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.

Kate writes in: I love to cook, and one of my favorite things to make from scratch is chicken stock. I know making it yourself saves money, but I would love for you to go over how much it actually saves. If you’d like to factor it in, I also save vegetable scraps (carrot peels, potato skins, vegetables in the fridge that are starting to look a bit mushy) and chicken bones when I cook and freeze them, so it cuts down on the amount of vegetables and chicken I have to buy to make the stock. That might be a tip to pass along to readers, apparently this is something only I do among people I know who like to cook, and it has spread since.

We sometimes make stock ourselves out of leftover vegetables. Before we made the switch to being vegetarian, we also used to make stock out of chicken bones and spare vegetables, much as you describe.

Typically, we make about four quarts of stock at a time. We use our crock pot for this and simply dump in about two or three quarts of various kinds of scraps, fill up the crock pot with water, turn it on low, and let it cook gently for several hours. When it’s complete, we simply strain the liquid and store it in quart-sized containers in the freezer.

Our crock pot runs at about 100 watts, so we use roughly $0.12 of energy when making a batch of stock. This adds about $0.03 per quart for energy. The amount of water used is negligible.

At the store, I can easily find (somewhat) comparable stocks for approximately $3 per quart. This means that my crock pot produces about $12 worth of stock at the store price. There’s also the option of buying broth, which is thinner and a bit less flavorful, at a lower price ($1.50 or so a quart).

The value of the stock really comes down to the cost of the ingredients that you use to make it. If you use nothing but the scraps left behind by other meals and view homemade stock as a “bonus” of sorts, stock is incredibly cheap and an enormous bargain.

The question of value comes into play when you start looking at actually buying things to supplement the stock. It doesn’t take a whole lot of purchases to add up to the value of the stock itself, so you have to be very careful when making purchases.

For example, if you’re making chicken stock and purchase a whole chicken, you’re sinking $6 into the stock (ideally, you can still use the chicken for other purposes here, but not always). If you buy even a few vegetables to go along with it, you’re quickly approaching the cost of just buying stock at the store.

For me, given the extra time invested and the cost of the ingredients, stock is really only worth it when you’re using scraps, such as leftover vegetable pieces and/or bones.

Our method for accumulating these scraps is to simply save the uneaten and unused remnants of meals. For example, if we cook too many green beans, we’ll toss the remainder into our “scrap bag” in the freezer with the intent to use it someday for stock. When we reach a certain amount (usually a few quarts), we use it as the basis for vegetable stock.

Another possible option for making stock occurs if you have a free source for the needed ingredients. For example, if you’re facing an overabundance of garden vegetables, you might want to make some vegetable stock using some of them. If you’ve suddenly acquired a large amount of chicken or beef for free or for a very low price, you may want to use some of the meat for stock.

Stock is simply an effective way of using materials that don’t have a direct food use without these items going to waste. Using items directly for stock isn’t a big money saver, but using items indirectly for stock in the form of scraps can indeed save dollars.

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. Student loan payoff or Roth?
2. Should we refinance?
3. Discrimination and temp rights
4. In college and in debt
5. Exhaustion
6. Debt and disability
7. Multi-level marketing
8. Fixing an iPod battery
9. CSA question
10. Favorite authors

I’m always amazed by the difficulty of scheduling things. For us, it seems like we’ll have long stretches without many irregular events to schedule, then we’ll suddenly have a period of a week or two with so many events that we have to synchronize our watches and even turn down some events.

Right now, we’re in one of those “heavy” periods. In a few weeks, we’ll wonder where all of the hustle and bustle went.

Q1: Student loan payoff or Roth?
My situation is that I’m a 3rd year graduate student getting a PhD in inorganic chemistry, I get paid a stipend of $25k a year and my tuition is paid for, allowing me to save roughly $400 a month. I have about $85k in student loans from my undergrad (nearly all of it subsidized while I’m in school with an interest rate of 6.8%). Because I have a stipend and not a true job, I have no option of contributing to a 401k. Should I start paying off my student loans with my extra $400 a month, invest in a Roth IRA, or a combination of the two? I already have a emergency fund of $1000 and I know that saving for retirement as early as possible is best for the long term, but I have tons of loans to pay off when I finish school. Any help would be greatly appreciated
- John

I would not worry about retirement savings until you’re out of school and have a job. Instead, I’d focus on doing what I could to make sure that I have minimal student loans as I came out of school.

