Lemonade on Tap

We set-up a Kegging system for Nick's home brews roughly a year ago. Nick was able to find a fridge at BestBuy on sale at 75% off because of a small dent and so we jumped at the opportunity to get this project moving. You see, as a home brewer your options for storage are kegging your beer or bottling the beer by hand, which means having empty and sterilized bottles on hand. I believe at one point in his brewing hobby we had 4 cases of empty bottles in our small apartment.

Needless to say, we bought the fridge and slowly started to purchase additional items to get the kegging system in working order. We now have a beautiful top and handles for our mini-fridge kegerator, 2 quarter kegs and a CO2 Tank to keep the liquids bubbly.

Unfortunately, we have run out of beer :(

Nick worked on a new batch this past weekend, but in the meantime he asked if I wanted to put bubbly water on tap. I suggested that we put sparkling lemonade on tap instead to give us an alternative to water or beer.

So, we looked up a recipe for Cranberry-Lemonade and got our yield up to 5 gallons and we now have Cran-Lemonade on Tap for the summer, or at least until a second beer is ready!


This concoction cost us:
3 Bottles of Lemon Juice = $7.47
2 Bottles of Cranberry Juice = $3.34
6 Cups Sugar, estimated cost =  $1.00
TOTAL: $ 11. 81
Yield 5 Gallons, each cup at 12 ounces= $0.22

I should open my own lemonade stand this summer. $.50 a glass and I would make a KILLING :) Watch out DC Kids here I come!!

Month in Review- April 2014

Sorry for the radio silence last week. Life has gotten a little crazy and I needed a week off from writing to get caught up :) Month two was really about sinking into our new money routine. Last month was an experiment, but this month it feels like reality started to sink in and we had to start really making decision about how to spend our money. Here is a snapshot of where we stand after month two:

Unexpected Costs: 

• Dentist Bill 
• Adjustments to our 401k Contributions 

Unexpected Income:

• Nothing extra this month, just the norm 

April Splurges:
Nick and I used our entertainment fund to sign up for the Dogfish Dash race that will take place in September. We also treated ourselves to a random Friday off, mid-month. We both took the day off, slept in, went for a long run, and went out to lunch at a Korean restaurant called Honey Pig.

Funniest Moment: 
Nick and I like to try "fun" beers; however, fun beers come at a larger price. "Fun" beers also disappear off the shelves quickly at our local beer stores. Over the past four years, Nick has gotten to know the beer guys at our local shops. They shoot him emails to let him know something rare is coming in or will hold one out back for him if it is something he specifically requested.

So this past month, we walked into our local store to pick-up a 6 pack of our go to frugal beer, Yuengling. The beer guy came running up to us with two great beers they had gotten in the day before that he was saving for Nick. This was the moment Nick had to break the news to his new friend that we were saving money and fun beers were going to be a rarity rather then a norm. It was like watching Nick break-up with a long-term girlfriend.

We picked up our $5 six pack and headed for the door. This may not seem like a funny moment but you have to admit it is pretty funny that A. we have a beer guy and B. that we had to kinda breakup with him...

Lessons Learned: 
Hmmm, we still haven't gotten the grocery money quite figured out. We went to Costco to do a one month bulk up trip- paper towels, toilet paper, oats, frozen fruit, and meat. Basically anything we could freeze and make it last a month or more. We ended up spending over half our food budget. By the end of April we were back to pinching pennies at the grocery store, so we still need to work on how we spend our weekly expense line, and be sure to leave money for the end of the month.

Total Payment to Debt: $39.76, on top of our minimum payments

Current Debt: $172,461.37

This months debt payment was significantly less then March because of the unexpected dentist bill, and  we needed to dip in to help cover additional life expenses. This was hopefully not a typical month and we are hoping to get back on track next month. 

We started with a total of 35 Student Loans, adjusted from 36 after a "place holder" line was removed, oops :). We are now down to 34 Student Loans and we need to pay $4,574.80 more in order to reach 33 :)

The Paper Globe

I now I owe you all a month in review, but our month really doesn't end until May 10th, just how the budget is set-up, and we are pinching pennies this month so I want to be sure to give you all the accurate amounts. So I hope to have the month in review to you by next Wednesday, but for now, here is a fun piece :)

On the Comment Today post, one of my good friends sent me a link for fun free printable things to do. One of these activities was to build a paper globe. While last week was bring your kid to work day and a colleague of mine did just that. As she was checking emails, I asked her daughter if she'd like to help me build a globe. She was in charge of the coloring and folding, while I took care of the structure pieces and taping.

Here are the instructions we followed. If you do nothing else just go read through the instructions the guy has a great sense of humor and made me chuckle through this process.

