Each week, I’ll present a low-cost meal (or a meal that demonstrates a lot of options for cutting costs) that my family eats for dinner and enjoys. Many of the recipes will be vegan or vegetarian, with options to add other ingredients for non-vegetarians.

By fish fillets, of course, I’m speaking of whatever type of fresh fish you prefer – swordfish, salmon, catfish, or whatever else you like.

In our case, we used fresh catfish fillets. These fillets had never been frozen and were actually caught in a river just a day or two before we prepared them. They smelled, looked, and tasted delicious.

What You Need
Obviously, you’ll need several small fillets of whatever type of fish you prefer. For this recipe, we’re using an amount that adds up to about two pounds of fish. We’re also using a bit of olive oil to brush the fish with before grilling.

For the corn and tomato relish, you’ll need four ears of corn and two large whole tomatoes, as well as a bit of basil (fresh or dried, whatever’s easier for you). These are easy to acquire in the mid-to-late summer.

You’ll also need a grill, of course.

In our grilling process, we used two small cedar planks to grill the fillets on. These are not required – the planks were gifted to us by a friend. If you do have an opportunity to use them, they do add a certain character to the fish, but I’m not convinced I would invest any of my own money into the planks.

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
One step you can take in advance is to prepare the vegetables. Roughly chop the tomatoes and store them in a bowl.

You’ll also want to shuck the corn, then use a knife to slice the kernels from the ear. It’s pretty easy to do – just start at one end of the ear and guide the knife below the kernels. If you cut too deep, you’ll feel a lot of resistance, so just let the knife guide you.

Preparing the Meal
Preparing the relish is quite easy.

Simply put two tablespoons of olive oil into the pan, spread it around, and heat it over medium-high heat for a couple minutes. Add the corn and stir it regularly, waiting for the kernels to brown just a bit.

Then, add the tomatoes and either two tablespoons dried basil or 1/2 cup minced fresh basil. Keep stirring and cooking for about another minute, then turn off the heat. Your relish is done.

The fish is even easier. Start your grill, lower the rack until it’s close to the flame, and turn up the heat to high. Brush the fish with some olive oil and sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper, then put the fillets right on the grill.

Grill the fillets for four minutes, then flip them (unless you’re using the wood planks, in which case you don’t flip). Allow it to grill for four minutes more, then use a thin knife to check the center of one of the fillets. Depending on the type of fish, you’re probably looking for a white flaky texture to indicate doneness. If you’re unsure, check the temperature, as fish need to have an internal temperature of 140 F to be done.

Take the fish off and serve with the relish and perhaps some vegetables on the side.

Optional Ingredients
If you wish, you can marinate the fish as you desire. Lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and many herbs and spices are common things to add to grilled fish. When accompanied by the relish, I like the fish to be nice and simple, but experiment! Do things that seem tasty to you!

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Diane said, “While I’m on board with the idea that bringing your own lunch, rather than buying, I think the savings are less than a lot of financial articles purport, and the time involved in prepping the lunch, cleaning the kitchen, packing the bag, rinsing and throwing the tupperware in the dishwasher, etc., is more than the extra 5-10 mins some articles throw out as the amount of extra time. I think those who tout the savings tend to overestimate how much was spent on eating lunch out and underestimate the cost of making your own.”

I would separate the idea of brown-bagging into two separate groups.

Brown-Bagging Leftovers
In my eyes, this is the way to make brown-bagging into a winning proposition. You simply take the meal you had for dinner the night before, perhaps repackaging it a bit by turning something into a sandwich or the like, and take it to work the next day.

Often, Sarah and I will do this while putting away the evening meal. We’ll simply prep our lunch for the following day as part of the process, putting the meal into the refrigerator so it can easily be grabbed the next morning.

Because we’re using leftovers, the cost is usually really low. Because of the size of our family and the variable eating habits of our children, we usually tend to prepare plenty, thus ensuring that we have an adequate amount left over for brown bagging, often enough for both of us to make a meal.

Brown-Bagging from Scratch
Diane, however, seems to be mostly focused on the idea of brown-bagging from scratch without using leftovers.

The variables here are very difficult to calculate.

For example, time can vary widely. If you’re preparing a simple sandwich, a baggie of vegetables, a baggie of fruit, and a drink for your sack lunch, you can easily prepare it in ten minutes. If you prepare stuffed mushrooms, a side salad, a from-scratch wrap, and some fresh cookies for dessert, you’re going to be working for hours.

Also, cost can vary widely. Comparing the two meals above, the first meal can be made with a dollar or two in ingredients. The second meal requires quite a bit more to prepare.

On the flip side, the time and cost of the meals you’re comparing them to can vary widely. Are you comparing a lunch eaten out at an elegant (and expensive) restaurant in town? Or are you comparing a double cheeseburger and a small drink snagged at McDonalds for $2?

One tactic that one of my friends uses is to pre-pack many of her lunches for the week. She makes her first three or four lunches for the week at home on Sunday and puts some effort into them, coming up with meals that often have overlapping basic ingredients but are good enough to go beyond what you might call “simple fare” for lunch. Because of this, she’s able to reduce the time invested per meal significantly but still have meals that meet her lunch standards.

