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.

Shelley said, “My husband insists on unplugging the microwave. Obviously this saves money but I feel like we are talking about pennies.”

When you’re discussing unplugging a device like a microwave (or a television or a VCR or other such items), you’re trying to avoid the device’s use of standby power. Standby power is a small but constant use of energy that does impact your electrical use for the month.

What’s standby power? Standby power is what powers the clock on your VCR or microwave or the “not currently in use” lights on your television or computer monitor. Those things stay on when you’re not using the device and thus require a tiny amount of power (compared to normal use of the item) all the time.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has a very nice table showing the standby power usage of a lot of different types of devices. They vary widely.

Now, if you’ve looked up the usage of a device and want to know what it’s costing you, you’ll need the number from the first column in that table – the average consumption in watts.

In the case of a microwave in standby mode with the door closed, that’s 3.08 watts. 3.08 watts is the same as 0.00308 kilowatts.

Electric companies charge customers in the form of kilowatt-hours, which basically means if you use a device that consumes a kilowatt of energy for an hour, you’re charged whatever their kilowatt-hour energy rate is. The nationwide average hovers around $0.11 per kilowatt hour.

So, how much is Shelley’s microwave costing her per month to sit there plugged in in standby mode?

There are 24 hours in a day and 30 days in an average month, giving us 720 hours. Multiply that by the 0.00308 kilowatts her microwave is using and you get 2.22 kilowatt-hours per month. At a rate of $0.11 per kilowatt hour, the microwave is eating about $0.24 per month sitting there on standby mode.

This brings us bach to Shelley’s question about plugging and unplugging the microwave. In my opinion, if you’re a heavy microwave user, plugging and unplugging the device every day probably isn’t worth the quarter per month. In our home, the plugin for the microwave is actually behind a large shelf of cookbooks, meaning it would be a hassle to plug in and unplug the microwave. I certainly wouldn’t do that a few times a week to save a quarter per month.

If you rarely use the microwave – say, once a month or so – the quarter might very well be worth it. This is also true if the plugin area is really convenient for you or if it’s hooked to a switch so all you have to do is flick a convenient switch with your finger.

For me, though, the only time I might consider unplugging the microwave is if I were traveling for several days. In fact, I did unplug our microwave prior to our recent trip to Seattle, which saved us about ten cents or so.

Unplugging the microwave to save money on the standby energy use saves pennies, not dollars, and is probably not worth the additional effort unless the plug-in is very convenient.

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. Recovering from abysmal credit
2. Handling debt collection
3. Preparing for a layoff
4. Starting with web design
5. Repaying loans now or later
6. Deciding whether to become contractor
7. Getting started with GTD
8. Paying off a mortgage quickly
9. Severing your credit from someone
10. Why mention prayer?

One interesting situation I now find myself in is that authors now come to me and ask me to put blurbs on their book covers. “Will you send me a nice quote to put on my book?”

Some authors just put a blurb on everything. Some of them blurb nothing at all. Others just blurb for their friends.

I’ve made the (perhaps) mistake of asking people to send me a copy of their manuscript so that I can read it. The end result is that I have a big pile of soon-to-be-published personal finance book manuscripts sitting on my desk.

I’ve been trying to read them and write reviews of them that I can hold onto until they’re released, but that basically means that I’m reading and reviewing two personal finance books a week (for the time being). That’s a lot of reading!

Q1: Recovering from abysmal credit
What do you do if you have horrible, abysmal credit? I am rejected for any credit card I apply for (even the Orchard Bank ones, that everyone can get). I racked up about 10k in CC debt about 5 years ago and defaulted on my student loan…. I have since fully paid off the CC debt and my student loan is back on track but I just feel like I will never be able to establish credit. I just got a new job and will be eligible for their 401k in a year but I’d love to find a credit card and slowly start to establish credit. I am 28 years old and single with no debt except about 4k in student loans. All I have is my bank credit/debit card and I am trying to get back on track. Please advise.
- Melinda

The easiest first step to take in this situation is to head down to your local credit union and discuss options with them. Some credit unions will offer you a small collateralized loan at a reasonable interest rate to help members re-establish credit.

