Frugal Urbanite

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They decided to reject our offer and go to auction. Stupid, considering that we were offering to pay full price for the house, but what can you do.

As much as we loved that house, it’s actually better for us financially to wait another few weeks. The later we break our lease the less we are penalized and the less likely it is that we have a month of overlapping lease/mortgage.

This was supposed to be the beginning of Tech Tuesday here, but thanks to lots of chaos and confusion over the house, I’m just going to leave you with the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Streaming Video Here

And, yes, that is Neil Patrick Harris. Go watch it, you won’t regret it.

It? That would be “THE” house. The one that’s perfect. The house it what we want. The area is what we want. The price is what we want.

The only catch being we have to buy it RIGHT NOW.

We were just planning to take a look at a few houses, get an idea of what we could afford, but then we went to THE house and fell in love.

The house is a pristine foreclosure. Anyone dealing with foreclosures knows that this is a rare thing. The only things needing immediate work is the carpet in one room and a replacement refridgerator. There’s some ugly wallpaper and questionable color choices, but those are things I want to fix, not need to fix. This house will not last on the market as it’s cheaper than the other houses in the area and in much, much, much better condition.

We have to give 60 days to break our lease, which means that we’ll probably have a month where we are paying rent on the apartment and paying the mortgage plus the cost of breaking the lease ($1,500). It’s going to be really right for about six months, but we will make this work.

FB just wrote an interesting post on splitting the bills with your significant other.

To be totally honest, Mr. has always paid 100% of our bills because I was in college when we met and now I’m starting my own business. I pay for my own ‘wants’ but our basic needs are covered by him. Even once I’m established, my income will be auxiliary, because I plan to take care of my (future) children full-time and I want to be home when they’re home once their school aged. My job is going to be a full-time homemaker and mother, with my business coming in a distant second.

I don’t think Mr. minds being the breadwinner, because it means I have the time to do all the cooking, cleaning and other household tasks so he doesn’t have to. The deal is that if I’m working from home, I will all the household chores, but if I start working part-time outside the home, he’s going to have to pick up his fair share. We work as a team, so neither of are resentful that we’re doing all the ‘work’.

Mr. and I have also picked out our Real Estate Agent and are starting to look at houses. The bubble has burst on our area and prices are hitting rock bottom (not to mention all the foreclosures form people who can’t manage their money) so we’re jumping in while we can. Winter is also a good time to look at houses because the sellers are usually people who desperately need to sell the house (most people try to avoid relocating during the school year) and sellers are more likely to negotiate better terms when less people are buying and everything seems grey.

We’re trying to hit ~$275k, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and either a basement or an attached garage (preferably both). We don’t give a damn about the cosmetics, because one of the first things you do when you move is paint the walls and fiddle with the flooring. My parents still had avocado and goldenrod 70’s bathrooms when they sold in 2001, so I can put up with some ugly stuff. My main concern is making sure the roof and siding is either new or recently replaced, because we couldn’t take a hit like that in the first year without some serious struggling.

The good news is that Mr.’s consumer debt will be paid off in the next few months, so we’ll have an extra $250 in the budget to play with. We could also cancel some of our unnecessary services (internet on phone, GameFly, WoW, extra cable package) for another $100 a month, but those are already coming out of our ‘fun money’ and we don’t want to be boring misers.

Recipes and Kitchen

Vegetable Lo Mei @ All Recipes - I would leave out the curry powder (seriously wtf?) but it’s a pretty good recipe for Americanized Take-Out food.

Crab Rangoon Recipe @ Blog Chef - Speaking of Americanized Chinese food, here’s another favorite recipe.

Watermelon Mint Ice Pops @ Eating Out Loud - I want one of these so bad right now.

Watermelon and Mint Ice Cubes @ Gastronomer’s Guide - These would be fantastic in lemonade or iced tea.

Freeze Happy - A blog about cooking and freezing in bulk. Great if you are feeding more than just yourself.

Onigiri Revisited @ Just Hungry - A quick way of forming Japanese stuffed rice balls (onigiri).

Open Source Food - A site full of creative commons licensed recipes.

101 Picnic Recipes @ The Guardian - If you’re sick of potato salad and hot dogs, here are some quick and easy recipes for more unusual picnic treats.

Crafts and Sewing

Credit Card Wallet Craftster Forums - A tutorial for a cute little wallet for all the plastic in your purse.

The Perfect Tea Towel @ Sew Take a Hike - A tea towel can make a great accent piece for a kitchen, and of course they’re useful on their own.

Tie Dye Tissue Paper @ Parent Hacks - A fun project for creating unique gift wrap.

My Secret Pocket - A wonderful sewing blog with lots of great advice on practical sewing projects.