To put it simply, the idea that you can save money and time by preparing your lunch at home relies heavily on what your expectations for lunch are. If you are pleased with simple fare, you’ll probably find yourself getting more value and nutrition and convenience out of making your own meal. If you expect a gourmet meal, you’re probably better off going out for lunch.

Let’s make it simple. If you’re happy with leftovers or with a very simple lunch, brown-bagging it to work will probably save you dollars. It can also save you time, depending on specifics. A fast food value meal might compete on price, but at most workplaces it requires you to leave for a while. A sack lunch is much more convenient and flexible to your time needs during your work day.

On the other hand, if you expect a unique and carefully-prepared lunch, you’re probably better off eating out. The time investment in creating such a meal can be rather high, as can the financial investment. Obviously, eating out in this way can really be expensive and it can be a big time sink as well, but when eating with coworkers, some of that can be mitigated through workplace discussions and planning over lunch.

In short, it really comes down to what you expect from your lunch. The simpler you expect it to be, the more you can save by simply bringing your own.

Every once in a while, I’ll get an email from a reader that goes something like this…

This month, my annual insurance bill came due and I couldn’t make ends meet. I cleaned out my emergency fund. Then, at the end of the month, my car broke down. What’s the point of having an emergency fund? I’m in debt anyway.

The issue is this: an irregular bill that you know about ahead of time, such as your annual insurance bill, is not an emergency and shouldn’t tap out your emergency fund.

Emergencies are things that you did not know were coming, such as your car breaking down, a parent or a child or you getting sick, a tree falling on your house, and so on. An emergency fund is money you set aside for things you didn’t know were coming.

Irregular bills are expenses that you know are coming but may be a long way off, like an annual insurance bill or a tax bill. These aren’t emergencies, so you shouldn’t use your emergency fund for them.

Why shouldn’t you use your emergency fund for these things? The big reason is that when you drain your emergency fund for non-emergencies, you leave yourself exposed to actual emergencies. Anyone who has ever experienced Murphy’s Law knows exactly what I mean here. You tend to find yourself needing something just as soon as it’s not there.

How exactly do you handle irregular expenses, then? I use a handful of techniques.

First, I try to pay for irregular expenses out of my regular budget. My monthly budget is pretty flexible, with the excess mostly just being dumped into our savings for our dream home. If I can, I just pay for irregular expenses out of my checking account so I don’t have to worry about it.

Second, I actually save for such expenses. I have an Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of all of the irregular bills I cover and how often they occur. I total up how much these will cost me over the next year, divide it by twelve, and find myself with an amount that estimates how much I’ll need per month to pay for all of these irregular bills. On top of that amount, I usually add about 25% to help with bills that come up sooner rather than later.

I then set up an automatic savings plan with my bank to move this amount into my savings account automatically each month. I have a savings account specifically for such purposes. Then, when I need to pay an irregular bill, I just take money out of that account to pay for the bill without any real worries.

Yes, over time, that account builds up some excess money. That’s fine. It helps me in the event that there are irregular bills that I’ve forgotten about.

So, let’s say I have an annual insurance bill that’s $1,200 a year, a semi-annual insurance bill that’s $450 every six months, and another bill that’s $200 every three months. That’s $1,200 plus $900 plus $800 per year, a total of $2,900. I divide that by twelve, giving me a monthly amount of $241.67. I add on an extra 25%, which gives me a total of $302.08 per month.

So, I just set up an automatic transfer of $300 per month into a savings account. When those big bills come in, I’ve got enough in that account to cover them.

I recalculate this every time a new bill pops up or a bill ceases to exist, so that I know how much I need to pay in the current situation. I then, of course, adjust my automatic transfer as well.

If I find myself in a situation where this plan doesn’t work, then I’ve got a real problem on my hands. Yes, I’ll pay the bill, but not being able to handle such a known bill means I need to spend some time re-evaluating my financial planning. Why did I miss this bill? How can I make sure I don’t miss it in the future?

To put it simply, it’s a bad financial move to not be able to handle an expected bill, particularly when it forces you to tap your emergency fund. Plan for it now so you’re not hurt by it later.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Keeping whole life insurance
2. Life choices and student loans
3. Adding spouse to property title
4. Should mom file for bankruptcy?
5. Student loan worries
6. Career balancing money and passions
7. Part-time or full-time schooling?
8. Emergency home repairs
9. Difficult restaurant situation
10. Moving to the United States

A few days ago, I met someone that I knew well about fifteen years ago. This person pretty much avoided talking about the present and spent almost all of our conversation talking about the state of our lives fifteen years ago.

There was perhaps a minute of mentioning what we were doing now (I don’t think I even got the chance to mention that I was married or had children) and no mention of what we were planning on for the future. Just the past.

This conversation troubled me a lot. Yes, maybe that other person’s life didn’t follow the path that (s)he hoped (yes, I’m trying to mention as little as possible about this person) and they didn’t want to mention the present or the future. I was still left with a sense that the person spent an awful lot of their time thinking about the past rather than about today or tomorrow.

