My $78 Grocery Bill

I've blogged before about our foray into vegetarianism and veganism, both here and here, and after a very successful year of adapting to meatless meals and cutting way back on what dairy products we use, I recently ran across a glowing review for a cookbook by Anupy Singla called Vegan Indian Cooking: 140 Simple and Healthy Vegan Recipes. My experience with Indian cuisine is that much of it is naturally vegan, so I was intrigued, and decided to use an Amazon gift card I'd received to order both Anupy's cookbook, plus another by Deborah Madison called Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. 

Armed with both new cookbooks, I sat down this morning to plan out a week's worth of meals, utilizing the circulars from the grocery stores in my area to determine what I was going to make based on what was currently on sale.

In addition, Mike loves having a couple of my homemade cookies for lunch each day, and the "cookie jar" stockpile in the freezer was getting low, so I decided to restock by making two new batches. I also wanted to try my hand at making homemade bread and pizza dough since I had picked up some packaged yeast a couple of weeks back. I had almost all the ingredients I needed on hand, except whole wheat flour and molasses, both of which I added to my list.

When I finished, my grocery list was long, but most everything I needed was either a vegetable, fruit, grain, nut or bean, so I was optimistic that I'd be able to get everything, plus pick up a few loss leaders for future meals, and still be under my $100 weekly grocery budget. 

So, without further ado, here is my grocery spend for the week, store by store, plus this week's menu:

Fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, dried fruits, spices and cheese from Sprouts - $30.29

Loss Leader items from Ralphs, most of which were incorporated into my meal planning - $14.68

Loss Leader items from Stater Brothers, which will be stockpiled and used in future meals - $6.43

Staples from Trader Joe's, plus one impulse buy; Basil Gouda cheese . . . who could resist? - $20.58
(Not shown: Coconut Juice Bars already put away for safe keeping in the freezer)

Ingredients from Target to make homemade wheat bread, pizza dough and gingersnaps - $5.79

The totals for all of the above was, ta da . . . $77.77.

And here's my menu for the week:

Breakfast
- Cereal with dried fruit, nuts, flaxseed and milk, or 
- Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and flaxseed, or
- Steel cut oatmeal with walnuts and bananas, or
- Wheat sourdough bread topped with peanut butter and bananas

Lunch
- Bean and cheese quesadilla with a side salad, or 
- PB&J sandwich with an apple, or
- Leftovers from dinner

Dinner
- Bean, cheese and green chile enchiladas, Mexican Caesar salad
- Vegetarian chili (leftovers from a prior dinner) over baked potato, mixed green salad
- Lentil minestrone soup, garlic bread
- Veggie burgers, spinach salad
- Mushroom pizza, Caesar salad, garlic bread
- Punjabi eggplant & potatoes, tomato cucumber & onion salad, naan bread

Baking
- Loaf of Brown Bread
- Pizza Dough
- Lemon squares
- Gingersnaps

I'm sure the abundance of how well we'll be eating, compared to the relative pittance of our spend, speaks for itself, but I have to add that I continue to be amazed at how much bang we get for our buck when I cook from scratch and avoid convenience foods. Not to mention leftovers for days!

And I'll also add that although I really do enjoy spending time in the kitchen cooking as a creative outlet, the fact that my wonderful husband cleans up behind me, including doing the dishes, definitely makes it even more pleasant.

And why I'm only too happy to make sure the cookie jar remains full.

An A+ Financial Report Card

We just returned home from our annual meeting with our financial planner, and she gave us a big A+. She also jokingly asked if we'd consider giving pep talks to some of her other clients on how to deal with the current financial market by containing expenses and saving more. I non-jokingly responded "Yes!", which leads to the point of this post.

In spite of the shift in popular thinking that times have never been worse, in our household they have never been better. I'm not sure I understand the doom-and-gloom crowd, but I have some thoughts on how they got there, as well as some thoughts on how they can snap out of it, so here goes . . . 

