After much thought, I've decided that TTC will take a summer hiatus and pick back up in early September. The reason is simple: the true work for any tightwad homesteader takes place in the summer. If I want to build up our supplies & reserves for the winter, I can't take 4-5 hours of each week to write.
I plan to continue the current gardening series throughout the summer, but not on any particular schedule. I will probably post new articles on rainy days. : )
I hope everyone enjoys a prosperous summer and I look forward to engaging again in the fall.
-The Tightwad Trainer
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
gardening on the cheap -- creating healthy soil
Have you started your vegetable garden yet? In our smack-in-the-middle Midwest Zone 6, we get the green light on Mother's Day. Since the weather is 70+ degrees & sunny this week, most of us are busy prepping the garden bed in eager anticipation of Sunday.
My grandparents graciously gave us their walk-behind tiller two years ago. Two years ago, I started with a tiny plot about 4 foot by 4 foot. Last year, I more than doubled the size. This year, I plan to do the same. We have always broken new ground with our tiller, so I have been looking forward to prepping the new ground in under 30 minutes. But, as chance usually has its way at just the wrong time, our tiller last month refused to start. This led me down the path of figuring out alternatives, and as it turns out, the broken tiller was a blessing in disguise as I've learned to look at gardening as less a hobby and more a process of nature.
As we all know, while hobbies can be quite expensive, living in sync with nature is about as free as you can get. So, this year I have even healthier soil as well as several tips to help keep your vegetable garden from busting the budget.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, picture this in your mind: you are hiking in the forest. You stumble upon a log overturned on the path. On the one side, you see where the tree has uprooted. There is lots of debris around the spot -- dead, rotting leaves, rotting bark, bugs galore. But, you also notice that there is also very lush new growth from ground plants in that same area. There is a low ground cover and many other taller plants, probably flowers.
Our goal is to recreate this scenario in our own home gardens to help our vegetables thrive as much as those flowers are on the forest floor.
So to begin our summer gardening series, let's look at how we can cheaply create the soil that will feed our plants.
Healthy Soil
The picture I laid out above is a perfect example of healthy soil because it contained lots of decaying plant matter. To recreate this in a home garden, many people like to use compost. Remember that compost is simply decaying plant matter. The easiest way to start a functioning compost pile is to designate a back corner of your property for yard waste & start dumping in there. You don't have to turn the pile over to create compost, but if you do turn it, you'll acheive the desired result faster. Do remember that anything that goes in your compost pile will eventually make it back into your garden, so don't dump anything with chemicals on it (such as pesticides or weed killers) and don't dump any diseased plants back there.
To prepare your garden bed, till only when you're breaking ground for the first time and maintain the bed by using an overwintering ground cover or mulch. In our forest floor scenario, nobody tilled anything. Contrast that with the scenario of new home building. If you've ever had a home built, you'll know that only very hardy weeds thrive on the disturbed soil. The function of soil on this earth is to allow plants to thrive and it does its job quite well without our intervention.
If you have a motorized tiller, use it on new ground, then cover the bed with something that blocks the sun, such as a tarp or heavy layer of newspapers for about a week. If you don't have a motorized tiller, you can simply cover the ground for at least a week, directly over the grass & weeds before tilling. Since covering it will weaken & begin to kill the growth underneath, this will make the ground much easier to till.
After the week is up, uncover the bed. If you're tilling by hand, you can now till the new ground. Concentrate on getting only hardy weeds & grass tilled up. If you have an existing ground cover in that area, you till it less aggressively or leave it alone altogether.
Next, apply about 1/2 inch of compost across the whole bed. If you don't have a compost pile yet, you can find compost under decaying trees in almost all wooded areas you might have (legal) access to. After applying your compost, you can lightly till new ground a second time to mix in the compost. Plan to plant on or after a rainy day.
