10 Kitchen Items I Love/10 I Don't Want or Need

One of the fun things about cooking at my sister-in-law's house is that she owns nearly every kitchen item that is/has been sold at Macy's and, she has an amazing collection of spices and unusual foods. That makes cooking extra interesting. For me, however, there are plenty of popular kitchen items that I simply don't want or need.
Here's my list of cooking implements that I can't live without:

1. My grandmother's cast iron pan and cast iron dutch oven. I LOVE cooking in these pans! The bonus is that they have been seasoned for over sixty years.
2. A blender. I use a blender nearly everyday for making smoothies, sauces, soups, and other tasty items.
3. A good set of heavy bottom pans. When I was in college, I bought the cheapest set of pans I could find. I then promptly burned nearly everything I cooked in them. A good set of pans is priceless.
4. A toaster-convection oven. Hubby had to convince me that we needed this small counter-top oven but once I started using it, I didn't want to part with it. It heats up much quicker than our regular oven, cooks much faster (since it is convection), saves energy over the cost of using the regular oven, and is the perfect size to cook for two (ie: bake a half chicken, heat up bread for two, etc).
5. A small but useful set of cooking utensils. For some reason, we stick some utensils in the drawer and they tend to multiply. And multiply. All I really need are a few good knives (paring, chopping, cleaver), my grandmother's wooden spoon, a good vegetable peeler, a basic rolling pin, a good spatula (there is a difference between a "good" and a "bad" spatula), a sturdy whisk, and a couple of large spoons. That's all I need.
6. A small rice cooker. Since rice is a must in our house every day, we must have a rice cooker. Just a small, basic rice cooker works fine for us.
7. A toaster. Even though we have a toaster oven, nothing toasts better than a good toaster.
8. An all purpose mixing bowl. I have a favorite mixing bowl that went into storage with the other few items I didn't want to part with. There are plenty of bowls out there but when you find the 'perfect' one, you want to hang onto it.
9. A set of baking pans. I tend to bake quite a bit and I have a small collection of baking pans (bread pans, cookie sheets, oblong pans) that I just love.
10. A great cutting board. For some reasons I am pretty picky about cutting boards.
    Some are too rough and some are too slippery. I had a really nice cutting board that hubby ran the Skillsaw through (he was cutting ox tails, yes, with a Skillsaw, and forgot the cutting bard was underneath and cut the thing in half!). So I will need to find another 'perfect' cutting board when we decide where to settle.

And then there are the things that "everyone" says I should have but which I don't even want in my kitchen. Among the items:

1. A dishwasher. I much prefer to wash dishes by hand as I find they get cleaner that way. Every dishwasher I have owned has ended up being an expensive drying rack.
2. An expensive coffee maker which uses even ore expensive "cuplets". You probably know what I am talking about. We had a small, cheap, $10 coffee maker from Walmart for years and it worked fine for hubby's morning coffee.
3. A Kitchen Aid mixer. Everyone I know has one of these, mostly because they come in cute colors and matches their kitchens. Hubby wanted to buy me one of these many times since I do a lot of baking but each time I would refuse because I much prefer using a cheap mixer or even a whisk for mixing thing and I much prefer using my hands when I am mixing bread dough (how else to know when it is perfectly kneaded?). Then when you take into account how long it takes to take it apart and clean it after use...
4. A slow cooker. Some people swear by their slow cookers. I have only used one a couple of times and decided I didn't much care for it so this is one item I don't need.
5. A bread machine. This item was super popular a few years back. I guess I am old fashioned in that, if I am going to bake bread, I want to make it completely by hand.
6. A Seal a Meal. I think these are clever machines, but I feel that they take much more effort than a simple ziploc bag.
7. Gadgets. Walk through any kitchen store and you will find an armload of gadgets for every little purpose. Most of these items are for a single use and are really unnecessary.
8. 50 different pans, 50 different bowl, 50 different utensils. In looking at many people's kitchen, it seems like they think if one item is good, then ten must be better. Since I'm a minimalist, I disagree.
9. A popcorn popper, a waffle iron, a juicer, a food dehydrator, a deep fryer...there are plenty of items that seem useful when you first look at them. I know I have bought my share of "wow that will be really useful" items only to find that I rarely, if ever, used them. Now if I want to dehydrate a batch of apples, I use the oven. If I want to make egg rolls, I fry them in my cast iron pan. You get the idea...
10. Plug-in appliances. There are so many specific "plug in" appliances that one can buy. A plug-in wok, a plug-in pan, a plug-in specially oven. These appliances seem very redundant to what most basic appliances (ie: an oven or a stove with a pan on it) can do.