If that’s not an option, you can take out a secured credit card. A secured card is one where you essentially pay a deposit when opening the card and that deposit is equal to your credit limit. You then make payments as normal and receive the deposit back if you close the card, but you lose the deposit if you fail to make payments. This, again, will help you build positive credit.

Another option is to convince someone you’re close to, such as your parents, to add you to a credit card of theirs to help you raise your credit. You wouldn’t need to actually have a physical card at all or ever charge a single thing to that card. Having a line of credit on your credit report will certainly help, especially when that credit line is actually controlled by someone else that is reliably paying the debt.

Q2: Handling debt collection
I ran into credit card problems after being laid-off from my job about 5 years ago. I was paying the credit cards on time and monthly, but unfortunately, the credit cards companies ran credit report on me and decided that my debt was too high and increased my interest rates – some to 24%. After doing this, I could no longer afford the payments and my credit cards (there were four) ended up in charge-off status. The total debt is $55k.

The debt for 3 of cards was sold to debt collectors/law firms and I was subsequently brought to court and judgments were filed against me. The 4th card is with a debt collector but there hasn’t been a judgment filed.

Currently, I am gainfully employed and paying the judgments monthly. The 4th card has a total debt of 33k. I am saving up to approach this company with an offer of debt settlement.

Do I approach this company with an offer of say, 15k? And if they accept, what happens to my credit report? What can I do ensure that they remove the negative mark on my cc report (if I can at all)? Is this the best approach? (Debt Settlement)

Down the road when this is all paid off, I would like to buy a home. What can I do now to ensure that my past problems don’t make it impossible for me to purchase a home?

My goal is not to have this prior debt ruin my future and it seems that credit reports are being used more and more. Do you think that once it is paid off, it will go away? It is a huge burden in many ways.
- Kelly

Settling with these people is certainly an option here. Most likely, they’ll be happy to negotiate with you. I would suggest lowballing them for even less than you’re offering here, though.

If you do reach an agreement with them, your credit will be marked as having paid off the debt. However, that late debt will be brought up to the current date. That means that instead of having a black mark on your credit for two or three more years, you’ll have more of a gray mark (not nearly as bad) mark on your credit for the next seven years.

The less honest approach is to just never pay back the loan. It’ll fall off of your credit history in a few years and no longer impact your credit. It’s rather strange, but that’s how credit reports work.

Q3: Preparing for a layoff
I have just been told that layoffs for a large portion of the staff at our company may be coming by the end of the year. While I do not know for sure if this will affect me, I would like to assume it will and be prepared for it. I have no idea if there will be a severance package or if I’ll need to apply for unemployment and I would expect it might take me 3-6 months to find a similar job.

I currently have about $6,000 of credit card debt, a mortgage (which is about the same per month as I’d pay in rent around here), a small car payment and a few student loans. In addition, I have about $5,000 saved in an emergency fund (which equals about 2-3 months of living expenses). Up until now, I have been aggressively paying off my credit cards at a rate of about $1,000 per month, so I expect to have them paid in 7-8 months. However, with the possibility of a layoff looming, should I continue this path or should I pay the minimums and save the cash for when I might be unemployed?
- Angie

If I were you and I knew a job los was looming without a replacement job lined up, I would immediately go to minimum payments and start adding every dime I could to an emergency fund. It’s impossible to tell how long your jobless period will last, but you should be prepared for the worst.

If everything goes well and you quickly get a job, don’t hesitate to make a big payment on your debts out of your savings. You won’t have lost much money in the process.

On the other hand, if things don’t go well, you’re going to be incredibly glad to have that money in the bank.

Q4: Starting with web design
I am a long time reader of your blog and truly admire your commitment. I am not a technical person but I would like to learn the basics of web design and have my own web site. I have some ideas to monetize my site and yet I do not want to be dependent on a web designer at least at the early phases of my hobby/side business.

What would you recommend? There are lots of books about this at Amazon but, I cannot decide where to start.
- Canan

Since I don’t really have a grasp of your level of computer skill nor the type of project you have in mind, my honest suggestion would be for you to head down to your local library and start perusing the computer book section. Look for books that speak to your specific need and level and check out a few of those.

Another path might be to learn a software package that does this all for you. The best software package I’ve found for such things is Adobe Dreamweaver.

Better yet, do both. Knowing how to use Dreamweaver coupled with some raw HTML skills can be a valuable mix, both for your own goals and for contributing to other projects.

