When most people think of the expenses of having a baby, they think in terms of things for the baby and the medical costs of giving birth/pre-natal care. I hate to tell you, but there’s a lot of spending happening in the early stages of a pregnancy too. If you are planning a family, hopefully this list will help you plan ahead.

• Vacation/Sick Leave – Okay, this isn’t an expense in the traditional sense but a lot of pregnant women end up taking time off because it’s hard to schedule all your appointments in the evening or on the weekend. If Dad is attending all the appointments, you could be out double the time off.
• Food – While ‘eating for two’ is incorrect, Mama does need an extra 300-400 calories a day and that is an extra 7 snacks/small meals a week. Many pregnant women also change their diet to be healthier, which can raise costs (or lower them, depending on what was being eaten before.)
• Cleaning Products – Many families switch over to ‘green’ cleaning products (if they haven’t done so already) and if Mom has the energy to do the housekeeping, she’ll want to use a mask and gloves.
• Shoes – Everyone knows about the expense of maternity clothes, but a lot of time the swelling and need for extra support means that new (comfy) shoes need to be bought as well. If the mom-to-be will be exercising, it’s doubly important to get a new pair of trainers that can support her shifting center of balance.
• Vitamins – Your prenatal specialist may suggest you start taking a prenatal vitamin. Luckily the generic vitamins are usually just as good and there’s no need to take extra supplements (unless directed to by a doctor) if you are taking a prenatal multivitamin.
• Books/Video – Sure you can borrow these from the library or friends, but most parents want to own new pregnancy/childbirth books because the recommendations for pregnant women can change between editions. You can also get the newest info online instead, but remember to ask your doctor before about anything you read.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Potlucks are one of the most frugal ways to entertain and as people worry about their finances potluck suppers are coming back in vogue. Potlucks aren’t limited to just dinner and you can be as creative as you want to be.

Potlucks can bring to mind childhood meals of soggy green bean casserole, buckets of tasteless baked ziti and nary a piece of actual meat in sight. It doesn’t have to be that way!

• Have everyone on board. It helps if you’re all on the financial wavelength and understand the need to cut back on costs while still having fun. If you’ve got a friend who still blows $200 a weekend on booze and steak dinners they can’t afford, they may not enjoy a potluck as much or understand why everyone else is cutting back.
• Have an overall theme. It should be fairly specific so there’s some direction for people to look to. You don’t have to have a ‘normal’ theme either. If you want to get together after normal dinner hours, you could have a ‘chocolate desserts’ theme. Or have a ‘zombie’ theme and have people get creative.
• Organize food types. Unless you love potato salad so much you want everyone to bring a pan, it helps to organize your guests so they have a category of food to bring (salad, dessert, side dish, vegetable, whatever.)
• Rotate food types. Some categories of dishes tend to be more expensive (ex. main dishes) than others, so either cook those yourself, or make sure that no one gets stuck with it time after time.
• Get creative. You don’t need to have a Sunday supper potluck. Try a brunch, dessert, after-work picnic, midnight snack, or other more unusual potluck. This will keep everyone from getting bored and help fit in time for some socialization in what are probably very busy schedules.

In the next couple days I’ll try to get to some of my favorite crowd-pleasing (but still inexpensive) dishes. Providing I can a) keep my eyes open and b) stop running to the bathroom every 15 seconds. Pregnancy blows.

Popularity: 3% [?]

My coupon stash has gotten downright unruly lately. Before I was able to manage it in just one envelope, but I had to go buy and index card holder and a few dividers last weekend. I’ve seen people with huge binders and these crazy organizational systems and I wonder if people get put off of couponing because they see these contraptions and get intimidated.

I’ve hit a kind of plateau, too. When you first get started there’s this sense of exhilaration when you see your receipt and you’ve saved 50-60% off the total. That savings high gets you through as you try to see how much more money you can save until you get so used to it that it’s not longer a game but a chore. Now instead of getting all excited when I snatch the Sunday newspaper off my lawn I sigh and procrastinate cutting the circulars.