Misc.

Etiquette in the Age of Social Media by Chris Brogan - Most of you will already follow these etiquette rules, but reading it wouldn’t hurt.
Sex Diaries of a Mom - Hilarious and truthful blog about sex and motherhood.

Goldfish in a Bag Soap @ Spoon Sisters - Awesome novelty soap that looks like a goldfish in a bag, like you’d take home from the pet store. I want one.

Poor Man’s Stained Glass @ Ready Made Magazine - An ingenious use of bubblewrap. I couldn’t do it because I’d pop it every time I went past.

Old Photos Of Japan - Exactly what the title says. The site does a great job of giving a bit of history and context with each photo.

20 Parts of Your Body You Don’t Need @ Amazing Posts - An interesting read. I didn’t know I had most of these in the first place.

Last night the Frugal Urbanite household was woken up by the fire alarms going off in our hallway. This is a fairly regular occurrence, so we weren’t worried. We stumbled around in a half-asleep stupor for a minute or two putting on clothes, grabbing shoes and keys and then started the long, 16-floor trek down the fire stairs.

As we approached the fifth floor, I turned to Mr. and pointed out that I could actually smell smoke. And when we opened the fire doors in the lobby, lo and behold, it was filled with acrid smoke. We held our breath and followed the line of bewildered residents out the door.

Total time to egress? Roughly five minutes. And because our fire department is made of awesome and win, they were already pulling their gear out of the trucks by the time we crossed the parking lot.

However, there were still idiots wandering slowly out of the smoke filled lobby for a good twenty to thrirty minutes after we had exited, fully dressed (makeup and all), clutching their laptops and iPods.

Please don’t be one of these assholes, because you never know when it’s a real fire. Your appearance and your stuff is of little consequence when that alarm goes off. You need to get yourself and your loved ones (including the four-legged variety) safely out of the building ASAP so the firefighters can do their thing.

Don’t get me wrong, replacing your posessions after a fire definitely sucks (and dealing with your insurance company to recover your valuables is a nightmare) but they CAN be replaced. You can get that smoke smell out of your upholstery with a professional cleaner, but that doesn’t work so well with fatal smoke inhalation. You don’t even have to be in the fire to die from it.  The smoke and fumes can finish you just as well, so don’t think you have extra time because the fire isn’t on your floor.

If there is something in your apartment or home that you feel you absolutely need to bring with you during a fire, then make sure it is properly stored. Any irreplaceable documents should probably be stored off of your property, but if they are in your home they should be in a fire-proof box which is stored where you can easily grab it (not in the home office on the other side of the house). If the laptop holds the key to everything in your life, then every night it should be properly stored in a carrying case or bag. Keep your pet carrier handy so you can grab Fluffy or Fido (or coax them out from under the bed) and get the hell out of there.

Whatever you want to take with you needs to be small enough that you can run, crawl, climb and push while holding it. If you cannot do any of these maneuvers, than you need to rethink what you’re taking.

And for Pete’s sake, no one cares what the hell you look like. We’re all standing around in the parking lot in our pajamas , half-awake and worried about our stuff.  And the hot firefighters are more concerned with the burning building than your new dress.

Some people are born salespeople and have no trouble convincing people to shell out tons of money for crap they don’t need. Then, there are the rest of us who sit at our computers and can’t figure out why no one is bidding on our prized collection of band memorabilia.

Here are a few simple tips to getting more money out of bidders on Ebay.

1) Run a search for the item you’re selling.
If you get hundreds of listings, you may want to hold off on selling that particular item for a while. Lots of listings mean lower bids.
Also take a look at the wording of the listings and see if there are any keywords or phrases common to the higher ending items.

2) Get descriptive in your listing title.
It’s not ‘blue pants’ it’s ‘NWT Old Navy Blue Leggings Size 4″. The more info in your title, the more people are going to look at it. Furthermore, a descriptive title will make your listing come up in more targeted searches, which is where a lot of bids will come from.

3) Provide the basic info, and then get interesting.
Start off your description with the usual info (size, condition, color, etc.) and then get creative or personal. If that mini-skirt helped you land your current boyfriend, say so. If there’s a funny story behind the collection of DVDs you’re parting with, tell it (briefly). If you can make the bidder feel like they have some sort of connection with you, you might get them to bid.

4) Try your hand at creating lots of items.
If you’re selling off a ton of used DVDs at ~$2 a pop, you’re going to lose about $.50 in various listing/paypal fees. Instead of selling low-priced items individually, try to sell them in logical groups. Bidders feel they are getting a better bargain on a lot of 10 Sci-Fi DVDs than 10 individual ones.