It’s very hard to move forward in life if you’re not mentally looking forward. I try to always keep my mind on what I need to do today, where I’m going tomorrow, and what my plans are for the next few years. I don’t know where I would be if I spent my time thinking about my college years, but I doubt it would be a good place.

Think forward, not backward.

Q1: Keeping whole life insurance
I started reading your site a few months ago after a friend recommended it. I am now 30 years old. When I was 22 or 23 I signed up for whole life insurance through a friend at the time. It is about $1150/year for $100,000 in coverage. I am unmarried with no children. At the time the cost was prohibitive but I thought I understood that the cash would grow and could eventually pay for the yearly fees. The most recent statement I got gave a cash value of $4,676.28. I am not excited when the bill comes each year and it is hard to think that I have paid about $8,400 for a current cash value of about 60% of that. Should I get out of this now? Or stay in? If I got out would I be entitled to the full cash value? I should add that this is not a financial hardship to keep paying for this product. I am meeting all my financial goals – I have an emergency fund, I have a good mortgage rate and make extra payments on it, etc.
- Jennifer

What you’ve described is pretty much the nature of whole life insurance.

For one, you’re also getting the benefit of the $100,000 insurance policy out of your annual payment. I tend to look at whole life insurance as an investment package tied in with a term life insurance policy. Some portion of that $1,150 a year is going solely to insure you.

Now, as for the cash value of the policy, the early years of such a policy tend to be rather lean years. Most of the time, the agent gets his or her commission for selling the insurance out of the first few years of you paying into the insurance.

Generally, such policies become better the longer you’re in them. If someone is just starting out with a policy, I’d usually advise them to look at a term policy instead. However, if someone has already sunk several years into the policy, I’d probably encourage them to stick with it. This is, of course, a general rule of thumb that might change with the specifics of that particular policy.

Q2: Life choices and student loans
I will graduate with my Bachelor’s degree Spring of 2013. Throughout my undergraduate career so far, I have managed to avoid accumulating any kind of student debt. I’ve worked and will be able to pay tuition out of pocket for the rest of my undergrad career. However, I want to go to grad school out of state, which would mean paying nonresident tuition along with inevitably taking out loans. I currently still live with my parents because they don’t charge me rent, so food and shelter are free, but I am far from eager to stay here past age 22 (when I’ll graduate). Aside from the hope of finding some amazing scholarships/stipends, I’ll have to take out loans even if I do stay in state, but my question is, am I being stupid? My mom thinks I should just stay here until I’ve finished grad school, but as grateful as I am to my parents for helping me out, my distaste for taking out larger loans than necessary is outweighed by my distaste for living with my parents well into my 20s. Should I just suck it up and stay with the parentals (and in a state I do not want to live in forever,) so as to avoid the loans? I have absolutely no debt thus far in my life, so student loans would be the first, and while I do have a relatively well-paying job for a student, there’s no way it can pay for grad school and living expenses.
- Amanda

The flat-out truth is that you’re going to have to pay for your food and shelter if you move out of your parents home. If you can’t afford to do that out of pocket, that’s going to either mean bigger loans or a part-time job outside of your classwork – and probably both.

Bigger loans are something you’re going to completely regret when you’re done with schooling and ready to pay them back. I can’t say for certain that you’ll regret it worse than living with your parents, but looking back from my perspective, I can certainly say if my options were to live with my parents with free room and board while in college or to have tens of thousands of dollars in additional student loans, I’d far rather have lived with my mother and father.

Some of that may come from maturity, though. I’ve been on my own for long enough that I no longer question my independence from my parents, nor have I for years. It sounds like you’re still in that phase of life where you seek independence from them, which can be a pretty powerful motivator.

I can’t make the call for you. All I can say is that looking back from my early thirties, I would far rather have lived with my parents for a while than have extra student loans.

Q3: Adding spouse to property title
I purchased a home in June 2006 and have been living in it since then. I got married in May 2010, and my husband moved into the house with me. I had my name changed on the mortgage to reflect my new last name. I didn’t add my husband to the mortgage or deed, solely because there was a $200 processing fee for my bank to add him to the mortgage and if the fee was just for the sake of adding him it didn’t seem like something we needed to do. Is there any reason that I would need to add him? We obviously do not plan to divorce but I live in Louisiana, a community property state, so I think he would basically be considered part-owner for all intents and purposes. We have joint acocunts and therefore jointly pay the mortgage.
- Elizabeth

My understanding is that in a community property state, all property owned by either one of you would be split fairly evenly in a divorce and any mortgage would probably have to be refinanced as well to include both of you.

Given that, the biggest impact that adding him to the mortgage and particularly to the home title is that it may affect your insurance rate in a positive fashion, depending on your husband’s credit.

In other words, if your husband has better credit than you do, then I would add him to the mortgage and title. Otherwise, in a community property state, I see no significant reason to take action.

