alternate title: Ants in My Pants?

Act I

So, Sharla and I had a weird, weird buggy day. It began @ 7:30 this morning when Sharla told her groggy bear that there are ants in our closet.

Now, I don’t know about your closet, but in ours, we keep very, very little food. In fact, I am pretty sure there was none? Maybe, just maybe, there was a Twinkie hidden in my T-shirt bin?

The ants were on the floor, twenty or so, and she killed them dead.

Act I (cont.)

Later, Sharla was doing some laundry, and low and behold, she finds the rest of the ants. Easily a hundred of them in the laundry hamper. Why? Why so many? Why there? Is my sweaty shorts such a sweet, sweet salty delight?

The ants were in the hamper, hundreds, maybe even millions, and I killed them dead.

Act II

Dinner time, and we are trying to get more potatoes in Sharla’s diet. Thus, the bag of potatoes on the floor of the pantry. (I think you know where this is going.) Do I even need to say it?

The baby roaches in the bag of old potatoes, a few, and I let them be, in the trash can in the garage.

Act III

Sharla is going in and out the back sliding door. And well, a wasp(?), maybe a yellow jacket(? - I don’t know, I am no Entomologist), follows her into the house, our home, our mini-kingdom.

Whatever it was, we did battle. I knocked it down three times, but it kept getting up. It was the Rocky Balboa of the bug family. So, I set it free.

The mystery wasp-like creature was in the living room, just the lone fighter, and he was victorious.

Closing Remarks:

-All these bug encounters involved Sharla. Coincidence? I think not.

-Pest guy comes yearly. I try to do it in early July. But, I keep forgetting. Uh, yeah, he is coming Friday.

-Occasionally, I find a dead spider in the house. Now, either the pest spray from a year ago still works, or we have a black widow in the house.

-Just last week I finally cleaned out the front door, exterior light fixture. I had about a hundred gnats(?), again, an entomologist, I am not.

Since I deactivated my comments, here is a comment emailed directed to me. It came from Bobby F. (I will respect Dr. Feaster’s anonymity):

as i’m sitting here watching my 5th patient officially no-show, i’ve been reading your frugality brant (web rant, i prefer to “blog”).
here’s a ponderable - you neglect to mention the interconnectedness or web of frugality (frugaweb for short)
immediate frugaweb - i mow every other week instead of every week. it would seem i use half as much gas, but for my yard, at least, the job takes longer the longer the grass is. the mower works harder and i have to go slower or it will die on me as it gets clogged up.
bread - i use one piece, but (assuming i follow a 2000kcal diet or whatever) now i need something else to replace my lost calories.
distant frugaweb - my wife cuts her milk consumption in half. sounds good for now until she fractures her osteoporotic hip in 30 years, or is put on meds prior to that and now has to followup more often due to the diagnosis. or maybe she takes supplements, also costing more money.
a/c filter - i decide to change it less, then it doesn’t function as well, driving up the a/c costs, maybe stressing it til the compressor gives out.
thankfully there are positive frugawebs. i drink less milk and eat less bread, i poop less and use less toilet paper, i drive to the store less to get these things and my car lasts longer.
sadly this cannot be voiced due to your ‘no comments’ policy
audi alteram partem
b

What is interesting about my toothpaste example, is how it applies to so, so many consumables. I like to call these the inevitables of suburbia’s modernity. A brief and random list:

• toilet paper (how many squares to you use? my library only dispenses 3 squares at a time! Cheryl Crow only needs 1!)
• milk and/or Dr. Pepper (how many glasses/day do you have? Note: milk spoils, so that might determine the maximum window of consumption)
• bread (how many sandwiches/week? Always need two pieces? Note: bread molds eventually, use the fridge)
• clothes (which wears out sooner: fashion or threads?)
• cars (how long can you keep that paid-off vehicle?)
• printer paper (what do you print and why?)
• gas for the mower/propane for the grill (how often you mow/grill?)
• a/c filters (how often you change ‘em?)

With any of the above, if you to fully consume all of said item, you would mostly likely, if not inevitably, need to buy another one. Thus, the proper mindset is this: the longer I can make THIS last, then:

(1) my money will get spent at a slower rate, which is to say, the monthly budget/boundary for THIS item will look that much smaller

(2) the total number of THIS item consumed in my lifetime will be smaller, which obviously effects the total dollars spent on a particular item over a lifetime.

These are two different thoughts, each with it is own merits. The first helps your “disposable income” (such a funny phrase, and appropriate for our current culture). It helps you have more money on hand. The second speaks to having to purchase less and less items on the tail end, you know, and that is were the real saving is.

