Someday A Goat

Way off the budget track

Throughout June, I started really tracking our expenses, even most of those in cash. I refined and added to my budget tracking worksheets, I really felt good about making some progress. And then, while I was copying June's excel chart to make July's sheet, it happened.

I deleted a whole section of June's worksheet, thinking I was clearing the cells on the July worksheet. Almost a millisecond after I hit delete, my stomach sank. The particular section of the worksheet would take me a while to rebuild, it details paying money back to savings and credit cards and probably had about 20 entries.

Since that fateful keystroke, I've been a budgeting mess. I've kept entering receipts, thankfully, otherwise I would have weeks of unentered receipts. I did print out my June report from Quicken so I can manually go back through and recreate it. I usually don't print the month reports, but it would be too hard to switch back and forth on the screen. So I made quite a bit of progress, then gave up halfway through one night to go to bed and haven't yet finished. We're getting to the end of July and I still haven't analyzed June.

Despite almost three weeks of delay, I have to do something soon. I made so much progress in budget tracking in June, this setback is discouraging.

Dinner on Wednesday: Tinga

Just another day with another boring meal. We are in a serious rut and had tinga last night. My husband makes an excellent seasoned shredded chicken that one of our friend's Mexican grandmothers taught him to make. We usually make big batches when we make chicken stock and freeze them to meal sized portions. He wraps a tortilla around the chicken and shredded cheese, then grills it in a skillet. Lately he's been using the griddler/sandwich press, which has made clean up easier. Dipped in salsa as we eat them, this is a tasty meal that's super fast to make because the chicken defrosts so quickly.

Since we just had them last week, we actually ended up using all the tortillas in the package over the two meals, which we almost never manage to accomplish. That said, we've had a lot of it lately and we have made all our recipes ad naseum. We just don't seem motivated to try new stuff (although I did have the last of my potato salad last night and still really liked it--the lime makes a big difference and the peppers are tasty. Definitely going to make that again next time we need potatoes for another meal. I splurged on some inexpensive bell peppers at CostCo, so we may try a stuffed pepper recipe tonight.

Bad news for my friend

I'm starting to see more and more signs of the economy at a personal level. A good friend of mine just got laid off due to very slow business conditions--I hope my he can find a new position soon. Luckily his wife has a very well paying job, but they did just buy a house.

I was coming home from CostCo last night, and since we bought the house, I really don't drive a lot anymore in heavy traffic. I had to go to CostCo to get a hose, soda and fill up the tank, which meant I had to batttle traffic to get there after work, then battle my way home. I have to say, I don't miss road rage much. It's been so hot, and my AC wasn't picking up like it should (plus I make myself turn it off while idling at lights, or the whole time if I can stand it), so I was seeing red.

At a particular interchange where people are never in the correct lane and always trying to cut over at the last minute, the delivery driver in front of me was nearly stopped trying to get a lane over to get on the highway. Usually I give delivery drivers some slack, but I figured of all people, he should know which lane he needed to be in and was just being rude. I laid on the horn, and once he got over and merged, I happened to be checking for people getting off the highway and got a better look at him. He happened to be an older gentleman and looked pretty stressed.

Immediately I felt terrible, he wasn't driving a nice car at all, and since his windows were down, I'm guessing he was pretty hot too. But with all the reading I've been doing in the personal finance blogs, It occurred to me that maybe he just started this part-time job to make ends meet, and has spent his whole life in a professional job. Or maybe his wife's sick and they had to move to an expensive big city for treatments. It really doesn't matter what his situation actually was (he could in fact be rude), but I certainly need to show a little more compassion. I have had a very lucky life.

Random Tip: plastic bags + empty paper towel roll = cheap storage

I just discovered Cook's Country, a magazine from the same people who do Cook's Illustrated. In the "Kitchen Shortcuts" section, where readers share clever tips, a Claudia Carrier in Sagle, Idaho, suggests using cardboard tubes to store plastic bags from the grocery store. While we have a great simplehuman storage container, I could have definitely used this tip when we were living in tiny apartments. And it's free! It could also be an excellent idea to bring along on long road trips, though.

Tracking charitable donations

Buying a house entails many new problems to solve, things to remember and lessons to learn.

We've had to adjust our thinking on tax deductions, for instance. We do tend to give when friends are fundraising and definitely donate a good bit to Goodwill (especially with the move). Keeping track of these receipts is something I need to start actively working on.

Since we bought our house at the end of October, we didn't pay enough interest to do anything but the standard deduction in 2007, but this year we definitely will be itemizing. I think you can still deduct charitable contributions without itemizing, but to be perfectly honest, we've never bothered. I feel lucky that my returns make it out each year by April 15. Part of the reason behind this is that because of investments, my returns are pretty complicated without adding in other stuff. Part of us acting like grownups is taking charge of the tax situation.

I noticed on our July mortgage statement how much of our payments were for interest through June--I figure doubling this number is an on-the-spot workaround to estimate how much we would pay in interest this year. I know July - December, the interest portion of the payment will go down a tiny bit each month, but I just needed a quick figure.