Q5: Repaying loans now or later
I am a full-time college student, about to start my Junior year in August. During the past two years, to finance my education, I have taken out $20,000 in student loans at 6.8% interest. I never planned to borrow so much, but poor decisions on my part and unforeseen circumstances lead me to where I am. However, inspired by your blog and similar blogs, I’ve already made drastic changes. I am transferring schools in August to save money, and my tuition and other educational expenses will be completely covered by a scholarship and grant. Further, while I’ve always had a part time job during school, I’m working full time this summer, learning to budget, and contributing to an IRA. It feels great to finally understand finances and get back on my feet!

At this point, I want to start paying off my loans – I have started reading Dave Ramsey’s book Total Money Makeover, and I just finished building my “beginner” emergency fund. Now that I’m moving onto Step 2 – Debt Snowball, I’m not sure if I should continue. My dilemma? I plan on attending law school in two years when I graduate, and there’s a very good chance I will have to take out more loans to attend. I would like to start saving money for law school now, but that means not paying off my current debt at this time. I have some flexibility in my decision: about half of my current loans don’t start incurring interest until after I am completely done with my education. I certainly don’t have the money to both save for law school AND do the debt snowball; I make less than 10 dollars an hour.

So, would you recommend I forget about paying back my loans for now, save for law school, and worry about the loans after I graduate? Or, should I stay on Dave’s plan, pay off all my debts, and maybe even forget about law school until I can actually afford it without loans(maybe 5 to 10 years from now)? Is there a compromise?
- Melissa

There are a lot of factors involved in this decision that you didn’t mention. Is the degree you’re working on now going to be able to employ you on its own without the law degree? Are you going to be able to get into a good law school (in other words, is this plan realistic with your current grades and academic progress)? What is the broader financial picture of your family like? And do you want to go to law school, or is this something you’ve convinced yourself (or others have convinced you) that you should do?

I can’t answer these questions for you. However, I will say this. If you’re sure that law school is the path you want to follow, I would plan on doing it right after graduating and I would start saving for law school immediately. If you leave school for a while, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to return and the return on investment of a higher education degree will grow smaller each year you’re out of school.

Sit down and think about what you want, first and foremost.

Q6: Deciding whether to become contractor
I am 27 years old in a pretty decent financial situation (0 debt and over 6 months of expenses in savings), single and in good health. I’ve received an offer to become a long term contractor doing similar work as I do now. The pay would be about double my current hourly rate but there would cuts to benefit options by becoming independent (I would be paid/managed by a professional services agency instead of workplace). What things do I need to be thinking about when making my decision about the job?
- Charlie

How good is your resume? Do you have a skill set that will make it easy for you to find work elsewhere if the situation changes? Are you actively building your skills?

What exactly does the long term contract look like? What are the “outs” for you and for the company? How long is the term of that contract? Are you eligible to continue your current health care plan for a while under COBRA?

I would be asking myself and all parties involved those questions. I would only make this leap if you were really in the driver’s seat when it comes to your career. If you’re really a top performer, you’ll make more as a contractor. If you’re not, contracting will be a painful experience over the long term.

Q7: Getting started with GTD
I read through your GTD series and I have two quick questions.

How do you deal with daily items. You used an example of making pizza or cooking dinner. If you cook every day, or close to it, do you really have next actions on your lists for cooking dinner? For instance, I would like to incorporate this into my life with my wife. Much of her day is composed of daily routine. Doing laundry, daily house cleaning (not a deep cleaning or something you would plan that I can see as an actionable item), picking and dropping kids off at school or friends, etc.. Basically my question is, what is your demarcation line between things that make the list and things that don’t need to be written down.

I also work from home and over the years I’ve done a pretty good job at adjusting to the presto change quick change required sometimes to transform from project leader in crises to daddy pick me up in the space of 30 seconds. Yet, it’s vital for me to create separation between home and work, separate time, work space, etc.. Do you keep separate action lists for home and work? Separate systems? Or do you find it easier to lump it all in?
- Larry

I don’t put things that are normal parts of my daily routine into my inbox. Instead, for them, I have a daily checklist that I just move through. If I really want to establish a new routine, I add it to my daily checklist. My “inbox” is for irregular activities and ideas.