Q4: Should mom file for bankruptcy?
My mother had a serious infection in her knee joint in July 2010 (she had just turned 65 and enrolled in Social Security and Medicare Part A), and after she spent several months in a rehab facility, I realized she could no longer live on her own, so I packed up the things in her house and moved her from her home in Virginia to our home in New Mexico (I have a husband and two children in the home as well). She has serious health issues and is no longer able to work. She receives $895 per month (take home) in social security and $1,000 in long-term disability (currently on hold for medical re-authorization but expected to continue through January 2013). She is on Medicare Part B (which comes out of her social security check) a Medicare Complete Advantage plan (which is free). She is on a LOT of medication and will likely hit the prescription donut hole in August. She also has co-pays (fairly low) for numerous doctor visits as we get her health stabilized. We purchase all food, household supplies, etc., for her as part of our normal grocery shopping.

She has significant debt, and we are trying to figure out a good strategy for dealing with it. The total amount of debt is $69,500, with monthly minimum payments of just under $1,000. The majority of what she owes is a home equity loan (unsure about the interest rate) for $43,000. We are in the process of getting everything we packed up cleared out of the house, and we have been advised by realtors that our best option is to sell the house at auction (because of a problem with the septic system, it’s unlikely to pass inspection). We might get about $50,000 for it (maybe more, you never know!). She has a very old car that is currently being stored at a friend’s house in Virginia. We were thinking about giving it to another friend of hers who could use the car but can’t afford to pay for it.

We doubt the house would sell for enough to pay off all her debts. She clearly can’t afford to pay off the debts on her own. Because mom can stay with us, and she shouldn’t need to secure credit in the future, we are wondering if bankruptcy is a good option for her. We as a family could certainly pay off her debts over time, but that would have obvious negative consequences for our own finances. Is filing for bankruptcy a good idea? If we do this, do we need to handle the sale of her house or car in any particular way (e.g., do we need to “buy” the car from mom and then give it to her friend?)? Are there considerations we need to be aware of?
- Sheila

Given the details you’ve shared here, it sounds like bankruptcy is the best option for your mother. There may be other factors not mentioned, of course.

Before you go making any moves prior to bankruptcy such as selling a car or anything, I would contact a bankruptcy lawyer who can help you determine which steps are legal and which ones are not. There are some items you’re allowed to keep in bankruptcy and there are some maneuvers that can get you into trouble with bankruptcy, depending on the specific state.

This story is an example of the deep challenges that health care presents in the United States.

Q5: Student loan worries
Starting this September, I am leaving my job to return to grad school full time for 2 years to change careers and follow my passion. The program is demanding and time intensive, so we have been told we cannot hold outside jobs. I will be making very little money as a grad assistant (and most goes straight to tuition). We can live off my husband’s salary and have worked out a budget. The budget includes a small amount of savings transfers for travel to see family and other anticipated save-to-spend items, but it will leave almost no surplus after that.

We have an 18k (6 month) emergency fund in a money market. We have about $64k in retirement accounts (401k/Roth IRA), split equally between the 2 of us. We are 28 years old. We are both contributing 6% (plus small company match) to our own 401ks, but I plan to stop contributions when I return to school.

We have $50k saved for a house down payment ($40k in mutual funds, $10k in money market). We are thinking about starting a family and buying a house in 3-6 years. I think we will need a big down payment because houses in the area we live (DC) are typically around $500k.

My husband has no student loans, but I have $26k, and I will be taking on another $40k for grad school over the next 2 years. (11k at 6.8% fixed unsubsidized; 7k at 5% fixed subsidized; 8k at 1.87% variable mostly subidized. Not sure of rate on the new $40k, but I imagine 6.8% fixed unsubsidized.) Although my loans are deferred while I’m in school, I am planning to pay off the interest on the unsubsidized loans as it accrues because paying interest on interest drives me crazy.

We have no other debt. We each own a car.

Questions for you:
1. Should we use the $50k that we had designated for a house to continue saving for a down payment, or would it make more sense to pay down the student loans?

2. When I am in school and not earning a salary, we plan to keep my husband’s 401k contributions at 6% (to take advantage of a company match), but not to contribute anything to my retirement accounts. Is this a mistake? Will missing 2 years of retirement contributions in my late 20’s set me too far back? Would payment I’m planning to make on student loan interest (around $65/month) be better spent on retirement contributions?
- Shannon

If I were you, I’d use that down payment savings to get rid of the higher interest student loan debts. I wouldn’t worry about the one that’s at 1.87% too much, but the others aren’t worth keeping. I’d channel most of the rest to paying for your upcoming studies.

As for delaying retirement contributions, I don’t think that’s a concern. You’re already ahead of the curve with the amount you have saved and contributing while you’re in school just means additional financial challenges that you don’t really need.

I think your plan is solid.

Q6: Career balancing money and passions
Growing up, a lot of pressure was put on me to acquire a practical degree in a field with solid career potential. My desires to become an educator were often belittled. So, I got my BS in Manufacturing Engineering… and while I had some sucess in related jobs, it’s been mostly miserable for me and at this point I have been laid off twice. I have no heart felt desire to go back, but the money was nice. Currently, I work as a Math Educator and absolutly love it. Even with long days and late nights of bring work at home – I can honestly say I feel at home in my field of work. I feel lucky to have the opportunities I do despite my lack of education specific degree however there has been a drop in pay.