What Can You Do With a Gallon of Milk?

That was the question I was wondering last week when I went to the store for a half gallon of milk for some cooking I was doing. When I checked the prices, however, I noticed that a half gallon of milk cost $1.97 and a gallon of milk cost $2. Hmmm I figured for an extra three cents, I would figure out what to do with all of that milk because it seemed like a waste of money not to buy the gallon. This is what I did:

• Saved half a gallon of milk for cooking, baking, and drinking for everyone in the household (none are big milk drinkers but there were quite a few recipes I was trying out that required milk).


• Made yogurt out of the other half gallon of milk. Making yogurt is so simple! I thought you had to have some kind of magical cooking ability but my friend always told me how cheap and simple it was for her to make yogurt for her family so one day I decided to give it a try and now I am a convert too. To make yogurt simply put together a double boiler (one pan that fits inside another pan with enough room for water between the two pans). Heat the milk to near boiling. Cool the milk to about 95 degrees. Mix in a couple of tablespoons of yogurt from your last batch (you can do this about five or six times before you need to go to the store and get a small container of plain yogurt for the starter). Pour the milk into containers and set it somewhere warm for about eight to ten hours (sometimes I set it on a heating pad covered with a towel, other times I set it in the windowsill on a warm day, sometimes I will put it in the oven and turn the oven on occasionally to keep it toasty warm in there--note if you don't pay attention you can forget to turn off the oven after a few minutes and melt the containers all over the oven--this is why I prefer the heating pad!).


• With the yogurt made, I put half of the yogurt in the fridge and took the other half of the batch of yogurt and strained it (line a sieve with coffee filters and put the yogurt on top of the filters). After five hours of draining over a bowl in the fridge, you get "yogurt cheese" which is kind of like cream cheese and can be used accordingly.


• Recipes: with either the yogurt or yogurt cheese, you can mix in garlic powder or finely chopped garlic and a bit of dried dill and have a tasty "tzatziki" like dressing. You can also mix mashed strawberries with the yogurt cheese and have a wonderful spread for bagels.

How to Beat the High Cost of Driving

Well this article certainly got my attention. Even though we are traveling now and many of our expenses are paid for, we still get to put gas in whatever cars we use so when I saw that gas prices could climb to $5 this summer, it got me a little freaked out.

For someone who still clearly remembers when gas cost less than $1 per gallon, $5 per gallon (or a whopping $100+ per fill up) seems super high. Yikes.

The last time that gas prices went through the roof (about 2008), I mostly swore off driving. I bought a bus pass, rearranged my schedule, and also started walking and riding my bike more. Looks like those days will soon be back. The unfortunate affect of this increase in gas prices is that it will also affect nearly every other part of our lives as well--the cost to transport groceries will increase, the price for building materials will increase, the cost of toys--and everything else made out of plastic--will increase, getting to and from work will cost more, flying will cost more, even the cost of a styrofoam container for your take out food will cost more because oil impacts just about every manufacturing process there is. Here's how we, even now, try to reduce our fuel costs:

• We ride the bus whenever possible (a monthly bus pass is much cheaper than filling your car up every week).


• We walk or ride our bikes to do local errands.


• We try to buy locally-produced food (this saves the cost of all things related to food from the cost of fertilizer to the cost of transporting the food to the grocery store. Plus it is usually more nutritious as well!).


• We car pool whenever possible. Now the hubby and I are pretty much together most of the time but before, when I was working, we could sometimes get four or five people who were going to the same meetings to car pool together--that saved a lot of gas!


• We simply stay home. Depending on your situation, this may or may not be an option, but for many people, especially on weekends, their first inclination is to get up and get out of the house, driving somewhere to shop, eat, or otherwise entertain themselves. If you stay home, you don't use gas. Simple.


• Our vacations will be much closer to home in order to beat the high cost of fuel (I think the term 'staycation' was coined during the last gas price increase).


