WIse Bread (Margaret Garcia-Couoh)

5 Things to Do With Your Coffee Beans

Maggie Wells — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:24:12 +0000

I once walked into a coffee house where all the art on the walls was made from using coffee bean grounds as watercolor paints. Very cool if a little monochromatic — and aromatic, I might add. Upcycling old used coffee beans and grounds into art! But seeing as most of us have used coffee beans every morning and only a small minority of us have an artistic inclination to do coffee bean watercolors, what else can we use them for? (See also: 10 Ways to Reuse Common Household Items)

Garden helper

Depending of course where you live and what the make up of your soil is, used beans are a great soil fixer and additive. They are especially beneficial to berry bushes like blackberries and blueberries. The blackberry behind my old house really loved coffee grounds sprinkled on the roots of the plants. Carrots seem to like them too. Other gardening suggestions can be found at Sustainable Enterprises.

Beauty aid

If you are into making your own soaps, lotions, bath bombs, scrubs, masks and balms, consider coffee. Among other properties, it's an antioxidant and a great exfoliator (not to mention it can smell pretty darn yummy). Mixed with an oil — like olive or an omega-3 oil — it can be used as an anti-cellulite rub. You can use it in a mask. The benefits of drinking coffee come out in force, as people swear by the 'pick me up' of coffee in soaps. I've added it to bath bombs for an extra kick.

Combat odors

Whether it's garlic or meat smells on your hands (that one always bothers me), or a smelly kitchen drain, rubbing some coffee around will soak up the odor and just leave the pleasant smell of coffee behind.

Critter repellent

Lots of animals and insects don't particularly like the smell and feel of coffee and thus coffee becomes a nice non-toxic way to get rid of potential pests. Ants, for example will move if you sprinkle coffee on their hill. Cats will find other places to relieve themselves other than your plants and flower beds if they sense you've put coffee down.

Cleaning agent and stainer

Its mild abrasive qualities make it a good cleaner. I tend to put some grounds (or wash my espresso accoutrements ) when I'm needing to clean something greasy. Some extra grounds in the water help cut the grease. Coffee can make a great stainer too — and if you like the staining process, consider trying that coffee house artwork I mentioned at the beginning.

What do you do with your used coffee beans?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

How Closing a Small Business Can Grow a Better One

Maggie Wells — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:24:26 +0000

Sometimes the best way to grow your business can be to close the business. Huh? I wouldn't have thought it was true, but recent developments have shown me otherwise. (See also: How to Get a Groupon Refund When a Company Closes)

My Own Business

I had a small consignment shop that I closed at the end of 2009. The store hadn't lost money...yet. But I could see how it might start to do so. Business was slow, and the secondary purpose I had for it — a space away from home where I could catch up on work at my desk — never came to fruition. I could also tell that my fellow business owners in the shop and I (the store was a second room inside a salon) would have a better chance of remaining good friends if we didn't work together.

Though my business was around less than a year, I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. I learned not to go into business with friends — especially when the thing you admire most about your friend/business partner will drive you crazy. In our case, I kept coming in seeing all the stuff I'd arranged rearranged. The shop was inside a badly ventilated salon, and I didn't realize how much the smell of acrylic nails would bother this organic-eating, nature-loving person. I would literally have to leave the shop because I was getting dizzy. It didn't seem to bother the rest of the business owners. But by the end of the three quarters of a year I'd spent there, I knew more about where I belonged and what sort of things I can get involved in and what I can't. Valuable lesson.

The best thing about the shop was the used book sales. It seemed I really had a knack for hooking up people with the right book, and I also was a decent book scout at estate sales and thrift stores. I consistently can find the book in the pile of trash that's going to be worth fifty dollars. Armed with all this knowledge, I closed the brick-and-mortar shop and reopened as an Amazon seller specializing in rare books. That part of the business is still going strong, but it's now in my garage. It doesn't make me a lot of money — but it makes me more than the shop ever did.

The Alley Cat Cafe

My favorite coffee house in the entire county closed its doors at the end of February. I'm an adjunct professor with no office space — where was I going to get great coffee and a fast Internet connection? I talked to the owner. Was she crazy? Everyone loved her coffeehouse; she always seemed busy. Why would she close and leave us all stranded? She told me what I'd suspected — the rent on that place was crazy high for our town and was destined to keep going up. She'd have to charge us $10 bucks a latte to break even if she stayed. Meanwhile, there was a theater being built (slowly) in town. The owners of the theater and Julie sat down and talked. Her husband was a contractor, too. There was still more work to be done on the theater before the first play could ever be produced there...and wouldn't that foyer make a great coffeehouse? They worked out a deal that cut Julie's rent in half and gave her more space for more customers to sit.

It didn't happen overnight. While the cafe in the foyer was a great idea, it took awhile to convince the county and to get inspections underway. Julie thought the business would be closed three months, and instead it was closed six months and nearly drained her savings. But she seized the opportunity of free time to plot ways to make the new Alley Cat more successful.

Julie turned to community involvement and social networking. With time on her hands, she got busy beautifying the town and meeting with other business owners. She got flower baskets to line our main street to make it more inviting and less of a drive-through space. She researched further into organic foods, and recommitted herself to serving high-quality food and drinks (nay sayers had suggested that if she skimped on ingredients she'd make better profits). She made sure her cafe was searchable on the web, and that those looking to visit and vacation in our area knew where it was and when it was open. She used that time away from the business to reinvent its presence and goals. She's started an Alley Cat Cafe blog to keep on people's radar and so patrons know where she's coming from.

Now Alley Cat is busier than ever. She was able to hire more staff, too!

Chef Jayson

My friend Jayson has the patience of a saint. Rather than go with his dream of being a chef, he went initially with family obligation and started a business with his twin brother. They owned a comic book and gift shop. Slowly my friend realized, seeing his brother's spending, that in a few years my friend was pretty much going to have to carry the whole business venture by himself. He watched as his brother bought classic cars and went on expensive vacation benders to Disney World and Vegas without so much as glancing at his checkbook. All the warning signs were there for significant problems in the future. The more closely he looked, the more he realized that he was alone in saving for a rainy day or business expansion later. As much as he loved the shop, he decided to cut losses early and dissolve the partnership rather than face possible problems down the road.

But Jayson got the taste for business and liked it. Instead of going off to work for someone else, Jayson took his initial training and dream to be a chef to the next level. Even while dissolving the partnership, he began baking again, collecting a portfolio of portraits of his best and yummiest creations. By the time he was out of the first business, he was already building up a loyal following of his desserts for a second business. He moved himself back to his home turf (a very foodie area) and began making connections with other foodies. His new business is fledgling, but he has cake orders already, and everyone who has tasted his creations has clamored for more.

My Local Pet Store

Like the Alley Cat Cafe, the place I buy my pet food closed down earlier this year. It was teetering on the edge of viability, and the owner sold the business to a nearby auto parts store that had also seen a loss of customers due to the economy. Now the auto parts store and pet shop are combined in the same building with one rent to pay. While we'll all miss the old pet shop owner's good nature, it's nice to know the shop is still continuing, and the consolidation makes sense for our small community. Now the old pet shop owner is free to pursue new interests and doesn't have to contend with high rent, and the town keeps its pet shop in a smaller and warmer location.

I would have loved to have seen all these businesses succeed in their original locations with their original game plans, but sometimes it's much more valuable to rethink and meet a goal in away that feels better for the business owner and the community that business serves.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more Entrepreneurship articles from Wise Bread.

Should You Lend to Friends and Family?

Maggie Wells — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:36:30 +0000

It's happened to all of us at one point or another. Something has happened to someone we love, and money is needed. Our money. If perfect strangers asked us for money, we'd more than likely not give it, end of story. But when a friend or family member asks to borrow, we don't usually say "no" right away. We think about it first. Some of us are more apt to help out friends than family or family than friends. (See also: The Different Types of Loans: A Primer)

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as a good friend of mine just inherited money from the sale of her grandfather's house. We've watched as all sorts of friends and family of hers have come out of the woodwork to ask her for loans. To be fair, she was often insolvent in her youth, and most people feel justified, I suppose, in asking her for money. It has, however, reconfirmed my beliefs and suspicions about lending to and borrowing from those you know.

The Complicated Route: Agreeing to Loan Money

Lend it. Go ahead. Don't expect to see it again, though. Or do what some people I spoke to about this do, and treat it like a bank loan — sign a contract, charge interest, and set up a timeline for repayment that both parties can be comfortable with. This is crucial to getting the money back. If you don't set guidelines for repayment in writing, you have no one to fault but yourself if it doesn't come back to you in that timely manner you expected when you said yes over beers. Don't expect the party to pay up faster than you set up a plan for.

Your Expectations and Values

Is your potential borrower a good bet? Do they have the capability to pay you back? You don't have to do a credit check on the person, but what do you know about them? Do they have marketable skills? Are they willing to do trades? Do they continually have trouble? Do your homework with other friends and relatives, and find out.

If someone asks you for money, do you get to judge where the money is going? Can you lend it, no questions asked? This is where resentment comes to fester. If you can't give it or lend it freely without the judgment, it's probably best not to lend it at all. None of us spend money the same, and we don't value the same things. For example, I spend $400 a month on tuition so that my kids can attend a great school. I gladly remain in a single-car family so I can do this. Someone else might find that idiotic.

I lend money for groceries, school related expenses, and women's reproductive health concerns. I usually won't lend or give for anything else. The key in all this is communication. As long as both parties are clear about their values and expectations, things can go smoothly.

From the Borrower's Perspective

Hopefully no one out there wants to borrow money from friends or family, but it can happen. Unexpected car repairs, house repairs, or trips to the emergency room with the kids can strain and break the pocket book. Sudden, unplanned unemployment can take an almost permanent toll on individuals as well. There was a month back in 2008 when my husband was laid off, and I had a bare minimum of work the same week that our car needed repairs and tuition was due.

Three times in my life I've borrowed from friends and paid back. They are all three people whom I would lend to in a heartbeat. One of the prime reasons I borrowed from them is that they knew my situation and offered (I hadn't asked). I don't see anything wrong with things going back and forth between friends as long as it is a true back and forth and doesn't become lopsided in favor of one person.

My mother is one of the most generous people I know. She has given both to my brother and I when we've asked for it and many times when we haven't. She says that basically, she expects both of us to keep up the family bargain of helping her out with whatever she needs whenever she needs it — and she instructs us to help people in our community when we can. We are fine with this arrangement. The other night she made too much meatloaf and brought some over for us. Last month I made an extra tray of enchiladas for her. We treat our money between the three of us the same way we treat our food.

