[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

Just spent three hours cleaning out a few closets with dd14 who could seriously make a MINT as a personal organizer. As soon as I was flagging, she'd say, "We're almost done. Can you do X while I organize these boxes?"

I listed three things on craigslist for a total of $50. I hope they sell, mainly because I want them out of the house! I got closet space back and I think I'll feel more relaxed at home, and therefore less likely to spend, with less clutter around the main rooms. I also have about six bags for donation, a few extra bags of trash, and a collection of e-waste and chemicals to dispose of later this month. I also found a red tablecloth that we can use for the month of February. 🙂

We didn't eat anywhere near as much fruit last week as I thought we would, so I can skip a produce trip today. I am going to cut back to every other night beans because my kids have been making comments about digestion issues 🤣. We ate leftovers last night, but needed to toss some uneaten oatmeal.

I opened checking accounts for two out of three teens yesterday. One more to go!

ETA: Found about $75+ of personal care products while decluttering hall closet: 20 bars of soap, 6 deodorants, 3 floss boxes, 10 toothbrushes, 3 containers of feminine hygiene, etc. all in box, unopened.

Emily

[2023 Goal Group - January]

On 1/1/2023 at 8:19 PM, EmilyGF said:

Week 1:

Wellness - weighed once, and made soup, but ate lots of leftover Christmas sweets. Not excited about the new workouts being posted on NML: either I need something harder or I should look for a different program for a month. Next week's goal: start reading a blood sugar book for motivation and look into a free power yoga series.

Family - walked with dd14 4x this week (library, church, work, simple loop). She told me about her favorite books. Right now she's on a Mitali Perkins kick and learning all about Indian culture and generational struggles. Some of the books are a bit heavy, so it was good to discuss those. Next week's goal: keep up the good work.

House - decluttering is going well, but I can't listen to books while doing it yet. I have three bags to donate, one to shred, one to take to the e-waste place, and two huge garbage bags. I've gone through sheets, towels, sewing stuff, and files so far. I set a goal for the month: make places for all stuff that is currently piled on top of cabinets and clear closet space for the telescope DH was gifted last year. Next week's goal: keep it up, slow and steady wins the race!

Relationships - invited a friend over for dinner tonight. Made a list of people for dinner. Next week's goal: find someone or someplace for next Saturday night when it will only be me and dd6.

Homeschooling - book is on hold, Next week: begin reading. Also, clean up my watercolors and make a "kit" that I can easily access.

Spiritual - totally forgot about this one, but was doing other Bible reading. Next week: print out church Bible schedule and use as marker in Bible.

I made some progress that I'm excited about! I am going to print out my "next week" plans and put them in my planner (or maybe I'll just hand write them).

@Quill whoohoo - great job dealing with the cardboard boxes!

@Granny_Weatherwax you are inspiring me with your blood donation goals. When I should have been starting to donate blood (high school, college), I was ineligible due to having lived in Europe during the Mad Cow scare. I never looked into it again until now. I hope to donate this year (baby steps), thanks to you.

@Carrie12345 I love your water drinking goals.

Emily

[Writing - am I overdoing it?]

@Ting Tang and @Lori D. about eliminating written narration if doing a writing program (IEW): IEW seems like... so little compared to what I've done with the narrate-every-reading mindset.

@lewelma I have tried dictation with this kid, but he really hated the open-ended aspect of it and felt like he was never good enough or finished. He loves having workbooks that define what finished is. That's also why we are doing IEW; there is a rubric that defines "done" and "excellent."

I have kids who range over such a huge spectrum that it is hard to know what reasonable or normal is.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

Argh, @historically accurate, that's a bummer about the knee surgery. I hope the PT helps. It was sweet of your hubby to consider your busy day. Nights like the one you are describing have driven me to more tv than I used to watch... 

Emily

 

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

Just now, Carrie12345 said:

Weeeell, it’s Friday.

Last night I ordered a pack of my favorite toothbrushes with ridiculous shipping fees for a total of $21.16. This afternoon, I found almost a full pack in my bathroom cabinet. 😕

Last night I also paid $29 for planner downloads for the If I Die binder I’m putting together.

And today I got groceries; $68.47 at WM and, oops, $96.73 at Aldi, where I was just supposed to get bananas, grapes, bread, and beef jerky.
They had a good price (by today’s standards) on butter, 1/2 price mango slices, and decent blueberries and asparagus. They also had a good price on egg whites, cheaper than whole eggs. Then I got like 6 or 7 things I have no real excuse for grabbing other than I’m weak.

BUT, I dropped off a return and will have $25 in my account shortly.

Wow, that sounds like a great idea!

