I said, I had a sort of nebulous goal of finding 10 ways to save money each week.  But as I also said, it is sort of hard to define/measure a "way to save money."  I think I nailed it in spirit, though, as much as you can nail something in spirit.  (That sounds like a bad necrophilia joke.)

Below is a list of some of the ways we saved money in October.  I'm not suggesting that any of them are new or innovative, and quite frankly the first two sound so snobby that I kind of want to smack myself.

1. I cut back on going to Trainer Jill once a week instead of two.  Again, if that isn't the most elitist snobby money-saving suggestion, I don't know what is.  Like, Hey, I don't know why you're struggling so much financially, people on We Are the 99%, you just need to cut back your personal training time.  I fully acknowledge that having the ability to hire a personal trainer is an incredible luxury, and I feel very guilty about it when there are people who can't afford to buy milk. But the fact remains that cutting back on training was a way I saved money in October, so I'm listing it here.

2. I raked my own leaves.  Again, I feel like this sounds snobby, but we have a lawn service that mows our lawn.  In October and November they rake the leaves, but they charge something like $4 per barrel for the leaves.  (I don't recall how big the barrel is.)  Last year it cost us $120 to have our leaves raked.  So this year I elected to rake our own leaves.  I spent $7 on a new rake, $9 on the paper yard waste bags required by our garbage collection company, and $6 on a cardboard "Baggin' Buddy" to prop up the bags.  So I guess our net savings was about $100.  I feel very awkward admitting that I did not heretofore rake my own leaves, so let me attempt to break the tension with an attempt at comedic levity concerning the Baggin' Buddy:

I cannot possibly pass the Baggin' Buddy in my garage without thinking about baggin' in the 80's slang sense, meaning to insult.  As in, "Why you gotta bag?"  And I think about this piece of cardboard that helps you with raking leaves and insulting others:

3. Slightly less humorously, I called AT&T and switched to cheaper phone and Internet plans.  Actually, they're more or less the same plans we had before, but AT&T does not make it a point to call you and alert you to the fact that the price of your existing plan has been lowered.  You have to call them.  Who knew?  Additionally, it seems the rate you get depends on who you talk to at AT&T, which makes no sense.  When I told AT&T Employee #2 that AT&T employee #1 had quoted me a lower rate, Employee #2 asked, "Why didn't you just take her rate?"  Hello?!  You work for the same company!!

4. I started buying groceries at Aldi.  This was possibly our biggest money-saver this month.  Not only that, I feel my life has improved tremendously now that I am not doing the bulk of my shopping at grocery conglomerate Jewel.  Aldi just seems like so much less of a production.

5. I bought a bunch of stuff in bulk at Costco.  I'm not totally clear that Costco saved us money.  Obviously you can do a point-to-point comparison on particular items at Costco vs. another store, but it's difficult to really calculate whether or not you saved money overall.  The expense at Costco is a lot up front, but you might save money over the course of several months.  Oh well, if nothing else, you can fall back on the fact that Costco does save you time. 

6. I bought generic tampons.  Yeah.  (Except they were Target's Up & Up brand, which I suspect is just made in the same factory as the name brands anyway.) 

7. I focused more on coupons and scouring sales ads.  I still contend that coupons aren't really the best way to save money, because you always save more on either generic (see #6 above) or whatever brand is on sale that week.  But occasionally there's something I have to buy in the name brand, like Nathan's Silk soy milk that he must have in the purple kind (vanilla, but different somehow from the vanilla kind in the blue or green carton), and so I like to look for coupons for that.

8. Bill and I both practiced iron-clad discipline at Target.  Target is a dangerous store.  You go in for toilet paper, but then while you're there you see laundry detergent, and you figure you're running low on that so you'll pick something up, and then you realize you should pick up some toothpaste, too, and then Look at that cute sweater!  I need a sweater!  Oh yeah, Nathan loves these frozen taquitos!  And let me stock up on greeting cards for everybody who has a birthday in the next two months!  And aww, are those not the cutest decorations for [insert upcoming holiday here]?!  Then you get to the register and it's never less than like $100.  That can be a problem when you're going to Target twice a week.  So this past month, we made it a point to go to Target and not come back with more than the few necessary items on our list.  (Well, okay, sometimes I bent the rules for fruit.)  Now we walk out of Target for $20 instead of $100. 

9. We tried harder to practice the old WWII motto of "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."  Which, okay, can I pause here and show the poster I found with this motto?

Am I the only one who thinks that it looks like she's spanking him?  Was there nobody at the WWII poster-making office place with a mind in the gutter?  Also, she wouldn't make him take off the pants before she repaired them?  

But all implications of corporal punishment/weird fetishes aside, it is a good motto.  I admit that in the past I have not done a great job with this particular motto, especially when it comes to food waste.  It's very difficult to predict our exact food needs for the week, so if, for example, suddenly my husband filled up on free food at an afternoon reception at work, the food I planned to make goes to waste.  Obviously one day of this sort of thing happening is not going to cause massive food spoilage, but add in a couple of weekend nights where I suddenly don't feel like cooking, and pretty soon you have wilted asparagus and expired chicken.  Another problem is the half-used item, like the half an onion or the half a jar of pasta sauce, which I put in the refrigerator with good intentions, but just end up throwing away when I buy more groceries the next week.  But this month, I worked harder to make use of it all.  When I only needed half an onion, I chopped it up the other half and froze it.  Ditto with the extra enchilada sauce.  When I only needed to make two turkey burgers, I used the rest of the ground turkey to make meatballs, and I froze them for future pasta nights or as a topping for homemade pizza. 

10. Of the 93 meals I ate in October, only 4 were at restaurants.  And one of those somebody else paid for.  "Sponge off others" is always a good money-saving tip.

11. I went to Starbucks once the whole month.  Nathan and I never went to Dunkin' Doughnuts.  I carried around a water bottle so I wouldn't be tempted to buy a drink during errands.  

12. I didn't buy any new clothes or shoes the whole month.  Which is obviously not a plan that is going to work forever, but I think taking a step back from consumerism once in awhile is a good idea.   

13. I didn't spend a single cent at iTunes.  I got all my music at the library.  I didn't buy any magazines.  I did buy one book for my Kindle, but I didn't read it because various library materials arrived for me, so I like to think that the Kindle expenditure is something I can spread across several months.  

14. Instead of buying greeting cards, I had Nathan make them.  He loves crafts anyway, so making cards keeps him occupied.  And we already had the paper, so it's better for the environment than purchasing more paper goods.  

15. I cashed in all our spare change at Coinstar in exchange for Amazon credit.  This isn't really something that saved us money, since technically we already had that money, but it is making better use of resources. 

Unfortunately, October is the month that our car insurance is due, and the month of the gigantic property tax bill, so we still had to dip into our savings.  But you'd better believe that I made maximum use of those parks and libraries that my tax dollars funded.