Mulch helps retain water & prevents water run-off. In layman's terms, you can water your garden less and your plants will be healthier & more resistant to disease & bugs if you use some sort of mulch. Options for traditional mulch include newspapers, cut grass, dead leaves, wood chips, sawdust, shredded non-glossy black & white junk mail, and pine needles (which will acidify your soil, so be prepared to make soil amendments). Living mulch or ground cover can be very effective since you can plant it once & be done -- no need to continually add more.
At the end of the growing season, be prepared to put in a few hours work on your bed to help it build itself while it overwinters. Plan to apply another 1/2 inch of compost across the bed and cover it with a mulch of some sort. Many people like to use newspapers, as they still let in air & water, but block the sun. Others like to sow in a crop like winter rye that will feed nutrients into the soil during this downtime.
Next time, we're going to talk about planning our garden for the most effective use of space as well as each plant's preferences.
My grandparents graciously gave us their walk-behind tiller two years ago. Two years ago, I started with a tiny plot about 4 foot by 4 foot. Last year, I more than doubled the size. This year, I plan to do the same. We have always broken new ground with our tiller, so I have been looking forward to prepping the new ground in under 30 minutes. But, as chance usually has its way at just the wrong time, our tiller last month refused to start. This led me down the path of figuring out alternatives, and as it turns out, the broken tiller was a blessing in disguise as I've learned to look at gardening as less a hobby and more a process of nature.
As we all know, while hobbies can be quite expensive, living in sync with nature is about as free as you can get. So, this year I have even healthier soil as well as several tips to help keep your vegetable garden from busting the budget.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, picture this in your mind: you are hiking in the forest. You stumble upon a log overturned on the path. On the one side, you see where the tree has uprooted. There is lots of debris around the spot -- dead, rotting leaves, rotting bark, bugs galore. But, you also notice that there is also very lush new growth from ground plants in that same area. There is a low ground cover and many other taller plants, probably flowers.
Our goal is to recreate this scenario in our own home gardens to help our vegetables thrive as much as those flowers are on the forest floor.
So to begin our summer gardening series, let's look at how we can cheaply create the soil that will feed our plants.
Healthy Soil
The picture I laid out above is a perfect example of healthy soil because it contained lots of decaying plant matter. To recreate this in a home garden, many people like to use compost. Remember that compost is simply decaying plant matter. The easiest way to start a functioning compost pile is to designate a back corner of your property for yard waste & start dumping in there. You don't have to turn the pile over to create compost, but if you do turn it, you'll acheive the desired result faster. Do remember that anything that goes in your compost pile will eventually make it back into your garden, so don't dump anything with chemicals on it (such as pesticides or weed killers) and don't dump any diseased plants back there.
To prepare your garden bed, till only when you're breaking ground for the first time and maintain the bed by using an overwintering ground cover or mulch. In our forest floor scenario, nobody tilled anything. Contrast that with the scenario of new home building. If you've ever had a home built, you'll know that only very hardy weeds thrive on the disturbed soil. The function of soil on this earth is to allow plants to thrive and it does its job quite well without our intervention.
If you have a motorized tiller, use it on new ground, then cover the bed with something that blocks the sun, such as a tarp or heavy layer of newspapers for about a week. If you don't have a motorized tiller, you can simply cover the ground for at least a week, directly over the grass & weeds before tilling. Since covering it will weaken & begin to kill the growth underneath, this will make the ground much easier to till.
After the week is up, uncover the bed. If you're tilling by hand, you can now till the new ground. Concentrate on getting only hardy weeds & grass tilled up. If you have an existing ground cover in that area, you till it less aggressively or leave it alone altogether.
Next, apply about 1/2 inch of compost across the whole bed. If you don't have a compost pile yet, you can find compost under decaying trees in almost all wooded areas you might have (legal) access to. After applying your compost, you can lightly till new ground a second time to mix in the compost. Plan to plant on or after a rainy day.
Mulch helps retain water & prevents water run-off. In layman's terms, you can water your garden less and your plants will be healthier & more resistant to disease & bugs if you use some sort of mulch. Options for traditional mulch include newspapers, cut grass, dead leaves, wood chips, sawdust, shredded non-glossy black & white junk mail, and pine needles (which will acidify your soil, so be prepared to make soil amendments). Living mulch or ground cover can be very effective since you can plant it once & be done -- no need to continually add more.
