Every Thursday is Goat-Free Simplicity Day at Living Behind the Curve.

I hate mornings with an unbridled passion usually reserved for dental work, flat tires, sewage backups, and bad hard drives. My circadian rhythm’s complete disregard for daylight would have me wide awake around noon, doing my best work around 10 PM, and sailing off into dreamland sometime close to 3 AM.

My current lifestyle does not lend itself well to my night owl ways. I need to be as functional for my hour-long commute at 7 AM as I am when I leave class at 10 PM. I’ve struggled with this cycle my entire life — my mother reports that getting me up for school was a Herculean task — and it wasn’t until recently that I began to fight back. When I made the decision to fit 30 minutes of exercise into my daily schedule, it was painfully obvious where that time needed to fit — I needed to become a morning person.

Would you like to know my secret? The one thing that turns me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:30 AM?

The secret is that there is no secret. There is nothing in this world, including an IV of double-brewed espresso, that can make me happy to be awake at that time of day. Every single morning, I grumble as I put on my sneakers, snarl when I fill my water bottle, and say things to my elliptical machine that I wouldn’t dare send to PostSecret. And yet somehow I do it. Every single day, I muster motivation from the depths of my brain and I get my butt out of bed.

I’m still half-asleep when I shower in the morning, and I still can’t listen to podcasts on my way to work, because listening to people read puts me to sleep. (Fortunately for everyone else on the road, the local shock jocks are enough to keep me amused and awake.) Having that extra time in the morning, however, has enough benefits to keep me coming back for more. I’ve found that starting my day off with a little cardio keeps the blood flowing to my brain on long days, and that the combination of exercise and stretching has done wonders for my fibromyalgia. Above all, there’s a certain sense of accomplishment. Not only do I feel good, I’ve added an extra 30-45 minutes to my day without skipping a beat.

So there you have it. My secret to living the early life is to accept mornings for the hideous creatures they are, and concede that it’s OK for misery to be part of the process. I’d love to hear how you cope with mornings — just don’t expect a coherent response from me before 10 AM.

Image courtesy of Morgue File.

Every Tuesday is Kitchen Sink day at Living Behind the Curve.

Yesterday at PFAdvice, a reader named RobertL wanted to know:

I’m single male and I keep reading that it’s less expensive to cook your own food. I would love to save money, but I find that it is almost always cheaper to buy prepared food. What am I doing wrong and am I missing something? Is the advice only meant for those with families and not for a single person living on his own? What is the best way for somebody who is single to save money while still preparing nutritionally balanced meals?

With a little poking and prodding, RobertL revealed that:

• His monthly food expenses total about $250.
• Most of his grocery budget goes toward prepared food.
• He does not want to keep large amounts of food around, because he will eat anything that’s in the fridge, including leftovers. It’s good that he knows his boundaries, but he’s losing out on the advantages of bulk-cooking.
• Part of his monthly expense is lunches out with his buddies, which he is not willing to give up.

Everyone, including me, threw lots of ideas at him, but you know what? RobertL, you’re doing pretty darn good already, given the circumstances. Your monthly food budget includes lunches out, and you’re still averaging about $8.33 a day in food, which is quite low for a single guy (bonus points if you’re between 18 and 30.) Young, single people traditionally spend enormous amounts of money on food. Having said that, there is definitely room for improvement.

My first question to anyone in this situation, RobertL included, would be, “What are you currently paying for food?” A plan to cut costs from 10 bucks of take out every day looks a lot different from giving up a freezer full of TV dinners you picked up for $1.50 each.

Regardless, we’re big fans of bulk cooking. For instance, chili freezes very well (particularly if you make a bean-free version), and if you bulk it up by serving over rice, with some cheese on top, one large batch can become 12 or more individually frozen servings for your future microwavable convenience. (The rice doesn’t freeze well, but for fast rice prep, check out our post on microwaved rice.) My favorite brew works out to about 50 cents a bowl.