5) Don’t start with too low a starting bid
Sure, setting an item at $.25 will probably land you a bid, but there’s always a chance that it could be the only bid.

I’m sure there are lots of other tips floating around the internet for selling on eBay, so if you think you have a good one, spill it in the comments.

Invitations, IMHO, are probably the easiest place to save some money.

I’m going to be honest with you. Most likely, the only person who cares about the invitations is the bride, with the possible exception of the mother of the bride. The rest of us look at the invitation, think ‘isn’t this pretty?’ and then forget all about it.

With the rules of wedding etiquette getting more and more relaxed all the time, there’s no reason to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on engraved invitations with all the tissue paper, insert cards and trimmings unless that’s what you really, really want.

For example, when Mr. and I were quoted between $500-750 from some companies we talked to if we got our invitations engraved by them. Getting them printed vs. engraved was better (at about $200-300), but we were still looking to trim more off.  In the end, we printed the invitations ourselves and spent ~$120 on card stock (including the place cards for the reception) and toner.

There are two things to keep in mind when shopping for invitations. One, the more accessories you want, the more expensive the invitations become. While you probably want a response card, you can probably skip the inner envelope and tissue paper, and those directions can be printed on regular letter weight paper just fine. Two, the more crap you stuff in the envelope, the higher the postage will be. You will probably be spending about $1 per invitation, so remember to factor that into your budget.

If you are willing to skip the most formal invitation traditions, you can easily save quite a bit on your invitations. No one will notice that your lettering is printed instead of engraved, the tissue paper is leftover from when the handwritten ink didn’t dry quickly, and with proper wording address you can skip that inner envelope. The one thing I really suggest you don’t skip is putting return postage on your response card envelope if you use one. Traditionally the recipient would write a formal response on their own stationary and send it off, but now days (if you include a response card) nothing is tackier than forcing someone to pay $.42 to say they aren’t coming to your wedding.

Please note that I’m not going into some of the ‘cheap’ options because they are ‘cheap’ not frugal and some frugal options just aren’t viable for your average urbanite Yes, you can just e-mail all your guests, but that’ is still not socially accepted yet, and is seen by most people as really tacky. Handwriting your invitations on personalized stationary is traditional and frugal, not cheap, but I know very few urbanites who have that kind of time on their hands (or handwriting that neat.)

Image by domaz_dk

Now that my big convention of the year is over, I can finally relax and do my own weekend reading.

Food and Recipes
Kung Pao Chicken - by Appetite for China - Mmmmmm….

Zuchini Ricotta Cheesecake - by 101 Cookbooks - My mind immediately goes to NYC dessert-style upon hearing cheesecake, but you can make savory ones as well.

Make Your Own Oreos - by Chocolate Bytes - Not really a frugal recipe, but it’s definitely an interesting read. You might reconsider eating Oreos after seeing what’s in them.

Tech and Internet
Open Source Irony - by Jemmatzan - Idiot writes letter back to company and proves he’s too incompetent for the job.

14 Easy Ways to Use the Internet to Get the Best Shopping Deals - by Buxr - Deals are good!

Crafts and Sewing
5 Minute Skirt - by Angry Chicken - This takes a little longer if you don’t have a serger, but the whole thing would probably take less than an hour if you knew what you were doing.

Candy Cane Bathsalts - by Lightening Online - Homemade Christmas present, anyone?

Pattern School - A great site if you’re trying to make a leotard, bathing suit or other project involving stretchy fabric.

Misc.

Run, Goomba, Run! - by Cacti - Children of the 80’s will get this short little flash animation.

Man Almost Loses Penis Humping Steel Bench - by Weird Asia News - I really don’t have anything to add that’s not already said.

If you read the title of this post and thought “Christmas shopping already?”, you have not mastered the fine art of shopping for gifts.

The time to do gift shopping is whenever there is a sale on something your giftee would like. If you wait until two weeks before whatever holiday or occasion you are celebrating, you are going to pay way too much money for a hasty gift.

Early in the year, take stock of the gifts that you will need to buy throughout the year (Birthdays, Graduations, Weddings, Holidays…) and the next time you find yourself browsing the clearance section or sales, look for an appropriate gift. While you are at it, you might want to consider picking up an extra generic gift or two for those awkward times when you find yourself in an unexpected gift exchange.

And while you are off buying gifts, stock up on holiday wrapping paper in the weeks after the holidays, when it’s 75% off. If you find yourself without appropriate gift wrap, stop in a dollar store for cheap gift bags (nothing wrong with solid colors), tissue paper, and all the other trappings of a nicely presented gift. There’s no reason to buy a $5 bow when you can make 100 of them from a $2 spool of ribbon.