• The financial meltdown of 2008/2009 was not fun. It took a good chunk of change off our table, and left me with a permanent shift in my overall confidence, as well as a permanent loss of confidence in the US and world financial markets. But here is my question: Was there ever a justification for being confident in the first place? Those people who experienced The Great Depression probably would say there wasn't. Those people that experienced the oil crisis, Black Monday or the dot.com bubble burst would probably say there wasn't. My parents were never able to afford being in the investment sector at all, nor were Mike's, so they would probably say there wasn't either.
• Increasingly I'm convinced that much of the late 80's, 90's and early 2000's were about being under the illusion that we were entitled to a standard of living we really weren't. The run up in housing values was clearly unsustainable when salaries were evaluated alongside, but we didn't want to pay attention. Since we personally never pulled equity from our home to purchase consumer goods we really couldn't afford, as much as it hurt, we weren't left standing without a chair when the music eventually stopped. 
• We were resolute about not carrying consumer debt. That made life a lot easier post-2008/2009 as well.
• We saved 10% of our income from day one, even when it pinched to do so. We bumped our savings percentage level up each and every time we received a salary increase, even when it pinched to do so. We did not increase our standard of living significantly as our salaries went up, even though it pinched not to do so.
• We began putting 90% of all financial windfalls, including tax returns, into savings, electing to "blow" the remaining 10% as a small reward for jobs well done.
• We avoided falling prey to anything that would increase our fixed expenses run rate. On that list of things we rejected were: Timeshares, Smart phones, New vehicles, Leased vehicles, Luxury vehicles, Vacation homes, Premium cable, Club memberships, Season tickets, Anything requiring storage and Fancy gym memberships (our's runs $9.95 a month per person). All of which we could have easily afforded as long as we remained employed.
• We tried to be careful what we got used to, because we recognized that for every "wouldn't this be nice" we took on, we'd have to work longer to sustain it in retirement.
• We calculated how much we thought we needed to have saved to be able to comfortably live on 3-4% of the proceeds. We used this to evaluate each and every spending decision, and ending up taking a pass on many, many things as a result.
• We moved into retirement with a conscious decision to withdraw at a rate lower than the prevailing norm of 3-4% in order to ensure we had room to maneuver should the economy sustain another significant hit or hits in our lifetime. We obsess about keeping our fixed expenses low in retirement for the same reason.

Flash forward to today. I watched my children struggle for about two years after college to find sustainable employment during The Great Recession, but then they did, and are now doing just fine. In comparison, I had to go to work immediately upon graduating high school, not college, and made $119 a week as a typist in 1980. That was enough money to pay for renting a room in someone else's house, make my car and car insurance payments, buy groceries to cook at home, save, and have a couple of dollars left over each week. That was it, and it never occurred to me to complain.

When I eventually got around to deciding I wanted to go to college, I did so at maximum intensity, and ended up graduating at the top of my class at a local public university. Because I graduated at the top of my class, I had three immediate job offers in spite of 1995 being a horrible year of employment for college grads. I started off making $24,000 a year, but worked smart, as well as hard, volunteering for each and every extra duty I could find, and the salary increases and promotions started to roll in.

I never worked a job with a pension, nor did my husband. I never worked a job that would grant health benefits upon retirement, nor did my husband. It never occurred to me to be angry or upset over either situation. It simply meant we needed to save, save, save if we wanted to retire well. The fact that we retired so early was a case of both good luck and prudent planning. We were lucky when one of the companies we worked at got sold, and the stock value zoomed as a result. We were prudent when we elected to put all of the financial gains that resulted from it into the bank, rather than using the money to increase our standard of living. Had we not had the good luck we did, we'd probably have needed to work a few years longer, but we were still solidly on the path toward early retirement regardless.

Life today is uncertain, but then it always has been, and our financial choices should reflect that. Sometimes we choose to live under the illusion that it's otherwise, but I believe we're playing games with ourselves when we do.

A Journey To Outerspace, and How Not To Be Bored In Early Retirement

As much time and energy as I spend trying to root out interesting things to do during our travels, I sometimes overlook doing the same thing right here at home in S. California. I had my first 'aha' about this during our recent L.A. Architectural Tour, and it happened again today.

Thanks again to our Lifelong Learning program, Mike and I went on a fascinating and free tour of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in nearby Pasadena yesterday. We spent a very enjoyable two hours learning about NASA/JPL's many missions to explore the planets in our own solar system, plus those mysterious things which lie beyond. We saw prototypes of many of their famous unmanned space exploration vehicles, including Galileo, which traveled to Jupiter, and the Mars rover, currently zipping around and sending back data from the planet of same name.

I've posted some photos and links below for those of you interested in learning or seeing more about this intriguing place, but the bigger point I want to make is how much of this stuff is out there for the taking once you go looking. 

When I hear people make comments about their fears of being bored in early retirement, I want to shake my head in frustration. Because the only reason to ever be bored in early retirement is if you choose to be. There are so many opportunities to build a vibrant, satisfying post-working life it's almost beyond comprehension (sort of like outerspace!). The key is that you have to make the effort to seek it out. It won't passively or magically come to you. You have to initiate the effort. But once you do, things really do come cascading in from every direction. My experience is that for every new activity I take a chance and show up for, I generally walk away with another couple of ideas to consider.