Some other great meals that freeze nicely are lasagna, homemade macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, soup, and sloppy joes (meat and sauce only, please - freeze your buns separately.) Recipes for plan-ahead freezer meals can be found on almost any online recipe database, and there’s an excellent series on freezer cooking at Mom’s Budget. We also have our own tongue-in-cheek take on bulk and freezer cooking, SRSLY.

When planning freezer meals, it’s sometimes helpful to know what doesn’t freeze well. Those items include sour cream, fresh mushrooms, lettuces, eggs, pasta (if not in a casserole), and potatoes. The University of Illinois provides a comprehensive list of things that do not freeze well here.

If you’re truly set against bulk cooking as RobertL seems to be, this is what I would recommend:

1. Research
   Pull up your favorite search engine and start looking for easy recipes that sound appealing to you.
2. Experimentation
   Pick one night a week to try something new. See how easy it is to make and how much you enjoy it. If it’s not a recipe designed for solo cooking, play with the ingredients a bit to scale it down.
3. Creation
   Don’t be afraid to get creative with your food. You don’t have to be a culinary genius to find new dinners for your hectic life. One of the classic tricks is to re-purpose breakfast food - some eggs with cheese, a few vegetables, and a slice of toast or a piece of fruit, and you have a well-rounded meal that’s healthy, easy, fast, and perfect for just one person.
4. Documentation
   Once you have an arsenal of preferred recipes, keep them where they can be easily referenced, whether that is on your fridge or on your laptop.
5. Preparation
   Now that you have an idea of what you will be cooking, try to keep the non-perishable items on hand.

When Dani was single and living alone, one of her favorite meals was a “Pork Sack“. Lay a single pork chop on a piece of aluminum foil about three times larger than the meat. Top with canned green beans, breadcrumbs, and grated Parmesan cheese. Crimp the foil closed and bake. (A toaster oven works well for this.) The moisture from the pork steams the beans, and the Parmesan melts into the breadcrumbs to create a crunchy topping.

As with any other aspect of frugality, it all comes down to what you truly want to achieve. If RobertL’s priority was eating well on a low budget, he may have been more willing to compromise. No matter how inflexible the situation may seem, however, there are always small steps we can take to move toward our goals — and that’s a lesson we can all stand to learn.

Image courtesy of Image*After.

Every so often, a story pops up that forces me to be topical and timely. That means you get a bonus post!

I admit it, I had a little tiny orgasm when I caught my first glimpse of the Apple iPhone. It’s everything I ever wanted in a cellphone — I’ve been grouching for years that the pocket-PC-run cell/PDA’s were sorta what I needed, with big screens and QWERTY keyboards and combining all those little gizmos life requires into one doodad with a big shiny screen, but they’re expensive and slow and sorta not very good. iPhone, on the other hand, is better. It’s pretty and shiny and probably has the great Apple software that makes everything better and OMGSQUEE! No stylus!

I’m not going to buy one (yet.) They’re way out of my price range at $499 or $599 for a 4 or 8 gig iPhone, respectively, not to mention I’m smart enough to know not to buy first gen technology. I also have a cell phone I didn’t pay for that works perfectly well. Give it a couple of years and a few updates, and I am so there. Just not now.

I’ve been working on this plan for a couple of months now, and now I’m sure I made the right decision. Apple announced their service plans for the iPhone on Tuesday, though their partner AT&T. All the available plans are 2 year plans, and you could pay $59.99, $79.99 or $99.99 a month, depending on the number of minutes you want. These plans include unlimited data access and a whole bunch of other stuff that’s pretty standard on cell plans these days. There’s also a $36 activation fee.

The $59.99 is 450 minutes, and with the unlimited data thing, that doesn’t sound too horrendously bad to me, IF AND ONLY IF it includes free nights and weekends. The press release doesn’t mention that, so I’m guessing no. But for a plan that includes Internet, up until now, that’s not a bad price. I just wonder if all the people who will be lining up on Friday to buy an iPhone at 6pm tomorrow will realize that they’re signing up to pay 2100 bucks.