In other news, I purchased a large home while engaged to my then (soon to be) job-holding husband. The relationship since disolved, and I’ve been left with a mortgage I can’t afford on a education job. I’m applying for hardship assitance, but if it doesn’t work out… I won’t be able to make ends meet (and I will have to lose the house -ie foreclose). It should be said that I don’t take foreclosure lightly and the shame and sadness of losing my home are hard to deal with emotionally…. but I think I would still rather that then try to force myself into engineering again (despite the fact that the income would be substantial enough).

For what it’s worth I have already tried the sell the home legitimately and that is a no go in this economy. Also, if someone wants to suggest that I could be living leaner – I should probably state that my net income is actually slightly less than my mortgage, taxes and home association and that I rent out rooms to eke by.

I guess I am in an ethical quandry. Does the bank lose out or should I?
- LeAnn

Honestly, I see both sides of the equation.

On one side, it’s simply dishonest to borrow money from someone and then choose not to repay it because repaying it became inconvenient.

On the other hand, the money you borrowed was collateralized with your house and the bank assumed some degree of failure to repay.

If you feel as though your only options are to walk away or declare bankruptcy (both of which are devastating to your credit), I would probably walk away, but only after making sure that I had housing lined up when I did walk away.

Q7: Part-time or full-time schooling?
In college, I majored in financial economics and graduated in 2009. I was unable to find a position in this field and ended up taking a full-time position in a field completely unrelated to my major. I don’t mind the work but I’m very overqualified, the opportunity for advancement is very limited, the pay is low (with regard to other companies in this industry) and the work is fairly repetitive and mundane. I really enjoyed the accounting classes I took in college, so I’ve decided to go back to school and take some extra accounting classes. My ultimate goal is to sit for and pass the exam for CPA certification and begin working at a mid-sized accounting firm. My question centers around how I should take the classes. I essentially have two options:

1. Continue working at my current position and go to school part-time in the evenings.

2. Move back home with my parents (they’ve already given me their full blessing in doing so) and attend school full-time.

Under the first option, I would pay with cash as I go but it would take me between five and six semesters to get the classes I need. Under the second option, I would have to take out a small student loan (~$6,000) to add to the cash I’ve saved to cover tuition and books but I would get the classes I need in two semesters. In addition, I’d be able to go to work in a better-paying field that I believe I would genuinely enjoy.

I’ve been seeking opinions from friends and family alike and the results seem to be fairly mixed. I’d greatly appreciate any opinions and/or advice you could provide.
- Matt

If I were you, I’d work for another half year to a year, bank every dime I could so that I didn’t have to take out loans for education, and go back to school for the fall semester next year full time while living with your parents.

This enables you to get the education debt free in less time than you would doing it part time.

I think that route puts you in the best long-term situation in terms of your money and career.

Q8: Emergency home repairs
We are recently debt free except for the house. We’d been in debt since we married 27 years ago, but 5.5 years ago we got on the TMMO (Total Money Makeover) and started working the plan hard against our $136K non-house debts. We have three years left to pay on our land and six years left on the mortgage. So it is exciting to see the whole snowball effect really working.

We started on Baby Step 3 in May, building our emergency fund. Right now we have ~$8K saved.

Where we live in Central Texas we are experiencing an extreme drought and that has caused the slab of our house to crack. The repairs are estimating to be $20K. It is not covered by insurance, not covered by the builder, only to be covered by my husband and me.

I desperately don’t want to go back into debt, but when a room of your house is shifting almost daily away from the rest of your house it’s not something that you can just wait and save up for by the end of next year. I’m not concerned about cosmetic fixes like the cracks in the drywall, but very concerned about the structural integrity of our home. What would you do?
- Andrea

If your house is falling apart, you need to take care of it as soon as possible.

This is the type of situation that a large emergency fund can really help with, but if you don’t have that, you need to get a loan to take care of the problem.

Fix the problem and make sure that it’s fixed in a way so that the problem won’t recur.

Q9: Difficult restaurant situation
How do you handle situations where you’re paying at a restaurant and the person you’re with doesn’t have the right amount of change and you end up paying. They agree to pay you back. You have to keep nagging them and still you don’t get money back. It’s one thing to turn down someone when they formally ask for a loan. Then your advice makes perfect sense. But what do you do in informal, last-minute situations where it’s just more socially accepted to handle the bill yourself? I’ve even had this happen at a grocery store with a friend, who after putting $100 of groceries in her cart, realized that she forgot her ATM card. I had to nag at her for a long time before getting it back. How could you say ‘no’ in these situations??
- Laurie

By saying “no”?

Simply state that you don’t have the money to cover their bill. If you’re in a situation where covering a dinner bill for a friend is going to cause you financial hardships (which seems to be the case), then you shouldn’t be covering for them.

On the other hand, if you can easily afford it, just blow it off and wait for an opportunity to reverse the situation. Have the other couple cover dinner sometime. Have your friend pick up a grocery tab for you next month.

I don’t like situations where I’m indebted to my friends or they’re indebted to me. I try to avoid them. If there’s a situation where they’re in a pinch, I will often just pick up the tab for them and forget about it, knowing that they’ll return that kind of favor someday.