Some people will undoubtedly be governed more by a checklist and less by an “inbox.” It really depends on how routine-oriented your days typically are.

As for your other question, I don’t keep a separate system for home and for work. I found that there were too many things that made sense to combine to keep them separate. For example, if I’m driving to the next town for a meeting and research, it’s worthwhile to know that I also need to stop at the grocery store or to pick up a baseball glove or something like that on the same trip. I chose to work at home to take advantage of these synergies.

Q8: Paying off a mortgage quickly
First some background on our financial situation. We have: no debt, 3 months of living expenses in an emergency account (we would like to get to 6 months), $13,000 in my Roth IRA, $5,000 per year in my company retirement plan (tax-deferred), $8,000 in my wife’s IRA, and she fully contributes to company match ~$1,500 per year (tax-deferred). We also have a HSA with $300 and $500 monthly surplus after all our bills. We also have general savings of $15,000 and good credit (760).

Now for our potential home purchase info. We have chosen an upper limit of $75,000 because we are in a position with a down payment, home prices, and interest rates, that we could pay off a place in 5 years or less (which I consider “non-traditional”). Because this isn’t the norm, and our first home purchase, I am interested to hear your thoughts. Below is a potential home in our area which meets our criteria:

Potential monthly costs ($65k list price condo/townhouse)
$945 – mortgage ($50k mortgage after $15k down payment, 5 years at 5% interest)
$120 – HOA (water, trash, exterior maintenance, roof, plumbing, a/c, etc.)
$75 – electricity
$30 – homeowner’s insurance
~$1,170 total

Since we are a younger couple, paying this off in 5 years and reducing our housing costs (and our only real financial obligations) to $225 per month for HOA, utilities, and insurance would really improve our financial flexibility for the long-term. We could save substantial amounts of our salaries, go to one salary (if we have kids), or even rent it out. It almost seems too good to be true. The one downside I see in aggressively paying off the mortgage is it would reduce our ability to save for retirement during our potentially most important investing years for compounding interest. On the other hand though, eventually eliminating our single largest monthly expense is pretty big too.

Again, since this is a non-traditional mortgage length and I have to wonder, are we crazy? Am I missing something in this situation? Is it too good to be true?
- Justin

Even if you can pay it off in five years, I would not get a 5/1 adjustable rate mortgage. If you were to slip in your plans, the interest rate adjustment would be a big fistful of sand in the oil of your progress.

Instead, I would get a fifteen year fixed rate mortgage and make extra payments as often as possible. You’ll still get a stellar rate right now with some breathing room in the event of something changing in your life. Aside from that, your plan sounds good.

Many people plan their lives as though nothing can ever go wrong and then find themselves in a real pickle when things do go wrong. Don’t put yourself in that situation needlessly. Another fraction of a percent in interest is worth it to keep yourself out of a mortgage rate adjustment when you don’t need it.

Q9: Severing your credit from someone
I am recently divorced and have looked at my credit reports on the big three. Found that I have not been divorced financially from ex in their systems. Oh, I have good credit, and all, but I am also listed as residing at his address on one; am paying well and on time at the jewelry store for her engagement ring; etc. When I contacted the credit bureaus, one wrote that I had to send a copy of my divorce decree for them to sever my credit report from his. That’s a problem as every governmental agency that I’ve contacted to get my name back wants an original (63 pages at $1.00 per page – plus raised seal). At least one of the bureaus hasn’t updated my/our information for years. My question: Is it worth the hassle to work with the bureaus to get my credit severed from his or do I wait until it is done, more or less automatically? So far, he seems to be doing okay with his credit.
- Frances

Having your credit tied together is a risk for both of you. If you damage your credit, it will damage his and vice versa. The question really is how big that risk is?

If I were you, I’d probably change every piece of information I could for free, then allow the others to slowly drift away. You should both start switching to lines of credit that are free from the other person, ceasing use of the old lines of credit, and eventually closing them.

This will take time, of course, and you’re both risking that the other person won’t do something damaging to their credit. If that is a concern for you, then you should probably send copies of your divorce decree to every place necessary with regards to your credit.