• We throw on an extra sweater instead of jacking up the thermostat when it is cold (our house was heated with natural gas).


• We try to use all resources minimally because almost everything we do uses power generated by fuel (ie: shorter showers, heating the room we are in instead of the whole house, using a small counter-top oven for baking instead of the large oven, etc).

I think that as prices continue to rise, everyone will start looking at ways to conserve fuel which really isn't a bad thing. In fact it is something that we should have been doing a long time ago. Most countries have already learned this. In Japan, a country where natural resources are scarce, it is second nature to the people there to not be wasteful of anything--water, fuel, food, etc. This is how we all should be.

A Health Update and My 10 Health Rules

I was planning on writing this post as soon as I got the results back from some medical tests.

The bad news: the week before we were getting ready to move, the results of my "girly parts" test (Pap) came back abnormal for a second time. My doctor and everyone in the clinic knew we were getting ready to leave for a minimum of six months of travel and fortunately they are awesome. So two days before we moved out of our house, I had a consultation with my doctor about the further tests I would need. One day before we moved, I met with another doctor who would do the biopsy and other tests. The day of our move I had some biopsies done (then quickly went home and finished packing and cleaning up just as the new homeowners were on their way to our house). Talk about stress!

The good news: today my doctor called and said the biopsies and other tests came back fine so I would just need to come back for another exam in six months. Yeah! Happy!

Needless to say, during the ensuing couple of weeks I have been a bit stressed, worrying about all of the horrible results that the doctor could call me with. Also, however, during the past two weeks, I have become a health zealot. The idea that I have been treating my body like a garbage can pretty much resonated through my brain on a daily basis for the past couple of weeks. So I have turned over a new leaf and am ultra aware of the responsibility I need to take for my health. Here's the ten health rules I now abide by:

1. Get regular health exams. Getting a physical on an annual basis will allow your doctor to catch any problems when they are small, not at a later--and more difficult to treat--stage. Fortunately I have great health insurance but the cost for health exams for people who don't have insurance can be a real barrier to staying on top of health issues. For women (or at least their "girly parts"), many local and state health departments offer free Pap and mammogram tests for women over 40 (call your local or state health department or Google for the information). I have volunteered to help out at these events for many years and thought it was a good service, I didn't realize how, when you get scary test results back, these free services aren't just a nice idea but critical for a woman's future health.


2. Exercise daily. When all of this happened, I decided I needed to take better care of my health starting ASAP. Since that day, I have launched myself out of bed every morning and walked three miles, every day, seven days a week. Walking is free and it isn't hard to do but I used to be so busy/lazy that I would make excuses not to exercise or even walk around the block. Now I walk three miles each day rain or shine (outside or on the treadmill or at the mall when it is rainy). Best of all, this is FREE!


3. Take vitamins every day. This is another thing I was usually too lazy to do, but how hard is it to take one multi vitamin a day? Now I put the vitamin jar (and a couple of other supplements that I need) right next to the water I will drink when I get back from walking.


4. Food, part 1. Don't drink your calories. I had heard this phrase somewhere but--as I was sipping on my Starbucks--disregarded it. I figured that I drank maybe 500-800 calories a day what with my daily Frapuccino and other beverages. Now it is water and the occasional green tea. Only. I am happy to report that since I initially got the results of my abnormal test back, I stopped Starbucks cold turkey (and probably saved about $200 a month by doing so).


5. Food, part 2. Eat as close to natural food as possible. Now when I look at the food I eat, I think "is this the healthiest food I can eat or is it available in a more natural format?" This has resulted in me eating lots more fresh fruit and vegetables (raw, sometimes steamed, never fried, but I'll make an exception when I come across fried green tomatoes), no refined sugar/flour/other refined products if at all possible, and better quality food.


6. Food, part 3. I stay away from food that I know doesn't work well with my body. This includes gluten (most flour products are out), dairy (I love dairy but I was having way too much of it, now it is a treat and not a daily staple), chocolate (in my case, this creates instant zits...ick), and caffeine (I had such mood swings when I used to eat coffee ice cream for example, that it was clearly not good for my body). Note: not eating junk food gives you much more energy and saves a lot of money too!