I've been decluttering around here, as nothing reminds me better not to spend than throwing out stuff I thought I needed and have never used. I found 12 bars of soap and 4 hand soaps under a very neglected sink. My goal of decluttering is to get 2 closets back and to get ride of piles and boxes on top of cabinets. DH is traveling right now (the first major major trip since COVID hit) and I hope to deal with some major hotspots before he gets back.

Finally, I found a few things to list on ebay (perfect condition Disney dollars from the early 90s!) or Craigslist (child's table, some wooden maps). I am hoping to make $50 and a fair amount of space. 🙂

Emily

[Writing - am I overdoing it?]

DS-barely-11 is a handful to homeschool and I have a hard time recognizing what is the right expectation level.

Here's his weekly writing (composition) and language arts load:

1. IEW Fables and Fairy Tales (one lesson per week)
2. One written narration (usually 5-10 sentences) per day
3. One oral narration per day
4. IEW Fix-It grammar (one page per day)
5. Getty-Dubay handwriting (two lines per day)
6. Sequential Spelling (one lesson per day)

Am I overdoing the writing (composition)? Doing too little? Thoughts?

He types most of his work as fine motor skills are hard; he only handwrites for Fix-It, Sequential Spelling, and Getty-Dubay.

ETA: I am not concerned about the handwriting aspect, but the composition. I wasn't clear at first. Thanks!

Emily

[Opinion discussion - When a kid is not thriving away at college]

One of my best friends was in such a situation and she took a good year+ off (which meant leaving the country because of her visa). She went home and was able to put her life back in order in a way that made it possible for her to come back 15 months later and thrive.

My brother quit his college after freshman year, went to a community college, and then transferred. I think that it would have been better if he'd transferred earlier.

Emily

[Summer programs for high school students?]

Inspired by this and other discussions, I googled most of my nearby hospitals (dd16 wants to go into healthcare, she thinks) and "high school". Most of them had a page with information about volunteering and/or paid internships.

Emily

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

46 minutes ago, Soror said:

Food waste update:

 

1/4 c. beans (cooked from dried) - made a batch didn't use them all for a recipe- meant to throw them in something else and forgot them. I should have put them in the freezer

Tamarind paste- unknown amount- cleaning out the fridge doors I found the counter on the side and leaking. It wasn't entirely empty but a fair amount had seeped out.

3/4 bottle of dressing- bought ages ago- found Lemon poppyseed dressing for cheap so I bought a few bottles. This is the last one we all hate the taste. It is nothing like the ones we like 😞 Why did I buy in bulk when I didn't know if we'd like it?

1/2 cup greek yogurt- I decided to go back off of dairy due to issues- sometimes the girl's will eat my yogurt but of course didn't this time. I gave it to the cats so it's not a total waste.

That's impressive!

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

No purchases yet, but I need to make an Amazon purchase, so a goal for today is to figure out how best to do that without putting more on the CC. Maybe I'll use "rewards" to do so.

1/5 I need to enroll ds11 in winter/spring basketball, but the link isn't working. That'll be expensive, but we've budgeted for it.

I worked on my YNAB budget and am feeling pretty good about it. I am glad for my paycheck, but I felt pretty guilty about working yesterday. Dd6 had come down with something and was feeling nasty, so she sat on the stairs crying as I went to work yesterday. Then, when I came home, she sat in my lap and cried for 5 minutes. She felt better later in the night and didn't remember any of it, though. If I hadn't been leading in-person trainings, I would have stayed home yesterday. Sigh.

Finally, got two SNAP cards in the mail (for last summer!) and was worried that they were sent in error. I did some googling and found out (I think) that our kids in high school qualify for them because their high school has a high enough poverty rate, or our district has a high enough poverty rate, that everyone at the school/district gets the cards. So, that should cover February groceries.

I followed some links in the "buying a dress for ds's wedding" thread and that was dangerous. Argh. I did not buy anything, but I also should not look at clothes websites when not buying, LOL.

I decluttered old sheets and kitchen linens yesterday. I think that has to do with budgeting because watching what I spend also means being honest about the effects of overspending: buying stuff I don't need. I need to declutter my homeschooling stuff. It is USING curriculum, not BUYING curriculum, which causes people to learn!

Emily

 

[Well-trained bodies - turn of the year, goals, January, etc]

On 12/29/2022 at 6:23 AM, EmilyGF said:

I've been sleeping poorly this week, but I've had some success.

1. Walk 2 mi per day, 5 days per week: walked 4 miles Sunday, 1 Monday, and not yesterday.
2. Work through NML (Nourish Move Love) Beginner Plan: switched to the new plan they introed this week. It is 20 min/day, 5 days per week. Doable so far, and I am being careful not to overdo it.
3. Add in stretching 3x/week: 20 minutes yesterday.
4. Food: track everything for the month of January and then reassess. Not yet.
5. Food 2: Something along the lines of eating the rainbow because I want to up my veggies. Suggestions?