With that quick figure, I realized that we're only about a thousand and change over the amount of the standard deduction. If I'm thinking about this correctly, that means we'll only get a few years at the beginning of our mortgage where it makes sense to itemize for the deduction on interest. While this means that I'm probably borrowing somewhat responsibly, I was a little disappointed, tax deductions on mortgage interest are mentioned everywhere. Since we have no kids, no student loans and don't pay a lot for things like ad valorums on our cars, itemizing might not make sense for us after a few years in the house. I need to analyze this more in depth, and account for charity and other possible deductions, but wow, talk about surprising!

Check tax changes for 2008 here

I'm going to make it a short-term goal to create a system to track charitable giving, possibly incorporating into my excel budget workbook (which includes the budget, a worksheet tracking each month, and the budgeting schedule where I assign bills to pay periods. I'm already working on adding a net worth section to the monthly sheets, at least for now while we are still trying to figure everything out.

Starting with simple tools and making them progressively more information rich has been working very well for me.

Dinner: Rotisserie

We frequently rely upon Publix rotisserie chickens to do the cooking for us. This was not always the case, but lately, it's been a lifesaver. Maybe we'll start saving the other parts every once in a while and make chicken salad or throw it in the stock pot. I pretty much only eat white meat, though, so rotisseries present a consumption problem for me. Maybe I can mix the rich dark meat with some kind of meatless product to make a lunch meal.

So tonight was rotisserie chicken and frozen broccoli (bought at 50% off on Sunday, and when I mentioned we had it, husband was visibly happy). Chicken kept warm in the oven, and broccoli seasoned and cooked briefly in the microwave, one of the few dishes we use a microwave for. All around delish. Can't wait to stock up on veggies when on sale and use the new freezer.

We even cleaned the kitchen after dinner.

Dinner: burgers

We were lazy, and did burgers. Again. What can I say? Husband makes a rad burger, and ground chuck is on sale. I also had some of the leftover SW potato salad when I got home from work. The snack made all the difference, I think I'm going to start trying to have one every day when I get home to stave off hunger pains. The potato salad is pretty good. I'm actually having it as part of my lunch right now. I think it helped that I portioned it out when I put it in the fridge. I also think I used too much onion powder, and the extra salt isn't bothering me as much.

Dinner: Tasty stir fry

Sundays mean lots of lovely coupons and sales fliers, and thus large shopping trips. These trips are usually only at one store at a a time, and we've gotten very good about only buying with a coupon when it makes sense. We have one main store, and lately , about every two weeks, they're doing $5 of purchases of $35 or more. That's a big chunk of our grocery budget, $35, especially if we want to take advantage of the coupon multiple times. Usually I can time other regular buys, but only if I'm careful. I've missed many a possible discount, but what can you do?

Back to topic: This was one of the weeks with a $5 off coupon, so I felt a little freer to spend on staples (not really consulting the actual budget). Boneless skinless chicken breast was on sale for $2.49/lb., which is pretty inexpensive for that cut. So we bought a tray, eating two tonight, two in the upstairs freezer and and two breasts downstairs. We're still stocking the deep freezer, and we have agreed to get one honk of meat each pay period. We're well-used to using frozen meats to cook in a pinch, and I'm looking forward to expanding that.

Husband had a marinade ready when I arrived home from the store. He used some tamari sauce in the marinade/cooking sauce and decided that a teriyaki would do much better--the tamari is too strong, more suited to tuna. I agree, it almost takes over your mouth.

The chicken was very nicely cleaned and cut into large chunks. A great way to avoid gristle is to, well, cut it clean when you begin. Keep your cooking method in mind, though, sometimes you need the fat and skin to cook in if cooking slowly and at low heat. In this case, it's very quick cooking, 10-15 minutes once everything is rocking. We used leftover corn, red and green bell peppers from the potato salad and he threw it into the wok with the sauce, green onions and the chicken. Meanwhile, we made potatoes (well, he made them), from a Real Simple recipe that I have used over and over. Thinly sliced potato, cooked on a baking sheet at very high temperature for about the same amount of time as the wok (10ish minutes). Oil non-stick pan, oil, salt and pepper slices before cooking. Go easy on the salt, you can always add more later. We almost always oversalt this dish.

He still doesn't like potato salad

I've never been a huge fan myself--we eat potatoes on a regular basis but don't typically buy enough to make use of volume discounts. So I bought potatoes a week or two ago, then found this recipe for Southwestern Potato Salad and decided to try it (and managed to get to it before the potatoes went bad).

I feel like it's pretty tasty and something that I could easily eat at work during lunch. Husband still didn't like it, even though I put corn in it. So after a generous tasting, I put the salad into two large lunch-sized portions, and one snack-sized portion. We'll see how much I eat of it. It is tasty, and very limey. I did use more lime juice than it called for, and onion powder because I forgot an onion at the store. Instead of going back, I made do, although I wouldn't use as much next time.

All veggies were chopped to one-inch size. After assembling all ingredients, it was still pretty soupy, definitely need to reduce the lime juice and possibly do more to get liquid out of the corn. I think this might be the kind of dish were salt is best added upon consumption--it was almost distracting. A very liberal grounding of black pepper was wonderful, however.

We'll see how the leftovers go.