The biggest reason for that is that you need to make sure your bills are minimized as you enter that period where you’re trying to establish a career foothold. This is a really challenging period and the last thing you need here is larger bills than necessary, because you may find yourself taking relatively low paying jobs at this point (like a post-doc).

Focus on retirement later on when you have a good career in place. Until then, focus on making it to that point.

Q2: Should we refinance?
My husband and I are both in our 30s, and have stable government jobs with good benefits. We bought a tiny (668sq ft) house 3 years ago for $122K and currenly owe $112K on our home loan. The loan is an FHA 30 year fixed. We’re paying 5.875%. The county assessor values the house at $92,700. We each have government retirement (TSP) with $11K in his and $7K in mine, plus I have $30K in an IRA. We have a combined total of $30K in our checking account. We have no debt other than the home loan, and no children. We live very frugally and don’t need to have that much cash in our checking for an emergency fund, and with the poor performance of the market right now it looks like we should use some of that money to refinance.

As we’ve started to look at refinancing, we’re finding that the FHA streamline is a desirable option because it doesn’t require an assessment. The 30 year is at 3.75% right now. If we do pay to have the house assessed, it would be a $300-$400 expense out of pocket, and we may find that the house is worth even less. The snag of the FHA streamline however is that the closing costs due at signing are around $5600, and we will have to pay mortgage insurance for a required 5 years before the bank will look at the loan to value ratio to determine whether we can stop paying it. We have already been paying PMI for 3 years and the 5 year “clock” will start over if we refi. We pay $52 a month for mortgage insurance now. The estimated lower payment with the 3.75% rate is $241 less/month, so it would take 23.6 months to recoup the out of pocket refi costs.

Also, my father is in a position to loan us money at a lower interest rate so that we can pay down the loan to value ratio and try to do away with the mortgage insurance sooner. He’s mentioned a $20K loan at 2%. (We would do the loan formally, with a written contract with him regarding the terms.) As we currently have an FHA loan, we can’t do away with the mortgage insurance for the next 2 years (at which time we will have carried the insurance for 5 years and can look into not paying it, if we have paid off 20% of the value.) Is this 20% rule considering the value of the loan? Or the value of the home?

If we look at a traditional refi, we will need to have an assessment done and the rate isn’t as low. I was quoted 3.99%. So, what should we do? And in what order? We could keep the loan we have to be done with PMI sooner and not pay out of pocket closing costs, while taking advantage of the loan from my father to pay $20K off. We could refi and use some of the $ from our checking to pay the $5600. We could pay for an assessment to find out if the value is higher than the county claims-but would it gain us anything? Would you be in a rush to be done with the PMI?
- Margaret

The 20% value you mention is typically the assessed value of the home. The mortgage holder and/or the insurance company will want to reassess your home before they relieve you of the insurance. They’ll use that assessed value to determine if you have to continue to pay. Typically, there’s a “grace period” of a year or two where you don’t have to have a reassessment and use the initial assessment as the value, but you’re probably out of that period.

If your goal is to get rid of the PMI as fast as possible, I would probably talk to the bank, request an assessment, then borrow enough to cover the difference between what you owe now and that 80% threshold. While I’m not usually a fan of borrowing from family, if you’re going to do it, the best way to do it is with a contract.

You will probably not be able to get a traditional refinancing unless the amount you owe is less than the assessed value of the home, which means that you’d want the balance of your home loan to be significantly lower than what it is now. Thus, I wouldn’t worry about the refinancing until I eliminated the PMI anyway.

Q3: Discrimination and temp rights
I am a 35-year-old woman who makes my living as a writer. I recently sold two books to Love Inspired Historical and had been working from home on freelance writing jobs. However, recently the pipeline of jobs began to dry up–the SEO conent companies I have written for have all vanished, and the small company I was writing web content for abruptly fired me when they had a “cash flow” problem–and I never got my last paycheck.

