#frugalfebruary

“There’s been a little incident at work...with my paycheck...”  I don’t think I’ll ever forget that conversation from late January 2001.  My husband explained that his payroll check had not cleared the bank - we were left in a lurch.  In those days we had no buffer - no margin to help us navigate a surprise incident like a missed paycheck.  We also had considerable credit card debt hanging over us.  This was no little blip on our radar.  This was a full-on wake up call. Thus began a family project I named “Frugal February”.  

We only had three kids at the time; our little boys were 6, 4 and 2.  We had just begun homeschooling that fall, and I had already outlined a Pioneer Unit Study for February.  The plan was for us to introduce life skills, eat simple meals, play old fashioned games, and explore what living long ago may have been like.  I had no idea that this would become a real life exercise in resiliency for all of us.  

As the reality of our financial situation sank in, we began to look for ways to improvise and make do with what we had on hand. It was a frightening time for me, but still I tried to make it a game for the boys: “Let’s eat dinner by lantern light”. “Let’s read Little House in the Big Woods”.  “Who wants to help bake some bread?”

My panicked and spontaneous action plan was something like this:

Eat from what was already in the pantry before going to the grocery

Meal plan: resourcing the cookbooks More With Less and Extending the Table

No convenience foods, carry-out meals, QT drinks, etc

Reread all the back issues from The Tightwad Gazette Newsletter.

Use the library for movies instead of Blockbuster (this was back in the days of VHS).

Find any cash we had on hand to use for necessities

Only spend for basic needs

In the years that followed, I read stacks of books on frugality, simplicity and personal finance.  Every February, in honor of that first shock, we willingly shift from maintenance mode frugality to radical simplicity - 28 days of spending only for necessities: food, shelter, transportation.  For many years it was a necessary action.  Now the annual spending fast has become a reverent season on our calendar.  It’s a mental reset; a renewal of intentional decision making about how we spend our resources.  It’s also a reminder that we are only stewards of the time and money entrusted to us.

I enjoy it when we challenge ourselves to do without, and test our ability to delay gratification.  Regularly tightening our spending limits for a short duration has helped us develop creativity, and learn better habits about money.  It sounds so simple now, but it hasn’t been easy.  Over the years we’ve realized that we can live on less than we earn.  We’ve learned to be content with what we have, rather than constantly craving more possessions.  We’ve also disciplined ourselves to plan for a rainy day, by building up a savings buffer for when trouble strikes. 

This February marks the 15^th year my family has played our simplicity game.  What began under a burden of necessity is now a time of remembrance and gratitude.  I never want to forget the years we lived with debt and lack.  That reality still frames the way we live today.  I also don’t want to fret and ruminate over financial mistakes we made years ago.  We choose to look back and remember, and then set our sights on the days to come.

Mostly, we’re just grateful.  

Focus for 2014

Every year I set goals.  I write them on a 3x5 card.  Post them on the board.  Let them marinate.  Sometimes they are fulfilled, but often not.

This year I did something different.  I took a more minimal approach and chose words to represent what I want to focus on this year.  Here are my words.

Strength

Finances

Hackschooling

Create beauty

Contentment

On their own, these words don’t say much.  They certainly don’t communicate any significance to others.  Here is a bit of the back story.

Strength. Physical and mental.

 The mechanisms: Physical: daily exercise; cycling 3x/week, running 3x/week, yoga, body weight exercises, weights. Train for specific races and events.  Mental: daily Khan Academy, scripture memorization, Latin. 

Finances. Increase awareness of our personal finances. Increase income. Increase savings. 

The mechanisms: You Need a Budget software. Smart Passive Income blog.

Hackschooling. Develop creative ways to engage myself in learning and researching and writing. This is for personal development as well as professional development for Classical Conversations Challenge II.    

The mechanisms: Classes and seminars (both live and online), experimenting, reading.

Create Beauty.  This encompasses art, gardening, cooking, hospitality, home repair. 

The mechanisms: currently undefined.

Contentment. Different than happiness - more like living with joy.

The mechanism: Daily gratitude. Prayer. Intentional, focused, undistracted time with my family members. 

This year will be more about being and doing, and less about having.  I’m looking forward to it.

Lost and Found

I’ve been discouraged lately.  My work with Classical Conversations has been hard.  It has left me feeling that I have too little time to work with my own children in their studies.  I’ve been overwhelmed and ready to quit.  I have questioned whether this is really the model I want us to follow.  It takes so much time to study all the various parts of the curriculum.  We are rarely fully prepared for our seminar days.  I don’t like constantly feeling behind.  Even though we all study hard, it feels like there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done.  Honestly, I have been ready to build an exit plan and try something else.

The questions have rattled my brain:  Why am I, why are we - doing this? Why are we doing this, this way?  I don’t want to spend eight hours a day studying.  I don’t want my children parked at a table all day studying.  Where is the creativity? The inspiration?  The love of learning?  This has been the running dialogue in my head for weeks.

My children are all very artistic and creative, but a couple struggle with mild to moderate dyslexia.  I’ve read a lot about learning styles and individualized plans to help work with the strengths of divergent learners.  I recently even explored a local educational option that works specifically with teens who “don’t fit the mold of standard school”. I was looking for something different, maybe even "easier", because what we are doing is very hard - for all of us.  We have never used “standard school” but the past three semesters of Classical Conversations have felt more school-ish than anything else we've ever done.  I joined primarily to find community and accountability for my oldest son.  We were planning for his senior year, and while he wanted to continue homeschooling, he also wanted something different for this final year.  It was a good experience.  He learned.  We all learned.