7. Get all the sleep you need. Fortunately all of this occurred during a down time. Since I am not working right now, I have all of the time in the world to sleep and getting eight hours is much easier now than when I had early morning meetings, project deadlines that caused me to work late hours, or stress that would interrupt my sleep.


8. And then there is stress. Since my email dropped from more than a hundred messages a day to about five, I haven't had to look at my calendar in over a month, and (other than this health scare), literally nothing is happening these days, my stress level has dropped considerably. For my health, this is a good thing.


9. Positive people can have a positive impact on your health. Most books on health include a chapter on having a social support network as this has been shown to improve health, reduce stress, and make you happier overall. Quitting work has allowed me to drop all of the office drama and people problems and now I am surrounded by a few fun, happy people so I couldn't ask for more in this department. The hubby is also an amazingly positive, happy person who keeps me positive and happy as well.


10. All the other good-for-health stuff: on a daily basis I get plenty of fresh air, sunshine, and fun new experiences. I read Daily Word and pray each day (spiritual health is important too), and try to keep a positive attitude.

Here's to your health!

I Complain, Therefore I Am

I wouldn't say I complain ALL the time but my pet peeve is poor customer service so yes, I guess I can get a bit ranty when I am unhappy. A couple of days ago I was unhappy, thus this post.
I was looking for a great barbecue place which I heard Georgia has plenty of so I immediately went to Yelp because if hundreds of people say a place is good, it usually is. We found Jim and Nicks Barbecue which was highly rated by everyone who chimed in on Yelp (it is a chain but all of their ratings were four stars or higher so we decided to try it out).
The food was good but in the reviews everyone raved about the cheese corn muffins that they continuously bring to your table. We received two small muffins each, none when we asked for more, and the waitress, as my husband put it, "was friendly to everyone...except us". Eek.
At the end of the meal a lady who said she was the maitre'd in training came to see how our meal was so as tactfully as possible I told her I was a little disappointed that it didn't live up to the wonderful reviews it had received. I also told her I had looked forward to the famous corn muffins but the tiny sample we received were all we got even when we asked for more. Immediately the lady was apologetic (southern people have such a friendly tone of voice, it pretty much makes you not want to argue as opposed to, say New York...but I digress...). Within a couple of minutes we had a big batch of muffins in a to go container (she saw that we were finished with our meal) and she gave us a piece of lemon meringue pie for dessert at no charge.
Needless to say, I was super impressed with how she responded to my complaint and we will definitely eat there again.
Overall, I think that businesses want to do a good job. Sometimes an employee is having a bad day, sometimes the business gets overwhelmed and understaffed, sometimes things just don't work out well but it is always a win-win situation when, if the customer is unhappy, they give the business a chance to rectify the situation, and if the management hears of a problem, they get the chance to fix it instead of having disgruntled customers leave with a bad opinion of a place.
So now I am back to happy and looking forward to my next plate of barbecue!

Link Round Up: Great Ideas Edition

Here's some great idea links...enjoy!

• Create Time to Change Your Life
• 18 Year Old Entrepreneur Turns $500 into $1.2 Million in Six Years
• Living in 400 Square Feet and Looking to Downsize
• 25 of the Best Books About Money
• Game: Do You Have What It Takes to Be Working Poor?

The (Economical) Sabbatical

While the hubby often tells people that I am now retired, I figure that at 43 I still have a few working years left. So I am looking at this break as more of a sabbatical than as a permanent retirement. Sabbaticals are common in the education profession, but I saw this wonderful TED presentation about a business owner who takes a year off, even closing his business while he is gone, every seven years for the purpose of rejuvenation and becoming re-inspired which not only is great for him personally but also for his business. So I am officially on sabbatical and have established the following goals:

