Donna Freedman

Soup of the evening.

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DF was an alchemist this morning. Pulling containers and bags of stuff from the fridge and freezer, he filled the crockpot with:

Two kinds of broth (chicken-vegetable and seasoned pinto bean)

The drippings from a chicken he’d cooked on the Weber

Leftover pork loin (bought deeply discounted, of course)

Chopped-up garlic scapes (from the 2022 garden)

Diced onions

A handful of red and yellow pepper chunks (from the produce section’s “ugly but still good” shelf and cut up to freeze)

Homegrown celery (frozen), carrots and potatoes

The slow cooker began to emit a marvelously savory aroma as the day wore on. A little after 5 p.m., DF sliced up some of his easy rustic bread and announced that dinner was served. Outside it was 13 degrees and snowy, but indoors it was all warmth, comfort, and food that was prepared and shared with love.

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How I saved $233.97.

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This was money spent – or, rather, not spent – on the year’s garden, greenhouse and yard. Things like potting soil (we start our own seeds), garden soil (for our potted tomato and cucumber plants), replacement screws and nails, and yellowjacket and slug bait (wasps love nesting in our yard, and those slithering land mollusks like eating what we grow). How I saved that $233.97 was pretty simple: rewards programs.

As I’ve mentioned before, rewards programs, apps and credit cards are a nice boost to the budget. A real frugalist just hates to pay retail, or to pay anything at all if she can help it. So I cashed in gift cards to pay for the goods we needed to grow some of our own food.

Not that we limit these savings to the garden. Recently I cashed in a $25 Safeway card and a $25 Kroger card to use toward stealth stock-ups. I’ve also used reward programs to pay for trips to the movies, lunch out with my daughter and, of course, gift-giving. (Looking forward to cashing in more points in the near future, for Christmas gifts.)

I’ll be visiting my brother and sister in Orlando* next month, and stopping by Phoenix on the way home to see Abby again. It’s a pretty safe bet that rewards programs will help me pay for some of my trip expenses.

Here’s the beauty part: They’ll also produce more rewards in the bargain, as I use the cards, apps and programs to pay for things while I’m on the road. #GreatCycleOfFrugality

Will I get rich using these programs? Probably not. After all, my focus is on not buying stuff. But some rewards programs don’t require you to buy anything (more on that in a minute), they give you gifts for buying the things you do need, and fairly regularly let you get things for free.

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Beat inflation: The financial fire drill.

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I figured the words “beat inflation” might get your attention. Let me say upfront, however, that inflation isn’t 100 percent beatable. No matter how self-sufficient we are, we still have to pay taxes and buy certain things (any food we can’t grow, sewing materials, shoes).

Even if we ride bikes instead of drive cars, we need replacement parts. If we do our own home improvements, we need to pay for materials somehow. And we can’t meet all our needs through rewards programs and Buy Nothing Facebook groups (although I’m having fun trying).

In the novel “The Godfather,” mobsters would hole up in anonymous apartments in times of gang strife. They called it “going to the mattresses.” Right now we’re in times of financial strife, and we should all think about going to the frugal mattresses: How to make the smartest, safest decisions to beat inflation?

Here’s how to start: by doing what I call the financial fire drill, a kind of extreme budget makeover. The idea isn’t that you won’t pay your bills, but rather that you’ll look for ways to cut the number and size of those bills.

The financial fire drill is pretty simple. You build a baseline budget, i.e., the absolute minimum you need to survive). That means basic shelter, utilities, medical care, food, clothing and debt service (installment loans, child support). The idea isn’t to starve in an unheated garret. It’s to figure out how little you could spend without jeopardizing health, safety and solvency.

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This isn’t your grandparents’ recession.

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Image by Ingrid Felix Victoria from Pixabay

(Happy Throwback Thursday! Given recent inflation rates, and some pundits’ responses to the very real struggles that some people face, I thought this post needed re-saying. It first ran on April 25, 2011; a version of the piece, written by me, originally appeared on MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog.)

When the going gets tough, it’s tempting to invoke our grandparents and their tribulations during the Great Depression.