Yesterday at NASA/JPL was no exception. After discovering this fascinating little gem of a place, and enjoying a wonderful tour, we were handed pamphlets advertising even more activities to consider. One was an annual open house that provided access to areas normally off limits to the general public. Another was an overview on a series of once a month lectures on topics ranging from forecasting earthquakes to telexploration. All free, and all opportunities we could engage in should we have interest.

When I first retired, I had a small handful of activities to keep me busy, but I kept plugging away, and little by little my calendar became more robust with each passing month. Fast forward to today, and I am now at a point where there is so much coming at me that I'm having to carve out time to just read and relax. Which is a great position to be in, in my opinion at least!

This week alone I've gone on a 35 mile training bike ride in preparation for an upcoming 55 mile biking event, attended a lecture on the pros and cons of genetically modified food, listened to a presentation on the nuances of Pinot Noir in preparation for an upcoming wine tasting social event, spent time practicing the recorder in the hope of eventually improving enough to join a performing group at our university, attended my first singing class, read The Merchant of Venice out loud with my Shakespeare class, attended lunch with a group of women that enjoy trying our new restaurants, tried my hand at Thai cuisine, engaged in a robust discussion about the legacy of slavery with my book club, and spent several hours online creating a photo book about our recent trip to Thailand. 

I know, a lot of blah, blah, blah, since this is my life and not yours. But what I do think is of general interest is that every single one of these activities came to me after I retired. And adequate proof, I hope, that life in early retirement really is as great as you care to make it. 

___________________________________________________

Links to NASA/JPL Public Events

Public Tours
Open House
Lecture Series

NASA/JPL's campus lies at the base of the beautiful, and newly snow-covered, San Gabriel mountains.

I thought this sign was so cute!

The lab where Galileo and the Mars Rovers were built

Video of the surface of Venus, sent back by one of NASA/JPL's space probes

A prototype of the Mars rover. See the holes in the tires? They spell out "JPL" in Braille on the dirt tracks the wheels leave behind as the rover moves about Mars. The JPL folk that created this were prohibited by NASA from branding the rover with any JPL reference, so they found a more subtle way to do so.

Mission control. How exciting was it to be looking down at the place where so much of recent history has occurred? Very!

Apparently our national government agrees with my sentiments on how exciting seeing mission control was, since it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

A Case of Wanderlust

Even as I'm in the midst of a pretty bad case of jet lag (First up all night, then up till midnight, then awake since midnight . . . ) I am already getting itchy to take off again. Home is increasingly becoming the place we come home to to do the laundry and pay bills before heading out again. Or at least it is for me; Mike doesn't seem to have quite the severe case of wanderlust that I do just yet.

I knew going into our recent early retirement that we weren't on exactly the same page about how to organize our post working lives. A standing joke in our house is that Mike and I are exactly the same people we were when we were dating some 30+ years ago. One random weekend back then, he came over to my house and asked what I'd like to do, and I immediately suggested that we head over to the L.A. County Fair. Mike's immediate, panicked response to my enthusiastic suggestion was, "Now? But that's over 75 miles away!"

Not a whole lot has changed since then. I'm still constantly coming up with spur of the moment, and to be fair, sometimes slightly hair brained ideas, and Mike is still acting as the grounding Ying to my Yang.

Personally, I would love to be consistently on the road for two to three months at a time, home for a week or two, then off again. I enjoy coming home, but after a couple of days, the old familiar itch to take off starts to descend, and I become increasingly restless. Mike, conversely, appears to enjoy being at home just as much as he enjoys being on the road. 

So, my strategy in our early retirement has been to float my wanderlust ideas little by little, and hope hard that Mike comes on board and learns to love being on the road as much as I do. The agreement we've struck for now is that I will try to work around the 24 weeks of the year that our lifelong learning program is in session here at home, and Mike will give me free reign to plan on-the-road adventures for the remaining 28 weeks of the year.

The good news is that as Mike continues to de-stress from decades of working at a frantic pace in a high stress industry, I'm seeing a wonderful, playful spirit beginning to emerge that might just work in my favor. Mike is increasingly open to filling our days here at home with a variety of activities, and can often outlast me in the energy department. He's also beginning to float ideas of activities he'd like me to consider, and places he'd like us to go visit. After decades of me being the primary mover and shaker in these areas, I can't tell you how much fun it is for me to see this side of him develop.

In fact, just the other night he came home from the lifelong learning program we attend with the excited suggestion that we immediately head back over to catch a baseball game that was just beginning at university.

The irony? After two nights of virtually no sleep due to jet lag, my immediate, panicked response to his enthusiastic suggestion was, "Now???"