At the end of the growing season, be prepared to put in a few hours work on your bed to help it build itself while it overwinters. Plan to apply another 1/2 inch of compost across the bed and cover it with a mulch of some sort. Many people like to use newspapers, as they still let in air & water, but block the sun. Others like to sow in a crop like winter rye that will feed nutrients into the soil during this downtime.
Next time, we're going to talk about planning our garden for the most effective use of space as well as each plant's preferences.
Friday, May 4, 2007
thursday Q & A - best investment for extra income
Cyndi writes:
Cyndi, from a purely numbers perspective, you can easily compare your options based on what is going to gain you the highest interest rate. For example, you could contribute to a low-risk retirement-oriented investment account. These are currently running at 4 -5%. Higher risk investments might or might not earn you more money. My expertise is not in high-return investment accounts, so I would start by doing a lot of research before choosing that option.
Paying down consumer debt would usually gain a higher return. Paying on a line of credit would give you something in the range of a 7-9% return. A car loan or personal unsecured loan is likely to be around that. Paying down any credit cards that are carrying a balance could earn up to 22%.
Personally, I wouldn't make the decision based on a side by side comparison of interest rates. I would use the extra money to achieve a goal I might not have had the chance to achieve before. Here are some that were or are important to us. Some we have achieved, others we are still working toward. I would welcome the chance to use an unexpected source of income to accomplish things like these:
• A continuing education account for ourselves and/or our children (such as a 539 account)
• A life insurance policy for the main breadwinner
• Classes to teach skills that would either provide additional income or greater self-sufficiency
• Acreage that could one day provide us a homestead
• Building or retrofitting with solar and other renewable sources of energy
• Building or purchasing a slightly larger home
You could work toward goals similar to the last three by contributing to the new types of CDs that allow you to make periodic deposits, but still do not come due until a certain date that you choose.
My larger money picture is a little bit off the beaten path. We funnel very little income into retirement accounts. Instead, we focus on adjusting our lifestyle to not need much money upon retirement. We intend to have a paid-for home that functions mostly on renewable energy with zero consumer debt when we retire. We also intend to have vehicles that can function on a renewable source of fuel (such as biodiesel) and the skills and health to keep things in repair by ourselves. Obviously, we can't guarantee that our health will be in the kind of shape necessary to live that lifestyle; however, we honestly can't guarantee that we (or anyone) will live to retirement age either.
I would keep this one hard, steadfast promise I would keep when using your extra income:
I will not spend that extra 5% on depreciating items of any kind.
If you stick to this one rule, I don't think you can go wrong with your decision.
Good luck, Cyndi, and thanks for writing! Every Thursday (-ish) The Tightwad Trainer will answer one of your questions. Email me at tightwad_trainer@fuse.net and I will do my best to solve your dilemma. Sign your name if it's OK for me to include it!
Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.
My husband recently switched jobs, and we will have a one year lapse in 401K benefits. We contributed 5% which was matched dollar for dollar by his former employer. I'd like to keep growing dollars somehow while we are without this benefit. What makes the most sense? IRA? Stocks? Paying down debt? Thanks!
Cyndi, from a purely numbers perspective, you can easily compare your options based on what is going to gain you the highest interest rate. For example, you could contribute to a low-risk retirement-oriented investment account. These are currently running at 4 -5%. Higher risk investments might or might not earn you more money. My expertise is not in high-return investment accounts, so I would start by doing a lot of research before choosing that option.
Paying down consumer debt would usually gain a higher return. Paying on a line of credit would give you something in the range of a 7-9% return. A car loan or personal unsecured loan is likely to be around that. Paying down any credit cards that are carrying a balance could earn up to 22%.