• It can't cost a lot. Obviously for the sabbatical to work you need to be able to fund the time off. This can be done by #1, not having debt payments to make while you are on sabbatical, and #2, carefully spending your money during your time off so you don't end up with more time off than money.
• I want to focus on my health. When I am working I can put together dozens of excuses to not exercise mainly because my schedule was so crazy I couldn't get into a rhythm for exercising. I may exercise four days in a row but then have two days crammed full of meetings and immediately fall off the exercise wagon. Now I have NOTHING to do which means that as soon as I wake up each morning I head out the door and walk three miles. This is perfect because it is free, I have a beautiful place to walk, and there is sunshine which is inspirational in itself.
• Also as part of improving my health (as well as being a good house guest) I am cooking everyday. This saves money (eating out costs a lot!), it is much more healthful (I know exactly what ingredients I am using and opt for the healthiest ingredients possible), and I am learning how to cook Southern food (my sister-in-law's fiance is a Southern boy born and bred so he gets to test all of my cooking to see if it measures up...he even gave me his granddad's secret cornbread recipe!).
• I get to sleep! This is also free and again, with no meetings/appointment/projects on deadline, I can actually sleep eight plus hours per night! That in itself is super rejuvenating.
• I am enjoying time to just slow down and be. Compared to my previously insane schedule, this gives me plenty of time to become inspired. Learning and inspiration can be found anywhere and be found relatively cheaply or even free. On my list of things to do: go to Sunday service at a traditional African American church, see the Georgia Guidestones, and maybe take a side trip to Memphis for some blues and ribs. Basically what I do is research things that are tourist attractions/happening in the area as well as stay open to any opportunities that come up (for example, my SIL invited me to a tour of the CDC today which was interesting**). I really think that I will come back from this experience more relaxed, refreshed, and hopefully with some wonderful new business ideas!

A sabbatical should be de rigour for everyone. Most people never take any time off for themselves and instead go straight from high school to college to the world of work with hardly more than a week or two of vacation each year. By taking an honest-to-goodness sabbatical even if you need to pinch pennies when you do so and enjoy more free stuff than expensive, scheduled events, the time spent on rejuvenating yourself can be priceless!

**I moved my other blog from Tumblr (again) back to Blogger (again) so if you want to find out about our travels, you can find my travel blog at http://mosttraveledme.blogspot.com/.

In the Land of Excess

We are spending a wonderful month with my sister-in-law north of Atlanta. The weather here is perfect, the food is awesome, did I mention how nice the weather is? That's the Seattleite in me--very unused to nice weather especially at this time of year!

After getting rid of nearly all of our worldly possessions, however, this place seems to magnify the difference between the spartan lifestyle we have adopted and the magnificent excess of most everyone else.
It may be the area she lives in (wealthy), or it may be the sudden realization that I used to be exactly like these people (shopping til I dropped...repeatedly), or maybe I am just more aware of things that I need as opposed to things that I want. Whatever it is, I am supremely grateful for her generosity (free room and more food than we can ever eat) as we stick a toe into this new vagabonding lifestyle. Here's the things that "everyone" seems to have here (and the things that I am pretty happy I no longer have):

• A massive shoe collection (I hope she doesn't see this picture but I saw her shoes lining the entire garage--because one of her walk-in closets is already overflowing with shoes--and I had to take a picture). Currently I own five pairs of shoes. The shoes cover everything I need--from exercising to dancing to dressing "smart casual"--but I do love shoes and if I had more room I probably would have kept a few more pairs. Not this many pairs though.
• A continual outflow of money: for the yard guy, the pool guy, the bug guy, the housekeeper, not to mention house payments, credit card payments, a daily run to Costco. Yikes. Granted she can easily afford this but I am glad that our lifestyle has been drastically scaled back and I don't have to worry about the yard, cleaning the house, etc.
• Driveways full of cars. We used to have more than a half dozen cars...they seemed to multiply after the kids started driving. Now we have one paid-for car and a couple of bus passes. Note that there is absolutely NO public transportation system here so a car is more or less a necessity. I didn't realize how much money and effort it took to have a car until I got rid of mine. I figured that I saved about $800 a month on the car and at least five or six hours of effort each month (cleaning it, oil changes, etc).
• There is SO MUCH shopping here. Nearly every store you can think of is here either in the Mall of Georgia, as a stand-alone big box store, or in one of the many strip malls that have popped up everywhere. Fortunately for our finances, we haven't bought anything besides things to cook because we have no room to put any more stuff in our pretty small carry-on backpacks. Being a vagabond and carrying your stuff with you everywhere you go is the limiting factor that will stop shopping--and spending--in its tracks.
• More more more! This seems to be the siren call of American consumerism. Have a house? Why not get a bigger one? The houses here are literally 5,000 square-feet plus which is an insane amount of space for mom, dad, and two point three kids. Have two deck chairs? Why not have six? It seems to be an inborn need--having some stuff is good but having more is even better so we work and shop and work more to pay for the shopping then shop some more to make us happy after a hard day of work. I am happy we are off the consumer treadmill.