But if any of the above makes you uncomfortable, take...

The Easy Route: Saying No

Just don't do it. Loaning money affects your relationship with the other person and creates inequality between you. You go from being friends or family members with a shared past to a serf and a lord. You'll find that you can't help yourself eyeing the borrower's purchases without suspicion. If you establish early on in your relationship with other people that you don't lend money to family and friends, people will quit asking you pretty darn quickly (and move on to those who say yes). It's when you've said yes that the asking really starts.

How about you? What are your rules and expectations of lending money to friends or family?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Farewell to Homeownership: Lessons to Share

Maggie Wells — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:48:38 +0000

Losing your home is a strange and alienating process. Mine is being lost right this minute, but it’s not the end of the world. Here’s what happened to me this year, and some advice from what I learned along the way. (See also: How to Avoid Foreclosure)

The Long, Slow Demise

The day my neighbor’s house — twice the size of mine and renovated — sold at auction for $65,000, I knew we were in trouble. We paid $189,000 for 1,000 square feet of non-renovated 90-year-old American dream. But, I thought stupidly, it’ll come back up. Then, six months later, three more houses in our neighborhood foreclosed. It won’t be too bad, I said to myself. Those were old single-wide trailers. They have nothing to do with us. We’ve got a gem of a little house on an acre of land. Surely, it’ll still be worth something. Then, six months ago, the cute, refurbished, hardwood-everything house I coveted across the way sold at auction for $20,000. It had more bedrooms and baths than mine. We were done for.

I tried all last winter to modify our loan without success. We made too much on one application. Didn’t owe enough to other people and weren’t behind, so we didn’t qualify for another.

Then spring hit. Which wasn’t spring, really, but a second winter. Record snow. Record rain. The basement, where the posts and piers are, flooded three times. The water table was so high that the bathroom sink no longer drained. The septic, which had been drained and cleaned the summer before when we replaced pipes, was a mess. Contractors and plumbers said good luck with that — “You’ve got a year before you’re going to have to build a new one up the hill from you.” How much would that cost? All three contractors said $60,000. Oh, and did I mention the bathroom is sinking from the wet ground? I did some investigating, and apparently our whole town is built on top of mine caverns. One good earthquake, and it all comes down.

Math isn’t my strong suit, but even I know that my dinky house, now more than likely worth less than $20,000, is not worth a $60,000 new septic system built on top of a hillside that apparently is just caverns a few feet down.

The bank didn’t seem to think it was worth fixing either. It was worth it that we pay them our mortgage, but not worth it for them to loan us more or modify it for us to fix it. So earlier this year, we decided to leave.

Can’t Happen to Me

It’s not like us not to pay our bills. It feels weird. Especially the phone calls. We get them every hour from the mortgage company. Once every two weeks I pick up the phone and talk to them. I tell them the same thing each time — we are leaving our house because the plumbing issues and foundation issues have left it near to condemned. You wouldn’t help us fix it. Soon it will be yours.

The representatives are always pleasant. But what can they do? They tell us to apply for deed in lieu. In order for the bank to go for deed in lieu, the house has to be in move-in condition. That doesn’t work for a house with winter storm damage needing a new septic. We had been remodeling the kitchen but never finished. They tell us to short sale — and then they can apply what we make from the sale to the mortgage. No one who lives in our area is going to buy this house. Everyone here knows what the winter did to these houses, and that underneath the house is a cavern waiting for the house to fall in it.

Then I asked my lender the big picture question — which option is better for the home owner? Turns out deed in lieu and short sale are both better for the lender. But for us schmucks in the muck of home-owner disaster, it doesn’t matter much. What does bad credit mean in the US of A anymore?

So the bank calls me all the time now. I’m one of their dead beats.

The Silver Lining

With the savings of not paying the mortgage for a few months, I paid off a credit card, paid off medical bills, and was able to go see my grandfather before he died. None of these things I regret.

And there’s kind of a happy ending.

When I knew we were going to leave our house, I emailed a couple of friends of mine who have rentals. I stated I wanted at least a three-year lease so I wouldn’t have to move again soon. I’d need time to recover from all this madness. Did they have any open rentals or know a good landlord that did? My credit would be shot. I’d need someone who would take us on recommendation that we were decent people who would pay.

A friend wrote back. She had left the state but never sold her old house. It had been sitting empty for a couple of years. Beautiful house, but no one around here could afford to buy it, and odds are in the current market she couldn’t get what she paid for it. She wasn’t planning on selling it any time soon. She also bought a new house and wasn’t returning. She’d be less nervous about the property if someone was there to take care of it. Did we want to rent her twice-the-size-of-our-old-house, 70-years-younger, completely redone house? Yes, yes we did.

I’m writing to you from the new house. This feels like one of those "only in America" stories. The new home is in a nice area with lots of forest. The old home had a lovely view of my crackhead neighbor that used to weld in his garage at 3 a.m. Now I just have deer to contend with at night — a good trade off.

The Lessons for All of Us

It’s the community that will help you. It’s friends and neighbors with information. So many are suffering and in different stages of losing that we can all tell each other what’s going to happen next, which hoop to try, etc. I’ve gotten more information from my neighbors during our various yard and moving sales than from anyone in an official capacity.

If we were a corporation, we wouldn’t have thought even twice about cutting our losses and getting out of there. On the books it just doesn’t look right. Why put money into a failing investment? My husband and I are too old for that mortgage deal to ever have worked in our favor. We’d have been dead by the time we owned it anyhow.

Home ownership tends to be emotional, and just like we wrap up our worth in what we do for a living instead our humanity, we wrap ourselves up in our home's success or failure. I, frankly, have had enough of that.

Yes, America, I lost my house this year because by and large I was gullible and stupid and many people took advantage of my stupidity and gullibility. Stupidly, I thought that if I owned my own home I’d feel like less of a loser. I’d feel (there’s that emotion again) that I did something right and worthy of approval. I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s fallen into that trap.

But if there’s any Wise Bread reader out there about to lose his or her home and is freaking out — don’t freak out. We’ve all gone home with the wrong guy before. You didn’t die, and no one broke up with you for a cute young blonde. You helped yourself get screwed by a big giant corporation. They enjoyed it, and you feel cheap and easy. Get your clothes back on, grab your car keys and go. Hold your head high.

I’m a happy renter now. I love my landlady — she’s laissez faire about the right things and concerned about the right things. I love living in a house where everything was fixed and up to code. My kids are enjoying the 1,500 extra square feet. I’m enjoying paying out 300 less a month for a better house in a nicer neighborhood. Maybe finding a good landlord and a decent rent so that we pursue more important dreams than purchasing homes could be the new American dream.

Editor's Note: The views shared by one writer does not reflect the views of all writers on Wise Bread.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

The College Freshman Budget

Maggie Wells — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:00:15 +0000

Welcome to the fall semester! Whether you are on financial aid, are paying for college yourself, or have parents paying the brunt of it, your money can easily be gone long before your statistics or world civilization class will be. A little planning and corner cutting can help stretch those dollars. As a former student and current professor, here's my low-down on what you and your family might want to consider. (See also: Wise Bread's College Guide)

Textbooks

Every semester the sticker shock of books and materials seems to take both parents and students by surprise. The cost of textbooks is rising — that's not going to change for the better, but there are ways around this. For those on financial aid, know this — since the 1994 Congress changed laws governing student financial aid, America’s students have not received their financial aid checks in advance of the first day of class. This often means students are well into the first month of school before their checks arrive. The cheaper, used textbooks have since been bought out by those, ironically, not on financial aid! You need to plan for this.

Ask your instructors whether it’s okay for you to use a slightly older edition of the books you need for class. Most of the time the difference in an edition is as little as its introduction. Sometimes the instructors aren't aware that there is a new edition or older edition, or what the differences are. Using last year's edition can drop the price tag by more than $60.

Ask your instructors whether there’s a copy of the text on reserve in the library, and then go and make time to read it there. Many professors do have books on reserve.

Texts for three of the books I use for a class are entirely online available for free. Make sure you look up your texts just in case this applies. You never know! This is especially true of older textbooks, novels, etc.

Weigh all your options in buying the books: Amazon, eFollett, eBay, and your student bookstore. Sometimes an item can be high priced from one online company and totally cheap from another. Sometimes a nearby town book store can order books for you as well. If you are taking a literature class, check thrift stores near where students live, as odds are good that someone just moved and didn’t have time to take their old textbooks with them. I scored four books that I then gave away to students because other students just dropped them off at the thrift store.

Food

Now is an excellent time to go on a diet — less food, less money! All teasing aside, see if your campus has a meal card for its cafeterias. Meal plans generally can be bought in incremental amounts depending on the school and how much a student will be eating on campus. If you are on campus for three meals a day, get the bigger plan. This is one way to really strictly budget food.

If your college does have a meal card and your aunts and grandparents keep asking what you need, tell them to put money on your card. Nothing makes a student feel like he or she is more broke than not having money to eat. Eating on campus might not provide the best variety of food and can certainly be boring, but it can be economical. You don't want to be thinking about what to cook or where the cheapest meal might be when you've got midterms you should be studying for anyway. I've seen students with money left on their cards at the end of the semester barter with other students without any money left on theirs. Other meal suggestions can be found in my college student eating survival guide.

Transportation

First of all, don’t go home. I mean it. You are in college. Go home at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but not two weeks into school. You’re a big kid now, and you can manage. Those frequent trips home to do free laundry are going to cost you in gas and time. Most colleges have some deal worked out with local bus lines for free or discounted bus passes. Opt for this rather than having your car with you, or just use your own car as a last resort. Cars lead to parking tickets around campus anyhow. If you do have your car, gas cards usually don’t expire and are another great gift from the grandparents if you can convince them to send you this rather than a sweater.

College Resource Centers, Computer Labs, and Libraries

The most expensive part of being a student can be the technology, and sadly, most students do not use the resource centers, student services, and computer labs available to them for free on campus. Your tuition and fees go to pay for such services and equipment. Use them. Odds are you have your own laptop, but you can print on campus for free or low cost. Some student centers have counseling and therapy available for students — again, your tuition and fees paid for this, so why not use the services rather than pay for the same thing off campus?

Regular Bills: Frivolities and Utilities

You don’t need the mega data plan on your phone; you’re supposed to be reading, remember? Do you need 500 channels of TV? Look at your existing bills like cable and data plans on your phone, and see if you can downgrade them a little. You don’t need the distractions, and you could use the $40. Also, never talk to your professors about not being able to afford the book with a smartphone in your hand or $200 sneakers on your feet. It just won't fly.