Hmm . . . 

Containing Travel Costs

Over the years of our travels, which started on a shoestring budget back in our lean years, when we were a single income household raising two children, we've adopted certain habits to help contain costs and ensure that travel remained a significant part of our lifestyle. Even as our income grew, many of the "lean years" habits remained in place, allowing us to stretch our travel budget today to a full 50% of the calendar year in early retirement. Sometimes we travel on our own, sometimes we cruise, sometimes we take a guided or semi-guided tour, but regardless, there are always ways to contain costs. 

• We budget for travel on an annual basis, and then do a rough outline of where we think we would like to go, and when, for the entire year, including estimated costs. I then start looking for deals. Most of our long distance vacation decisions are made based on what travel deals cross our paths; meaning we don't fixate on one particular destination, but rather wait until something enticing and deeply discounted makes it's way to us. One of my favorite sites for last minute discounted cruise deals is the 90-Day Ticker at Vacations To Go. Another good site to locate deals on all types of travel is the weekly Top 20 from Travel Zoo. Both of our recent Gate 1 trips, for example, were purchased after being featured on Travel Zoo's weekly Top 20 deals email.
• We set a budget for each trip and stay within it. Travel for us is really not so much about shopping or fine dining; rather it's more about meeting people, photographing what we are seeing, and doing our shopping and eating as much like the locals as possible. Not that we don't enjoy souvenirs or fine dining - we do - but only as occasional one-offs, rather than being the primary focus of a trip.

Our souvenirs from Thailand, which totaled about $50, included some handcrafts made by the hill tribes we visited, an opium pot, a carved wooden elephant, and a framed photo and bookmarks made from - get ready - recycled elephant dung!

• We withdraw cash when we arrive, generally at the foreign destination airport. We've compared the cost of converting currency here at home vs using foreign ATM's, and the foreign ATM's win every time. The same fee is charged whether we withdraw a lot of money or just a little, so we try to draw out enough to cover our entire trip in just one transaction.
• We use cash whenever possible, avoiding the foreign transaction fees charged for ongoing credit card usage.
• If we do use our credit card, we request that the hotel, store or restaurant charge us in their foreign currency, meaning we do not want them to convert the charge to US dollars. Conversions done abroad generally favor the hotel, store or restaurant, and we therefore prefer to have our own bank do the conversion instead.
• We track our daily spend and review each night to see where we stand. It's similar to being on a diet and weighing yourself daily . . . it forces accountability which might otherwise go by the wayside.
• We pack energy/granola bars equal to one per person per day for the duration of the trip. Breakfast is generally included with most hotel stays abroad, and a granola or energy bar, plus a piece of fruit generally available for free at the hotel and eaten midday, will see us through to dinner. We enjoy eating one meal out daily, but that's about it. Two meals eaten out is a bit too much, both monetarily and calorically.
• We'll often stop instead for a midday coffee or tea break at a local cafe. It's usually very cheap, and very interesting in that there are so many different ways to serve tea and coffee. It also allows us an opportunity to interact with the locals since cafe tables tend to be placed very close together.
• We avoid public transportation as much as possible, preferring to walk instead. Walking is a great way to get to know a new area, meet the local folk, and experience the local sights. It's a great, free workout as well.
• Increasingly hotels offer free WiFi, often in their lobby, as do coffee shops. Internet cafes are another good choice to stay in touch with friends and loved ones for very little money. What we don't do is buy internet service from either hotels or cruise lines. Way too expensive!

In Thailand with our Kindle Fires, using the hotel lobby's free WiFi to stay in touch with family and friends

• We find the closest market as soon as we can upon arrival, and buy enough beverages and snacks to see us through our trip, helping to avoid the higher cost of doing so at whatever hotel we're staying at. As an example, in Thailand we could purchase a can of the local Chang beer at a nearby 7-Eleven store for 25 baht, or about 75 cents US dollar, vs 120 baht, about $4 US if we took it from the stocked mini bar, or even worse, 220 baht, about $7 US, if we ordered it instead at the hotel's restaurant/bar. Multiply that cost difference times two weeks for two people and the result is very significant: $21 for 24 cans of Chang beer purchased at 7-Eleven vs. $96 if consumed from the mini bar vs. $196 if ordered at the hotel restaurant/bar.

$21 vs $196 for the same darn thing? Easy choice!