@Soror and @Laura Corin you two inspire me!

Emily

 

I'm making more progress on the physical goals than the food ones. 🙂

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

I put some books on hold at the library, or got on Libby, for inspiration, though I'm going for a month or six weeks, and not a year. 😄

The Year of Less

The Year without a Purchase

A few years ago I read Not Buying It. It doesn't get great Goodreads ratings, but I found the conversations the author and her partner had thought provoking (are crackers necessary? wine? how do you draw the line between necessary and luxury?). I may pick that one up again, too.

[If you liked Prime Climb...]

...what other math games did you like?

Ideally, the game would have some deep connections in it.

(Here's a blog about how Prime Climb formed some of ds11's thinking. I'm looking for the next big thing for him.)

Thanks,

Emily

[What do we know about the science of teaching math?]

On 1/1/2023 at 8:28 AM, mathmarm said:

I will disagree with you on the bolded. This is a matter of teaching sequence and the amount of "microconcepts" and "microskills" taught and mastered before hand. A student that has mastered the appropriate Place-value  "microskills" of combining mathfacts and regrouping skills will not need to learn to add/subtract 2-digit, then 3-digit, then 4-digit, etc problems. Instead, they can apply their understanding of "microconcepts" and "microskills" to calculating any amount of digits on the same day that they learn the vertical addition/subtraction format type.

 

Agreeing with @mathmarm. RightStart teaches 4-digit addition with regrouping on the abacus in one step, skipping fewer digits. I just did it last week with dd6. It made sense to her rather quickly; she went from abacus to paper to "this is easy, why are we still doing this" in four 20-minute sessions.

Wrt Science of Math, I don't think there has been the same breakthrough as with reading. Reading dealt with the question of whether good readers sound out words or not. fMRIs showed that good readers used phonics and that perceptions that they did not (which is what all the Marie Clay stuff was built on) were wrong. I don't think there is a puzzle piece for math that big that science has uncovered. If I am wrong, let me know! 🙂

I came across this website: The Science of Math that has some short, research-based rebuttals to some math questions, but it isn't as deep as I'd like.

ETA: I work coordinating a study through psych lab currently that does research about young kids and mathematical interventions. Research is messy. I wish there was something as clean as an fMRI that could show what is really going on with some key part of math.

Emily

 

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

1/2 - Worked on decluttering the bookshelf next to my bed and found a large amount of money. This encourages me to keep decluttering and to stick to the budget. DS17 reminded me that he needs something off Amazon for next week. I may just buy an Amazon gift card with the money I found to purchase it because it'll keep me honest and away from the credit card.

Food: Made Pumpkin-Teff bread (teff flour) for breakfast. Made baked beans (white beans) and Boston brown bread (rye flour) for dinner tonight. Also served coleslaw. I'm working on that pantry!

Emily

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

5 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

I am behind on this bc I have covid and still cannot get much done in a day. Will give some time to finances early in the day tomorrow, before I am wiped out.

January goals:

1. Set up 2023 in YNAB. We do a new budget each calendar year.

2. Watch some videos about YNAB so that I can learn to use it better.

3. Continue to pay extra on mortgage.

4. Cut grocery spending by $200 from what it was in the fall. December is always high and not typical.

5. Ask Dh again to please use the YNAB app. 

6. NO impulse spending, especially Amazon!!! 

7.  Discuss finding a new investments person with Dh. Our guy moved and our accts are passively managed right now. Dh just changed jobs and we need to roll his 401K from his old job to an IRA. Ask Dh to take the lead on this. 
 

Week 1: 1, 2, and 7 from the list above.

Already have had a little success in #6. Looked on Amazon for prices, but did NOT purchase. Will shop around and purchase when the funds are there.

 

 

I need to do this, too. Do you have videos you recommend?

[Anyone want to do a Well-Trained Wallet January thread? - JOIN THE WEEKLY THREAD]

12 hours ago, scholastica said:

IRS has postponed this rule, but kids should still get their own accounts.

I think they postponed it to 2023 (it was originally scheduled for 2022), which helps me be motivated to get those accounts set up this week. 🙂

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

@Soror I love your specific steps towards saving money on food. That motivated me to find some recipes for weird foods I'm trying to clean out of our pantry (ragi flour, anyone?). I've printed out recipes now for a few of the strange flours and will look for ones for my strange lentils. I had fun at an Indian grocery store a while back.