Two months ago, I found out I was pregnant with our second child. My plan was to work through the pregnancy and stay home with the baby, which is what I did with our first child. About a month ago, I was given a temp job as a proofreader for a marketing company. The hours were awful (1pm to 10pm Monday through Friday with expected overtime) and the commute was bad too (an hour roundtrip). But my husband and I agreed I would take the job so that the last six months of pregnancy, I wouldn’t have to work at all.

Three days into my new job, I found out I lost the baby. I stayed home 2 days that week without pay (and with my supervisor’s permission). I was scheduled for a D&C this past Monday but actually had the miscarriage Sunday afternoon through Tuesday, so I missed two additional days. These days were already excused as it was assumed I would be recovering from surgery. Yesterday before leavig for work, I was informed by my temp agency that my miscarriage was creating a “distraction” for the department and they were going to find a new temp. So essentially, I lost my second child on Monday, and lost my job Friday. Worst week ever doesn’t even begin to explain it.

Several friends have told me to sue the company for discrimination, but as a temp, I feel I have few rights. My question is, what should I do now? I had the next year mapped out, and now I have no job, no baby on the way–everything has changed and I am in complete shock. I don’t know if I should try for another temp job, stay home and write my second book and then write more books to self-pub, or what. We have our $1000 emergency fund, my husband has a steady job as an engineer that covers the essentials (but not the extras which is why I work). We had planned to save up that 3 months’ emergency fund and dump debt but now that feels completely derailed. Everything is derailed, and it’s so hard not to be furious at my ex-employer. I actually felt guilty for missing work for my miscarriage. Had I known I was going to be fired, I would just quit and save myself the trouble.
- Monica

Yes, you should absolutely contact a lawyer based on the information you’ve shared here. If this is truly the full picture of the situation, you likely have grounds for some sort of legal action against this company.

As for what you should do with your time now, I would involve your husband in that discussion. A key part of the discussion is what you want to do. Another key part is the expectations that you both have for the roles in your marriage.

If I were in your shoes, if I were passionate about the writing, I would push that for a while as legal processes moved forward with the employment situation.

Q4: In college and in debt
I am 21 years old, I have lost my scholarship and I am trying to get it back, I have lost help from my parents for paying for things I need and things I need for college, and I have a maxed out credit of 1000 with a maxed out L.O.C. of 500. I just recently lost my job at this restaurant, I was a server… I need things for my room before Winter hits, like a comforter, a lamp, and a shelf. I need some money to wash my clothes that have been piling up… I just feel so overwhelmed that I don’t know how to get myself out of this hole. I try and pray for God’s guidance but maybe I need to pray more. I also owe money to online store I ordered stuff from…

Can you give me some tips? I want to become a Zumba instructor but that costs 275 dollars for training…
- Rachel

The first thing you need to do is get another job. You need some income coming in, no matter what form it takes. Get out there, beat the pavement, and find something to occupy yourself and generate some revenue.

The next thing you need to do is whack away at those debts. If you owe thousands in consumer credit, you need to get rid of it as efficiently as you can. Don’t buy a single thing unless you absolutely need it.

Get those two things out of the way first and foremost. You’ll find that once you get through this difficult stretch, things will be a lot better on the other side.

Q5: Exhaustion
I spend almost every day feeling completely tired, except for the evenings. It’s so intense that it’s interfering with my work and my time with my family. What can I do to deal with this?
- Erin

The first thing I’d check is whether I was getting adequate sleep. If you’re getting less than seven hours on average, you need to sleep more, period. Some people require an average of eight or even nine hours of sleep to function well. Don’t squeeze in another half hour of household tasks or a half hour of a hobby in the evening if it means exhausted misery the next day. Go to sleep.

If you’re not getting good sleep, figure out why. There are lots of tactics for improving your sleep, from drinking warm milk to taking a warm shower before bed.

Another useful tactic for exhaustion is to exercise more. By getting your heart rate up and kicking your metabolism a bit, you can make yourself feel more energetic.

If none of that works, talk to a doctor. You might have a vitamin or mineral deficiency or there may be some other cause.