This year, however, I am also tutoring a Challenge II class - the equivalent of 10^th grade.  I have had to put in so much study time to support my tutoring that it leaves little time for the other study I’d really like to be doing. (namely, on nutrition, fitness, entrepreneurship, gardening).  I’ve become resentful of the time required to prepare for my job as tutor.  I want more time for my own stuff.  I’ve been whining.  At first just to myself.  Lately though, I’ve whined to my family and even to my students.  Not cool.

Then I ran a marathon.  

That day stands out as significant on many points. I will write a post on the other factors later.  The part that matters here though, is that running that marathon was a huge breakthrough for me physically and mentally.  Never in my life - ever - had anyone suggested to me that I might be a runner.  For me to run my first 5K was a departure from the normal course of my adult life.  The marathon took this to an entirely different level.  It taught me that setting a high goal matters more than I realized.  If I had never set the marathon goal, I never would have accomplished all the smaller goals I met in the process of training.  By putting that marathon goal out there, I had to dedicate time and attention to preparation.  Long hours of preparation.  Changes in schedule.  In lifestyle.  In priorities.  Somewhere along the course that day and over the hours following the race, I realized how the same training model relates to our family’s educational process.  If we don’t set high, difficult academic goals - we may not even meet the shorter smaller goals that we’d rather set.  Those long hours of study actually make me crave the physical work of running and cycling.  The study also makes me crave creative outlets of music, art and cuisine.  If I take away the challenge of study, do I risk losing the impetus for the other pursuits?  A change in expectation, by changing our curriculum may prove to be more compromising in the end.

I could say, I’ve come full circle and am ready to start fresh with CC.  Really, this was more than full circle, more like climbing a winding mountain road and having my perspective shift and change through the journey.  This exploration of intent and content has taken me to a more solid platform than just a mental do-over.  I have a high regard for the wisdom of those in CC who have gone before me as parents educating their children at home.  It is right for me to be attentive to their words, and to yield to this process of being both a parent/teacher to my own children and a tutor/mentor to the students in my class.   

 Some days, I haven’t even wanted to want to do well with school.  I’ve been that disheartened.  The desire has been rekindled now.  I am ready to submit to the work it will take to finish this year well.  Kind of like my marathon goals: don’t quit, don’t get hurt, finish strong... and smiling!

November 24, 2013  Finished smiling!

  

Rethinking. Reevaluating. Reality check

"Trying to 'detox' with a warm mug of nuun..."

Since July I have been slightly obsessed with the idea of eating wheat free.  I dabbled with it for a few weeks, but then fully committed to a month without wheat in August.  It was a tricky proposition.  At the end of the month I ate a small serving of pasta.  I noticed no profound affect.  Even still, I wasn’t ready to return to my previous level of wheat consumption, so I continued with the wheat free experiment - and even stepped it up a bit by reducing how often I was eating other grains.  A few weeks later I chanced a taste of baklava at the Tulsa Greek Festival.  No reaction. I still had no strong indication that I have a physical reason to avoid wheat.  Mostly, it was just a nagging mental question of ‘I wonder if I should’.

This weekend I was pondering the grain issue again.  I began to wonder if it was even worth it.  Why should I be wheat free?  My weight hasn’t changed.  My bust/waist/hip measurements haven’t changed.  I’ve been wheat free for over three months - with nothing substantial to show for it.  I had already lost 30 pounds over a year ago, but I thought I’d at least see a noticeable change in my body composition.

This past month my husband and one of my sons joined my wheat fast.  I must say, it was delightful not to be the only abstainer in the house.  We were fully a half and half household - three wheat free - and three wheat eaters.  By week two, my husband was already talking about how he wanted a pasta meal on November 1^st to break his wheat fast. 

I obliged. Last night, I made a batch of my favorite tomato sauce.  I also sautéed mushrooms, steamed fresh green beans, wilted spinach with garlic, baked meatballs --- and boiled the water for a big pot of pasta.  All the while, I was giving my husband a small rant on how I’ve had no positive affect from going wheat free.  “Over THREE WHOLE MONTHS and nothing!  I thought my last bit of fat layer would melt away! I thought I’d feel so much different!  I thought there would be more to go on, so I’d know it had been worth it!!”

Then we sat down to dinner.  And I ate.  Pasta.  For the first time in months.  My first thought was “this is not nearly as satisfying as the zucchini noodles I’ve been substituting on spaghetti night”, but I kept that thought to myself because the rest of my family was obviously happily enjoying their meal.  

About four bites in, I was already feeling full.  I had only taken a small portion of pasta, knowing I would go back for more if I was still hungry.  I ate a few more bites and then an achy, full feeling made me stop.  I felt like I had just finished a second plate of Thanksgiving dinner.  Stuffed.  From a one cup portion of linguine with tomato sauce.  Ugh! For the rest of the night I was holding my stomach.  I was in pain, not just bloated.  I haven’t had such a strong and immediate reaction to a meal in a very long time.  

Even though I had pasta about thirty days into my experiment, it didn't give the same reaction that a longer fast enabled.  I still can’t believe it.  I thought there wasn’t a strong reason (for me) to become what free.  I think I found my answer.  This morning my stomach still hurt, my head is groggy, my joints achy - like a mild flu.  

Not. Worth. It. 

I’ve eaten wheat my whole life. There was a season in my teens where I ate pasta with butter and parmesan every day.  I ate bread every day too.  I loved bread. I never would have guessed that it was creating a reaction in my body.  It took giving up the one food I ate the most to discover that it can no longer be my standby staple.  

As much as I hate feeling the way I did last night and this morning, the reaction brought me to a very important crossroads.  If I hadn’t made the choice to eat the pasta, I wouldn’t have known the answer to a question that’s been chewing on my brain for months. No book could have given me such a definitive answer. All my research was just conjecture until my body gave the final vote.  

My one small risk led to a place of clarity and resolve.