• We make visiting a local supermarket a top priority. It's a great way to get insight into how people eat, and an absolutely fabulous place to pick up items to take home. Local coffee and tea, packaged cookies, chocolate, biscuits, crackers, interesting snack food items . . . all travel well, clear customs easily, are inexpensive, and make great gifts for the folk back home.
• We invest in a good travel book, or even better, check one out from the library for free, and bring it along on the trip. Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge we have, the less likely we are to fall into a tourist trap. Plus, many travel books, particular those by Frommers or Rick Steves, contain excellent walking guides, eliminating the need to purchase a tour. And working to follow these guides and not get lost is just plain fun, reminding me a bit of being a kid and going on a scavenger hunt.
• We bring an empty water container, which we fill each day from our room via the hotel's generally filtered water supply and carry with us. It kills me to pay for water since the markup is something like 500%! 
• We convert large bills to small bills as soon as possible, generally at the hotel, to prevent a situation of trying to purchase something too small to allow the vendor to give back adequate change, and having to therefore purchase more than we want of something, or worse, being given back the wrong change and being too unfamiliar with the local currency to catch the error quickly enough.
• We look for every opportunity to enjoy the local culture the way the residents do, which is generally free or very, very inexpensive. As an example, in China we enjoyed going out to the parks and exercising, dancing and playing with the locals for free. In Thailand we enjoyed getting up early and watching the procession of monks collecting daily offerings from the locals. And in many other countries like Sweden, Italy and England, we enjoyed following well marked, free walking guides to see the local sights.

Courtesy of Rick Steves' travel guides, we explored the alleys and byways of Gamla stan, what the old section of Stockholm, Sweden is called, even as people on expensive guided tours were trailing behind us seeing the same exact things.

Did I miss anything obvious? Is there something you do that I haven't yet thought of? Please feel free to share it here.

Lessons Learned In Thailand

The beautiful White Temple, outside the city of Chiang Rai

We are just back from our trip to Thailand, including it's three flight/36 hour journey home, and I'm feeling fairly refreshed after getting a solid nine hours of sleep last night. We had a fabulous time, and I feel incredibly privileged to have the ability to travel as extensively as we have over the years.

Traveling to places so far from home can be arduous, but the rewards of doing so far outweigh the pain, for me at least. I found what I expected to in Thailand - temples, rice paddies, elephants and tigers - but I also found much more. I was moved by the way Buddhism permeates life in Thailand, not realizing until our trip, that most Thai men will live as monks at some point in their life, even if only briefly. I loved the morning ritual of giving offerings of food to the local monks, and the way the Thai people give a small bow of greeting to each other as they pass on the street. I loved the gentle spirit we observed everywhere we went, and the presence of temples on virtually every corner.

Thailand is very diverse, containing areas of tremendous lushness and beauty, as well as areas of mass population and air pollution. We loved how affordable Thailand was (a full meal, including a glass of the local beer, regularly ran us about $3.00 each), and the friendliness of its people, even as we lamented the poor quality of much of the air and water, and the "ownership" of animals like elephants, that in a more perfect world would live in freedom in the wild.

We experienced poverty in Myanmar and Laos, each of which we visited only briefly, and I realized that the next time we are in a similar position I need to be better prepared by having a large quantity of small currency that we can hand out. Yes, I understand that it would be but a small ripple in an otherwise difficult life, but as our travels become more diverse, I'm learning I can't simply come in and "take" from another culture without also giving or leaving something in return.

Which is why we continue to crave travel, even as it often leaves us exhausted. We inevitably return home with a deeper understanding of this complex world we live in, and a burning desire to be better humans in whatever capacity we can.

A woman from the Longneck Hill Tribe of Thailand.  We were touched by the gentle spirit of those we met, as well as the beauty of their handicrafts, particularly their hand woven products.

Children in Laos, the one in the middle apparently charged with taking care of her little brother while her parents worked. I regretted that we hadn't thought to bring more money to distribute during our brief stop there.

Workers transplanting rice in one of Thailand's abundant rice fields.

This is a tuk tuk, a common (and fun!) form of cheap transportation in Thailand.
  

We saw this amazing sight in person. You may recognize it from photos - it's been displayed many times in travel books and articles about Thailand.

An ancient temple in Sukhothai Historical  Park, a UNESCO world heritage site dating back to the 13th Century.

Also in Sukhothai Historical Park . . . a beautiful Buddha sculpture. The yellow flowers are offerings given by the Thai people.

At The Grand Palace, from the Old Kingdom of Siam, in Bangkok. The temple behind us in covered in 24 karot gold leaf, pounded thin and protected by an acrylic-like clear coat covering.

Also at The Grand Palace.

A small portion of the amazing and enormous Reclining Buddha in Bangkok.

More beautiful temple artwork

We so enjoyed the sight and sounds of monks everywhere we went in Thailand.

http://www.gate1travel.com/southeast-asia/thailand-video.aspx