If you do decide to take on this project, use thick paper. I used office paper and it "worked" but was really flimsy. It was fun to take a little work mental break and the globe was spectacular :)

Remember to do something fun everyday!! HAPPY FRIDAY :)

Bittersweet Credit Card Romance

I've recently received a few questions on the use of credit cards in personal finance. So, here is my quick credit card dating history...

I got my first credit card when I was 17 before I went on a school trip to Spain. I got a secure credit card for $500. This means the bank took $500 from me and put it in a savings account I could not touch. This money could be used if I didn't pay my bill for a few months :) I am happy to say that when I closed this credit card later in life, I was able to take $500 out of one savings account and put it in another. I viewed this card as a safety net. If I got into a problem, I had something to help me out!

In college the credit card spending started to get away from me. I was learning how to use disposable income and when it wasn’t available in the moment, I had a hard time saying no. So I started to accumulate movie tickets, pizzas, and road trips on my credit card. I would use it as a place holder until I got a check from my campus jobs, but it quickly became the go to way of spending money. I was always paying off my activities with the next week’s pay check. This is also about the same time that I stopped putting half my pay check into savings, funny how those coincide. 

Most months I would pay it off in full because the charges were small enough, but then I left college and I no longer had a meal plan to pay for my food, or 'CollegeBucks' to take care of going out for late night pizza, or free events to attend every night of the week on campus. I think I slowly fell into using my Credit Card as a safety net for when I didn't have money in the checking account to do what we were going out to do. The definition of an “emergency” became, we don’t have enough money in the account to do what we want to do.  

For example, we made plans to go out to dinner with friends. Before going to dinner, I realized we only had $30 to put towards dinner. While I couldn't just cancel our dinner plans, so the answer became, "While I guess we have to use the Credit Card to cover this one." Saving for special event of Christmas were not in our budget.

"Let's put it on the credit card and we can pay it back next month," started to be used almost every single time we went out. We never said NO, we just kept living our life beyond our means. We don't live extravagantly and don't go out to eat every night. We are frugal people by nature, but yet when an opportunity presented itself we rarely said No. 

So the credit cards kept on increasing. We maxed out our cards a couple of times, but got lucky. We either had savings, a great tax refund, or a free month of rent on a new apartment. Let's just say someone has been watching over Nick and I because every time the credit cards got to their max level, something would just go right for us. 

But 2 months ago, when we began this debt payment process, I realized things weren't always going to work out for us. We kept spending money on activities that we didn't have the money for and waisting money and savings of stupid activities. We had not learned to live within our means. Our Credit cards were at roughly $7,500 and we needed to STOP saying yes and learn to spend ONLY what our incomes would allow.

I would love to say that are credit card debt was for emergencies, but they weren't. They were life. You take a look at our credit card bill and you can see our life. We sold ourselves on using our credit cards because we get cash back, but seriously 1% Cash Back is not worth the interest that we accumulate when we can't pay down our bill each month!!

As I read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, he made two really good points that have stuck with me and forced me to really think hard about how/when we use our Credit Cards, or if we should even have Credit Cards: 

·         Many people plan on paying off their credit card balance at the end of each month but very few people actually fulfill this goal. I think he said only 33% of people actually fulfill the goal. Yup, I had been one of those 33%, but had become part of the 67%.

·         Long term financial independence and wealth do not revolve around credit cards. The more you think about it the more you realize it’s true. The wealthy are not using 1% cash back or any other rewards program to live life.

These two points helped me to move to NOT using our credit cards. Nick still likes to pay a few bills on his card and pay them off each month, and I still have my gym membership connected to my credit card. I should probably change that account, and will eventually switch that to my debit card. But, neither of us have used the card for life activities for two months. I still carry my card with me, and hope that at some point I will feel comfortable taking it out of my wallet, but for today I am happy to not be swiping the card. 

This is not an easy choice to make and has at times we have really hated saying No to attending events or going out for drinks. But, we are learning to prioritize and  live within our means rather than our credit card limits. Currently it SUCKS, but on a positive note we have "found" money in the budget to pay down debt so the long term potential ROCKS :) 

NOVA Habitat for Humanity

Nick and I had the opportunity to participate in Northern Virginia's (NOVA) Habitat for Humanity project A Bush with Kindness this past Saturday, as part of our Alma Maters Alumni Service Day.

SUNY Plattsburgh has sponsored a service day for the past three years and has dedicated this day to Dr. Richard Semmler. Nick and I have had a chance to meet and work with Dr. Semmler for the past three years, and seen first hand his generosity to both SUNY Plattsburgh and the NOVA Habitat families. His giving is one of those things you can hope to emulate in life.