I’m about to commit cultural heresy: A lot of their advice wouldn’t help us.

My paternal grandparents, who were 17 and 18 when they married in 1935 and had a baby the next year, knew an awful lot about living on an awful little. They’d make most of us modern frugalists look like Rockefellers.

But allow me to point out an irritating fact: The world was different then. When you look at our grandparents’ lives in context, you’ll see that it was easier to manage on relatively little. Not more comfortable, or more fun – just easier.

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Easy(ish) food preservation.

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Recently a neighbor offered me a Lowe’s-sized bucket of apples and a gallon of pie cherries. The former became eight pints of applesauce and the latter a 10-inch pie. At some point that day I got a Facebook message from an old friend; while e-chatting, I learned she, too, was elbow-deep in food preservation that day: tomatoes, corn and green beans.

The coincidence made me grin, especially since her early life goal was to become a big-city journalist and live the single-gal life. (She did become a journalist, but spent most of her career in a small town.)

I asked her if she’d ever pictured herself using a pressure canner, or was that something our moms did. Her response: “We are lucky we grew up the way we did, so we can survive. I rarely shop but when I do it’s only for what I can’t grow myself.”

Those are thoughts I’ve voiced myself. Growing up fairly broke got me through single parenthood and a protracted midlife divorce. Now I’m no longer jobless or broke, but the soaring cost of food (and other stuff) is making me really nervous.

Not everyone is able to (or wants to) freeze, can or dehydrate. But hear me out.

For starters, think about broadening your definition of “preserving” food. In my opinion, bulk buying, stocking up during sales, and combining sales with rewards programs are all ways to “preserve” food. As in, you’re making sure you have the groceries you need at the best prices you can find.

You’re preserving your budget along with the food. The money you don’t spend on grub is money that can go toward other essentials. It’s unlikely that many of us will starve in this country, but a whole lot of people will be mightily inconvenienced, in a couple of ways: 

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Support the reader economy: Giveaway #5.

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Still here (albeit on semi-sabbatical), and still supporting the reader economy. For those just joining us, I have been doing a semi-regular giveaway of products made in Alaska, the state where I live. It’s important to me to support the local economy.

But with inflation kicking everyone’s backside, I have decided to focus also on the reader economy, with a semi-regular giveaway of $25 gift cards. That’s not exactly a huge sum, but I’m not exactly a huge blog.

Besides, while $25 giveaway won’t permanently prop the budget, it can certainly be a much-needed tweak. For example, maybe you’re operating on the tightest of margins and your kid’s birthday is coming up. These days $25 won’t buy you much, but it will buy you something. Maybe several somethings, if you’re a bargain hound and your child is young enough not to be picky.

(Pro tip: Before you buy anything, join a Buy Nothing Facebook group. Not only might you find like-new or even brand-new items to gift, you could also put out an “ask” for birthday party supplies. I see that kind of thing being given all the time in my own Buy Nothing group.)

The winner of the Support the Reader Economy giveaway gets to choose the retailer, so perhaps that winner will choose Shell or Chevron, for gas to get to work before payday. Or, if you live in the right area, a Wawa card. (Man, I miss Wawa.)

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Nope, I haven’t retired.

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It’s been way too long since I’ve published anything here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve retired from blogging. Blame a mix of deadlines and personal stuff, plus the need to enjoy the last days of summer; even though it’s been raining almost nonstop, I still love these days of near-nonstop light.

I’m also getting ready to go to the Financial Blogger Conference, which is in Orlando* this year. Hearing all the horror stories about flight delays or outright cancellations, I’m hoping for the best. But I am also planning to observe the mantra of the stranded seal hunter: Go with the floe.

Taken together, this has meant an undeclared sabbatical. I don’t want anyone to think I’ve given up on this site, because I haven’t retired either from it or from writing for a living. It’s just that other things get in the way of my wanting to post here regularly.

That whole work-life balance thing: If I could figure it out, I’d become a millionaire teaching other people how to do it. But I haven’t. And as far as I can tell, few people have.