Most utility companies have basic plans for students and low-income households. I had Lifeline on my phone through college — just the basics. Some electric companies offer a reduced energy bill program. In California, my home state, we have the CARE (California Alternate Rates for Energy) program through Pacific Gas and Electric that can mean $10 to $15 off your utility bills. A local community resource center or student center might have brochures for what applies to your area.

The Student ID Card

Not all schools require students to have them, but all produce some sort of ID card. Make sure to get one. This really is your ticket to all sorts of discounts around town. Look for entrance fee discounts for museums, specials in restaurants, bookstores, etc. If you are in a college town, odds are the local merchants will give you a break provided you can prove you are a student at that local college.

Financial Aid and Student Services

Whether you are on financial aid or homegrown parent aid, the trick with budgeting is to plan for the worse case scenario. Checks can be late and rules can change in the middle of the semester. Parents get divorced while young adult children are in college, and that great step parent might leave you high and dry afterwards (happened to me). Make that first check last as long as possible. I used to try and put half of it away in a savings account that I could withdraw from in a few months. It was never long enough to draw interest, but the money didn’t tempt me in my checking account. This is the best time in your life to learn how to stretch it.

This might be the first time mom and dad aren't there with you to fight your bureaucratic battles. Don't be shy! You need to be your own advocate. Go through your college handbook and familiarize yourself with where to go for health concerns, housing, utilities, financial aid, tutoring, and other students services. One of the biggest learning experiences in college is learning to navigate the system itself.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

6 Areas Where You Can Eliminate Distractions

Maggie Wells — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:00:17 +0000

In that post-New Year's resolution malaise that sets in at the end of January, I'm noticing an obvious thing I didn't think of before — distractions can break the best intentions. Coupling my distractions with an addictive personality, and I find myself on the brink of task-mastering disaster.

Thirty days after my resolution to be more productive and somehow exercise myself down a few sizes at the same time, I'm beginning to notice an awful pattern. Left to my own devices of sloth, it takes me too long to do simple things. Productivity-wise, I'm really no better than a 14-year-old boy staring at a screen of video games for 10 hours who then sits at his school desk Monday morning completely ill-prepared for the week. (See also: 5 Efficient Ways to Boost Productivity)

If admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, then I'm ready to take the first steps. Some people like to start out the year by uncluttering their living spaces or cleaning out their cars. For others, what we really need to do is to make some space in our bodies and minds. What is it we want to do with this year? What would we like to see by the end? What can we cut?

1. Volunteering

Perhaps it's my Catholic upbringing or my overarching sense that when something needs to be done, I'm just the person to do it, but I tend to over-volunteer. Do this with me: Pick one or two things a year you are going to volunteer for. Have strict control over yourself to make sure you don't overextend your time, and for goodness sake, don't volunteer to be in charge. Volunteer for something that has a beginning and an end, but nothing that's not fully defined. A good friend of mine has this nasty habit of thinking that the world will end for our children if we don't volunteer to be coaches, room mothers, advocates, and the like. While yes, we are providing cool things for the kiddies, we're also teaching them that moms should sacrifice themselves on the altars of their kids' childhoods. That's not a good lesson.

2. Social Networking

On my honor, I will try to stay off Facebook and Twitter; how about you? Talk about time wasters! Go delete all those game applications right now. Don't even finish reading this sentence. Stick your mother's voice in your head for a moment: "No, you may not have dessert until you've finished everything that's piled on your desk." If you can't break the online social networking habit, then at least establish a LinkedIn account instead and be more professional about your online time.

If you work from home, the social networking distractions are often traded for in-the-flesh ones. Develop a loner mentality. Writer Ariel Gore talks about this in her great writing manual How to be a Famous Writer Before You're Dead. The writer at home is an easy target for lonely friends and neighbors. Don't fall into the trap that friends set for you. Remind them nicely that just because you're home, it does not mean you can walk their dogs or pick up something from the pharmacy!

3. Dieting and Exercising

I envy thin people; I really do. But those not thin by genetics have to work at it. They have to spend all sorts of time and energy thinking about it. Having spent January dieting, I can tell you that all I did was think about food, which left very little time to think about anything else. And don't get me started on all those fiberous trips to the bathroom.

Don't give up on diet and exercise, but be smarter about it. I'm following writer Michael Ventura's advice when he said only do exercise that takes you somewhere. I'm cutting out all non-walking, martial arts, and dance-related exercise (physical activities that require no expensive equipment to pull off). Water doesn't cost any time or money if you have a tap and a thermos. The dieting is perplexing, but I'm starting to think that instead of following diet book makers' 101 tantalizing recipes, we who need time might better opt for fewer choices in food options — wasn't there that guy that ate two Subway sandwiches a day and nothing else? Former California governor Gray Davis was said to eat the same tuna sandwich every day. I had an aunt who made fixings for tacos on Sundays, rice, and beans, and then that was it for the week. Everything was ready-to-go in the fridge in Ziploc bags. There were no surprises, and she expended minimal energy during the week.

4. Working

I teach community college. This semester I've taken advantage of the Internet like never before. Why was I still grading longhand when I could set up quizzes online to grade automatically? Now my students have their results back faster, and I'm not spending Sunday night bleary-eyed. My breaks between classes (I have two hours between) have now become appointment time — be it student-related or a trip to the doctor.

But saving time at work isn't limited to teachers taking advantage of technology — although there is a big lesson here. Go online and seek out things you normally create for work. Why reinvent the wheel when you don't have to? Teachers can take great advantage of swapping lesson plans and quizzes. When my husband has to implement something at work, he always researches online beforehand to see who is dong something similar to find out what the results are. He also answers all emails at home and on the way to work (he takes the bus), so that when he's there he's not bogged down in communication and is ready to work instead.

5. Communicating

Unless it's your grandmother or for your livelihood, do you really need to talk to the person on the phone? Do you need your phone to be set so you can hear every time someone has left you a message? Probably not. Email the person back instead, and that saves you from long, drawn-out conversations you don't have time for. Turn your email program off when you are working, or turn down the sound so you don't hear the ding of receiving mail. However many times a day you check your mail, cut it in half. I'm down to morning and night. Twice!

6. Running Around

Perhaps my maternal grandmother was actually right about something. For 80 years, that woman could not be reached on a Friday morning because she did all of her errands (banking, post office, grocery shopping, etc.) on Fridays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. That's it for the entire week. By dedicating only those hours of time and having everyone in the family know that that's what she'd be doing on Fridays, we've all known not to call. She taught herself to stretch food to the end of the week and plan ahead so nothing runs out. I, of course, do errands whenever I'm in the car. I wonder how much more would be accomplished if I stuck to four hours a week instead of anytime I need something.

Join me on these time experiments for March. Let's see if we aren't more productive.

What are you doing to be smarter about your time?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more Productivity articles from Wise Bread.

How to Survive a Recession: Notes from the Broken Dog Days of Summer

Maggie Wells — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:00:16 +0000

This year was particularly trying for my family and I'm sure a good many families of Wise Bread readers. This summer was particularly relentless for this homeowner. I don't even think we should use that term. I own a mortgage and it really owns me, more or less. But when the pipes cracked and the septic tank simmered at the brim under a rotted lid threatening the peace and tranquility of homeownership this summer, I started reassessing just how lack of employment, the high cost of student loans, living, offspring, the car that decided it needed a thousand dollars dumped into it, and homeowning were going to factor into my attempts at frugality.

I felt like a fraud writing for Wise Bread. Yeah. Who am I to dispense any advice when I can't even use my own toilet? So I took a little break in an effort to not feel like a fraud and reassess if there was some turn I could have made in the last year to better the situation. The process of sitting in the comfy chair in the living room staring into the abyss of the cool sage green wall with a legal pad and pen actually did help.

There were a few things I could have planned for better and a few things I could have anticipated, but in the end I don't think my choices yielded more than a couple of hundred dollars extra with better planning. But I didn't get poor me, whiny about it. My mortgage is still getting paid. My kids still have food to eat, and we are doing a hell of a lot better than many neighbors. I am grateful.

A big difference in this summer is there was no vacation. OK — technically we went away for a three-day weekend, but that was it. This gave me time to really see my community for what it is. These are predictions and solutions for surviving the national recession and individual malaise that comes with it.

Get over that American uber alles mentality

Nationalism is not productive and there's nothing joyful about watching Rome burn when you're a Roman. By this I mean we'll fare much better if we put more energy into the health and well-being of our local communities — with an eye and heart to how the global community is doing — than if we were continue perpetuating the mantra that America must be No. 1. I think we get bogged down in thinking we should all be millionaires by now. We get that look in our eye best expressed by Prince's song "Pop Life": "they put your million dollar check in someone else's box..."

We aren't as badly off as we think we are

Is a fifth of our nation underwater? Was our capital destroyed by an earthquake? My kids and I just viewed the 1992 film Baraka the other day and as the segment of dire poverty begins midway through the film, it was good to remember what real poverty looks like. We are not living on the streets and we aren't picking through a landfill for food scraps. I'm not working as a prostitute and they aren't begging in the streets. We have health insurance from my husband/their father's job.

Get over the myth of the nuclear family

If we can keep in mind that the whole reason we live nuclear is that suburban developers sold us on the idea to sell houses, we'd be better off. Cultures around the globe know that you need to be tied to your family and society. I need my neighbors and community, and my neighbors and community need me. The smartest thing I've done in the last decade was moving three miles from my mothers.

Kids need access to grandparents — biological , adopted, or faux. So many struggling families I know are too far away from their extended families. Women spend nearly as much money on daycare as what they make. Moving back to an extended family and community model of living could change that. Co-op day care and family watching children both have great merits, and it's not a one-way street. My mothers watch the kids every Saturday and then I'm available to them for errands they cannot do.

And it' s more than childcare. We can share vehicles. (Between the two households, there's a car with great mileage, a car for snowy days, and a truck for hauling.) We share groceries. We share baking and cooking. (My mom and I tend to bake or cook trays of things and we always give the other a tray of something we've made.)

I consider my friends in this family equation too. The only way we had any vacation this summer is when one friend got a hold of free passes to the aquarium, and another let us stay in her house while she was gone, and still another bought us breakfast and shuttled us to and from the aquarium so we didn't have to pay for parking. We have let people stay with us for short bits and done as much reciprocity as we can think of.

I am over the myth. I need my mommy and my friends. They need me, too.