If you’ve hit this kind of burnout, there are a couple of things you can do. First, if you’ve been buying extra newspapers for the coupons, stop for a few weeks and only deal with one. If you’re only dealing with one source, stop clipping altogether for a few weeks and work with your stash. If you’ve been clipping for a few months, chances are you’ve already got more than you need.

You can also try alternate sources for coupons. Services like The Coupon Master and The Coupon Clippers will handle the clipping for you if you select what you want. Coupons.com let you select and print coupons out so you don’t have to dig through the weekend’s newspapers for what you want.

And of course, you can always try stopping using coupons altogether for a few weeks. After seeing what you’re grocery bills look like without savings, you’ll get the urge to coupon again really quickly.

Popularity: unranked [?]

(Pimping my Twitter Account again. I’m not very social, but I share a lot of good recipes and DIY links. Think of it as my old Weekend Reading posts in small chunks.)

You could tell I was never a ‘true’ urbanite because I never had plans to stay there full time. I loved D.C. but I never wanted to work 80 hours a week just so I could rent a tiny studio in the middle of it.

But, like me, a lot of urbanites have a secret dream of buying a big ol’ house here in the urban sprawl. Right now I’m going to inject a big ol’ healthy dose of reality into that dream.

A house is… not always a better option than renting. Not everyone lives the same cookie cutter life with the same cookie cutter finances. Maybe a decade down the road it will make more sense, but don’t feel obligated to buy a house just because you can afford the down payment.

A house is… expensive to maintain. You thought the utilities in your apartment were expensive? Now you’ve got to maintain the grounds as well. Not to mention that if anything breaks, now you’re paying for it and it’s not fun when you realize the roof needs to be replaced to the tune of $10k. And don’t forget the property and school taxes.

WTF were the previous owners thinking?

A house is… a lot of hard work. Yard work, cleaning, maintenance… Sure you could pay someone to do it for you, but that’s not a frugal idea for most people.

A house is… expensive to customize. When we shop for houses, we spend most of the time thinking “I’ll paint this room blue, put hardwood in here, we’ll need a new couch for the living room. It all adds up. Mr. and I had $10k for improvements (necessary because it was a foreclosure) and we barely got the new appliances and 5 rooms painted and carpeted (all with reasonably priced, on sale items). Half of the rooms have no furniture, and it will probably stay that way for a few years while we comb the second-hand stores and garage sales for solid wood pieces.

A house is… 15-30 years of massive debt. When you see the ‘final’ amount you will have paid on the final mortgage documents, you’re stomach just sinks. There are ways to pay down the principal faster so there’s less to collect interest on, but it’s still a long, long term and a large number.

Popularity: unranked [?]

*Disclosure: If you click on my referral link and buy something, I will get a commission.*

MSI Wind U100-279US 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) White

This is my new toy. I purchased it two weeks ago for the purpose of NOT lugging my husband’s ancient 8lb brick around to conventions.

Being a wee bit tech savvy, the first thing I did was open up the case and pop in an extra 1gig stick of RAM (bought at the same time for $12 , effectively doubling the speed. This voids the warranty, so if you’re a little tech shy it’s best to talk to MSI and let them deal with any upgrades.

Pros:

• At 2.6 lbs I can carry this little guy around all day.
• Bright screen, even in energy-saver mode.
• Battery lasted almost 6 hours when just word processing.
• Fast boot and very speedy.
• Built in Bluetooth. No fighting with mouse cords.
• Speedy SD reader.
• Nice big hard drive. Great for processing photos on the go.

Cons

• Trackpad and button absolutely suck. Buy a Bluetooth mouse.
• Compact keyboard awkward for long fingers. I had no problem but Mr. kept hitting the row above.
• No optical drive, but given recovery Cds. Real helpful.
• Had to reinstall a lot of drivers upon purchase just to get things to work.

Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the purchase. Even with the extra memory, I came in under $400. With the newer 120 available, the price might even drop more in the near future.

This is also an example of why you should always comparison shop. After crunching the numbers, I realized that even with eBates 2% back off at Newegg, Amazons Super Saver shipping still made buying at Amazon cheaper. Go figure.

Popularity: unranked [?]

(On a totally unrelated note, FB just pointed out that OB is giving a way Free Purse Packs of their tampons)

If you’ve been perusing the frugal blogs, you’ve probably heard about the Grocery Game. For the uninitiated, the Grocery Game does all the work of a price book, giving you a list of items that are at their lowest prices that week along with telling you which coupons to use. You could track the prices yourself, but for me at least the opportunity cost for my time is much higher than the $10 for 8 weeks (plus $5 for every additional store) the Grocery Game charges.

We’ve had fairly good results thus far, but nothing near the 60% they claim.* If you’re a savvy shopper already, you’ll probably be saving more like an extra 10-20% off your bill, but every little bit counts. For example, we’ve saved an extra $20 the last time we went shopping. I already had perused the local circular and cherry picked the items I wanted, but then I looked at the Grocery Game list and realized I had totally missed that frozen vegetables on sale ($10 saved), the yogurt sale ($3 saved) and a few other misc. unadvertised sales.

That said, the Grocery Game isn’t for everyone. The Game is optimized for people who:

• Live near several major grocery chains
• Have flexible shopping days
• Shop at multiple stores
• Clip coupons
• Have room to stockpile 12 weeks of items

That’s not to say you won’t save any money if you don’t fit those criteria, just that you won’t be saving as much. The only real deal breaker is not living near national chains. If you live in the inner city and shop at the corner market, this is not for you.

In addition to the actual list, there’s also a coupon center (in partnership with coupons.com, I believe) where you can print coupons or find links to buy or trade coupons, a message board where you can talk to other Gamers and get help and some sort of weird pop culture/women’s magazine type center called Teri Today they’re trying out (not worth it). The message board was actually quite helpful, but I found the Coupon Center (it’s not worth the effort for me) and Teri Today to be an utter waste of time.

Right now they’re having a $1 for 4 week trial, which I think is well worth the ‘investment’. Just remember to cancel before the trial is up. (And tell them kaligoddess@gmail.com sent you)

* I think this claim comes from the idea that you can save over 60% on individual items.

Popularity: unranked [?]

(I’m still trying to figure out what’s eating my posts. There were supposed to be one on brunch and one praising Mrs. Micah yesterday and the day before but I don’t know where they went.)

Anyway, feeding a crowd can be difficult, and it’s awfully tempting to buy those big trays of frozen appetizers to keep them at bay while you finish cooking. DON’T DO IT! For the same amount of money you can have five times as much food if you do a little bit of advanced planning.

Shop ahead of time and buy items in bulk or on sale if they’ll keep. If cheese will be melted, you can by massive blocks and divide it up and store in the freezer. The texture suffers when defrosted though, so if you want to serve a cheese board, you’re better off with fresh. You can also chop up vegetables and freeze them if they will be cooked or mixed into a dip.

These appetizers range from hearty to delicate, so you should be able to find something you can serve.

Nachos

• Tortilla chips
• Faux-refried beans (mash a can of pintos with some garlic and chili powder and warm it up)
• Shredded cheese

Preheat the oven to 400. Lightly grease a 9×13 pan. Layer half of chips, beans and cheese. Repeat. Bake until cheese is melted.

Hummus (yes, again)

Recipe
Variations
Serve with cut up veggies (cut them yourself), pita bread, or tortilla chips.

