Thrift My Sass

 I was hesitant to write up another monthly spending review; it may get repetitive as the year goes on. Remarkably, my February expenses were very similar to my January expenses, proportionally speaking. The main difference was the $800 deposit I put on a fall vacation with my husband. We'll be traveling from Berlin, Germany to Budapest, Hungary by train and stopping several times along the way. We booked with Intrepid Travel, as that company was recommended by several of my coworkers. This vacation package is pretty basic and only includes hotels along the route (which include free breakfast), rail tickets, and a few orientation walks upon our arrival in each city. I wasn't sure whether or not to include this expense in my monthly spending recap, but I decided to leave it in. At the end of the year, I will add up all of my travel related expenses to get a feel for how much I spend on that category. It is remarkable to me how similar the expenses are compared to January's e...

       As the first month of my no-buy year comes to a close, I wanted to summarize my successes and shortcomings. There were a few wins, like finding gift cards hidden in my wallet, but there were also some losses, like 2 pairs of my shoes falling apart this month.      If I had really wanted to minimize my spend during a no-buy year, I would have pre-purchased extra running shoes and socks, at the very least. I did not do that, so I have already needed to replace 1 pair of trail running sneakers, socks, and a pair of winter boots. My old boots were 14 years old, so I certainly got my money's worth ($120 in 2011). My new trail sneakers were on sale, but the new winter boots were over $200. Perhaps it was an error on my part not to buy a cheaper pair, but I did not want to have to shop for new boots in a year or two.      As you can see, my mortgage is by far my largest expense, followed by groceries and utilities. I'm very pleased to ha...

 I had read about the recommendation to eat at least 30 plants per week  sometime last year, but I had never gotten around to actually enumerating whether I meet this standard. At the time, I was pretty confident that I would exceed the minimum threshold easily, but it's time to put my calculator where my mouth is. While this is not part of a new year's resolution, nor is it part of my low spend year, I think now is a good time to examine my diet because I will start meeting with a dietitian later this month. Monday Breakfast was a yogurt parfait with a peanut butter chia protein bar layered with nonfat Greek yogurt and topped with a tablespoon of sugar free raspberry preserves. I also had 2 cups of black coffee. Raspberry (1) + Peanuts (1) + coffee (1) + chia seeds (0.25) = 2.25 points for breakfast Lunch was a salad from the salad bar at work.  Arugula (1) + red and orange cherry peppers (2) + carrot(1) + cucumber (1) + daikon radish (1) + scallion (1) +ginger (0.2...

 Decluttering my house and taking stock of my possessions has revealed a few ways I can save money during my low-spend year. Return bottles and cans. This is something I had stopped doing for a number of years, primarily due to my own laziness. I hated bringing the bag of empty recyclables to the store with me and potentially waiting for a recycling machine to free up. Now the deposit charge in my state is 10 cents per container, so I started returning them during the last few months of 2024. I'll continue the habit in the new year. Try using my SodaStream I bought my SodaStream machine in 2023 at a thrift store when it was on sale for $12. It seemed like a steal because it came with multiple sealed flavors of syrup and a carbonation cylinder. I do drink a lot of seltzer water, so I thought this could help save on a recurring expense. However, I have never taken it out of the box. In 2025, I will give it a try and give the machine away if I don't find it useful. My SodaStream i...