Personally, I wouldn't make the decision based on a side by side comparison of interest rates. I would use the extra money to achieve a goal I might not have had the chance to achieve before. Here are some that were or are important to us. Some we have achieved, others we are still working toward. I would welcome the chance to use an unexpected source of income to accomplish things like these:
• A continuing education account for ourselves and/or our children (such as a 539 account)
• A life insurance policy for the main breadwinner
• Classes to teach skills that would either provide additional income or greater self-sufficiency
• Acreage that could one day provide us a homestead
• Building or retrofitting with solar and other renewable sources of energy
• Building or purchasing a slightly larger home
You could work toward goals similar to the last three by contributing to the new types of CDs that allow you to make periodic deposits, but still do not come due until a certain date that you choose.
My larger money picture is a little bit off the beaten path. We funnel very little income into retirement accounts. Instead, we focus on adjusting our lifestyle to not need much money upon retirement. We intend to have a paid-for home that functions mostly on renewable energy with zero consumer debt when we retire. We also intend to have vehicles that can function on a renewable source of fuel (such as biodiesel) and the skills and health to keep things in repair by ourselves. Obviously, we can't guarantee that our health will be in the kind of shape necessary to live that lifestyle; however, we honestly can't guarantee that we (or anyone) will live to retirement age either.
I would keep this one hard, steadfast promise I would keep when using your extra income:
I will not spend that extra 5% on depreciating items of any kind.
If you stick to this one rule, I don't think you can go wrong with your decision.
Good luck, Cyndi, and thanks for writing! Every Thursday (-ish) The Tightwad Trainer will answer one of your questions. Email me at tightwad_trainer@fuse.net and I will do my best to solve your dilemma. Sign your name if it's OK for me to include it!
Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
bill-paying system
We recently applied to refinance our mortgage to take cash out for the purchase of 15 acres of raw land. After they ran the obligatory credit report searches, they sent us a copy of our scores with each of the three agencies. I was very pleasantly surprised to see our scores less than 50 points away from the max in every single agency's report. Remember, I was once a notorious spendthrift and I had the credit scores to match.
I attribute much of our credit report success to our bill-paying system. It is one of the easiest systems I have seen out there and it works so well for us that we rarely (less than once per year) overlook a bill. This has allowed us to have credit reports without a single late payment in the past five years. I don't personally agree with most of the criteria used to determine credit scores, such as the enormous emphasis on a long credit history. In my ideal world, everyone would pay cash or trade for everything and credit would be rarely used and therefore, the history would be irrelevant. However, the credit score criteria is absolutely out of my control and is essentially a game. To win the game, you must avoid late payments. Perhaps our system will work for you too.
Our bill sheet is simply a spreadsheet file entitled "Bills2007." I have four columns in the spreadsheet as follows:
Column 1: the bill's due date
Column 2: the creditor or company
Column 3: the amount due
Column 4: the amount paid
I begin each month with the name of the month and then list the bills under it. My husband is paid weekly, so there are four color-coded sections of each month. The bills to be paid from Week 1 are blue, from Week 2 are purple, and so on. Each time I pay the bill, I fill in the amount paid column with the amount and color code just that amount paid column in red. This makes it easy to see what's been paid at a quick glance.
A single entry might look like this:
Column 1: 18th
Column 2: Duke Energy
Column 3: 186.00
Column 4: 186.00
When new bills come in the house, I have a designated spot near my computer where I stash the bills until I go to pay bills again the next week. At that time, I sort through anything new that has come in and update my spreadsheet with the new bills, putting them in the appropriate week with their due date and amount due listed.
On paper, it's very easy for us to see what bills we have during any given month, so if we're looking to cut expenses for awhile, I can pore over the bill sheet to see how we might do that.
It is also a great budget helper. In most weeks, we owe in bills about $150 less than we have coming in. If new bills have come in, it's easy to see which week we should put them in based on how much overage we have that week and when the bill's due date is. Also, once bills are paid for the week, there is an exact dollar amount left that has to be budgeted for gas, groceries, gifts, savings, giving and entertainment. This is the easiest way I have found not to go over-budget.