@Hilltopmom Being financially mindful after a raise or new job is so important! Not doing that is what got me where I am. We had an increase in income and I began thinking, "I can afford that." Lifestyle creep happened and now I'm needing to cut back.

@NorthernBeth Realistic food budgets are important! How are you working on it?

@73349 What great goals! We've got free pantries all around, but I haven't thought of dropping off. Thanks for the inspiration.

@JennyD Food waste is the worst, but we're totally guilty. Let me know if you come up with routines that help you.

@Carrie12345 Go for it with those returns! Great concrete goal: keeps unnecessary stuff out of your house and puts money back in the wallet.

[2023 Goal Group - January]

 My January breakdown:

Wellness

• Weigh every Saturday morning
• Do NML 5x weekly = 20x in January 
• 2x yoga per week for 20 min
• Make a big pot of veggie and bean soup to eat for lunch each day
• Limit snacks to fruits and veggies

Family

• Walk with dd14 at noon each day. She'll walk partway to work with me on days I work. Otherwise we'll just do a mile-long loop in the neighborhood. (We walked 4 miles together today. We both love walking.)

House

• Watch a video on how to repair the oven and gather everything I need
• Use the Declutter 365 missions for January and July. Choose a brain-candy audiobook to listen to while decluttering.

Relationships

• Make a list of people to invite over for dinner
• Have two families over for dinner and a single friend over (when DH is traveling)

Homeschooling

• Put For the Children's Sake on hold
• Do four watercolor nature journal entries

Spiritual

• Read 1 Samuel with the ladies at church

[2023 Goal Group - January]

Thanks, @Granny_Weatherwax, for starting this thread! I was inspired last year and am excited to join this year. 

Word of the Year: Refresh (give new strength or energy to, reinvigorate)

Wellness

• Get back to my WW goal of 155 (12 lb loss)
• Be able to do 10 real pushups in a row 

Family

• build a better relationship with dd14 by walking 1 mi a day with her 200x this year (basically, M-F most weeks)

House

• repair the oven
• repair broken tile on the first floor
• repaint 3rd floor bathroom
• declutter to prepare for a possible move

Relationships and Region

• have a family over for dinner on Saturday nights 3x/month, Shabbat-style = 36 meals this year
• join the Architecture foundation and go on 8 tours

Homeschooling

• Reread For the Children's Sake and another book to reignite my excitement
• Do 50 watercolor nature journal entries

Spiritual

• Daily Bible reading (starting off with my church ladies)

I'm leaving financial goals off here because so much is up in the air.

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

Here are my goals:

1. Cut way back on spending by:
   1. Only use my credit card for gas.
   2. Buy groceries with cash on hand. Eat down my pantry and freezer.
   3. Keep a list of desired purchases in my planner. (I bet I won't even want to own most of them by the time February comes around!)
2. Except for gas, not use my credit card until Feb. 15. That's when the February bill is due. I want to get that bill down.
3. Put money aside for upcoming big purchases: a violin and braces. Goal for January: $X. (decided to keep amount private, will post percentages)
4. Open a CC in my name - DONE!
5. Open checking accounts for my teens.

Emily

[Well-Trained Wallets - Week 1 of 5]

Hi friends!

This is your place to be make your own financial well-being goals and work towards them this month. Here's what I'm envisioning.

1. Write up your goals for the month. Break them down week-by-week.
2. Post your progress.
3. Share ideas to help others.
4. Celebrate with and encourage one another!

Please don't share any links to shopping; if you find a great deal, post it to the Frugalistas thread!

Emily

[Anyone want to do a Well-Trained Wallet January thread? - JOIN THE WEEKLY THREAD]

7 minutes ago, Brittany1116 said:

Is this the thread for progress, or will a new one be started tomorrow?

I will run weekly threads this month, since this is a January "focus" challenge!

[Anyone want to do a Well-Trained Wallet January thread? - JOIN THE WEEKLY THREAD]

38 minutes ago, Soror said:

In case it helps and is not redundant. When I started doing menus I did a lot of repeats. A friend used to a monthly menu on repeat all the time. You don't have to have different dishes every night. People often eat the same thing all the time anyway. If you have a template you can mix things when you have time and inspiration. Also, the plan can be buy frozen pizzas or a rotisserie chicken and bagged salad. That's still cheaper than a family meal out. It doesn't have to be all homemade.

It can be as simple as-- spaghetti with salad, tacos, stir fry, frozen pizza, baked fish and roasted veggies, chili, roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. 

Just pick some family favorites. Pick easy meals for busy nights. 

This is great advice. Thanks!

[Dad Update (new update in first post on 12/13) (and 12/30)]

I am so sorry for your loss.

Emily