If I don’t feel confident in that, what kind of friends are these people?

Q10: Moving to the United States
I am moving to the US (San Francisco) to take a new job in a few weeks. I need easily understandable (e.g. low in jargon) advice / information on issues like: leasing an apartment, health insurance, 401Ks, Roth IRAs, finding a cellphone plan, establishing a credit score (will they take into account my great credit in Australia?). THe information on the Simple Dollar is targeted towards people who already have a basic understanding of how things work in the USA. Can you direct me towards any external, easy to understand, online sources?

A related question: What insurances should I consider carrying (excluding health insurance and life insurance). Background: I will be renting an apartment, I have no kids, will have a car, reasonably substantial household assets, reasonably active habits. In Australia I would have renter’s insurance, auto insurance (third party, fire, theft, accidental damage), income protection insurance, long term disability insurance, and that’s about it. With the move, my key concern is public liability – what am I responsible for in terms of accidents that injure third parties and how should I insure against it?
- Erin

I would suggest reading a “personal finance 101″ book or website geared toward American audiences to answer many of your questions. One example of this is the Money 101 section at CNN Money.

As for insurance, you’ll have much the same set of insurance in the United States as you would in Australia, excepting income protection insurance. In the United States, this is usually handled by employers in the form of unemployment insurance that they cover, which pays you for a short period after a job loss.

As for public liability insurance, most Americans really don’t cover this outside of collision coverage on their automobiles. Such insurance is usually sold as “umbrella” insurance and is sold by many insurance companies, but usually only wealthy individuals carry such a policy.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Kim asked, “Today I made my own tomato sauce. I’ve thought about canning it but after I buy the jars will I really be saving any money?”

There are a lot of variables in Kim’s question.

First, are the tomatoes homegrown or did you buy them? If the tomatoes came from your garden, then the cost for those tomatoes is negligible. If you had to buy them (unless there was an exceptional sale), then the tomato cost alone would eat up all of the value of making your own sauce.

Tomatoes often cost around $2.99 per pound in our area during the summer – and more during the winter. Every pound of tomatoes yields roughly a third of a pint of tomato sauce. Thus, buying tomatoes at that price will cost you about $9 per pint in tomatoes.

You can easily find 15 ounce cans (just shy of a pint) of tomato sauce for $0.99. Even organic tomato sauces, like Muir Glen, can be found for about $1.50 per can. If you’re buying tomatoes for turning into sauce, you’d better be getting a huge deal on them.

So, without a doubt, you really must be getting the tomatoes from your own garden or from the garden of a friend to make saucemaking worthwhile. Don’t even consider it unless you’re getting tomatoes for pennies. From here on out, we’ll assume you have a free (or nearly free) source for your tomatoes.

You’ll probably also add some seasoning to your sauce in the form of things like olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh herbs from your garden. This will add a slight increase in cost, perhaps $0.02 per jar.

The second cost worth discussing is that of the jars. The initial cost investment in jars can be fairly high. You can easily find a twelve pack of jars with rings and lids for $16 – and perhaps for less if you shop around. You can also find a dozen regular mouth lids for $4.25.

You need the twelve pack of jars to start with, so your cost for the first batch is $16 – $1.33 per jar. Yes, your first batch of tomato sauce will be at a loss.

However, you can reuse jars many times. If you can annually, you’ll probably get an average of ten uses out of the jars. If you can other things in other seasons (like jam), you’ll get more uses than that.

Each subsequent canning will require only a batch of lids – approximately $0.35 per jar.

Thus, if you can tomato sauce ten times, you’ll produce 120 jars of sauce at a cost of $16 (for the initial jars, rings, and lids) plus $38.25 for additional rings (nine batches at $4.25 per batch). That’s $54.25 for ten batches (120 jars), or $0.45 per jar.

Your total cost, if you’re willing to commit to canning over this long period, is $56.65 for 120 jars of sauce. That’s the $54.25 for jars plus $0.02 per jar for additional seasonings beyond the tomatoes.

Onto that, you’ll want to add roughly $0.02 for tap water and about $0.80 in energy costs to boil the water you’d need for that many batches. The total cost, then, is $57.47 for 120 jars canned at home.

Buying 120 cans of tomato sauce at the store would cost you $118.80 (at $0.99 a pop). Thus, your savings for canning that many jars at home is $61.33.

Is that worth the time invested? You’re probably spending two active hours per batch of sauce (plus some inactive time, where things are boiling but you don’t have to be standing right there). That’s a total of twenty hours, meaning you’re saving money at an hourly rate of about $3 per hour.

You can make your own judgment call on that. However, I’d also note that homemade tomato sauce is tremendous as a food item. It makes your house smell delicious as you’re cooking it and the taste of it is far superior to that of canned sauce from the store.

There is another option, however. It’s one that we use. Freezing.

We buy quart freezer Ziploc bags from a warehouse club at about $0.29 per bag. We are able to reuse these a couple times, so our cost per batch gets down to about $0.10 per bag. The freezer cost is negligible, since we’ve got a large freezer with adequate space for the sauce. We simply put about a pint and a half into each bag (when it’s cooled to about room temperature), then seal it and pop it in the freezer. Our time invested here begins to approach a return equal to minimum wage.

