My Two Dollars

Talking About Groceries – My Two Week List & Cost.

I have talked before on this site about how much I spend on groceries, asked you how much you spent, and even advised you that cooking at home with “real” food you can save money. My monthly grocery bill is between $200-$250 for myself, and that’s buying organic fruit, vegetables, and meat at Whole Foods. I go out to eat about once a week or so, making my monthly total spent on food to be about $350, give or take. Just last Thursday I did my grocery shopping for the next 2 weeks and the total was $107.69, and in the interest of showing you guys what I bought with my $107 I figured I would list it here:

Organic whole wheat cereal
Organic high fiber cereal
Organic milk
Organic low-fat yogurt
Mixed jar of olives
Organic Tumeric spices
2 X Organic dark chocolate bars
Wild honey
Dried cranberries
Organic frozen cherries
1 lb raw almonds
Organic brown rice
3 pounds chicken
1/2 lb turkey breast
12 oz cheddar cheese
Feta cheese
1 loaf whole wheat bread
2 red bell peppers
2 lemons
5 lb bag organic Yukon Gold potatoes
1 package organic Earthbound Farms salad
1 package organic grape tomatoes
2 organic oranges
2 organic pears
1 organic butternut squash
1 organic red onion
2 organic apples
1.5 lbs organic blueberries
1 organic broccoli bunch
1 organic celery bunch
2 organic carrots

That’s it! This will just about feed me for almost 2 weeks (maybe 12 days). Every time I go I try to buy different products so my meal plans don’t get too static, and this trip I didn’t need to buy coffee as I still had enough at home to last me. Occasionally the bills are more because of personal care or vitamin purchases, but this is pretty average for one of my trips. Here is the scan of the bill:

The idea that organic foods cost WAY more than traditional foods isn’t actually true, especially if you can get them somewhere other than Whole Foods. My grocery bill hasn’t really gone up since I switched to mostly organics, and that’s because I stopped buying frozen pre-packaged meals & soda and started buying mainly fresh singular ingredients to cook with instead. Have you gone organic and/or raw & fresh foods in your grocery shopping? Trust me when I say that if you start buying raw/fresh foods and a good cookbook, you can save a ton on your food bill!

saving

By David

Sunday Money Roundup – Sell An Old iPhone Edition.

This past week I sold my original 2G iPhone for over $200 – more than I paid for it years ago. Score! Seems these “no longer under contract” phones are worth some serious cash. I used it on AT&T for years until I got a 3GS model, and then a friend used it on T-Mobile for a while. And now someone else is going to use in on the network of their choice. I think this is the first time a piece of tech I owned was worth more money years after I bought it. Just hope I can do the same for this 3GS once the new ones come out! On to the roundup…

The Wisdom Journal wants to teach you How To Really Screw Up Your Life (Insurance). You should probably pay attention to this post.

Tight Fisted Miser talks about Total Cost of Ownership:Used Camry v. New Prius. If cost is your only concern, used is pretty much always better.

Frugal For Life posts about 1st time coupon clipper mistakes.

Bargaineering wants to know what Your Cleverest Money Hacks are.

Your Finances 101 asks why you buy lottery tickets. I am with him here – I never buy them anymore. It’s a waste of money.

Five Cent Nickel wants you to Re-Evaluate Your Recurring Expenses.

Frugal Babe shows us her new pantry she made after fishing wood out of a dumpster. Some people are so creative!

Ultimate Money Blog wants to know if stopping shaving is a good way to save money. My take? For men, yes. I haven’t used a razor and shaving cream in years. I also haven’t paid for a haircut for years. But women, no. Sorry…I actually like the way your legs look when shaven!

The Digerati Life talks about debt reduction with DIY Debt Reduction Programs: 3 Affordable Ways To Beat Debt.

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By David

Money Quote Friday – Vastly Happy At Some Period Edition.

“Men spend their lives in anticipations, – in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other – it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.” — Charles Caleb Colton

Have a fantastic weekend.

quotes

By David

How Many Hours Do You Work Per Week?