Q10: Why mention prayer?
Whenever you mention meditating, you also mention prayer (and vice versa, I guess). Why?
- Kevin

If you ignore the spiritual realm entirely, meditation and prayer serve pretty much the same function. They give us a few moments to put our mind at ease and escape the flood of information and thoughts that burden us in our daily lives.

For those who are religious, prayer does also offer an avenue of communication with one’s god. The value of that depends a lot on the value that person puts into their faith. However, the solace that meditation provides is still available to those who are not religious.

Simply put, I mention them together because they can provide benefit to everyone, regardless of religious belief.

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.

Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance or other book of interest. Also available is a complete list of the hundreds of book reviews that have appeared on The Simple Dollar over the years.

Karen McCall has a fairly interesting premise with this book. From her perspective, anyone who is in a challenging money situation is more or less in the same boat. If you’re struggling with debt, struggling with inheritance issues, or struggling with simply being able to save money, you’re more or less in the same boat.

It’s an interesting take, since the financial tools that you would use to solve these situations are often quite different from one another. McCall’s perspective is that the real challenge all of these situations throw at you come from instability and dissatisfaction with one’s situation and that there are constant principles that turn instability into stability and dissatisfaction into satisfaction.

Understanding Your Relationship with Money
McCall’s argument is that most of the financial problems that people face don’t come down to not having enough money. Instead, they come down to a poor relationship with money. Our expectations are often unrealistic, for one, and we often don’t have a strong grasp on where our money goes and what our best financial steps are. The key to solving all of this is self-evaluation. You’ve got to sit down and spend some time looking deeply at the financial choices you’re making, from top to bottom. Every dollar you spend. Every dollar you make. Why are you making these choices?

Deja Vu All Over Again
If you do this kind of self-analysis with sincerity and with regularity, you’ll begin to see that you often repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again. When you find these, you will have discovered the key things that you need to clamp down on. These will often be spending leaks, but they might be other things, too, such as a bad habit of forgetting to pay bills on time. It is these leaks that cause people to feel as though they’ll never get ahead financially.

Healing the Wounds of Shame and Deprivation
Such mistakes can make people feel ashamed of themselves, but the truth is that almost everyone has a mistake or two that they make behind closed doors. The key, as with any serious life mistake, is to look forward and commit to making the situation better. Nothing heals the mistakes of the past like positive moves in the present and future.

Getting on Track
That revelation, of course, brings us to the next chapter, which focuses on the very process of getting on track. The advice at this point begins to move more into the traditional personal finance areas. The first step that McCall advocates is simply tracking all of your spending. Whenever you spend a dime, write it down. This alone will help you get a better grasp on where your money goes.

Creating Your Personal Spending and Income Plan
Once you have the data on where your money goes, start grouping it together so you get an idea of how much you spend in a particular area per month or per paycheck. Some areas will stick out at you as a bit excessive. Those are the areas you should focus on reducing. McCall largely suggests putting a cap on spending in those areas. What I find works well for me is grouping all of your nonessential spending and putting a cap on all of it.

Saving Your Way Out of Debt
Ideally, you’ll quickly reach a point where you’re spending less than you earn. That money should, of course, be applied to the debts you’re in. McCall advocates actually saving this money in a savings account in order to build a large emergency fund first, then making extra debt payments from there later on when you have a healthy emergency fund.

Your Relationship with Work and Earning
Many people have conflicted feelings about their work. Many people hate their jobs. The key thing to remember that you’re often exchanging spending time and energy on things you don’t want to do for money that you can use to survive. Look at your job as that type of equation. During those moments when you’re unhappy, keep in mind that you’re doing this so you can enjoy the other aspects of your life. Similarly, there’s no reason to not look for work that pays you more for the time spent doing unpleasant things or reduces the amount of unpleasantness in the work.

Imagining Sterling Money Behaviors
The book closes with what I would describe as goal setting. What do you want most out of life? What in your life really is unimportant compared to that? Focus on the things you really want and don’t be afraid to really cut back and eliminate the other areas. You can mold your life to whatever you want it to be. The choice is up to you.

Is Financial Recovery Worth Reading?
Rather than addressing direct financial topics, McCall’s book focuses heavily on getting your mind in the right place. This book comes off like a psychology book more than anything, as the focus is on making the mental shifts needed to be ready to get ahead with your money.

For many people, particularly people who are earning a reasonable income but just can’t seem to get in a good financial place, this book is just what they need.