Classic Spinach Dip

• 16 oz container of sour cream
• 1 packet onion soup mix
• 4 oz can of water chestnuts (or drained artichoke hearts)
• 5 oz thawed frozen spinach, drained and chopped
• 1 round loaf sourdough bread

Mix first four ingredients and refrigerate overnight. Cut off top of bread and carefully cut out insides, leaving about 1″ for structure. Fill with dip and cut up bread insides to use as dippers.

Tea Sandwiches

Just make any kind of open faced sandwich on thin sliced bread, chop off the crusts and cut into quarters. Classic choices include cucumber on cream cheese, smoked salmon on cream cheese, egg salad, curried chicken salad… Just make sure you spread the bread with softened butter (or cream cheese) to keep the bread from getting soggy.

Roll Ups
Put your favorite sandwich fillings into various tortillas. Slice and serve.

Mini Quiche

• 1 ready-made pie crust
• 2/3 cup cream
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup grated swiss
• salt/pepper

Cut 4″ rounds out of the pastry and press into muffin tin and trim off extra. Bake for 6-10 minutes until lightly browned. Beat rest of ingredients together. Pour into shells and bake until set (roughly 8 minutes).

Variations:
Add 1/2 diced ham and 1 tsp mustard
Add 1/2 thawed, drained and chopped spinach.
Replace swiss with Parmesan add 1/4 cup drained and diced roasted red peppers.
Add 1/2 cup fried and drained onion and zucchini

Popularity: unranked [?]

It’s starting to look like spring and around here that means that the ants (and other pests) come marching in.

I’m still on my ‘granola’ kick, so when Mr. started noticing ants in the kitchen a few days ago,  I set to work trying to research green ways to get rid of the little buggers. First I did a little academic research and then I did a little less scientific research by asking around.

There are three main parts of dealing with an ant infestation: Prevention,  Dissuasion, and Poison. Yes, all are necessary, even the poison. But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be bad for the environment.

Prevention:

If you’ve got ants already, it’s a little late for this, but once you’ve gotten rid of them, you’ll want to make sure they stay out.

• Make sure your cabinets are clean and dry foods (rice, flour, sugar, pasta, etc) are stored in plastic or metal containers.
• Make sure your kitchen counters are wiped down and your floors are swept/vacuumed everyday.
• Check your home for cracks and holes and seal them up.
• Try a placing a cinnamon stick, mint teabag or bay leaf in your cabinets.
• Make sure your outdoor areas are clean and keep garbage cans away from the walls.

Why this works: Without access to your home or food, ants will look elsewhere for a place to live.

Note: This is hard to do in an apartment. While your apartment may be clean, your neighbors may be leaving food out, etc. You may need to talk to your landlord so he can talk to the whole unit.

Dissuasion:

If you’ve already seen a couple ants, you can help prevent a full-blown invasion by taking a few steps.

• Mop down your floors and counters with a 1/4 white vinegar/water  solution every few days. (This smells horrible. Try to plan to leave the house for a few hours to let the smell dissipate)
• If you know where the ants are coming in, spray the area daily with a strong white vinegar solution OR lay a line of crushed mint, bay leaves, cinnamon or talcum powder in front. Make sure the line is unbroken.

Why this works: Cleaning the area with white vinegar destroys the scent trails that the scouts leave behind, causing ant confusion. Ants are also repelled by certain scents (like bay) and will avoid them.

Poison:

You don’t have to use a can of RAID to kill your pests. There are safe, effective poisons/methods that won’t destroy the environment or cause you to have 6-armed babies.

• If you can see the ant hills outside, boil a kettle of water and dump it down each opening.
• Boric Acid (or Borax) + Sweetener/Grease = Ant Death. Popular combination include borax mixed with powdered sugar in a bowl and peanut butter and jelly mixed with boric acid and spread on paper. If you have pets, make sure these are placed in cabinets or other places where your furry friend can’t get to it.

Why this works: The boiling water should be obvious. The ants are attracted to sugar or grease depending on the type of ant. The boric acid does nasty things to their nervous system after awhile, leaving them enough time to bring the ‘food’ home to their nest and poison others.