Q6: Debt and disability
Recently I went out on disability, and I have a lot of debt. I have $22k in credit card, and $65k in student loan. Right now I get $674, but in january I will get $1,250. i can’t afford my debts. What should i do? Should I file for bankruptcy? I have a muscular disorder, and I don’t know when I will be back to work again.
- Emma

The first thing you need to do is write to the people holding your student loans and request that they put your loans on forbearance. Generally, you don’t have to pay on your student loans if you’re disabled or not gainfully employed.

As for the credit cards, you may want to try a similar tactic. In this case, you’re more interested in finding a payment plan that will make it easier for you to pay the bills. Simply call up your credit card holders and discuss your situation with them.

I don’t think bankruptcy will be necessary if you take these steps and find success with them.

Q7: Multi-level marketing
I have been reading yours and several other personal finance blogs. As a part time sidejob, I want to get involved in financial education. I saw an ad for [a known MLM group], and at first the position seemed interesting.

However, after listening to their pitch, I realized it was more of a multi-market deal, where you own a business, ands sell their products. In fact, the whole meeting I had with them made me feel like I was being sold a used a car.

Have you heard of [this group]? Do you have any thoughts on them? Are there other companies that do something like they do, however, are more reputable?
- Ron

I chose to excise the specific name of this group from this email because often when you mention companies that use specific MLM tactics, you find yourself facing a lot of ardent defenders of that company.

In general, I encourage people to avoid such companies. Success with multi-level marketing requires a very specific skill set (including very good people persuasion skills) and, if you don’t have those skills, you’re going to be a very low earner. Beyond that, people who do have the skills to succeed at MLM can make a killing in other fields.

Not only that, MLM often requires people to sell to their friends, which puts a financial pressure on a friendship that often results in resentment. I’ve experienced this myself and witnessed it more times than I can count.

Q8: Fixing an iPod battery
I read recently in one of your posts that you learned how to fix your own iPod battery. Mine died awhile ago and I didn’t even know salvaging it was a possibility! I was wondering how you did this and/or if you could provide some links that might be helpful in this situation?
- Nicole

There are a lot of techniques out there for replacing iPod batteries. I was able to successfully do it myself. However, it’s important to note that such tactics will completely void your warranty and if you do it and mess up, you’re going to wind up with a non-functional iPod.

This site offers a collection of videos on how to replace the batteries of some specific iPod models. Other models (particularly iPod Touch models) are much more tricky. For example, here’s how to replace iPod Touch batteries.

If it’s just sitting in a drawer, it probably makes no difference to you if you accidentally damage it and you might end up with a functional iPod again. In that case, it’s probably worth it.

Q9: CSA question
I buy a Community Supported Agriculture share, or CSA. I pay about $30/wk for a box of 30 lbs of organic local produce. It runs for 6 months from June-December. But, when we are on vacation for a week we end up giving it away, if the weather is bad we get less or odd items, plus we have to pay for it way in advance and all at once (over $700 in the January prior). We also eat a lot of kale. We get the fruit share which is $15/wk for about 2 bags of organic local fruit- not as great of a bargain but it is really tasty. Same risks as the vegetable share though. What are your thoughts about this from a financial perspective? We do eat every bite, or freeze it to eat in the spring when the share’s not in season (kale soup year round!).
- Mary

My experience has been that they’re well worth it if you commit to using everything that you get and if you don’t travel much (meaning few “vacation” weeks where you miss a week’s share).

However, as you mention, there is the issue of having weeks where the selection is a bit odd. You have to more or less live with what you get. However, you’re getting 30 pounds of vegetables for $30, which is almost always a bargain.

Our philosophy is that you simply plan your meals around what you get. Pick up your pack, figure out what you have, plan out some meals, then do your grocery shopping based on what’s in the pack. If you can’t use everything, freeze the rest and use it later.

Q10: Favorite authors
Like you, I’m a voracious reader. One thing I like to do is to really dig into an author when I’m reading. I’ll often ask friends who their favorite authors are, then dig into those authors.

Which brings me to a fairly obvious question. Who are your favorite authors?
- James

I’ll make this really easy. Here are my ten favorite authors. Each of them is linked to their author page at Amazon so you can find out more about them and see all the books they’ve written.

Haruki Murakami. Michael Chabon. Brandon Sanderson. George R. R. Martin. Neal Stephenson. Dan Simmons. Jon Ronson. Malcolm Gladwell. Edmund Morris. Michael Lewis.

