stock up!

I'm not sure if you've been reading the newspapers are looking up stuff on the Internet but you'll probably notice that inflation is reported to be roughly 1-2%. I don't know if I believe those numbers entirely. Inflation on goods you don't need is low, but inflation on goods that you do need is higher than reported.

The consumer price index is calculated using a basket of goods, including various things like [don't quote me on this] the cost of hotels, food, housing costs, energy, transportation, and other goods like electronics and computers. I'm sure there's others that I have not mentioned.

In case you haven't noticed, car prices are dropping like crazy as our home prices. In addition, other discretionary expenses are also a dropping in price. That is putting a downdraft on inflation. You may have not noticed or might have noticed, depending on how closely look, that grocery prices are actually not going down very much - in fact, not at all. In fact, last week bananas were actually up approximately 15c a pound and we haven't noticed any significant decreases in the cost of any fresh produces since the summertime. Some people may attribute this to the relative weakness of the Canadian dollar in comparison to the US dollar and this also could be due to the increase in the cost to import goods especially in the wintertime.

So, in order to mitigate that inflation, we went on a little binge last week.

We went on a significant grocery trip last week. We went out and stocked up on dried goods, such as pasta. We didn't just buy small quantities of past, but we ended up buying approximately 36 kg of it (in restaurant-sized boxes). We also ended up buying a significant quantity of flour (we usually buy 20kg bags). We've noticed that buying in bulk significantly allows us to save money and we don't need to spend extra time going out if we run out of goods, because we never really do. Ditto with rice and sugar. We used to get 20kg of rice for around $12-14. Now, it's $33. We ended up buying the cheaper rice, which is still $18-19/20kg.

I digress.

All the flour and the past was purchased at a local wholesaler that does not charge a membership fee. Yesterday, we went out and bought some seeds but that is for a later post. Stay tuned!

DIY baby food - save money and it's very healthy!

Of course you can buy baby food in jars at the grocery store, but making your own baby food is not only easy but economical and brings peace of mind (you know the ingredients that are inside).

How do we accomplish this?

My wife simply makes a rice porridge (boil the heck out of rice and maake it gloopy). We freeze cubes of it in ice cube trays. Each cube is roughly 1 tablespoon in volume.

Then, she steams or boils vegetables (broccoli, carrots, shelled peas, cauliflower, sweet potato, squash, and whatever else we can find in either the fresh or frozen food sections), pulverizes them via a blender, and again, freezes cubes of these vegetables in ice cube trays.

We then freeze portions of raw meat (turkey, chicken, beef, pork, fish) on a plastic lid (roughly 1-2 square inch).

So basically, each morning, she takes out different variations of porridge, veggies and meat. (like a 3-5-1 ratio for example). She minces the meat cubes (everything other than fish) when it is semi-frozen and adds some water to make it a "watery meat paste". Or we steam the fish for 2-3 minutes then break it up with a fork.

I heat the porridge and veggies in the microwave until boiling and add the meat slurry....stir and heat until boiling again. (if using fish, just add the cooked fish to the boiled mixture.)

Our son eats half of it for lunch and we just save the other half for dinner.

It sure saves us a lot of money and also saves her children from having to eat processed food. Also, another side benefit is that since the texture is not completely puréed and smooth, they can progress to sell its very quickly.

How to recession proof your finances

I just saw this article this morning and thought I would share with you. Please click on the link in the title of the post.

I particularly liked the line about taking on new debt : "unless your job is ironclad and your financial picture rosy, it's not a good time to take on a lot of new debt." This is especially true in the bad times but also particularly true in the good times.

Happy reading!

Understand the macroeconomic picture

If you need to buy a vehicle or do some major renovations, you need to understand the macroeconomic picture.

What do I mean? basically, everything is about supply and demand. When supply is up and demand is down, prices will inevitably fall. The same can be said about the supply and demand of services and of products.

We are in the market for a vehicle in preparation for a potential family expansion. We realize that the current market for vehicles is still somewhat "hot" in that vehicle sellers will become slightly more desperate once they see that cars pile up in their lots. As such, by understanding the macroeconomics, we choose to wait for vehicles to come on sale. We don't really care about any financing or lease deals, as we will be paying cash for that car, so we can wait.

Likewise, with something like house renovations. We do understand that there are significant numbers of people who have been laid off from the oil sands and will be/have been flooding the Maritime provinces. This is going to significantly drive down labor rates and we're willing to wait. Plus, the federal government is now giving tax credits to do renovations and we feel that this is temporarily inflating the market for renovations. As smart consumers, we choose not to fight for a limited pool of labor with those people who are experiencing low interest rates and can therefore afford renovations based on credit.

So, a thorough understanding of the macroeconomics can also be helpful in a frugal lifestyle because certain decisions can be made in the context of supply and demand and therefore you usually can get lower prices as a result. Moreover, because of the frugal lifestyle that we live, we have no need for credit to the finance any of these major purchases.

That being said, it's always just difficult to predict the future.