That’s because we want to do it all – at least in theory.

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Relishing summer’s bounty.

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A reader named Ringo apparently misses the garden updates, and asked whether we were still growing fruits and vegetables. Yes, and I’ve been taking pictures like mad – but still haven’t organized a major “looking at this year’s garden” post. As a stopgap, I’m going to write about relish.

Why relish? After all, we’ve frozen peas and raspberries, made rhubarb leather, and canned rhubarb compote and raspberry jam. We’ve eaten some very good tomatoes, lettuces, greens and strawberries. But the relish might be the best thing to come out of this summer, because we may have invented a new recipe.

Relish was never a huge thrill to me. It was just something to put on hot dogs and hamburgers. But last year our Chelsea Prize cucumbers, an English variety from Renee’s Garden Seeds, produced so heavily that I decided to look for a bonehead-simple relish recipe. (As a Renee’s Garden Seeds affiliate, I receive a small finder’s fee for sales made through my link.)

Found one, too. And then DF improved on it.

He improves on so many things in my life, as I’ve written before. When I described the relish recipe DF said, “You know what might be a good addition? Some jalapeño.”

We have pickled jalapeños in our fridge – a can we’d found in the dented-can bin, because that’s how we roll. So I diced up a bit of pickled pepper and added it to the mix.

The result was delicious: sweet yet pungent, mellow but with a peppery zing! that turns even the cheapest hot dogs into a decent meal.

Sometimes we nibble it by the forkful, like a salad. Which I guess it technically is, being made of cukes, onions, garlic, sugar, and mustard and celery seeds.

Our enjoyment of this humble condiment reminded me of a passage from Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine”: 

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Giving Cards: The update.

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Back in early June, Nate St. Pierre of Giving Cards gave me a wonderful opportunity to pass along to readers: The chance to “think ‘big’ with ‘small’.”

Specifically, the chance to take a $20 prepaid Visa card and use it to make a big difference in someone’s day. (Or maybe a whole bunch of someones. More on that below.)

Five readers were chosen to receive these cards. The only request from Giving Cards is that they not simply hand over the card. Instead, recipients are asked to think about how to deliver the biggest impact with such a relatively small amount of funding. What I love about this is that it sets recipients loose to dream.

It also lets them provide a little love for local causes. After all, nationally known organizations are always going to get donations. They’ve got the funds for outreach and marketing. But small causes that make a difference locally need help, too.

All the winners had great results. If I had to pick a favorite, it would (narrowly) be the cake kits. A reader named Wendy planned to buy $20 worth of cake mix and icing, then package them with disposable cake pans and birthday candles that she already had on hand. They’d be delivered to a local food bank.

“That will allow people who use the food pantry to make cakes for special occasions. Often these are too costly to purchase, or the ingredients aren’t available at food banks,” she said in a comment on the original post.

Can confirm, having been broke, and having used a food bank. While a cake for someone’s birthday (or graduation, anniversary, confirmation, etc.) isn’t necessary as such, it sure makes being broke a little easier to bear. My guess is that Wendy’s cake kits brightened some people’s days considerably.

Even though she did Giving Cards wrong. But in a great way. 

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Meet a reader: FrugalStrong from Texas.

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Like the first person featured in the “Meet a reader” series, FrugalStrong has also been the subject of a post on this site. I had the chance to meet her and her family when they traveled to Alaska. The result was an article called “Why aren’t more people frugal?” The title for that piece came from a question her husband posed during our frugal meet-up at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant (a location chosen for its big indoor playground).

When the 2017 Financial Blogger Conference took place in Dallas, she invited DF and me to stay for a couple of days, pre-conference. Their home is on a lake, and DF got a kick out of being able to swim in late October. Unfortunately, I came down with some kind of bug while I was there, which was mortifying, but she and her husband couldn’t have been nicer about it. 

Our recent phone chat was the two of us taking turns preaching to the choir. FrugalStrong and I have the same mindset: Save where you can so you can spend where you want.

Here, lightly edited for brevity and clarity, is that conversation.

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