In our experience, freezing is the least expensive way, but you need to use it fairly quickly (within three months) or else “freezer burn” becomes an issue. If you’re looking at more long-term storage, canning is a better option.

In either case, you can definitely save dollars by either freezing or canning tomato sauce – especially if you have the jars already in hand. You’re not going to be making a huge return on your money, but it’s definitely a solid return. Add on top of that the fact that homemade sauce is delicious and you probably have a bargain.

My oldest child starts kindergarten tomorrow. Our next child starts formal preschool tomorrow, too.

They were babies just a short time ago, but they’re now progressing into the world, moving into their own independence. Frankly, it’s awesome.

How We Didn’t Save Money with Our Babies The real story is that breastfeeding doesn’t work for everyone, even though it is a strong money-saving (and healthy) tactic. (@ minting nickels)

How to Donate a Car I donated the first car I ever owned. Well, actually, I gave it to my uncle for spare parts as he ran a junkyard. (@ bargaineering)

Why Tracking Your Net Worth Is So Overrated The real issue is why you are tracking your net worth. What’s the purpose of it? What does it gain you? For me, it’s simply a reminder that I’m spending less than I earn every interval. (@ len penzo)

How to Make Cleaning a Habit: 10 Tips I like that the principles here don’t just apply to cleaning. They apply to any positive habit one might want to build. (@ pick the brain)

Exercises for the Terminally Busy For my birthday, I received a copy of You Are Your Own Gym, which focuses on the same idea of using just your own body (and the weight of it) as complete body exercise equipment. This makes it very easy to work out pretty much wherever you are. A similar idea can be seen in this video of Mike Rowe doing “burpees.” (@ zen habits)

My five year old son is saving diligently to own a Nintendo DS Lite video game system. One of his cousins gave him a baggie with several games that would be playable on that system and he’s longing to play them, so he’s been saving.

That system, new, costs $100. We can find reliable used ones with a warranty for $60 (sometimes) or $70 (most of the time).

His allowance – at least, the portion he’s able to use to save for such a purpose – is $2 a week.

Here’s the amazing part. He’s already hit the $35 mark and he’s quietly putting his $2 a week away into a bag for that purchase. That’s several months of not buying anything else with his allowance, with several months yet to go.

A five year old is so focused on a savings goal that he hasn’t spent a dime of his allowance on candy or inexpensive toys in several months.

(At the same time, incidentally, his younger sister, only three, isn’t spending her tiny allowance either, though she doesn’t have an explicit goal. She has about $20 saved up for some future splurge.)

Something’s going right here.

This Sunday (since Sundays are allowance days), we had a conversation about this as allowance money was being handed out. My five year old was putting his money away into his savings pouch when I asked him how he felt the savings was going.

“It’s taking a long time,” he said.

“Have you ever thought about spending it on something else?” I asked him.

He mentioned a few things that he thought about spending his money on.

“But why haven’t you?”

“Because if I buy that stuff then I will never get my DS.”

That’s the heart of saving, right there. If you buy the inexpensive stuff now, you’ll never put the pieces together to get the big thing.

“You know, Mom and I are doing the exact same thing you are. We are saving for a new house.”

He looked at me with big eyes. “Do you guys get an allowance?”

“No, Mom has her job and I have my writing business. We both get paid every so often. We take some money out of that pay and use it to save for the house we want to build. So, what you’re doing with your allowance is pretty much the same as what Mom and Dad do with the money they make at work.”

He sat there for a little bit, then asked me a great question. “Can I do some work to make some more money?”

At this point, I’m trying to devise some tasks that my five year old can pull off that’s useful to the household in some way. I can think of a lot of things that he’s just on the cusp of being able to do (washing towels, loading the dishwasher, etc.) but he still makes little mistakes at them.

Still, the lesson is there. My five year old son understands the connections between earning money, saving, and the big things in life better than many adults that I know.

How did we reach that point? Money is never a taboo topic at our house. The benefits of saving and financial responsibility are a constant topic at our kitchen table, and we as parents try as hard as we can to show good financial responsibility to the children through our own actions.

We also make an open point of every good financial practice we can think of. When I get a new item, it’s usually via a trade or through money I’ve saved. When I read a new book, it’s usually from the library or a used copy I got from somewhere or from the “free” Kindle book selections. We spend time engaged in hobbies that are low cost, like reading or playing those used board games with our friends. We make meals at home. When we have something expensive that we want, we save for it. We plan many of our shopping trips around sales and coupons. None of these factors are hidden in any way from our children. In fact, we talk about it with them quite often.

Our children seem to be absorbing these things and we couldn’t be happier about it.

During the month of May and the first half of June, I kept a time diary. Several times throughout the day (as often as possible, in fact), I recorded how I had spent my time in as much detail as possible, without judgment, and saved all of these notes.

After allowing a couple months to pass, I sat down with all of these notes in August to try to piece together how exactly I spend my time, how I was wasting it, and how I could use it better.

I found this to be a really useful experience, so I decided to share it with you.