The bottom line: to each his own, of course. This is a free country and people can do what makes them happy but I just hope that people actually think about what would make them happy instead of buying into a consumer lifestyle of excess that really isn't necessary.

How I Saved $1200 On My Taxes

In the mad rush to get everything done during the week of our move, I also wanted to get our taxes completed so I wasn’t carrying our tax paperwork all over the country and could leave the papers in our storage shed. I first did our taxes manually which meant downloading the forms, breaking out my calculator, and using a pencil with a good eraser plus taking a couple hours out of my busy schedule. In the past I have usually had my taxes professionally done, especially during complicated years (buying or selling property, cashing out investments, complicated business years, etc). However that costs around $300 and I really didn’t want to spend my travel money on an accountant (not that accountants aren’t great but this past year wasn’t very complicated tax-wise).
In other past years when the tax year was pretty uneventful, I would use prior year tax returns as a template and then enter my current info on a new tax form and do the calculations with a calculator. Needless to say, doing the math took quite a while because it seems like every calculation was made as convoluted as possible!
So last week, I did our taxes using a previous year’s return as a template and was shocked to see that I would owe about $9,500. Ouch! Turns out I wasn’t following my income during the year very well and made much more than I thought and therefore owed much more in taxes than I thought, as well as other small things (like paying less in mortgage interest because we were getting down to about ten years owed on the house and that means more of our money at this point went to principal than interest. Property tax was also lower, and sometime around the beginning of the year, I found a much cheaper house insurance policy so all of these things meant I had less deductions than usual.
While I was still reeling from the huge payment I would get to send to the IRS, I saw a post on a forum about people doing their taxes online. I did a bit of research, found this highly rated site, and learned that you can do your tax return online through a simple process of answering questions. At the end, you know how much you owe/will be receiving back, then you pay a small fee ($24.95 in my case), and you can either e-file or print and mail your return. I figured there was nothing to lose because at the end, if it showed that I owed as much as I had calculated, I would figure I was on the right track and not pay for or use the tax return I had just completed online.
When I got finished, however, there were a few new deductions and credits that I was unaware of which meant that, according to this tax return, I would only owe $8,300! Still a lot, but less than my calculations had shown. So I happily paid for the return to be completed, downloaded the 1040 as well as the other attachments (schedule A, Schedule Cs, etc) and not only finished my taxes in record time (the whole process online took less than an hour and was super easy to complete), but was able to pack up all of my tax records for the year before we left the state.
The bottom line is that if you usually do your own taxes and you aren’t super keen on every single new tax rule change, doing your taxes online can be a cost-effective, and in my case cost-enhancing was to take the drudgery out of tax filing!

Update: The We Are Homeless Edition

It's been a busy week. Here's what happened:

• We finally got everything sold, stored, and packed for our trip.
• The house closed (without a single hitch!) and we got the check from the proceeds of the sale which will pay off a debt and fund our travel for the next year. We have an amazing realtor!
• We had a last minute scramble to clean out the house before the new owners arrived (I finished sweeping the entryway as they were driving up!).
• The cable company shut off our internet on the 6th instead of the 9th which meant no internet and no blog posts.
• We became officially homeless yesterday (scary!).
• I had a last minute medical situation which took up the better part of two days right as we were packing out our final things (more on this in a future post).
• I did our taxes in the middle of the fray because I didn't want to drag our tax paperwork all over the country with us and saved $1200! (more on this in a future post)
• We are heading to Atlanta tomorrow. I picked Atlanta for the first month because usually the weather is much better there in February than dreary Seattle. However Seattle is super sunny today and Atlanta has reports that they are expecting snow tomorrow :(
• I started some sort of hubbub with the state because I went to change the address on my driver's license to our mailing address (it is a law in Washington that you need to change your address within ten days of moving or you could get a fine). They insisted on an actual location where I live and I insisted that I am technically homeless. They said that the homeless don't drive. I said they should check out all of the homeless living in their cars. Anyway, they wouldn't help me so I took this problem to some very outspoken homeless advocates I know and they are now talking to legislators and making a very big deal about this--as they should. While I have the option of buying another house, the actual homeless do not and they shouldn't get a fine just because they don't have an actual place to live.