Sustainable is a good word, not a bad word

It means more than just growing organic crops so you don't kill the soil. It means research. Everything I do now makes me think of this word. How many extra-curricular activities can my kids reasonably sustain? How much square footage of a house can be heated economically so I don't run out of cash? How sustainable are my habits and hobbies? Where I live in the mountains, it's common for neighbors to announce they are going 'off the mountain' and take orders for things that anyone needed from the civilization of boxed stores 90 minutes away. It's always gratifying not to be able to think of anything.

Live only up to your own expectations

What if we all got off our collective butts and did what we said we wanted to do instead of what we think we must? What if we didn't care about that look our parents give us that says "Why didn't you become an accountant or a corporate lawyer?" That would look amazing. I bet it would feel amazing, too. What if we stopped blaming others for our predicaments? What if we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more Lifestyle articles from Wise Bread.

Six Months as an Amazon Seller

Maggie Wells — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:00:16 +0000

Back in January, I looked at my contract work for the spring and realized things were going to get a little sparse for a few months. I also was cleaning house and realized my books were not only double rowed on the shelves but tripled in some places. I had to stop the madness and also be able to still pay bills. Enter Amazon.

After six months I can safely say that I've had a variety of experiences with various features and exchanges with customers and the Amazon monolith itself. Here's what you need to know.

1. Figure out your goal for selling

You aren't really going to make that much money off of Amazon unless it's your life and you have nothing else to do and you have unlimited access to books you can sell. My goal was cleaning out the garage and getting my bookcases down to single rows with no extra file boxes full of books anywhere. My financial goal was being able to buy plane tickets and paying off one credit card. So far I'm about 65% in meeting those goals. It'll take another 3 months to meet all of them.

2. Decide which books to sell

Out of 2,000 books in my private collection I listed about 1,500. In a good month, I made about $600. In a low month I cleared $150. Not too shabby, but not worth quitting the day job. What sells well? Recent edition text books, small print run collectibles on small or interesting presses, and collectibles. If you go book scouting to yard sales and library sales pay attention to presses. No one wants to buy something that Costco is pricing under $10 and is a best seller with a million copies out there. Those are going to come up worth a penny when you look them up. But a hard to find photography book might yield $50 or a recent translation or reissue of something from the 1940s on New York Review of Books Press consistently sells for ten bucks.

I have good luck selling Grove Press books, the aforementioned NYRB, and any small press or university press books. If you see a philosophy book at a library sale for fifty cents, pick it up — philosophy texts are not revamped every year and have limited press runs. Someone donated a book of philosophy text books and our local library had them in a corner destined for the dump. I picked them up and each has sold for at least $10 a piece. Steer away from any textbooks on technology or English composition if they are more than a year old — they aren't going to really be worth anything and will be too heavy to ship economically. Small run poetry books don't really lose too much of their value over time because they are hard to find and have a very steady audience. So if you are at your Friends of the Library Sale, pick up the book from the poet you never heard of but put down that copy of Eat, Pray, Love. Too many copies of that one floating around.

3. Choose your price

If you look up prices of books on Amazon enough you'll realize that there's a heck of a lot of books being sold for a penny and shipped for $3.99. Amazon is going to take about $1.99 of that. So, while you want to be competitive, don't get in the position of paying the customer to take the book of your hands. If I kind of wanted to keep the book anyway I listed it at a highly competitive price. If it is something I'm trying to get out of here I priced cheaply. I find if you can give a good description of the book and maybe not be the cheapest price you still fair well because customers like descriptions.

Take the time to browse books you like and are familiar with. You are going to have to invest at least a weekend or two in this. Don't just price by the other sellers because their goals might not be the same as yours. I have one book listed at present for $99 because it is out of print, hard to find, and that $99 is 5 dollars cheaper than my next competitor. I have at least 100 listed at $5.99. It's all about which book it is and how rare it is. I tend to price karmically. Many of the expensive books I list could sell for $20 more but if I got them for cheap I sell them at that discount. I don't want to gouge anyone. At the same time if you sell a collectible too cheap then you cause a spiral of downward pricing that will get every seller on Amazon angry at you.

4. Pick your fees

If you have only a few items you are trying to get rid of then listing single items takes a dollar an item. If you have tons you might want to take advantage of Amazon's $39.99 a month plan. Sell one good art book and you have the month covered.

5. Prepare to deal with customers

Amazon abides by the customer is always right mode of operation. It sounds like a great idea until you have customers that are less than ideal. I've had three crazy customers and one rational one that gave me negative reviews out of hundreds of sales. For the one guy with a legitimate complaint (creases on the backcover I didn't notice) I'm truly sorry. However, in case of the woman who canceled the order and then wrote a complaint that I never sent it, I'm kind of mystified. Most people do not leave feedback if they liked the transaction. People who like to complain or had a negative experience do leave negative feedback. You know how it takes thousands of A assignments to maintain your A and only one F to bring it all down when you're in school? Same thing applies here. I had two of these in one month that made my ratings go way down but thankfully that was a few months ago and now they are back up to almost 100%.

6. Manage packaging and shipping

You can invest way too much money in packing materials and tape. We didn't want to do that so being the saver I am, I had boxes of envelopes and boxes and packing material. I've yet to have to buy anything to ship anything in. I also asked the two store owners who went out of business if they had extra stuff they wanted to get rid of and got more packing materials that way. People are always wanting to get rid of packing materials. Don't buy them unless you really need to. I just buy mailing tape which is expensive enough as it is. Also keep in mind how much Amazon credits for shipping. If you have a heavy book it's going to be over the $3.99 credit they give you so make sure you can make up that difference in the price of the book itself. Make it easier on yourself and your postmaster and start a stamps.com account or something similar if you think you are going to be shipping 50+ books a month.

7. Gems of the experience

I think my best sell was a book I picked off of a free giveaway table. It was a French textbook and turned out to be worth $75 and I was able to sell it for $50. My husband found a brand new house design book for a dollar that sold for $89 (it's listing price was $125). I'm just glad I was able to buy plane tickets to bring my kids to visit my grandmother without breaking our budget, that the credit card is now under control, and that while the bookcases are still double rowed, I've at least been able to get rid of ten file boxes of books.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more Extra Income articles from Wise Bread.

Cleaning the Oil Stove

Maggie Wells — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:00:11 +0000

Ever have one of those months where you swear your house had a meeting while you were away and each part of it decided to break at once? That's how my husband and I have been feeling lately. So overwhelmed were we on Friday that we just stood there in the middle of the kitchen. Do we fix the plumbing? Replace the front door? Deal with whatever wildlife made a home underneath the house? Or do we fix the oil stove?

It's April. We were hoping we could wait on the last one. I'd had the stove cleaned last summer but since winter seemed to have started in early September and spring has yet to arrive, the stove was looking pretty bad. And of course the weather report for this weekend was forecasting snow. Darn! Better do that one first.

Hiring a professional to clean an oil stove where we live starts at $90 but can go upwards depending on the extent of the job. We thought well, we'll eat this one and called our guy. He of course was too busy with other clients and said he thought our lack of heat meant that even though it may or may not need cleaning, what it really needed was repair (and then cleaning). But you know how hard it is to get someone to come out on a weekend in a rural area? Sheesh. We called the repair guy. To come out would start at $145 but could quickly become more depending on the problem.

My husband described the problem to the guy. We have tanks full of kerosene but can't get any to come into the stove. Sounded like a valve issue to the repair guy but of course could be worse. And again, thankfully, small town guys don't want to work on the weekend. After talking to the repair guy and doing some research in those old fashioned things called books, we decided my husband would give it a go.

And pretty much we needed only three things: a vacuum cleaner with an attachment to reach into tiny places, an old butter knife (though why is it husbands always reach for the good flatware?) and a flashlight. We also needed to open it up and turn the valve on the bottom right hand side clockwise and then counter clockwise to loosen it up.

To Clean the Stove

First, of course, make sure you've turned off the stove.

Second open the stove wide open so you can see all the parts involved. There is probably a cylindrical metal piece in the center. Lift it out and with whatever you've chosen to be the scraper, push in and see how thick the muck is. You'll be scraping off lots of black residue. Scrape the sides and reach down to get the corners way underneath. My husband tried to push all debris to the center of the stove.

Third, clean off the glass plate in the front. We use a non-toxic glass cleaner. First we wipe off whatever we can with a paper towel and then clean the residue with a glass cleaner. We use the Trader Joe's brand in our house.

Fourth, vacuum with a long attachment hose and get out all the flakes of debris in the stove. Then replace the cylindrical metal piece.

The bottom of the stove should have a second door or some sort of second panel underneath the main door. Open it. Here you'll find a valve that should be turned clockwise then counter clockwise. If it hasn't been turned in awhile it will really stick. It's important to get that unstuck!

Once you try out the stove, make sure you are getting a blue flame. A blue flame means a healthy stove. The lower the setting you can put your stove to the more likely you have a clean, well working stove. After two weeks of it having to be set at 4 , it was back down to 1 with the same amount of heat.

Ideally you should have or should clean your own stove once a year. We are so grateful for the advise the repairman and the cleaner gave us!

In less than an hour he scraped off the muck, vacuumed it up and voila — stove worked again and on the lowest setting too. Yay! We're still more than likely going to have the professionals look at this summer but at least it will be on our time table and better planned for than this weekend whoops!

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more DIY articles from Wise Bread.

Throw a Swap Meet Party

Maggie Wells — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:00:02 +0000

I’m pretty skeptical about suggestions I read in magazines found in my local salon. Maybe it’s all those fumes. I walk away kind of light headed ready to believe that I can have great abs and thighs in two weeks and that I can do anything I set my mind to with little or no preparation. So it was with much trepidation that I ever actually try a suggestion coming from the mags in the salon. Thankfully, my best friend and hairdresser, Kristy, is not so skeptical.

She found an article in January’s Better Homes and Gardens that suggested throwing a swap meet party. Get together with friends and neighbors, clean out the closets, and perhaps come home with something fun without spending any money. Sure, I thought. But will it be successful? For the most part it was.

First, Kristy — the queen of making everything perfect — came up with clever invitations and invited some of her best clients at the salon and some friends. Key to a successful attempt at this seems to be inviting people of varied taste so that no one universally thinks one thing is trash and the other thing treasure. We were instructed to each bring 5 items in really good condition. Clothes had to be perfectly wearable. Nothing should have needed fixing in any sort of way. Where Kristy got clever was making sure she chose guests for the party that did not all have the same taste.

It was easy to find 5 new or newish items around the house that I wanted to let go. Sometimes people will send us things that are a bit too country for me (it frequently happens to those of us in rural areas). What was I to do with an Americana faux bicentennial quilt, a beautiful blouse not in my colors, and assorted cowboy accoutrements? So I brought over my treasures and displayed them around her living room as others had done with theirs.