What’s a time diary?
Simply put, it’s a document where you record what you’re doing throughout the day in as much detail as is reasonably possible. So, for example, I might write:

6:45 AM – Woken up by my daughter and struggle out of bed
6:50 AM – Make breakfast for the family
7:10 AM – Eat breakfast
7:25 AM – Get together clothes for everyone
7:30 AM – Everyone gets dressed
7:45 AM – Take children to preschool
8:10 AM – Check email
…

You get the idea. The more detail you can add, the more useful this will all be.

What’s the use of a time diary?
When you are just entering the data into the diary, it doesn’t really serve any use at all. It’s just a recording mechanism.

Instead, a time diary comes in handy later on, when you have a month or two of data to look at and analyze. With this level of information, you can pore over the data carefully and often find some very interesting things about how you use your time and what you could do to use it more effectively.

Five useful things I got out of my time diary
The easiest way to demonstrate how a time diary is useful is to jump straight to the conclusions. Here are five things (out of a much larger set) that I’ve concluded from my time diary.

I would initially get a “hunch” about these things while reading the entries, then I’d find some way to extract that information to see if the “hunch” was right. Often, it was.

I used the May and June 2011 pages on a wall calendar with large spaces for the checkmarks and numbers I mention below. This let me easily compare days.

1. A poor night of sleep doesn’t affect me until two days later. Let’s say that I don’t get much sleep between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. I’ll usually be just fine on Wednesday, but I find that on Thursday I’ll waste a bunch of time and be much less productive than usual. I suspect that on Wednesday, I’m running on some sort of reserve, and my sleep on Wednesday recharges that reserve but doesn’t recharge me all that much.

I found this fact by taking the calendar, checking each night that I got less than seven hours of sleep with a red marker, and writing the number of obviously unproductive hours on each day with a black marker. The source of the information, of course, was my time diary.

I can change my behavior because of this by accounting for lethargy on those days. If I get a poor night of sleep, I’ll try to be extra productive on that following day because I know that the day after that will be a poor one. I’ll save mindless tasks for those days.

2. The more I interact with my children, the bigger the productivity boost is the following day. If I have a day where I spend a ton of time just with my children, the next day is usually a productive one. I’m not sure why, actually. However, I’ll say that yesterday, we took the children to the grocery store, watched a movie with them, rode our bicycles to a park, played there for a while, and rode home, and today I feel really productive.

I found this fact by counting the number of hours spent each day with my children, then comparing that to unproductive hours the following day.

I can change my behavior because of this by keeping my commitment to spend focused time with my children each day. Not only is this interaction good for both of us in that moment, it apparently also bumps up my productivity down the road. In fact, it pushes me even more toward scheduling “special days” where we do things like go to the Science Center of Iowa together.

3. Time spent reading usually increases my productivity for the next two or three days. One thing I measured is how many articles I completed per day. I found that if I spent two hours or more on a given day reading, the following day would see production of about one more article than average and the day after that would see a bump of about half an article more than average. I think the connection is that reading helps me with my ability to come up with phrases for the ideas floating around in my head.

I found this fact by simply noting the time spent each day reading and the number of articles produced each day. I averaged the number of articles I am able to write in a “working day” and then would compare that to the number of articles on each day, writing a + or – figure in the square as well.

I can change my behavior because of this by minimizing the little amount of television I currently watch and replacing it with a good book.

4. The longer the gaps between time spent cleaning my office, the lower my productivity. If I stop and clean my office once every week or two, I tend to be more productive than if I just let it go for a while.

I found this fact by using the calendar, recording the number of unproductive hours each day, and marking the days I cleaned my office with a pink highlighter. I found that the farther from an office cleaning I was, the less productive I was each day. It was a small impact, but a real one.

I can change my behavior because of this by cleaning my office more regularly. I’ve started setting aside time on Friday afternoons solely for the purpose of cleaning things up and making little changes, like installing a wall-mounted bookshelf for some of my most frequently accessed books.

5. My optimum amount of sleep is about eight hours, and it’s best if I wake up on my own and am not awakened by someone or something else. If I sleep much less than that, it tends to move into the “poor night of sleep” category and affects me down the road. If I’m awakened by an alarm clock (on occasion) or a child (much more frequently), it definitely has an impact on my day.

I found this fact by again using the calendar, checking the nights where my sleep was interrupted with a green marker, and writing my unproductive time on each date with a black marker. It works well with the first fact I discovered.

I can change my behavior because of this by going to sleep a little earlier. If I go to sleep earlier, I tend to rise with my children or even before them and I rarely need an alarm clock. This creates more naturally productive days.

Simply put, the entire purpose of a time diary is to figure out simple things you can change that make a big impact on your day-to-day life. I learned how much of an impact spending a couple hours cleaning my office can really have. I learned how direct the positive impact of reading is on my life. I learned that going to bed around ten during the school week is probably optimal.

These little things make a huge difference in my weekly productivity. They seem like small tweaks, but the impact of these tweaks is felt during every hour of every day in the form of increased energy and alertness and mental productivity. This adds up to more income and more life enjoyment as well.

Those types of discoveries are well worth the time that such a task takes up. It really can change your life in a positive way.