The example of the car:

Lets compare two different types of people. Both will be needing a vehicle for 60 years of their lives. Both will always spend 10K on a vehicle (on average? with inflation? etc?). In fact, everything else will be “constant” between the two of the, expect this:

Person A is only able to keep a vehicle for four years. While Person B squeezes out that extra year out of a vehicle (5 years).

This means, Person A will have to buy 15 cars over his lifetime, for a grand total of $150k.  So, he will be spending money on cars at a rate of $2.5k/year or about $200/month.

Now, Person B on the other hand, will only have to buy 12 cars over his lifetime, for a grand total of $120k. Additionally, he will only be spending at a rate of $2k/year or about $177/month.

(For a married couple you would just double all the numbers.)

In conclusion, as you can see, by increasing the longevity of an item by just 25%, you can save tons of $.

This, to me, is frugality; the attempt to consume at a slower rate. Now, this was only for my inevitables of suburbia’s modernity.

(Now, I know I did not even mention the non-essentials, non-allowables, non-expectables, you know, the toys of life. These fall completely outside frugality and work completely against it, so don’t ever buy them?)

The ultimate example of frugality is how well you squeeze your toothpaste. There is much theory behind this simple act, as I hope to argue for here. But, before I do, here is an interesting and amusing tangent on the act of squeezing toothpaste.

There are mainly two schools of thought in the act squeezing the fluoride: the fist and the roll. The fist was popularized in Roman times, especially after a great, post-war, victory teeth cleaning session. It’s utter brutally is plainly seen by all witnesses.

The roll was the technique of the more refined classes of people. It grew in prominence during the Renaissance’s Period. It was and still is today considered: the way of the enlightened.

I guess you can decipher which I school of thought I subscribe to: the roll, baby.

In a revealing intro to the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, each of the males in household were filmed squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of a single tube. I believe the order was: the fist, then a roll, then a fist pound, then a foot pounce, and finally, the dad drives over the tube with the minivan.

Why do I squeeze my toothpaste tube till the very last drop? Well, for two reasons:

(1) To reduce the rate of spending, that is, how much money needs to be spent in a certain amount of time, let’s say monthly.

(2) To reduce the total number of toothpaste tubes I have to buy in a lifetime.

I will explain this is great detail in my next post on Wednesday. In the meantime, here is a site I have been know to visit on occasion: Frugal for Life

The sub-heading on all (non-fiction) books is: IF you only knew…

This is suppose to be read as a threat, which is the second commonality to all non-fiction books, they all attempt to threat your existence as you know it. Thus, all books have a threat level.

For example, “The Secret: IF you only knew…” is supposed to score high on the threat matrix, as though you are living a terrible life without this book. Compare that to “MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers: IF you know knew…” which has a very low threat level.

The third aspect of any (decent) book is the challenge, what does the author want to you do differently after reading his/her book. They (typically) do this by arguing for a response to a thesis. We can call this: el conclusio.

I bring all this nonsense up to share with you (all 6 of you) this: I have recently “read” a few books that were in one way or another recommended to me, and, surprisingly, they all were threat level midnight with common challenge points. The books were: the Omnivore’s Dilemna, Fast Food Nation, and the Walmart Effect.

These books all contend that: IF you (the consumers) only knew… the truth! Two of the books focused on the food industry (mainly cows and corn), while the Walmart book focused on outworkings of a corporate strategy of “lower prices.”

Most of the content in these books was fascinating, and yet, disturbing. Even if only half of the material in these books was true, or fairly described, it should cause one to evaluate their consuming habits. Which is the other thing all these books had in common, they concluded that it was up to you (again, the consumer) to stop spending money in (1) the fast food industry, (2) most of the food industry in general, (3) Walmart.

It is nothing personal, but I am shutting down my comments options. I am getting a lot of spam that has to be moderated, and well, it is pretty annoying.

I know there are even more steps I can take to fight the good fight against SPAM COMMENTS, but I just don’t feel like researching, evaluating and installing all those plugin options.

thanks,

mgmt

Yeah, yeah, I know I killed this category, but the show must go on?

I love “Freeware,” and I loathe “Shareware.” And, although I am not tech savy enough to explain the history and definitions of each, I will write this post nevertheless.

Shareware are programs you download to your computer, and you get to try them for awhile. But, then the trial runs out, and you need to pay up or un-install.

Freeware, on the other hand, are programs that you are allowed to download, install and keep, guilt and cost free. They are typically single-minded programs, that is, they help you do like one thing better on your computer. Some of the more popular freeware programs are firefox web browser, winzip, winamp, realplayer, etc.

I love the idea of freeware and I am trying to seek out more and more good stuff. For example, to replace Windows XP/Vista and the like, I have been trying to learn how to use Linux. Thankfully, some people out there have compiled Linux into a nice graphic user inferface know as Ubuntu. And it is “free.”