If you can’t find something to read in there, I’m not sure I can help you.

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.

All of us have fears and doubts about what we’re doing and where our future is headed. I know I certainly have those fears and doubts. I constantly wonder if I’m making the right choices with what I’m doing, professionally and personally.

Uncertainty is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, paying heed to it is the right move and it’ll keep you on a better path. However, there are a lot of times where uncertainty shouldn’t keep you from doing something and getting past uncertainty is the key to success. In those situations, it’s best used as a guide to where you want to go.

Jonathan Fields, the author of this book, does a great job of digging into how to overcome uncertainty and how to use what it can teach you for greater success in almost any area.

Why Uncertainty Matters
No one on Earth has all the answers to all of the questions. Uncertainty is simply a part of life. The biggest difference between success and failure at anything is how we address our uncertainty. If we address it by running and sticking with what’s safe (and this applies for everything from political opinion to career choices), we fail. If we address it by digging into what we’re uncertain about, even if we don’t necessarily make a big change because of it, we succeed. Uncertainty isn’t an opponent. It’s a guide.

What Uncertainty Does to Us
Uncertainty makes us afraid, not only of our own failure, but of the judgments of others. “What will my friends think if I announce to them that I’ve changed religions or political beliefs?” “What will my parents think if I tell them I’m thinking of quitting my job?” We also fear loss, in a sense that the results of the change we’re going to take on are going to be worse than what we have right now. All of these things bundled together make uncertainty an incredible source of angst.

The Myth of the Fearless Creator
No one does anything of significance in the world without some fear in their gut. There’s no one out there, no matter how they appear, that does interesting or great things in their life without some doubt residing within them. The key difference between success and failure is how you use that fear and doubt. Do you use it to withdraw? Or do you use it to guide you to success?

Find Your Certainty Anchors
The first step in this process is to figure out your “certainty anchors.” In other words, what things are you absolutely certain about? What experiences are ones that you can rely on? What things can you rely on, no matter what? Simply put, once you figure these things out, you can always rely on these things and experiences as examples of your own success. For example, I know I can succeed with paying down my debt, so this experience of success shows me I can handle other things that require willpower.

Build Your Hive
For something to be successful, you’re going to need criticism and suggestions for improvement. The only problem is that it’s easy to hear suggestions and criticism from sources that might not have your success in mind. The best way to handle this is to find a group of people that you genuinely trust – and genuinely trust you – and be completely open with criticism within this group. Everyone in this group is honest with each other and also encouraging of each other, offering criticism only in the sense that it should improve whatever the people are doing.

Socializing Creation
This idea of a “hive” works even with the creation of an idea. There’s nothing wrong with throwing out a concept to a group of people that you trust and receiving their feedback on your concept in order to build it into something greater. For example, if you have a trusted friend, you could throw out a business plan or an exercise plan or a change in philosophy that you’re considering and that person would offer you genuine feedback on it – and you would do the same for that person. If you have a collective group, even better.

Train Your Brain
One key to making something challenging work is to adopt the ability to focus specifically on that thing. This involves cutting out distractions from both your broader life and from the specific situation. Fields also discusses the benefits of exercise in achieving this, pointing to a lot of studies on the benefits of exercise for mental focus. There’s also some discussion of the benefits of a “growth” mindset versus a “linear” mindset, which basically means that you’re more interested in learning how the process works than always getting the right answer.

See the Forest
Some of our biggest doubts fall into the heat of the moment. What will this person think of me? What do I need to be working on right now and how do I know if it is right? These are instances of seeing the trees, but not seeing the forest. When you’re caught up in immediate doubts, look at the broader picture of what you’re trying to achieve. Does it matter what this person thinks of you right now if you’re building a better you? What task can you take on that has the best chance of building something great in the long term?

Own the Story Line
We often visualize stories of failure when we’re imagining what could happen in the future. Rather than believing those stories, we need to use them. What things happen that cause this kind of failure? What can we do to make sure they don’t happen? The more negative story lines you eliminate, the more positive the story line of your reality is.

Is Uncertainty Worth Reading?
This is the best personal finance or personal growth book I’ve read this year. Period.