It’s not a great solution for someone who is making a very low income and is truly scraping by, nor is it going to give specific retirement advice for investors. It focuses on the people struggling to stay afloat when it seems like they shouldn’t be – and it does a very good job of addressing their struggles.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Financial Recovery on Amazon.com.

These were nice little nuggets from posts that never came to complete fruition. I thought the little pieces were still worth sharing, however.

A vase full of fresh flowers in the entryway to your home makes a far better first impression than thousands of dollars in furniture.

Spending a minute turning off every light and electrical device you can before you go to bed is probably the most valuable minute you’ll spend all day in terms of financial return on your time.

Walk everywhere you can. You’ll feel better, give a good impression to others, and save some money, too.

If you’re going to be late paying a bill, call the person or business you owe. The negative impact will be far less than if you just skip paying it.

Whenever you’re thinking of spending money on entertainment, ask yourself what exactly about this situation entertains you. Then, ask yourself if you couldn’t get that same exact entertainment for much less money.

It feels like a waste to eat a dinner out with friends when the restaurant is so noisy that you can’t hear them. Thankfully, one’s dining room table is usually perfect for conversation.

Children are expensive, but children also keep you at home when you might be going out and spending money and they keep you from dallying and buying impulse items in the grocery store.

A bed is one of the most vital purchases you’ll make. Without a good bed that provides you with a great night of sleep, every day will be filled with the cloudiness of exhaustion. Pay attention to where you sleep well and make sure your regular sleeping area matches it. This way, you’ll always have plenty of energy to do more and earn more during the day.

Just because you want something does not mean you must have it. Fulfill that want and another want will just spring up in its place. Make sure that fulfilling that want actually does something more for you than just sating an immediate desire.

When I think of the specific things that make me happy, they’re usually experiences, not material items. If I’m going to spend money, then, I’d rather spend it on the experiences, not the stuff.

You are just a misfortune or two away from being in someone else’s plight. If you think that you’ll never be among the seriously ill or the disabled, know that any day could see you getting into an accident or having a DNA error that would lead you down that road. There’s not much distance between the well and the ill.

A skill that is useful to a lot of people is worth a lot of money, whether through employment, bartering, or the money that skill saves you. Cultivate some of these skills and you’ll always have a ticket to the things you need.

The one question I ask myself each day as I go to bed is, “Did I grow in some fashion today?” If I can’t answer that question with at least one very strong and clear statement, I view that day as a failure.

What do I mean by that? Let’s break it down into smaller pieces.

First of all, why? This type of self-evaluation provides a constant push forward for me to better myself in some way or another. Each and every day, I’m encouraged to do something to improve.

Why improve? The more well-rounded I am and the stronger my skill set, the more valuable of a person I become and the more avenues of life there are for me to enjoy. If I’m in good physical shape, for example, I’m able to keep up with my kids and participate in some sports. If I’ve learned a new skill, not only can I utilize it at home, I can share it with friends and perhaps be employed with it. If I’m in good spiritual and mental shape, I’m able to handle the challenges that life throws at me. The list goes on and on.

What do I look for? I usually look for improvement in six areas.

Emotional improvement comes from being happy with my life and resolving areas where I do not feel happy with things. If there is something that has been bothering me and bringing down my mood, taking steps to address it is a step toward improving my emotional state.

Mental improvement means that I’m more able to deal with adverse situations that life throws at me. Learning tactics for dealing with stress and applying them is a step in this area, as are tactics for parenting and improving my skill set for dealing with things in everyday life.

Physical improvement comes from simply being physically active. Did I get some exercise today? Did I eat well today (and by eating well, I don’t mean eating a lot, but instead mean eating good things)?

Spiritual improvement means that I came to a better understanding of who I am and my place in the world and the universe. Prayer and meditation usually help here.

Interpersonal improvement comes from building relationships with other people or improving the ones I already have. Did I build a new friendship today? Did I let someone important to me know what they mean to me today? Did I figure out what relationships really matter and which ones do not?

Intellectual improvement is pretty simple to define: did I learn anything new of real value today? I usually feed this through reading, research, or brain-crunching games (like chess).