(All the serious tech people that visit my site are flipping out right now, for I am failing to communicate how Linux and the like are “free.” They say stuff like “free like the free in free speech.” whatever.)

In conclusion, I wrote all above noise in order to introduce my most recent freeware downloads. I will be installing, configuring and evaluating most of these programs over the next few weeks. (I got the list from dl.tv):

Need a good free anti-virus? Then one of these titles should fill the bill; AntiVir Personal Edition Classic Avast! Home Edition or AVG Free Edition But remember always keep the virus definitions up to date!

Need a bombproof PC FTP program? Then definitely give FileZilla a try. For Mac OS X users out there try outCyberduck.

Adobe Reader can be a beast, especially in its most recent incarnation. Luckily there’s a great replacement. Foxit Reader is both fast and free, and skip having to use Adobe Reader ever again.

Want an office suite that won’t cost you a pretty penny? Then give Open Office a spin. Available for every major OS including Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Need more power than Windows Paint can provide but don’t need the all features of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? Then you need to check out Paint.Net. A free windows only photo editing software, supports layers, unlimited undo, and special effects.

IrfanView a small, fast, capable graphics viewer that runs great on slow machines (or if your machine is running 32 other apps). Plus does a bang-up job of cutting and resizing photos when you’re in a rush.

For Audiophiles that require only the most pristine rip of their audio CDs into a digital format you need to getdBpoweramp. Supports multiple codecs including FLAC, OggVorbis and of course MP3.

VLC Media Playeris a great media player that plays DVDs that expensive dvd playback software doesn’t normally handle. Of course it also plays back MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 over a network.

Portable Appsis a great excuse to load that fat USB drive of yours with loads of cool applications that you can run on any Windows PC you plug the drive into. If you need a mac solution you can find it at OSX Portable Apps.

An all in one IM client Trillian Basicis a great tool for IM addicts. You should also check out Pidginfor an opensource solution and for you OS X folks try out AdiumX.

For the ultimate in downloading convenience try outFlashGet. A great download manager that evens shuts off your PC when you¹re done.

Mac Users - Still having trouble dropping playable videos on to your Gen 5 iPod? Download iSquintand follow on the directions and you should be converting iPod compatible videos in no time.

 

I added another link this week: http://www.freakonomics.com

Freakonomics, in short, is pretty hard to explain. I came across the book about a year ago (although, apparently, it had been around for quite while by then). I guess I would describe it as just an excellent way to analyze topics. The main guy, Steven D. Levitt, is an economist, and brings that approach, how ever defined, to everything, seriously, everything.

In the book, I found the interesting conclusions hard to argue with. In fact, I think I would rather argue with why they picked the topics they did. Their conclusions are hard to argue with, because of their approach to every subject matter. And since I can’t really explain it well, I will just highlight one key thing: correlation vs. causality.

If two things happen at the same time, people often think they are related, and rightly so. This is called correlation. Unfortunately, people also like to make the next the jump to causality too quickly. For example, statistically, when more people leave their homes with umbrellas, it rains. Thus, a wrong causality jump would be to say that the act of people bringing umbrellas about their day causes it to rain. Of course, not all causality arguments are ridiculous. In Freakonomics, they do economic stuff data to prove causation.

To get caught up in the matter: Intro to Freakonomics page

There are two types of budgets, and both are bad. They are not even necessary evils.

Type one: A business budget that needs outside approval.

I think it is helpful and noble to tell your bosses, hey, this is how much my department is going to cost this quarter/year. Really, that’s great.

But, my understanding of these types of budgets, especially in government, is that they never get smaller. For example, when the news reports that congress is going to cut spending in something, what is actually happening, is that congress is cutting the rate of growth of a budget. The budget is still getting bigger.

In business, and maybe even in ministries/non-profits, the goal with any budget is to spend it all. The reasoning is to show activity and to show progress. Further, it allows them to ask for more money next quarter/year.

I guess my solutions to these types of budgets are:

• budgets that dependent on results (where appropriate)
• better audits
• rewards for cutting the budget

One of my favorite business stories is about that American Airlines flight attendant that was greatly rewarded by the company for suggesting they remove black olives from the in-flight salad. She cut the budget.

Type Two: The dreaded family budget.

There are so, so many reasons to hate the family budget, but here are just a few.

The first is that it creates a license to spend, that is, it removes reason from the decision making process.

Scene 1:

It’s the 30th of any month (expect February). The question: Should we go out tonight? With a budget, the answer will completely depend on one thing, is there any money left in the budget (or the entertainment and leisure envelope)?

No thinking required, just 1st grade math.