That's pretty much all that has happened over the past week. As soon as we get situated my posting schedule will get back on track!

10 Concrete Tips for Being a One Income Family

I came across this article about how to become a one income family. In the comments, many people asked for specific tips about living on one income. Since the hubby and I have been a one income family for exactly one month and two days, I can provide a few tips about how we got to this point:

1. Before you cut back to being a one income family, you need to be out of debt. Leaving the sole wage-earner with the responsibility of rent/mortgage and regular living expenses plus tens of thousands of debt is simply not fair. So before cutting down to one income, if you have debt, both people need to work four jobs if necessary to pay off debt as quickly as possible.
2. You need an emergency fund. Everyone needs an emergency fund but it is extra important if there is only one wage-earner in the family. What if the wage-earner gets injured and can't work? What if the family is socked with a huge one-time expense? Besides these problems, should the family decide that the second adult needs to go back to work because finances aren't working out as expected, at least with an emergency fund, the family will have a little cushion while the non wage-earner gets back into the world of work.
3. You will need to stop spending money. Since we have become a one-income family, my spending has come to a screeching halt. I have money that I could spend but now when I go to the store or when I feel too lazy to cook, I really ask myself if my limited amount of money should go to that fast food burger, that pair of shoes, or that cute gift for a friend. Usually the answer is no.
4. You need to look at all of your expenses and see how they can be lowered/eliminated based on your new lifestyle. We have been able to cut back on our cell phone contract (since I'm not working I don't use my cell phone nearly as much as I used to). A couple of months ago we cut our cable bill in half since we knew that soon our income would be reduced. We got rid of our second car quite a while ago and I am happy to ride the bus/carpool with the hubby if I am going somewhere--this simple move alone has saved us many thousands of dollars.
5. For expenses that are not set, such as costs for food and clothing, you can really make some big cuts. Since becoming a one income family I have forced myself to shop at the Goodwill (and loved it, surprisingly), cooked at home nearly every day (to where eating out is a treat and not a daily occurrence), and cut way back on Starbucks (when I was working it was a daily habit; I have been able to kick this habit since it isn't part of my "work day" any more).
6. Things I used to spend money on have been replaced by creativity. I simply don't have lots of money to throw around any more. The money we do have is pretty limited so I can't justify spending on many things like I used to and I can't reasonably spend money and expect to "make it up" with my next paycheck since I am no longer receiving any paychecks. This has resulted in me baking treats for parties instead of running to the store and buying them. I have declined a couple of invites to expensive restaurants with friends and with other friends I have had to suggest much cheaper options for going out.
7. I have re-read the Tightwad Gazette. I was a fan of this book about how a large family survived on one income some years ago when it first came out and I recently reread it in order to get some ideas for ways to further reduce spending and save money. With the internet, there is no end to the information you can find on the topic. It is much better to learn from others than to learn from your own mistakes.
8. Entertainment is now free. We haven't been to a movie theater in ages. We don't go out dancing every weekend anymore. When your income is reduced, you need to change your entertainment options to correlate with your income. Fortunately there are lots of free and cheap things to do to keep yourself entertained (see previous posts on this topic).
9. We are changing our entire lifestyle to accommodate this change and to get more in line with our income. Big house? Gone. While we will be traveling for a while, should we decide to become stationary again we will definitely end up with a smaller home which is cheaper to buy, furnish, heat, air condition, decorate, etc. Our traveling will also be done as cheaply as possible (staying with friends and family instead of at hotels, being flexible with our flights to get the best rates, etc.).
10. And some things that don't apply to us...hubby is retired and we live on his retirement income so there are some things that are different for us than for a young family with kids. Remembering back to when we were a young family with kids, if we had been a one-income family, I would have: made his life as easy as possible if he was the wage earner (ie: clean the house so we wouldn't need a housekeeper, make his lunch so he didn't need to eat out, etc). Cook as much as possible from scratch (this is healthier too). Use more creativity than money on the kid's birthday parties. You get the idea...