I’m not kidding. $59.99 a month for 24 months ($1439.76), $499 iPhone ($1938.76), $36 activation fee ($1974.76), 6% sales tax if you live in PA like I do ($2093.25), and I’m not even going to pretend to estimate the cost of all those little accessories that you just need to have, or what the taxes and fees would be on that service plan.

See? $2100, minimum. I’ll bet you Apple and AT&T know it.

Even though millions of people are about to be fleeced, there is one very, very good thing about this kerfluffle. The iPhone is the first real honest-to-gawd “cellputer” that’s being marketed directly to consumers. It doesn’t really do much that a Blackberry or a Treo or one of those pocket-PC Cells can’t do, but all of them are business gadgets first and foremost. Since they’re business gadgets, the cellphone companies charge business rates for the Internet access, which is to say a lot. The rates AT&T came up with are pretty excellent by comparison, and they will only come down in the future, making Internet cellphone plans reasonably priced across the board for the first time ever.

Regardless of what model computer-phone you’ll be carrying in the near future, the real legacy of the iPhone will be simply that the Internet will be in everyone’s pocket. You just wait and see.

For my cost-analysis of the iPod through time, check out the original iLuddite post.

Every Thursday is Goat-Free Simplicity day at Living Behind the Curve.

New age self help gets it wrong. As an industry, it seems to be of the consistent opinion that if you start feeling better about yourself, good things will happen. This is is a very popular opinion, but it’s backwards.

I ran across a video on the net of the episode Oprah did about The Secret. I’ve heard quite a lot of people talking about it, mostly in very unflattering terms, so I checked it out. The Secret, it seems, is visualization. Fake it till you make it. Affirmations. If you can dream it, you can be it. It’s not a new concept, obviously — philosophical fraternities like Freemasons and Rosicrucians and western esoteric and occult orders like The Golden Dawn and Theosophy have been teaching this stuff in one way or another for hundreds of years, and if you believe their lineage claims, thousands of years. And yes, I’m coming out to say that any group or system or book that appeals to enlightenment junkies will essentially tell you the same thing. The details will be different, as will the symbolism and the method, but in the end it’s all very similar. If you can sufficiently convince yourself that a change in the universe will come to pass, you subconsciously begin behaving in a manner that will allow these changes to occur. The explanations on the mechanics vary widely, but that’s the gist of it.

There seems to be a very big difference in execution, though, between the “traditional” enlightenment systems and the new age self help version. The enlightenment folks will be very quick to remind you that a ritual or practice alone usually isn’t enough to manifest a change the you want, but that you need to prepare yourself beforehand and take action afterwards. If your change doesn’t manifest, you didn’t sufficiently prepare yourself, or you didn’t do the practice appropriately, or you didn’t apply enough follow up. If you succeed, congratulations, you are probably prepared for next time.

New age self help systems, I’ve noticed, don’t work this way. They seem to rely entirely on the method they favor, and don’t have a whole lot of preparation or follow through. This is certainly how The Secret is presented. You just do the visualization, and good things will happen. It gets more sinister then that, though. New age systems have a nasty, cult-like habit of saying, explicitly or implicitly, that any success you may have is due to their system, but any failure you may have is entirely your fault.

Nice, huh? They’re selling wishful thinking that nullifies your personal accomplishments and claims them as their own, while simultaneously negating their failures and heaping them on you.

Do I think they work? Maybe. Everyone needs a filter or a system by which they can view their lives and create some semblance of order or organization so problems can be dealt with and moving on can happen, if only occasionally. Traditionally, this has been a function of religion, with philosophy following a distant, if trendy, second. With our (American) culture growing more secular and cynical over time, those options become less viable, or perhaps plausible, to the individual. Unfortunately, the need is still there, and that vacuum has been filled to bursting by the new age self help industry. It may be quite helpful to some people, but I think that, on the whole, new age self help misses the boat, and here’s why.