Most people only know Habitat to build homes and sell them to low-income families for the cost of the land and materials at a 0% interest rate; however, they've run into an expansion problem. Land is a hot commodity, so they've had to adapt their model and find new ways to help families in need.  They developed a program entitled A Brush with Kindness. The program aims to provide support to the elderly, single-parent homes, and meet the needs of the local community through small projects.

This is our third year working on this Habitat endeavor and so far we have cleared an old shed, repaired a fence, built a fence, and this year shuttered a house and tore down a fence. Lot's of fence work :)

I really enjoy working with Habitat because as I help this great organization complete their work, I also learn great practical skills. Since college I've learned, through habitat, how to instal walls, put down a subfloor, remove carpet, take down kitchen cabinets, insert fence posts, build a fence, and most recently how to properly cover house windows, which included the wonderful use of a circular saw :)

I really do love working with Habitat and would encourage anyone interested in learning more about building to contact your local Habitat group and sign-up to go out to a site for a day! If you're a women don't delay reaching out to them today. The next two weeks are considered Women Build Day's. I attended this last year with a friend and we had a great time. It is a day to get your hands dirty and have a great time accomplishing something that you may never get to do in your own home!

Action Steps

Last Wednesday I wrote a piece entitled A Generation of Student Loan Stories and left you with a question, How will our generation mold this problem into action?

Here are 5 Ways we are molding our student loan frustration into action today:

Loan Repayment: We will continue to pay back our student loans, but will move to an interest rate model, to save more money in the long run. However, we reserve the right to pick-up a few low hanging principal loans on our list if we need an emotional boost :)

Continue to Live Life: We are cutting back on a lot of activities, but we also can't miss out on the next 10 years of our life. We would like to use all of our extra income towards loan repayment, but are also going to be realistic and take a one month hiatus now and again to use that money for a long-weekend away or to go do something fun. We also may need a new computer, so there are expenses that are going to come up, but we will do our best to stay ahead of the needs vs. wants.

Retirement: I think this is worth noting as an active financial goal in our lives and a way to take action on our long-term financial growth. We are currently investing in our companies 401 plans. The benefit of putting away retirement savings early, based on compounding interest, means that over time our money is invested longer and therefore has time to grow. To give us a guiding post on the investment percentage, we are going to use our companies' match percent and hopefully be able to increase this amount periodically to at least 15%.

Income: The current numbers for repayment do not take into account any change of income over the next ten years. That simply will not be the case, we are two highly motivated individuals that don't plan on decreasing our salaries in the next ten years, so that keeps me smiling! We looked into taking on second jobs, but determined that for now we are going to make do with the income we have unless a second job would assist in our personal growth. We are happy with our standard of living, plus we need time to complete action #2, Continue to Live Life :)

Savings: We used part of our safety net to pay off our credit cards at the beginning of what we though to be a 5 year journey. We now see that with a ten year time frame, we will need to build this back-up to ensure that we can take care of any emergencies that may arise in the next few years. This is an action step that we haven't yet determined how to build into the full budget, but we are going to work on this piece!

Being able to list action items highlights that we are working towards a larger goal and grateful that we have the ability to make additional payments towards our student loan. No matter how soon we pay off our loans, we will save ourselves money in interest. My Sallie Mae payment, after one month of principal payments, has already gone down by $10. Little victories WILL win this long race :)

If you have an extra 10 or 50 bucks this month, do yourself a long-term favor and pay it towards any of your debts principal balance. JUST DO IT :)

Any action step little or big helps to save you more in the long-term, and this is a long-term game we are playing!

Where are you putting your extra $20 this month?? 

Just Another Wednesday

Sorry for my late post today, but it has been a crazy full week.

Today, I had the opportunity to go on a tour of the White House and then participate in a 6k Water Walk.

Sorry no pic's allowed inside. 

With Obama off in Japan, his house was open for tours. I haven't been on a tour of the White House since I was a young kid. Yes, I have lived here for five years, but have never made it a priority to get tickets. The most interesting thing about the visit was the "lack" of a tour guide. During budget cuts, the White House chose to get rid of official tour guides. They have now passed on that duty to the Secret Service Agents standing in each room. The tour information specifically states, if you have any questions to ask the Secret Service Agent and they will be happy to answer your questions. Seriously??

Can you imagine being assigned as an agent to the White House and then having to take a class on the history of the White House, and also having to learn a script to give tours of the room you're in on a day to day basis? Something tells me most agents would not be thrilled with this assignment, but at least the American people are saving a buck #frugalwhitehouse :)

After the tour, I headed off to participate in a 6k Water Walk. The length of a 6k was chosen because it represents the average length, mostly, women and girls walk daily to collect clean water for their homes. It was a great opportunity to meet a few new colleagues and get in a mid-afternoon walk. The Embassy of Sweden also had a water rest stop set-up with information on water conservation. Remembering how easy life is can be very humbling.