The bottom line is that a family simply can't live on one income of $40,000 like they did when the family had two incomes that totalled $80,000. Something (or many somethings) need to change in order to ratchet the cost of living down to half of what it used to be. That doesn't mean that your life will only be half as fun, you can only eat half as much, or you will be destined to be destitute. Plenty of families are actually thriving with less of everything (less money, less stuff, less Starbucks) but it takes both a shift in spending and a shift in attitude to accomplish this.

Update: The We're Nearly Homeless Edition

With five days to go before the big move (actually the big leave because we aren't actually moving anywhere since we will be traveling), here's what we've been up to:

• After three garage sales, we were able to get rid of most of our stuff. On Sunday I called some friends and family over to the house and said "help yourself, it's all free". The stuff included everything that was left over from the garage sales, the food in our cabinets, knick nacks, and everything else except for things that we are keeping which were put aside in another room. Everyone had a funny reaction to this. First everyone kind of stood around looking at stuff, unsure if they should actually go start picking up things they wanted. With some encouragement, people started picking up a few things, often asking if someone else wanted something they were looking at. After a while it turned into a free for all and with amazing speed, pretty much everything was snapped up. The things that were left over will be taken to a local thrift store. It was great to see people hauling stuff away because I know they will enjoy the items. It also made me realize that giving really is better than hoarding because the stuff will be in use instead of gathering dust in a closet. (My sister did say that it felt weird because people don't just open their house up and say "please take everything in here")
• It was hard to have such a little bit of food left after the big give-away. We emptied out all of our cabinets and pantry which included nearly all of our food. Almost all of the food was snapped up quickly as well (even the salt and pepper shakers went!). It is great that the food will go to people who will eat it (again, as opposed to gathering dust in the back of the pantry) but it was a bit disconcerting to see that we have literally only a day's worth of food left. For my entire adult life, having a fully stocked pantry made me feel secure and now, the opposite, having no food on hand, is making me feel insecure. So today I went to the store and picked up a bag of healthy food that we will eat before we leave (cheese, baby carrots to nibble on, a couple of apples, etc).
• We're still discussing our future. Hubby was a little freaked out about just heading off overseas next week so we decided to spend a month in Atlanta, a month in Connecticut, then a couple of months in Asia. Our thinking is that this will kind of ease us into travel mode (besides, Tokyo in April is way better than Tokyo in February!). We bought our plane tickets, and next week we will be on our way to the East Coast (which based on the weather report today makes me...um...worried. It is a beautiful sunny day in the Pacific Northwest today and we will be heading into the so-called 'storm of the century'.) Yikes.
• We are storing some of the basics (bed, couple of TVs, personal papers and pictures, and other things we don't want to part with such as my favorite cast iron pan and a couple of antiques) at a local storage unit until we decide whether we even like the continuous travel lifestyle. Everything we own will fit in the smallest unit--a 5'x10'--but we were pleasantly surprised that when we went to rent the unit today, they gave us the next bigger size--5'x15'--for the same price as the smallest size because they didn't have any of the smaller units available. They also gave us one month free. Kaching!
• Our final plans are still a work in progress. Hubby very much likes to be rooted in one place but I really feel like we need to get out and explore the world so we will travel for six months and then re-evaluate. We may end up renting a small apartment as our home base or buying a much smaller house as our home base (as opposed to the very generous offer by my sister in law to "home base" from her house at very, very little cost) and then travel more often but not continuously. I guess we will figure it out when the time comes.
• We're busy. For the past couple of months we have been "getting ready" to leave but it was kind of a slow process. Now that we are getting down to the wire, our "to do" lists are growing exponentially!
• Overall it is kind of a surreal experience. I have owned a house since I was 19 years old and to not have a house is just odd. I don't think it will totally sink in until after we move out. It's a little scary.
• Everyone we have told about our adventure has been super supportive. Word travels fast and we were even stopped in the parking lot at Walmart today by a lady we know who had heard from another friend about our plans. The overwhelming consensus is "I wish I can do/could have done something like that, it will be a great adventure." At least by us doing this, we won't have to wonder about what we "could have done". Come to think of it, there hasn't been a single naysayer that I have heard of. No one saying it is a crazy idea. No one saying we will fail and literally end up homeless. I guess that is something. I hope they are right.