While boric acid is relatively non-toxic to mammals, birds and fish, it’s still not a good idea to ingest it. Keep kids and pets away from ant traps.

Popularity: unranked [?]

If you’re a regular browser of the personal finance and housekeeping blogs, you’ve probably noticed everyone harping on the idea of ‘decluttering’. So what’s the big deal? Why is a lack of clutter a frugal thing? How exactly do you go about decluttering?

First and foremost, decluttering is important not just for aesthetic reasons, but because part of being frugal is making good use of what you have. Sure, a messy desk can detract from the look of a room, but it’s also a pain to use and there may be stuff buried under than that you need or that you aren’t using because you can’t see/find it.

Same thing goes for closets. What good is having 50 outfits if you always wear the same 10 because the rest are buried at the bottom of the closet? If you’ve only worn that pair of shoes once in five years, they aren’t doing you any good, even if they are gorgeous.

If you decide you want to simplify your home, remember that it’s going to be slow, tedious, and occasionally emotionally draining. You probably aren’t going to be able to just tear through with a black garbage bag and toss everything. We tend to put a lot of emotional weight on our ‘stuff’ and it’s easy to get caught up in the whole ‘but I could need this in 2 years!’ pattern of thinking. Then there’s items with sentimental value of their own.

So here are my tips on how to start to declutter. This is what works for me, but by all means do what works for you.

1. Start small. Don’t try to do the whole apartment in one go. Start on one area (kitchen counter, a desk, a bookcase) and work from there.
2. Donate/Keep/Toss/Relocate Have four boxes (Donate to Charity, Keep in this Room, Toss Away, Relocate to another Room) and label each one. When you sort through any area, have these ready. If you try to carry/move items around your home, you’re likely to get distracted, so just dump them in the appropriate box and keep going. Overachievers can make the Keep box smaller and only let themselves keep what fits.
3. Do the Six Month Test. Have I used this item in six months? Do I actually see myself using it in the next six moths? Not ‘I could possibly need this even though I haven’t used it in three years’, will you actually use it. Of course things like emergency supplies, formal/out of season clothes, and practical things like household tools (hammers, screwdriver, etc) should be exempt from this test.
4. Rethink Sentimentality. What is more important, the item or the memories? Often, we get stuck with a lot of stuff just because we’re paralyzed by the idea that it once belonged to Great Aunt Edna. Do you really need the item to remember your loved one? Would they have wanted you to hang onto their stuff just for the sake of hanging onto it? By all means keep sentimental items if you feel it’s necessary, but consider a memory box, photo album or other way of remembering instead. And if the idea of getting rid of  an ‘heirloom’ is totally repugnant, consider relocating it to another family member’s home so they can enjoy it.
5. Do a little bit each day. And I do mean a little bit. I spend 10 minutes a day putting things back where they belong, sorting papers and generally keeping the clutter from coming back. If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably need 20 (10 to declutter and 10 to keep the daily clutter at bay.)

Popularity: unranked [?]

Frugal Dad wrote an interesting post yesterday on adapting your frugal choices to your current financial situation (in this case, signing back up for cable), the discussion is interesting and he uses the same being ‘frugal is like being on a diet’ analogy I like to use.

Mr. and I originally cut the cable completely, but now we’ve gone back and gotten the two disc program at $15.99 from Netflix (got $18 back on it too, via eBates. – tell them kaligoddess@gmail.com sent you) Now we can have two discs of our favorite tv shows to watch on our schedule and watch a lot of the other things we want by using the streaming movie feature and plugging my laptop into the tv.

$15.99 is still an expense, but it’s cheaper than cable or going to the movies and we can afford it now. There’s no sense in being a total miser and living a miserable life. If you can afford the occasional luxury in your budget, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying it.

Popularity: unranked [?]