Every single one of us struggles with uncertainty in life and this book is loaded with food for thought on how to deal with that uncertainty. I can say without hesitation that some pieces of this book have made me deeply rethink how I address some of the more challenging areas of my life (exercise) and some things I’ve been afraid to tackle (writing projects).

I recommend this book to almost anyone. Put it on your library request list or pick it up at a bookseller soon. It’s a really worthwhile read.

Check out additional reviews and notes of Uncertainty on Amazon.com.

Abbie writes in:

My family is considering a move to a smaller town for professional purposes. The only problem with this move is that we’re Orthodox and thus we follow the dietary laws. This means that the food our family eats must be kosher. Where we live now, we have great access to kosher foods but we’re pretty certain that our access to such foods is going to become much more expensive when we move. Do you have any suggestions for making this work?

Just to clarify, Abbie is referring to Orthodox Judaism for her family’s religion.

First of all, good luck on making such a challenging move. From what you describe here, this is clearly one of those moves that would come with a long list of “pros” and “cons.” From the way I understand it, your list that would be in favor of moving includes professional reasons as well as some cultural reasons, but the cons list includes other cultural reasons and spiritual reasons. Finding the right balance there can really be a challenge and I can understand a desire to mitigate some of the cons.

So, how can you handle this situation?

The first thing I’d do is study small towns that would be a good match professionally for your family. There are many smaller towns with an Orthodox Jewish community in them. The single member of the religion that I’ve had a strong relationship with lived in Madison, Wisconsin and seemed pretty happy with it.

Since I’m unclear as to exactly what the professional reasons are for the move, you might have a lot of towns that will work or you might be highly restricted. The less restricted you are, the greater the possibility you can find a town with a community in it that can support a local grocer that matches your spiritual needs.

What if that’s impossible? I see several things that you can do.

One option is to talk to the local grocers and see what they have in stock. I’ve had great success in the past requesting that grocers carry specific items with narrow appeal simply because I’ve requested them. Of course, this may have to do with the specific grocer that I often use (Hy-Vee, which is an Iowa grocery chain), but I do know that some grocers are flexible on what they choose to have on their shelves. Come armed with information on brands that you use that the store does not carry and see if they can help.

Another option is to buy in tremendous bulk on occasional food buying trips. This is going to require a lot of planning, of course, as well as some food storage space. Let’s say you live two or three hours from a large city that contains a grocer that sells a wide variety of the foods you need. This my be something that you can do in conjunction with working with your local retailer.

Yet another option is to rely on online grocers. One example of an online grocer that might meet your needs is All in Kosher. Amazon offers a pretty solid selection of certain types of kosher goods.

You might want to supplement these options by starting a garden. Since you’re involved in the entire growing process, you can be sure that the vegetables and fruits that your garden produces match your dietary and spiritual needs. This is also an incredibly inexpensive route for obtaining food, plus it’s an option that’s much more viable in a smaller town.

Most likely, you’ll have to use some combination of these tactics. If you’re looking at things through a frugal lens, though, my recommendation would be to have a very large garden and a freezer. This way, you can produce tons of vegetables for your family, which can provide the backbone of your diet and store them easily. If you work in conjunction with local grocers, you may be able to fill in most of the rest of your diet, leaving more expensive options for rarer occasions.

Good luck on your move!

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.

Gretchen writes in: I have a grain grinder and I make my own whole wheat bread using freshly ground grains. The taste is so good but how does grinding grains compare to just buying whole wheat flour? Although I don’t think I could go back to store bought flour because the taste is so much better.

Honestly, this is something I’ve been thinking about doing. I would love to make bread using freshly ground grains in exactly the method you described, mixing grains the way I would like them. I’ve never really thought about it from a money-saving perspective, though, so I guess it’s time to run the numbers on that.

I can get a sack of whole wheat flour weighing five pounds for $1.50 to $3, depending on what I get. The brand I’m most happy with is King Arthur, which comes in at around $3 a bag, while the generic is at about $1.50 a bag. We’ll use the King Arthur kind for comparison’s sake here, because the purpose of doing this is to have higher quality flour.

A five pound bag of flour has about twenty cups of flour in it. My homemade bread recipe uses a little over three cups of flour, so I’d get enough flour for about six loaves of bread out of one bag. That gives me a cost-per-loaf for just the flour of $0.50.