Come the end of the month, I think every family budget looks the same:

(a) all money has been spent in every category
or
(b) all money has been spent overall, and some categories where moved around

Which might lead to a bit of guilt? Maybe? Potentially? You know, you might feel guilty for short-changing one category for another.

Sorry, Timmy no lunch money for you, Daddy is addicted to yard tools.

But, I think the most annoying part of a budget is what it shows about us. I would hate to see where all the money goes week to week.

Part of this stems from some calculations I did in my head the other day: I think Sharla and I are on pace to spend over half-million dollars in our first 10 years of marriage. (Thankfully, this includes paying off a lot of debts, but c’mon, we are going to consume 500,000 green pieces of paper with “1 U.S. dollar” written on them.

My solution to the family budget is what I call THE Boundary. I do not have any fancy way to illustrate this (maybe a mountain mesa/plateau scene?)

The idea is simple: in every category of spending, just have a maximum boundary per day/week/month/year/lifetime. Just state how much is enough to spend on whatever category. This is especially helpful on those once or twice a year purchases.

Maybe it is more of just a simple mind shift, a decision to stay under budget, to stay as far away from maximum spending as possible? Whatever it is, it is how I think.

(If you read this post you will get 25,000 Steve points. Sound good?)

Apparently, many of you people out there are fans of these things called “miles” or more specifically, “airline miles.” For those of you not in the know, there are several ways to accrue airline miles: fly, use certain credit cards, buy them, trade for them (sometimes with questionable legality), etc.

Let me just say, that “miles” are part of the biggest scam in the history of reward/incentive programs. I base this mainly on three factors:

Factor #1: To date, there are more “miles” out there than printed American money. This might be an urban legend I am propagating here, but I once heard that there are more miles than dollars. The airline industry has created a new medium to facilitate the trading of goods. So, a history lesson:

(1) Pre-monetary Medium Age: “Hey, you have a goat. Will you trade me that goat for two of my pigs?” Done.

(2) Monetary Age: A goat costs 200 green pieces of paper with “1 U.S. dollar” printed on them. These pieces of paper are backed by a larger organization known as the government. A pig costs 125 of said green paper. Thus, in order to procure a goat, I must sell at least two pigs, receiving more than 200 pieces of paper.

(3) Post-Monetary Age: I would like to fly somewhere. I can either exchange 500 pieces of the now famous green paper, or I can attempt to “redeem” a portion of my frequent-flyer miles for the trip.

If you think about it, there is really nothing like it.

Factor #2: Less than 8% of miles distributed have been redeemed. This is another stat I have heard thrown around. From what I know about this subject, it is a very believable stat. The reason: it is way easier to get miles than redeem them, eh?

Sharla and I get frequent-flyer miles offers daily. Usually, about 25,000 miles in the initial offer. That means, without flying, I can get 25,000 miles in my account.

Now, I, personally, have never had my own miles account, thus, I have never tried to redeem miles. But, from what I hear, it is next to impossible to do so. Something called “blackout dates”?

Additionally, if you think about miles as a currency, does it not fit that people will try to accumulate and accumulate miles? Aren’t we like that? I would bet that there are thousands of people just accruing miles because they can. They have no goal, there is no end in sight, no trip on the calendar.

Factor #3: Miles make people do crazy things. Here are three quick tales of how this type of reward program makes people behave strangely:

-Mileage runs: There are people who have been know to fly around the country for the sole purpose of accruing miles. I think they were trying to get to some special “level” in the program or to get enough miles to make a trip? Either way, I would have to see this on paper before attempting to wrap my head around this.

-The Pudding Guy: Do a little google search for David Phillips. He calculated that spending a quarter on some pudding was worth the mileage rebate. Thus, he bought 12,000 pudding snacks for the mileage.

-My first real credit card: My first real exposure to credit cards came in the summer of 1998. Long story short: I had a frequent-flyer credit card with my name on it, but it was on my pops’ account. Thus, the arrangement with my pops was that I would pay him back for all the money I spent. Well, wanting to be a good son, I decided that summer to accrue as many miles as possible for him. I charged as many things as I could, for as many people as I could. I remember a $250+ restaurant bill from the Hula Hut in Austin. That summer, I had to personally collect checks and cash from like 60 people, just because I wanted these mysterious miles. At least the waiters like me.

In closing, I am just not a fan of miles, and I hope that I never am. For those of you who are, I hear this is a good site: http://www.globalflight.net/

Also, I hear that this book is helpful: Peter Greenberg’s The Travel Detective

(I am also not a fan of the airline industry as a whole. The airline industry is mess with all the bankruptcies, buyouts, government bailouts, and passenger bill of rights debates.)