Kristy gave us five clothes pins color coded for each of us. I was red! I then went around the room and put the clothespins on five different items since I brought 5 items. Unless I had the competition of another clothespin, the item under my clothespin belonged to me. When two or more guests went for the same item, we then had to do a drawing for it.

I got some great wooden shelves for my son’s room and a perfectly good karaoke thing for my daughter who I’m sure will be done with it in less that a year so why buy one?

Kristy got to know her clients a little better that day, which is always a plus.

Of course she had a great quiche and mimosas to liven the mood. In just two hours we all got rid of unnecessary stuff that felt a little too good for the thrift store and we came home with some great new to us items. We are planning another one at the beginning of summer. Want to join us?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

The Joys of Plus Size Shopping for Women

Maggie Wells — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:00:03 +0000

I read last week’s article, 15 Reasons Plus-Size Shopping Sucks, with flabbergasted amusement. The article let off some well needed steam I thought — and I used to feel that way too — but it doesn’t have to be a pain and a chore to buy a nice outfit in a decent average size — which nowadays seems to be a plus size. Part of the frustration, as I see it, is seeing great looks in sizes that just aren’t going to fit your body type. Not that you necessarily need to go the route of watching endless bits of What Not to Wear, but perhaps taking stock in yourself in a full length mirror naked might help.

I’ve done that quite a few times. My weight goes up and down with my thyroid but for the most part I know where I hover (around a size 16-18). I’d even venture to say it’s harder for me to walk into your average mall and find clothes that look nice than most women due to the dreaded curves. Fat girl clothes seem to think that all big girls are broad shouldered, barrel chested, and pear shaped at the bottom with stilts for legs. I call it the eggs on stilts look.

But that’s not me. I have small shoulders, a small neck, the dreaded 38 DDD, tiny waist and giant hips and not a lot of length in the leg. Where does this freak of a girl find clothing? Everywhere but the mall and it is fun. But that might be the problem right there — walking into the local mall. In our DIY culture of now, when has a mall offered anything but the same old, same old? In going to the mall you are giving up on anything unique and original anyhow. So, stop the mall and chain store business and get realistic.

I don’t even think I own an outfit that doesn’t look good. I follow the adage that if you’re going to be big you HAVE to be beautiful. How do I manage it? I got realistic with my body type.

The hour glass figure with breasts to match

Dresses will always look better than anything else on you. Never wear pants. They weren’t meant for you. Wear at your own peril. Don’t wear belts or cap sleeves or bulky sweaters and for heaven’s sake don’t show up in shorts. Don’t even look at these items in stores. Even if you do find your size those things are always going to look tacky and you’ll always look like a caked sausage.

Once you realize that 1920s fashions and spaghetti straps are never going to work for you, you will begin to live again and enjoy shopping because you will no longer waste your time with expensive mistakes. Find what works for you. Find a celebrity that has your body type. What does she wear?

Find your time period

Seems like designers liked my body type from the 1930s until the mid 1960s. That’s 30+ years of fashion ideas that work well on this figure. This spring I went to one of my favorite shopping sites, Etsy, and typed in XL and 1X and 2X (some designers on here have 16 as a 2X) along with the word vintage and then again without it. I scored five beautiful dresses that each look amazing on me. I highly recommend Shristi Studio for nice, inexpensive spring/summer dresses. She uses vintage patterns with new fabric in large sizes. As soon as the first dress arrived and fit like it was made for me, I ordered two more just like it in different fabrics, same cut. That’s smart shopping. Each was under $30 bucks and perfect. From Rocket Betty I bought a great rockabilly dress that I get mega compliments on every time I wear it. From Pretty Cool Clothes I bought an unusual looking dress that fit my shape well.

One place that I check out every month for cool ads for big girl clothes is the back of Bust Magazine. Two of my favorites I’ve found cool on are The Mode Merr (who can custom make if so desired) and Daddy O’s. Not only are there many small time designers out there making great clothes in large sizes but purchasing from one of these designers means you are supporting small businesses who are making their products here in the USA. The items I’ve bought from these stores never fail to get compliments. So most of those sites above aren’t selling necessarily to the frugally inclined but my Scotch grandmother always taught me that a few good pieces in your wardrobe go a long way.

Thrift stores

I balance this out with strategic thrift store shopping. Did you know lots of times clothes wind up in discount outlets and thrift stores not because they were unwanted, ugly, or ridiculous, but because they were badly sized? I just bought a size 10 designer skirt for 3 bucks that should have been sized a 14 or 16. Don’t go by the size on the tag; hold it up to yourself instead. Surprise yourself too. I bought a great sweater for 2 dollars the other day that looked like a bunch of fabric on the hanger that was loose and low cut. But the fabric was such that it clung nicely where it should and not where it shouldn’t. A girlfriend of mine showed me a dress she found discounted $60 bucks in the store simply because it didn’t look like anything on the rack. The body made the dress and often does. When I lived in San Francisco I used to go to this great vintage store that catered to drag queens. Well, I surmised, men tend to need bigger sizes when they dress up as women and low and behold I hit the jackpot befriending a few fashion divas and asking their secret shopping places.

Target

If you aren’t willing to pay for the uniqueness and the styles are just a little to wild for ya, why not shop at Target? Hands down, Target always has cheap clothes with big sizes. They seem to go up to a XXXL. They also over size in the first place. A target shirt marked “L” is usually really an XL anywhere else. Some of my best workout clothes are always from Target. Know the local market of your chain store. I lived in a tiny woman’s neighborhood in San Francisco. I never went to the Ross, Gap, or TJ Max in my area where it would be futile. Those chains catered to their local population of size 1, 2, and 0. This sounds crass of course, but heck, go to a fatter neighborhood. Those same stores that carry XXXS in a skinny neighborhood in the city will carry XXXL in the suburbs.

I freely admit to loving clothes. I see them as performance art just as much as I see them as necessary covering. Even if I found a designer who made a pencil skirt in my size I know that it won’t look good. The waist will feel like there’s miles of extra fabric and the hips will be too tight. Why go through the torture? It should and can be fun to plus size shop. The designers are out there!

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

The Census Questions 8 and 9

Maggie Wells — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:03:32 +0000

I received my Census 2010 forms in the mail the other day and allotted myself a chunk of time to fill it out. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to find that it was only 10 questions — questions that sounded more like a set up for something else than a beginning and end of something (it occurs to me that I was out of the country during the last one and away at college the one before that).

If you listen to Michelle Bachman or any of her ilk it would seem like the census is part of some sort of giant conspiracy. If you let yourself be counted, so the logic goes, the government will know too much about you and use that information against you. My knee jerk reaction to paranoia is to fill out the forms and carry out the long standing American tradition. Also, as I live in a depressed county that has seen many economic changes and movement of long time families out of area in the last 10 years and at the same time watched as an influx of telecommuters from the coast have moved in. I’m curious as to where we are now.

But what got me was the assumptions being made by number 8 and number 9.

The history behind the two questions state that these two questions were put on in 1970 ostensibly to help determine whether bilingual assistance and programs were needed for “Hispanics.“ But instantly as I read the questions I was transported back to the day when I was campaigning in San Francisco for a local ballot measure.

After a day of canvassing and giving presentations in minority communities, a fellow volunteer activist (and Anglo) voiced his frustration with the ”Latino“ population of California. He said words I’ll never forget.

”Why don’t they realize they are voting against their own interest? Why don’t they remember they were all farm workers once?“ I looked at him flabbergasted.

”You really believe that all Latinos have the exact same background? That everyone started out their American life in a field somewhere?“

”Well, didn’t they?“

”No,“ I told him, ”They didn’t.“ Then I think I (because I’m a geek) launch into a Mexican and American history diatribe that started somewhere with Spanish land grant families, Yaqui Indians, and the Mexican War. I took him through the entire Mexican Revolution of the early 1920s and ended somewhere in NAFTA. Then I realized he may have gotten lost in the dizzying array of history and I promptly started over again. This time I started in Andalucia. The point of the matter was however, that there is no single unifying factor for this so called group of ”Hispanics“ in Questions 8 and 9.

That Question 8 is meant to determine language needs. But my whole family can answer yes that we are Hispanic (even though I hate that term) but will that get us the programs we need to learn Nahtuatl and Spanish since my family can really only speak English? And by my family, I really mean pretty much all of my extended family as well. At least half of the Hispanic population in this country probably falls into this same category if their family arrived in the US prior to 1980 — so wouldn’t a better question be what is your primary spoken language? And since, at least in California, bilingual programs were never actually ‘bilingual’ — in that two languages were never introduced on equal footing with a result of students being sufficiently fluent in both languages is it even relevant?

Where I live, there aren’t all that many people requiring English as a second Language courses that hail from Spanish speaking countries except in one area of our county. We could however, use programs that ease the transition from Korean and Russian to English instead. But I’m not sure how we are suppose to glean that from Question 8. Surely other Mexican Americans on this side of the county might check yes as our family has done and thereby will be counted erroneously as needing English as a second language programs in this part. Does this mean we’ve already wasted money on a program that won’t work before we’ve even finished up the tally? Quite possibly so.

And what of Question 9? Of course all its asking is a racial question. What do you identify yourself as. We know, of course, from the striking example of our president on down that a good number of us these days identify as more than one culture racially. We know that no culture is monolithic. Taking just Obama’s family alone we can see that being African-American doesn’t mean one thing or one type of community. So what exactly is Question 9 going to measure? Isn’t the smarter question here which economic class do you identify with?

If Question 9 was removed and some criteria of education and income were put here in its stead we’d be measuring something that we know truly exists — cultures within the United States that are much more monolithic in need and values than what the criteria of race achieves here.

I am fascinated and amazed at the idea of the census — not unlike how I used to feel about the department store I worked at in high school closing for a day so we could count every single item we sold and make sure it was accounted for. But the inventory only told us one thing — what items we had. It didn’t tell us the condition of them or how out of date they were and unhip and so no wonder no one wanted to shop there sort of information. It just told us how many earrings and handbags our department had — and in the end when our store closed from bankruptcy we knew that it had nothing to do with whether or not we were missing some inventory — it was because we were no longer relevant.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Review: Bluebird -- Women and the New Psychology of Happiness

Maggie Wells — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:00:05 +0000

Back when I was a Women’s Studies major, no story of the history of women in America so intrigued me as the stories of women in the asylums of the 19th and early 20th. Maybe it was that they all seemed to land there at the hands of their fathers, husbands, and brothers. All it seemed to take is one man in their families to notice them being restless, bored, or sighing too deeply and their whole existence could start to unravel. A perfect life for a woman was a marriage to a man of property, having a couple of kids, and building a home. Any deviation from the pattern was deviant. But women forced into the pattern often were unhappy (who wouldn’t be without any control over her own destiny?). And so thousands of women were institutionalized for their despondent sadness. Women of course have also been trained to be the one that doesn't fulfill her goals (goals? what goals?). As mothers and grandmothers we are happy for our children, happy for our husbands, happy for those around us but not, it seems, happy for ourselves. That, was too selfish of us.