How many hours per week do you put in trying to feed your family and keep that roof over your head? Are you one of those people who spends every waking moment at work? Or are you more apt to put in only the bare minimum to get the job done? Americans, on average, work way more hours than people in other industrialized nations while taking much less vacation time. This hasn’t necessarily led to more productivity at all; in fact, it may be one of the reasons we also have one of the biggest populations of people taking daily antidepressants. A few years ago I decided that I no longer wanted to trade my time for a paycheck deemed “enough” by a corporation, so I went out on my own. And since then, I have been concentrating on doing more in less time, leaving more leisure time open for me in this incredibly short time we all have here on earth. While taken to the extreme, the idea of the 4 Hour Workweek is something I am striving towards – and I am slowly getting there. Of course, getting it down to 4 hours a week will never happen for me because I have more than 4 hours of actual work to do each week, but I have a goal of cutting my working hours down to about 15-20 per week MAX and using the rest of my time to actually live a life.

Now, I could work more and thus make more money. But I haven’t ever been interested in amassing a fortune or even living high on the hog. I am comfortable, my debts are paid, I eat every day, I have transportation, and I have some money for a rainy day. To the people outside of most industrialized nations, I am rich beyond their wildest dreams – and I know this. I am very lucky to have everything I do have and to be born in a place that gave me the chances to have it. But as I get older, I refuse to let a desire for money and “stuff” to make me work more and more hours, trading time in my life just for a few more dollar bills in the bank. Some people feel the opposite way – that by working more now they can have a more leisurely life later on. One of my friends works his a** off as a lawyer, putting in 100+ hours per week. It works for him, as he has plans for what to do after 10 years of doing this. It wouldn’t work for me, however, as I don’t want to have to wait to live the life I want to!

So my question to you guys is – how many hours do you work per week? A lot? A little? Just enough? Do you like what you are trading your time for? Or do you hate your job and need something different? What’s your plan for living the life you want to live?

Lifestyle

By David

Making Money: Almost Everything In Your House Has Value To Someone Else.

I am opening every single box, plastic storage tub, closet, and cabinet this week in order to sell of some of my belongings. This is not because I need the money (although the money will be nice) – it’s because I just have too much stuff. I thought I did a good job of purging before I moved 4 months ago, but I am finding more and more items that are not bringing any value to my life…so out the door they are going! It truly is amazing what we accumulate slowly over time or what kinds of things we think we “need” when in reality we “need” very little – the rest ends up being stuffed in a closet or left to collect dust being on display. Saturday I started with my office closet and was able to thin it out considerably. While my office is always clutter-free, the same doesn’t go for the closet…until now. Here is what I pulled out of that closet to get rid of:

– An electric guitar I haven’t played in years
– A stand up fan
– A portable cd/tape player
– A rubber horseshoe set
– A wooden wall clock
– 2 model cars
– 2 shoeboxes full of cables/cords/adapters
– An over-the-door hanger
– A walking stick I made myself but have no need for
– A shoebox full of 4-track tapes from my days of being in bands
– 2 curtains
– 5.1 surround speakers I no longer use

And that’s just from my office closet! I didn’t even realize I had most of this crap because it has been packed away in boxes for years that have just been moved from house to house. So once I got everything laid out on the floor, I began listing anything worth at least a few bucks on Craigslist or Ebay while listing the low-to-no dollar value items on Freecycle. And so far, I am making a few bucks on this stuff! I don’t expect to make back anything close to what I paid for them, due to the sunk cost of buying “things” in the first place. But hey, $100 is $100! Just because I don’t need or want these things anymore doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of people out there looking for these particular items.

On Sunday, I went into my bedroom closet and decided to get rid of every piece of clothing I haven’t worn in the past 12 months. Every. Single. Item. So now I will also be listing some clothes online that are still in good shape and I hope to make a few bucks here too. Some of these items include:

– A coat from North Face
– 6 dress shirts from Banana Republic
– 3 pairs of shoes
– 2 sweaters
– 2 pairs of jeans
– 3 pairs of black dress pants
– 2 suits
– 2 fleece sweatshirts

With over 92 million daily users of the internet in the United States alone, your “online store” could have a lot of shoppers entering it on a daily basis. Just because you don’t think any of your belongings aren’t worth much of anything doesn’t make it so! There are millions of people looking at Ebay and Craigslist every single day, and they may be looking for whatever it is you have laying around your house taking up space. So when it is time for you to declutter and pare down, keep in mind that just because it is of no value to you doesn’t mean that someone else wouldn’t want it. You may be pleasantly surprised by just how much you can make by selling your belongings online.

Photo from Shutterstock

making money