One final tip I recommend is to make two or more payments on each credit card in each cycle. For example, if your credit card is due on the 3rd of each month and your allocated payment is $60 per month for that card, list it and pay it twice in the cycle: $30 due on the 3rd and $30 due on the 18th. This one method will eliminate all late charges on your card. Since credit cards have the steepest late payment charges of any creditor we've ever had, this can be a huge savings if you get delayed in your bill-paying process during busy months. If you have any other creditors that charge steep penalties for late payments, try to use the twice-monthly method with those bills, too.
Get Moving: If you don't have a bill-paying system that is working for you (i.e...you are not incurring late charges, each bill is paid on time, & you can easily see what needs to be paid each month), take some time to make one. It may take about an hour to set up the initial spreadsheet, but after that, the maintenance only takes a few minutes each month.
Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.
I attribute much of our credit report success to our bill-paying system. It is one of the easiest systems I have seen out there and it works so well for us that we rarely (less than once per year) overlook a bill. This has allowed us to have credit reports without a single late payment in the past five years. I don't personally agree with most of the criteria used to determine credit scores, such as the enormous emphasis on a long credit history. In my ideal world, everyone would pay cash or trade for everything and credit would be rarely used and therefore, the history would be irrelevant. However, the credit score criteria is absolutely out of my control and is essentially a game. To win the game, you must avoid late payments. Perhaps our system will work for you too.
Our bill sheet is simply a spreadsheet file entitled "Bills2007." I have four columns in the spreadsheet as follows:
Column 1: the bill's due date
Column 2: the creditor or company
Column 3: the amount due
Column 4: the amount paid
I begin each month with the name of the month and then list the bills under it. My husband is paid weekly, so there are four color-coded sections of each month. The bills to be paid from Week 1 are blue, from Week 2 are purple, and so on. Each time I pay the bill, I fill in the amount paid column with the amount and color code just that amount paid column in red. This makes it easy to see what's been paid at a quick glance.
A single entry might look like this:
Column 1: 18th
Column 2: Duke Energy
Column 3: 186.00
Column 4: 186.00
When new bills come in the house, I have a designated spot near my computer where I stash the bills until I go to pay bills again the next week. At that time, I sort through anything new that has come in and update my spreadsheet with the new bills, putting them in the appropriate week with their due date and amount due listed.
On paper, it's very easy for us to see what bills we have during any given month, so if we're looking to cut expenses for awhile, I can pore over the bill sheet to see how we might do that.
It is also a great budget helper. In most weeks, we owe in bills about $150 less than we have coming in. If new bills have come in, it's easy to see which week we should put them in based on how much overage we have that week and when the bill's due date is. Also, once bills are paid for the week, there is an exact dollar amount left that has to be budgeted for gas, groceries, gifts, savings, giving and entertainment. This is the easiest way I have found not to go over-budget.
One final tip I recommend is to make two or more payments on each credit card in each cycle. For example, if your credit card is due on the 3rd of each month and your allocated payment is $60 per month for that card, list it and pay it twice in the cycle: $30 due on the 3rd and $30 due on the 18th. This one method will eliminate all late charges on your card. Since credit cards have the steepest late payment charges of any creditor we've ever had, this can be a huge savings if you get delayed in your bill-paying process during busy months. If you have any other creditors that charge steep penalties for late payments, try to use the twice-monthly method with those bills, too.
Get Moving: If you don't have a bill-paying system that is working for you (i.e...you are not incurring late charges, each bill is paid on time, & you can easily see what needs to be paid each month), take some time to make one. It may take about an hour to set up the initial spreadsheet, but after that, the maintenance only takes a few minutes each month.
Annoying but necessary disclaimer: All information contained herein express my opinions only and are based on my health status & location. Each person's situation, health, and local laws & ordinances are different. By all means, use your own common sense & don't do anything you see here if someone more important than me (like your doctor, your local police, your own conscience) would disagree. If you're easily persuaded by everything you read, and you think I might cause you to hurt yourself or break the law, quit reading my site, please.
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