Today you’d think we’d moved away from these ideas but Ariel Gore shows us that today’s psychology hasn’t really landed us that far from the beginning. There is a whole industry of talk show experts, a thriving how to be happy book industry attempting to solve your problems, and of course the pharmaceutical industry to make you expensively dependent on their products all for the sake and the quest of that elusive thing called happiness. It’s all a racket of a business and we all seem to have fallen into the unwise trap of it.

What’s fascinating about Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness is how true it rings to a woman who has been told she’s depressed, or "sees the negative." As Gore chronicles the rise of the happiness industry, there’s no way to read this book without nodding your head in agreement of all the money and time and energy we’ve collectively spent trying to be happy the way society deems we should be. Whom among us hasn’t done that workshop or that seminar or bought that shelf of books that you haven’t finished reading? Who hasn’t taken the advice to take the anti-depressants? Turns out not many of us. Women are overwhelmingly diagnosed with depression much more so than men and she explores the reasons behind it all. The contemporary world is telling its women they need to find happiness in a man, some kids, and a home of their own — has anything changed since the 19th century? What about all of us women who don’t fit in that category anymore if we ever did? Are single mothers, feminist scholars, childfree women all destined to be unhappy? American psychology says yes, but Ariel tells us to think again.

Ariel’s way of writing is always a joy to read. Brutally honest, she is and willing to let you see everything that she is and isn’t. You feel instantly like you are talking with a friend. Make that a smart friend who reads lots of psychology articles so you don’t have to. Though sometimes I wished some of the areas touched on would have been expanded further and in more detail, she whets the appetite for you to go and research the history yourself.

What actually makes this book sing though is Ariel charming and witty writing style. She tells stories of her family and stories of her friends. Women she knows well and barely knows at all, come forward to say what works for them, what makes them happy. No two stories are alike but all have a familiar ring. Happiness is found in kissing the head of a baby and smelling in his scent, a hike in a favorite place, or an evening spent alone in a bath. Guess what happiness industry? Surprise, surprise, happiness actually doesn’t cost you anything — perhaps though, it might be worth the cost of this book.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Housesit on Your Next Vacation

Maggie Wells — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:00:03 +0000

I just got back from spending two weeks in one of America’s most expensive cities, staying in one of that city’s toniest neighborhoods, for free. You can do it too, you know.

It’s true. I spent two weeks in San Francisco and stayed on the north side of town (Russian Hill) and I didn’t spend a dime on accommodations. What did I do? I house sat a big national historic landmark house belonging to friends of mine while they were away. Hotel stays in that area can run easily in the almost 300 dollars a night range. I am eternally grateful. Almost the only way I can afford a vacation is if I’m able to build that vacation around free accommodations — usually the big expense outside food of any trip. While it’s true I am friends with this couple, we weren’t friends at the beginning of my housesitting gigs — it developed over time. I’ve housesat for many people over the years — especially when I was leaving my first husband and actually needed somewhere to stay. A little common sense and courtesy and you could become the primo housesitter!

First, I know some people charge for housesitting. In fact, my own housesitters often require I kick them back a check for feeding the cats. But by and large if I’m going to accept a housesitting gig, it’s going to be some place I want to go to in a house I want to stay in. I think those owners on vacation appreciate this as they realize how much money they are blowing on their trip and want to scale back. My grandmother is always telling me, ’but you should get paid!’ I say hogwash. No one is forcing me to hang out in North Beach every morning drinking the best cappuccinos known to man and eating the best tiramisu on the west coast. I am grateful and happy to have the honor. Now, of course my own housesitters don’t get luxury accommodations. They get a dinky cabin house in the woods no different than their own dinky house in the woods, so naturally the feeding of the cats and a check that the meth heads in the neighborhood haven’t sold my television is worth the $50 bucks. It’s more of a chore for them. If someone wants me to live in their house, sleep in their bed, and let my kids play in there too, what more could I ask?!

Housesitter Etiquette

I think over the years I’ve pretty much cultivated a few simple rules regarding housesitting.

Don’t snoop

Seriously. How would you like it if someone went through your bank statements and sex toys? The only drawers I open are in the kitchen. And I know I’m a writer and should want to find out more, but you have to build trust with the family you are going to housesit for. Don’t go snooping; it’s just not nice.

Technology

Be mindful of it. If you can figure out how to turn a TV on and not mess up the TiVO recordings on a system that has ten remotes then go for it. I however, am just not that savvy. I watched TV in my friend's house just on however she had it turned on. She was recording random things and I got a nice sampling of stuff without doing a bit of surfing. Likewise, bring your own laptop unless you want to leave a history of where you go on their computer.

Pets

Pets should always still be living upon the owner’s return. Take the dog for walks. Be a good pet person even if you aren’t a pet person. Make sure they leave groomer/vet info. This last time I made sure to get the dog groomed. He smelled a bit when we got there and I thought coming home to both a clean house and a clean dog would be the perfect way to return.

Cleaning

Keep it clean. I tend to spread out in one main room with my stuff so that final clean up is easier and I don’t leave anything behind. I had my kids with me this last time and we kept our stuff in the den by the downstairs bathroom. It helped keep the toys from going MIA and reminded me well of when it was time to do laundry. This particular family had the maids come the morning I was leaving. Yay! They took care of the cleaning. But in general, leave it better than when you found it.

Kitchen

I cook with anything that would have gone bad and would have had to be thrown out in their absence. And even though I want to drink the 55 dollar bottle of wine and they said mi casa es su casa, I stuck with the under 20 dollar bottles instead.

Breakages and Mishaps!

Be honest about what you broke and replace where possible. I broke a tea cup once that I took to be antique and freaked out, but I told the person and found out they’d gotten it at Marshall’s for 10 bucks. Whew. I replaced it with a better cup. Make sure you have the numbers of all people who do any sort of maintenance on the place: the gardener, the plumber, etc. Odds are if they know the place and something goes wrong, they’ll work on it and wait until the return of the owner’s for payment.

How to become a Housesitter

Tell the universe

Word of mouth is best. Tell your friends with houses and pets in areas you want to go. I’ve gotten gigs on Craigslist before, too. Put up signs in places where people with nice houses tend to shop — a co-op in a nice area for example. Ask for referrals from people who you’ve sat for before. I know a few people who’ve been able to survive in expensive cities this way for much longer than they would have without the gigs.

House swap

A few friends of mine have done this with Europeans that want to visit Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York. They get to go to houses in Italy and France while families from there stay at their houses here. I’m still working on this one myself but don’t find many people from somewhere I want to go to swap houses with. It works best if you are at a ‘destination’ city.

Housesitting is definitely worth considering. It occurred to me that this house I sat for the last couple of weeks I’d been housesitting for nearly 11 years off and on. If I added up my time at that particular house I could almost say I lived there a whole year! Sure, it means my vacations are sometimes the same old, same old — but sometimes having a fantastic view of the bay and smelling fresh French bread wafting up from the bakery down the street is all I need.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Could Online Teaching Be For You?

Maggie Wells — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:00:05 +0000

What is online teaching about?

Both private and public universities now have online degree programs — some were/are traditional brick and mortar institutions while others are predominantly online. If you do a search for schools to teach for online you’ll find a great many of them available. What you are doing is delivering a class in a different medium to a slightly different demographic than you might be use to. Online students are often single mothers, military personnel, older students who’ve gone as far as they can go in their careers without a degree. They are all coming to you now because they have a very specific goal in mind — to get that degree and get on with their lives. The material itself might be no different than the traditional classroom but the delivery and demographic are (the median age is 33, for example). So, flexibility is a big deal with most private schools that are marketing their institutions as those that can work with adults going back to school.

Why teach online?

Why not is more like it. I started this because I had two small children who were preschool age and I didn't want to leave them in the care of strangers. Nowadays I can go on vacations like the photo indicates, and I can still check in and spend a few late nights in a motel catching up. Not that vacations happen so often but it's good to know I don't have to be tied down to specific times.

What’s should an online instructor look for in an institution?

At first they tend to all sound the same. They are paying you as an adjunct to teach for them. But realize that you do yourself and the whole adjunct world a disservice by selling yourself too cheaply. Shop around and don’t be afraid to ask questions! Most online situations are non-union. That might not sound like a big deal to you upfront but it can become an issue later. Most institutions hire and fire at will and contracts are on a term to term basis. Even so, adjuncts can develop long term relationships with institutions and get into a regular routine of teaching year round for them.

What things they should offer?

401K or retirement plan, medical insurance coverage, and advancement possibilities are a few. Most important to you should be the advancement possibilities. Some institutions do not offer anything in the way of advancement and that can make the whole gig get old fast. Tuition assistance, reimbursements for calls to students or a calling card, updated software, equipment (some require audio seminars and headphones or video conferencing), good tech support, reimbursement for conferences, subscriptions to trades in your field, and advancement based on your work in your field are often available.

What should they have in place at their institution?

You want a school that has an actual department in your field and regular department meetings. For example, I work for a school that has great instructor input. We have regular staff meetings and help shape the content and curriculum for our department which is lead by someone in our field. That might sound like a no brainer but often times online universities group their courses and departments not by the traditional Letters and Sciences model but by an arbitrary arrangement. One school I quit working for used to drive me crazy by having people whose degrees were in marketing and education in control of the English teachers. It felt like we didn't even speak the same language.

What is their schedule?

Each school will have a different schedule — not the traditional semester. One school I love working for does 4-Week intensives. You teach one class at a time at a max of six per year. Nine and six weeks courses seem to be the most common. You also need to consider what the requirements of your time will be. Some programs will have the instructor set the due dates for every assignment and leave it up to you to decide on when to grade within each week. Others are maniacal about what you do on which day. Some have synchronistic once a week seminars so everyone can touch base. Make sure that you can function within the given schedule or else it'll be a headache for you!

Big Brother vs. Autonomy Adjuncts

I think the one thing that has become the most important to me is autonomy. In a traditional setting autonomy is paramount, but online anyone can look into your classroom for any reason at any time. Find out what the policies are at the institution you are interested in. If I don't feel like I have academic freedom, I can't function in the classroom. If it doesn't bother you that people who aren't in your field are looking into your classroom and commenting on what they perceive is good or bad teaching practices, then you can be less discerning.