A great day is one where I improve in some significant way in multiple areas. If I got a lot of exercise, learned a new parenting technique and actually used it, learned how to repair a bathtub drain, and also read a large portion of a thought-provoking book, then today was a successful day.

Not every day needs to be successful, but most of them ought to be. I try very hard to make each day successful in at least one of these areas. Yes, sometimes that means not kicking back and reading a page-turner in the evenings. Sometimes it means having to take a tough stance with my children or having a difficult conversation with my wife or overcoming my introvertedness to build a friendship.

Day after day, week after week, year after year, though, the rewards of doing this become apparent in the friendships you have, the opportunities you have, the internal life you have, and the future you have.

Make each day your masterpiece.

Each week, I highlight ten things each week that inspired me to greater financial, personal, and professional success. Hopefully, they will inspire you as well.

This week will mostly feature pictures of highlights from our recent travels.

1. Mount Rainier
The cloud-wreathed peak of the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states was stunning as we approached it.

2. Richard Friedman on money and love
What good is money without love?

“Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail” – Richard Friedman

You can have all of the things in the world, but it is love that imbues them with meaning.

3. Boy playing in ocean
My children visited the ocean for the first time. My oldest one ran right into the water, anticipating it to be warm.

It wasn’t exactly warm.

4. DailyLit
DailyLit is a service that takes novels (usually ones in the public domain), breaks them down into small pieces, then emails each piece out to you each day. Ever wanted to read Anna Karenina? The site will e-mail it out to you, a piece a day, over 423 days, with each piece being readable in about five minutes.

This is a spectacular way to keep literature as a part of your life, even if you’re really pinched for time.

5. Jim Rohn on time and money
The fact that time trumps money is a lesson that I’ve slowly learned over the past several years.

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn

That quote explains why I chose to stay at home and earn less than I might have otherwise earned.

6. Seattle skyline
I love city skylines.

City skylines are the net product of human effort and ingenuity. Every element you see in that skyline was an enormous human project of architecture, construction, materials engineering, politics, business, and countless other disciplines.

7. Distance, by Dorothy Parker
Distance is sometimes a good thing.

Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.

8. A sailboat on Puget Sound
I took this picture on a ferry ride across the Sound.

I would have much rather been on this sailboat, piloting it into the wind.

9. Amigurumi
My wife’s latest hobby is crocheting small dolls of various types. She’s made several animals and a small robot.

I love watching her when she’s focused on one. She slips into a zone, where she loses track of time and all that matters is the project in her hands. The concentration on her face is beautiful.

10. Grove of the Patriarchs
We visited a beautiful grove of trees just to the southeast of Mount Rainier.

The enormity of the trees was a reminder of how small and fragile we really are.

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.

Pita bread has such a wide variety of uses that we always pick some up if there’s a sale on it. One particular use for it is making individual micro-pizzas, where each person can have the toppings they want on their own pizza. This allows everyone to have the toppings they want that others might not want, avoiding such things as The Great Mushroom War.

Not only that, our calculations indicate that this actually makes a fairly inexpensive meal. We can easily produce five individual mini-pizzas for less than $5 (if we don’t get too crazy with the toppings).

What You Need
You’ll simply need a pita bread for each person eating, along with a small amount of olive oil and some basic pizza ingredients: sauce, cheese, and whatever pizza toppings you’d like. For our family, that usually involves mushrooms, black olives, turkey pepperoni, and onions, for starters.

The Night Before (or Early That Day)
The biggest step you’ll need to take for early preparation is to just make sure the cheese is shredded and that the vegetables are diced. You can easily store these in containers in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use them.

Preparing the Meal
Start by brushing both sides of the pitas with just a bit of olive oil. This will help the crusts cook properly, as well as give them a bit of extra flavor.

From there, preheat the oven to 400 F (about 200 C). Then, begin assembling the pizzas in whatever way you like. Everyone can do their own if they so wish, or you can make them yourself.

If you wish, you can easily grill these little pizzas, as long as you have the grill at about 400 F. On this day, it was a bit rainy, so we just cooked them in the oven on a cookie sheet. You can also do them right on the racks in your oven if you so choose.

Note that if you cook these on a cookie sheet, you may want to spread a thin layer of olive oil all over the cookie sheet to prevent sticking and to make a nice golden bottom on the pizzas.