A home grain grinder can cost around $20. It’s extremely similar to a home coffee grinder, actually, in that it takes larger grains and grinds them into a fine powder. Both devices even look fairly similar.

Now, let’s look at an example of wheat. You can get whole wheat berries dried for approximately $1.10 per pound. This was the best price I could find by asking around and searching websites – it was suggested by a person at a local food co-op.

In this case, to get five pounds of flour, you’d need five pounds of wheat berries, costing $5.50. You’d also need to pro-rate in a bit of the cost of the grinder (say, $0.05 if you use it a lot) and the energy cost (say, $0.02). This gives you a cost per loaf of about $0.93 for flour you grind yourself.

So, clearly, buying flour at the store is less expensive than grinding it yourself, at least in the quantities that you’d be able to do it at home. The large flour manufacturers work on an enormous scale and thus are able to buy the wheat at a much lower price than we’d be able to.

This isn’t to say that you won’t have access to less expensive grains. I can easily get access to dry corn for an extremely low price. I have farmer friends who would sell me a bushel of corn kernels for $7 or $8 – that’s 56 pounds of corn. If I’m interested in making corn meal at home, this would be an incredibly inexpensive way of doing it. If I had access directly to a wheat farmer, I could probably make a similar deal. (For some reason, I’m tempted to make homemade corn bread now.)

In other words, you probably can make flour at home cheaper than you can buy in the store if you have direct access to wholesale grain prices. The problem is that most of us don’t have this kind of access.

Regardless of the price, if you’re the type of person who deeply enjoys making things from scratch, this isn’t a terribly uneconomical thing to do. If you have the right sources, it can even be the less expensive option.

Either way, it’s inexpensive enough that I’m tempted to get a grain grinder and try to make a truly from-scratch loaf of bread.

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.

1. Epicetus on blame
It’s easy to get angry at others. It’s much harder to look at ourselves for solutions.

“When we are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.” – Epictetus

Every time I look at myself for an explanation for the problems in my life, I find something I can improve.

2. Sunni Brown on the power of doodles
I keep a notepad on my desk for random thoughts. Sometimes, I find myself doodling on it. Weirdly, there are times when that doodling will cause me to put together some idea in my head.

Something that seems like a time waster isn’t really a time waster.

3. Chogyam Trungpa on the fear of facing ourselves
We are who we are. We can’t change that.

“We have a fear of facing ourselves. That is the obstacle. Experiencing the innermost core of our existence is very embarrassing to a lot of people. A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible. We can’t do that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts. We have to see them. That is the foundation of warriorship, basically speaking. Whatever is there, we have to face it, we have to look at it, study it, work with it and practice meditation with it.” – Chogyam Trungpa

We succeed when we accept who we are and think about how we can use that in the world.

4. Autumn leaves
The evenings are getting very cool here and the leaves are just starting to turn.

Thanks to Yves Cosentino for the picture.

5. John Bogle on impulsiveness
Impulsiveness is our biggest opponent in life. It’s exciting, but it’s also quite capable of sinking our ship.

“Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.” – John Bogle

Patience, on the other hand, keeps our ship headed the right way.

6. Baseball
The reason I love baseball so deeply was rekindled this past week with perhaps the single best evening of sports I’ve ever seen in my life.

I would have given anything to watch all of those games with my father and my grandfather there.

Thanks to Sean Winters for the picture.

7. Will Rogers on life
Whenever I struggle with time management, I come back to this quote.

“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” – Will Rogers

The entire reason for thinking about time management is to have more time for the stuff you want to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

8. Louis Armstrong performing Mack the Knife
Something about this puts a big smile on my face every time.

This is just an amazing performace.

9. Twosides
This is just an amazing site. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the perspectives that others have on an issue, particularly those that disagree with you, this is the place for you.

I’ve met people on both sides of the political spectrum who seem to not fundamentally understand what the other side thinks or wants (or else abstracts it to the point of nonsense). I wish I could send this to every one of them and that they’d actually take a moment to use it.

10. Jonathan Swift on the value of money
Money isn’t what you want.

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.” – Jonathan Swift

Money is a tool to achieve what you want.