The Big Benefit

By and large the best thing about online teaching is actually two things. I've met some students who are truly amazing with hard knock lives that have been willing to put in the time to get their education. They struggle with lives that are far more complicated than mine was when I was going to school. I don't know how they do it. Often times I find it inspirational to be part of their education. The big benefit for me is my income isn't' tied to my local economy. Living in a rural area where unemployment is high, I find my online work to really be a life saver! With budget cuts at my local community college, it's good to have something else to depend on for income. Being an online instructor helped me stay home with my kids and has kept daycare to a minimum.

Starting your search

A good place to start is Adjunct Nation. Also Google the particular college or university you are interested in and read up on what other teachers are saying. Some are easy to start working for because they rather have you have experience in your field than teaching experience — which makes it easier to start. Questions on more specifics? Leave a comment here and I'll be happy to give you my opinion or direct you to someone I know.

Good luck on your quest to become an online instructor.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Ode to the Ecofan

Maggie Wells — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:00:02 +0000

Judging by the the thermostat this morning, I’d say it’s time to turn on the heat (37 degrees this morning). As we settle in for another fall/winter season that’s sure to see high prices in oil to heat our houses, or take time most of us don’t have to stack firewood and build fires, I present to you my favorite cost cutting item that I was initially super skeptical about: the eco fan. I usually have an issue with buying anything if it’s $100.

The ecofans run about $79-$159 depending on size. Ours was $100 from Gaiam. That model is now $109. But there are a ton of places online you can get one these days. You can use them on either oil burning or wood burning stoves. They work best in houses that are ‘cabin-style,’ split levels — anything that’s really open. Our bottom floorplan is really one giant room of the kitchen, dining and living room with no doors that would block air flow. With an ecofan on the top of our stove we can keep our oil stove turned to 1/2 — not even one — on its dial. Without the ecofan to get the same amount of heat from where the stove is in the kitchen to the living room, I’d have to turn it to 4-6 (floorplan is 1000 sq. ft.). The guy who comes and fills the kerosene tank often has commented that we go through less than most of his customers in our area. We also have dual paned windows which helps keep all that heat inside.

The ecofan works by you placing it on top of the stove while the stove is on. The heat turns the fan. There’s nothing to plug in and no hassle. I dust it a couple of times a year. That’s it. What seemed like an extra added expense a few years ago, now feels like a godsend as we’ve been able to last through our tank of kerosene for a full month longer than we did before. If you tend to like a really hot house, be careful. If you have a bigger space than what I listed below, you’ll probably want one of the bigger sized fans. Either way, you’ll save money on oil and labor on wood.

Oh Ecofan, I love you!

Disclosure: I was not given anything for this review.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Dreaming of a Frugal Christmas: 6 Things You Can Make That People on Your List Will Use and Want

Maggie Wells — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:00:22 +0000

The problem with many great Xmas ideas is we wait until November to start them and then can’t finish in time. Just devote a little Sunday afternoon time to all or one of these ideas and you’ll have an arsenal of cool cheap Xmas gifts to play Santa with. I present to you a few of the ideas and projects I’m working on and have done in the past.

Baby Food Jar Votives

Back in the day when my kids were eating baby food from a jar I must have saved up a hundred of those cool tiny little jars. Get a double boiler from the local thriftstore, some wax and wick from a craft store and you can have some fun. I’m a candle person anyways so I always save my old candle bits and keep them in a color coated ziploc bags. Come candle making time I mix some of the old wax with new wax and some dye if you wish and you’ve got some groovy little votive candles. I add a ribbon around the top of the jar so it looks less baby food and more clever disguise.

Bath Tea Bags

I order empty tea bag containers meant for the bathtub that can run as cheap as 20 cents a piece. If you’ve got roses and lavender growing in your yard the way I do, you just found a great aromatic "tea bath" recipe! Most tea bags simply have you iron the sides together when you are done. It might take the better part of an afternoon but then you have what’s often a $4 to $6 dollar item in a bath boutique made! Try this idea from You Grow Girl.

Bath Bombs!

This is a hit with my family and friends. With a little baking soda, witch hazel, natural herbs and fragrances, you can come up with great bath fizziness that everyone will like! There are molds you can buy. Some are a bit pricey to set them in--but I found that empty apple sauce containers make great molds! Here’s a recipe from Teach Soap that works well.

Infused Olive Oil

Hey, people spend good money on plain old olive oil infused with rosemary or garlic or both for example--why not make it at home? World Market usually has some great bottles for just a few dollars that can make a really stunning gift. Here’s an easy to follow recipe.

Amigurumi

Let’s face it. Everyone has more than enough scarves. You don’t need to knit any more. You can’t knit everyone a sweater--you’d have to have some serious downtime for that sort of project and yarn can be expensive. Enter the tiny knit project--make the kids and cool adult kids in your life some rockin’ amigurumi! What's amigurumi? Inexplicably cute crocheted and knitted animals and whatnot with excessively cheery expressions. No one can be depressed with these around AND if you buy them in a store you'll probably spend $20-$50 on them. Each one shouldn’t take too long to make and you can use scrap yarn to do so. There are a bunch of cool patterns for knit and crochet online but I went ahead and invested the book, Amigurmi World, that’s been a lot of fun.

Fingerless Gloves

You know why gloves take so long to make? Too many fingers! Enter the fingerless gloves. All of your friends sitting at computers in cold cubicles and apartments will think you are the most amazing friend ever. Each glove takes about an hour + a little wiggle time for the thumb. One skein of yarn can get you through a pair and many yarn stores will have great sales of one skein left in a dye lot. I’ve made these for awhile so I actually don’t look at a pattern anymore, but Knitty has a good basic one. I confess though, my kids were with me while I was looking at patterns and now I’m stuck making a complicated Transformers hat and sweater. Kids, don’t you want gloves?

Bottletop Checkers

Make a homemade checkerboard. I’ve made some from cloth with a checker pattern; I’ve painted old found wood as well to make a checkerboard. The fun comes in with the bottletop caps. We’ve done a big board with peanut butter caps (red and blue) and milk caps (pink for the 2% milk; blue for the fat free) to make two sets. The kids can glitter glue up the tops to match as well.

These are things I’ve been making but my big sources of inspiration, patterns and ideas often come from checking out these places:

The weather is starting to cool off. Time to head indoors, sit down and literally make the holidays happen.

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Disneyland on the (Sort of) Cheap

Maggie Wells — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:00:02 +0000

Disneyland is like a drug. Once your kids have had a taste of it, they remember it. They ask for it. When they hear you say the word "vacation" they remind you of it. We went a solid three years of their lives keeping them from all things Disney -- from the Disney channel to the diapers, but one trip there when a cousin was getting married about a mile away from the park, and that was it. They were hooked. Now, anytime we find ourselves in southern California we find ourselves considering the big trip to Disneyland -- the happiest place on earth. But return trips have made us much wiser Disney guests. If you are contemplating a trip with the kids these tips just might help you out.

In the old days my family collected tickets for our favorite rides in a shoebox in the cupboard above my grandmother's microwave. These days there are no tickets or passports but just passes instead.

Admissions

Think this article is out of season? Think again. There's no better time to go to Disneyland than -- for lack of a better phrase -- anytime that's not summer. We used to joke about it and say the best day to go to Disneyland was a Tuesday afternoon when it's raining in February. You don't have to wait for bad weather but here's what not going in summer might do for you:

Lower admission. Keep a look out on their website for deals. Sometimes you can get a 2 or 3 day pass at a big discount if you go off season.

Friends go with you. Tons of southern Californians have year round passes. They ususally have some blackout days in summer and around holidays but most of the time your southern California family and friends with passes can get in any time. And have them buy the tickets for you. Often there are discounts if you have a southern California zip code.

You can also make friends with people who work for Disneyland. They get a limited number of free passes for family and friends. If you hear your cousin's daughter is working there, hit 'em up.

Kids under 3 years of age are free. That can get a bit subjective. I had a big three year old son that they questioned was really three, but you aren't required to carry a birth certificate, so I just told them his birthday and got slightly indignant.

Free Admission on your birthday! You better bring proof!

Deals for multiple days and multiple parks. You can get a ticket for a day, two days, or three days. You can get a ticket for just Disneyland or Disneyland and California Adventure park or just California Adventure. California Adventure has a couple of great Pixar kiddie attractions that might lull you into the big ticket price. We were on a budget this time around and told the kids that those rides were closed today. They forgot about them soon enough.

Parking

There is almost no way to get out of the $12 parking fee except if you bus in or hitch a ride in a shuttle from one of the nearby hotels. One cool thing though is that you can park in the Downtown Disney parking section for free for the first three hours. You'll just need to send someone out of the park by monorail to repark and come back. Or if you plan a really brief trip.

Food

The most money you'll shell out after gaining entrance to the park will be food. They know you will be there for hours; you'll be walking a lot; you'll want food and drink. Here are a few tips Disney afficianados, Briana Sanford and Kathryn Couch shared with me:

Start the day with your own stuff. Every member in your party can walk into the park with a beverage in hand from somewhere else and they can't make you throw it away. We stopped at Tully's for a cheap round of coffee for us and juice for the kids before entering the park. Careful though! If one person carries all the drinks in a take away box or tray they'll make you dump it out. They can each be carrying something to eat in hand but again, one person cannot be carrying all the food. It must be for immediate consumption. But hey! You just got away with breakfast!

Your backpack full of snacks. My cousin's husband filled his backpack with any number of snacks, fruit and water bottles. Technically if you bring a "picnic" lunch you are supposed to eat at picnic tables provided outside the park, but no one uses these that I've ever seen. So long as the snacks are something you can eat standing up, you are okay. They'll look through your backpack but you are allowed to bring it all in.

Resist the urge and share germs. There will be $4 drinks everywhere. You'll see the number 4 so much you'll think sure, it's normal to spend that much. Don't do it. Buy one $4 drink per 4 people. They are big and if everyone gets their own drink then you just bought yourself an extra line for the bathroom. Keep it to the water bottles you brought with you. I ask for extra straws or bring them so my kids don't complain.