Bake until everything is beautifully melted and a bit browned, then serve. We served ours with some fresh sliced cantaloupe.

It’s quick, delicious, and pretty cheap!

Optional Ingredients
Go crazy! It’s pizza! Try artichoke hearts, pineapple, sun dried tomatoes, spinach, cabbage, fish, sauerkraut – anything and everything goes as long as you like it. I’ve eaten pizzas with nothing but sauerkraut, onions, and a bit of extra cheese and quite liked them, for example.

For a long time, my wife and I have kept a big pile of rags in our kitchen as a cost-saving strategy. Instead of using paper towels for the endless small kitchen messes that come from having three children (wiping off faces, cleaning up spilled food and drinks, etc.), we strive to use rags from our “rag drawer” as a cost-cutting measure. We simply keep the dirty ones in another spot and wash them once every week to ten days as part of a load of towels.

That’s not to say we never use paper towels. There are certainly some tasks where paper towels are the item of choice, particularly in food preparation. They can also easily handle many of the tasks mentioned above. We just tend to use rags as a less-expensive alternative.

But is it really less expensive to use rags? Clearly, there are some costs involved in using old washcloths and the like as our kitchen rags. Some fractional amount of the cost of each one should be included here, as should the cost of washing the loads of laundry.

As always, that means it’s time for us to run the numbers.

It costs us $1.34 to run a load of laundry. For this number, I’m using Mr. Electricity’s estimate. Usually, we do a load of half towels and half rags, which means $0.68 for that load just for the rags. Each time we do this, we run about 40 rags or so. Thus, our cost per rag for cleaning is about one and a half cents.

It also costs us $0.49 to dry a load of laundry, again using Mr. Electricity’s estimate. As mentioned above, half of this load is rags, cutting it down to $0.25, and resulting in a cost of roughly three-quarters of a cent per rag for drying.

We usually acquire the rags in bulk. They can often be found at yard sales and the like in large quantities for a cheap price. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I would pay ten cents per rag and I’d get 100 washes out of that rag before it fell apart. That would give us a cost of about a tenth of a cent per rag for acquisition.

All told, the cost per use with a rag is about two cents. A cent and a half per rag for washing, three quarters of a cent per rag for drying, and a tenth of a cent per rag for acquisition are all rounded up a bit, so I’ll round down to give the overall estimate. Two cents really is pretty close to the cost per rag.

How many paper towels does a rag equate to in the kitchen? It depends on the task. For wiping off faces, a rag is about equal to two paper towel sheets of the brands we buy (we usually buy good paper towels, because the cheap ones just disintegrate). For other tasks, though, such as washing dishes or scrubbing tabletops, a rag is equal to quite a few paper towel sheets – say, ten of them. For our uses, I’ll estimate that one rag use is equal to five paper towel uses.

How much does a paper towel cost? Obviously, costs vary. I went to Amazon and looked at lots of different paper towels and found the best bargain I could on a brand we’ve used in the past – Bounty. There, you can get a twelve-pack of Bounty “Huge” Rolls for $33.99 (shipped for free with Super Saver Shipping). Each huge roll has 130 sheets, so that equals 1,680 sheets for $33.99. Since every five sheets equals roughly the same usage as a single rag, that’s 336 “rag uses” for $33.99. That’s almost exactly ten cents per “rag use.” It’s also roughly two cents per single sheet use.

In other words, if I use a rag for a very light use, such as washing off my infant son’s face after he attempts to feed himself pureed carrots, it’ll cost two cents. If I can do it with a single sheet of paper towel, it’ll also cost two cents. The rag and the paper towel are roughly equivalent in cost for very light uses.

However, when the task becomes heavy duty, the rag wins. I can use a rag for scrubbing dishes, while a single sheet of paper towel will simply fall apart. The same goes for giving our kitchen table a good cleaning, handling messes from art projects, and so on. If a task is going to require me to use multiple sheets of paper towel, it’s cheaper to use a rag.

Given all this, we just default to using a rag for as many kitchen tasks as possible. Even if it’s a light task, the cost is roughly the same as a paper towel, and a rag is less expensive and more convenient for a heavy task.

We leave the paper towels for the handful of things they really shine at, usually involving food preparation tasks where you’re trying to dry off a piece of meat or some vegetables. For everything else, we turn to the rags.