Find deals for food. At some point you'll break down and eat there. Some places are better than others and some are better deals. Our frequent guests Briana and Kathryn shared these cheaper favorites:

California Adventure's Pacific Wharf Cafe has a large shrimp louie salad served in fresh baked Boudin sourdough bread bowl for only $10. A bunch of people seem to swear that this is the best food in either park.
Pizza Port in Tomorrowland is a family crowd pleaser with pasta dishes big enough to share and affordable.
Plaza Inn has large portions that can be shared amongst a family of four for under $20.
Main street bakery has some sweet yummy treats under $5.
Take the monorail to Downtown Disney and hang out and eat down there instead. It has upscale mall food for the most part.
Stay away from impulse buys of cart food and retreat to your backpack full of snacks instead.

Souvenirs

It goes without saying: if you have kids with you, you ain't getting out of Disneyland without a souvenir. But you can make more bang for your buck choices around it. Number one from the moms I know? The official Disney autograph book. For $6.95 you can get an autograph book so your kids can chase down their favorite characters and ask for their autographs. If you are crafty you can remember the book for repeat visits and fill up the pages. A little interactive activity. We usually tell our kids that they can look in the stores -- and to let us know what they liked and maybe we'll share the info with Santa Claus. Almost anything you can find in the park you can find online. And some of the very best Disney deals are at their outlet store. We got these great Alice and Wonderland pillows we saw for $45 bucks for under $5 at the outlet.

Buttons

Are you celebrating something? If you are there for the first time, having a birthday, anniversary, etc. go to Ciity Hall on Main Street at Disneyland or guest services at the California Adventure entrance and tell the cast members what you're celebrating. They'll give you a big dorky button to wear on your chest all day that exclaims whatever that is. Wear the button for potential freebies. Cast members are required to smile at button wearers, shout out Happy Birthday, and I hear rumors that various places will give you a slight advantage of one thing or another. A free bag of tortillas awaits you in California Adventure for example, or an extra cherry in your mint julep. You never know. Pays to wear the dorky button and find out.

Leaving the Magic Kingdom

We lasted nine hours at Disneyland. The tickets were $268 for the four of us. I brought an additional $100 cash and some change for a family of four. I also fed 2 cousins at lunch for coming with us. I entered the parking lot at the end of the night with $29 left and change. Not bad for two meals, drinks, two souvenirs. Anyone else have any cheap Disneyland tips?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Little Road Trips Here and There: Little Savings Everywhere

Maggie Wells — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:00:14 +0000

We’ve gone on two road trips this summer, with two more to go. Trips with a family of four can get expensive, but they don’t have to be. Here’s my advice on where to cut corners and where to splurge, and have fun doing so.

Rental car versus your car

Most rental cars aren’t maintained for a lengthy trip. I reserved a car from Avis, but when I went to pick it up the tires were bald and they refused to put new tires on it. I refused the rental. They offered to upgrade but their upgrade was a gas guzzler. Be careful with accepting upgrades on rental cars. Keep your destination in mind. An explosive fight between a husband and wife unfolded in front of us as the husband accepted an upgrade to a bigger, better, longer vehicle. The wife called him any number of choice names. “We are going to San Francisco!” She screamed, “just where do you expect us to park that boat?”

Unless your own car is on its last legs or you are concerned about adding miles to it, my mechanic says to take your own car. If you do regular maintenance on your car (tune-ups, oil changes, recommendations from the manufacturer) then your car should be up for the challenge. In my case, the road trips are what got me to give my car the tune-up it was asking for. So I now have a well maintained car with new tires, because the road trips made me anxious to make sure the car was in good shape. Without the threat of travel, I’d still be behind in my maintenance. Apparently many people tune up their cars before road trips, so going on a road trip might actually help your car’s maintenance.

If you have kids with you---it’s less stressful to be in your own vehicle. You never know when junior is going to get artistic with the back passenger side window. If it’s yours, you panic less.

Food

My family likes to fill up a cooler and picnic basket full of food and drinks, along with a cutting board and knife. We don't forage exclusively from this, but it allows us some control of the food availability this way. There could be long stretches of the road where you'd be hard pressed to find a piece of fruit. That’s when it’s great to have carrot and celery sticks at the ready. An empty calorie fast food stop can run you up to $20 for a family of four.

Having said that, we DO stop at fast food for the bathroom and maybe a shared order of fries. That saves $18 bucks each stop. We eat out of the picnic basket until we can’t handle seeing anything in it or we finish it.

We keep a look out for Asian restaurants that serve food family style. Family style means we can order for two people and have extra plates for the kiddies, instead of having to order a full separate meal they won’t eat. That saves us money on the kids. On our last trip we dropped $60 bucks on a great Indian food dinner, but we took the leftovers and ate them for breakfast the next day! Nothing was wasted, everything was good.

If you are going to some place known for its food, of course you don’t want to skimp on the food. Instead, skimp on breakfast and dinner, and make the big meal lunch since lunch is often cheaper than dinner. Eat with your region. One of the most expensive things to do food wise is to try and eat the same as you do at home. Eat what the locals eat--it’s going to be cheaper.

Accommodations

We do a mix of things. Obviously crashing on your best friend from college’s couch ain’t going to work with two kids and a husband (unless they are really mellow with a really big house). Our rule of thumb is that if we are invited to stay with friends, we stay one day less than they anticipated, and we only stay with people that are messier than we are.

More often than not we wind up at motels. After much trial and error we’ve decided that Comfort Inns and Best Westerns are the best way to go. They have more options on the continental breakfast (cutting out a meal on the road), have bath tubs (important with kids), have working pools (another important thing with kids) and are usually really clean. They take AAA discounts (which really just knocks off the tax).

What works best though is going to the town next door to the town you really want to go to. For example Ashland, Oregon is the big theatre destination with rooms running up to $300 a night. So if we go to Ashland, we drive 10 minutes and stay in Medford, which doesn’t carry the same high rate ( we stayed for 1/3 of what the price in Ashland was).

If you’ve got long term plans, think of housing swaps. In the 10 years that friends of mine and I have done this, I’ve only heard one story from one couple where this didn’t work out.

Souvenirs

When you travel with kids, this is the big one outside of food that can really set you back. Create family traditions that don't revolve around buying high priced and useless souvenirs. We put together a road trip scrapbook where we collect everything from leaves, matchbooks, postcards, menus, business cards--any piece of something that can be glued into a scrapbook. Time permitting, we like to stop at used bookstores or thriftstores where we might find the typical souvenir t-shirt from the area. Our souvenir becomes a few pages in the scrapbook rather than a shot glass that we might not use again. We know going into the trip that we are working on a scrapbook so everyone in the car is on the look out for symbolic things to put in the book.

Car toys

A couple of weeks before the trip, I glean the rooms and toyboxes for things the kids haven’t seen in awhile that would be good to occupy the kids in the car. I add a homemade journal for each kid of plain white paper with construction paper covers. When they are strapped in the car seats I present them with the new old backpack of forgotten toys and journal. It works like a charm and keeps them from fighting for at least a half hour while they look at all their forgotten treasures.

Lastely, don't forget that AAA allows you to get free maps and discounted rooms, as well as roadside assistance which provides a sense of security while you're on the open road.

The most successful road trip vacations incorporate a balance of two important elements: spontaneity and planning. While these might seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum and enemies of each other, they really aren’t. When applied successfully, spontaneity and planning go hand in hand. Keep this in the back of your head while driving.

What are some of your road trip suggestions for making better, cheaper road trips happen?

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.

Who Cares if there's a Recession? I just started a business

Maggie Wells — Sat, 23 May 2009 03:51:21 +0000

About four months ago my best friend thought she’d run a crazy idea by me. Want to open a shop together?

No.

It’ll be fun....

No.

Come on we can do it together.

No. Okay. Let me think about it.

The only person I know busier than I am is my friend Kristy. A year ago a woman with a salon and boutique who did nails asked if Kristy would come back and do hair at her salon. Kristy had a good reputation in town and had made a little home salon and was getting by that way. She’d put herself through college doing hair and a few years back had decided that doing hair fit better with the mom schedule than anything else.The original salon owner was leaving and offered Kristy the business. She was buying but there was a whole second room in the shop that didn’t have much in it. The rent for that room would be about $100.00 a month. Was I interested?

I did what any friend does. I went home and ran it by the family.

Here are some factors we considered:

Cheap overhead?
Concept of the store?
Location of the shop?
Time to devote to it?

The more I thought about it, the more the idea sounded intriguing.

The overhead is $100 a month plus $60 in Internet expenses. I’d been wanting to have an office in town so that I could stop working from home all the time. The salon is located caddy corner to my kids’ school. One was getting out at noon and the other at two so I was frantically driving back and forth or having to hang around to go home. With the Internet, I could still grade papers and work in a new place. Kristy is busy and so am I. She cuts hair in the morning; I’m online in the afternoon. We could have a shop open all day and just overlap by about thirty minutes each day.

Then it dawned on me. A couple of years ago I’d started up a site on etsy.com for a bunch of women around here that made things but weren’t very Internet savvy so that they could promote their wares online. I called a few of the ones that were around. If I open an artisan consignment shop , are you up for it?

We’ve been up and running for two months. I’ve got 15 local venders that make t-shirts, soap, lotions, bbq sauce, hot sauce, jewelry, bread mixes, rocking chairs, spin and dye their own yarn plus a few artists in the area that hang their photographs and paintings. In the corner of the shop I’ve set up my desk with my wireless to grade papers and write. We put the waiting room for the salon in the room so that customers get an eye full of stuff to look at and browse through while they are waiting for hair cuts. We’re the only place for Wi-fi on the way to three campgrounds. We have a huge porch out front for the kids to play on. We aren’t making the big bucks but we don’t owe anyone a dime either. We put together a small book exchange too.

In a town with only 150 residents in a region with only 2000, having a place to hang out and to showcase local stuff for the tourists, having a little shop like this one can play a big role in the community. Once a month we have an ‘event’ that helps us make rent---thus far we’ve always cleared rent that one day for the whole month. Somedays we only make about $10 bucks. But I look at it this way---had I not moved my office into the shop , I’d have been sitting there grading papers anyhow---now I’ve got $10 extra.

Local response has been great! Vendors are willing to ‘babysit’ the store when I can’t be there. There’s nothing around here in the way of competition and people are happy to be supporting the local artisans before they go to other sources like the Internet or big box stores two hours away.

The husbands helped us with building fixtures and set up. Kristy's given some free hair cuts in trade for banners for the store and advertising. Low and behold! Last week a restaurant opened across the street from us. What was a tiny deserted ghost of a town now has a full two blocks of commerce.

So if you are sitting around working from home and you don’t mind someone walking through every now and then walking through and buying a little one of a kind treasure, consider opening a little shop---you might just make yourself and your community smile.

Long Live SierraMaid!

Written by Maggie Wells and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.