Enormous amounts of energy are devoted to the concept of self-esteem. It’s become so prevalent in public education, for instance, that it’s become a joke. (Did you hear the one about the school that banned kids from playing tag because being “it” might harm their delicate self-esteem? Oh wait, that’s no joke.) Somewhere along the line, the idea spread that a person can only achieve if they feel good about themself first. This is bullshit. Self esteem that isn’t grounded in something is hopelessly fragile and must constantly be reinforced externally. Furthermore, it can build a rampaging sense of entitlement. This combination results in truly insufferable people. You know the type — full grown adults who are all smiles and sunshine until you tell them no, and they suddenly transform into a college-educated, tantrum-throwing toddler who missed their nap.

People like this base their self-esteem entirely on other people telling them that they have worth. As long as the world plays along, everything is hunky-dorey. If one of these deluded handjobs is suddenly confronted with opinion that they’re not the wonderful person they’ve been led to believe, however, they have no defense. That negative opinion floats in and nestles right next to all the positive stuff and holds just as much sway as anything else they’ve heard. Someone bearing negativity at you is a profound personal attack when you build your self image on nothing more substantive than “you’re special for just you being you”. (My sincerest apologies to Mr. Rogers.)

The real kind of self-esteem comes from accomplishing things. Doing stuff makes you feel good. This sort of self-esteem grows internally; you don’t need to rely on other people to tell you how awesome you are, because you can instantly recall that feat of awesomeness and tell yourself. It’s also a much more solid form of self-esteem — if you don’t rely on people to buoy your sense of awesome, you’ll be much less vulnerable to other people reminding you how much you suck.

So here’s the simplicity lesson for today: Just do it. (Sorry, too, Nike.) If you find yourself completely crippled by a soul-crushing depression, see a doctor. Otherwise, forget the new age self help garbage and just get started. Find your bills and start crunching numbers. Look at your pantry and plan tomorrow’s dinner. Sit down and write the first part of the first chapter of your novel. Find a box and declutter your kitchen table. Accomplish something. No matter how small it is, it will feel good, I promise, and it will be the first step to successfully completing great things. When you make good things happen, you’ll feel good about yourself.

Note: if this is all a little too… concrete for you to deal with, check out the writeup of The Secret that Trent did over at The Simple Dollar. He comes at it from an entirely different direction, and I can’t disagree with one word he says.

Every Wednesday is Domestic Science day at Living Behind the Curve.

Do you love to entertain, with fancy-schmancy food that makes your friends “ooh” and “aah” each time the next course arrives at the table? Wouldn’t it be great to entertain like that while sticking to your fabulously frugal budget?

Inspired by a last-minute visit from an out-of-town friend, Mer and I did just that this past week. With a little creativity and some interesting number-crunching, we threw a dinner party for 6*, for under $25.

The $25 Dinner Party Menu
Appetizer: Fried Chinese Noodles with Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce
Entree: Stuffed Teriyaki Pork Loin (pictured)
Side Dish: Peanut-Ginger Noodle Salad (pictured)
Dessert: Coconut Flan with Caramel Sauce
Beverage: Spiced Peach Tea Fizz

All of that for $24.71. The recipes are linked above, but this is how the money broke down (click to enlarge):

If you click through to both the recipes and the spreadsheet, you’ll notice that there are a lot of ingredients missing; that’s because I used a lot of what I already had on hand, and formed my menu to fit my food, and not the other way around. If there is one secret to entertaining well on a budget, it’s this: you need to know how to adapt your recipes. Want to try the flan, but don’t have coconut milk? Try sweetened condensed milk instead. Don’t have chai tea for the noodle salad dressing? Use good ol’ American black tea.

One other trick that made this possible was bulk-buying. I couldn’t get the amount of pork I needed for $5.92, because prices are higher in small quantities. Instead, I spent $17.76 on a whole pork loin, and cut it in thirds. One portion fed us that night (and lunch the following day), one was roasted off for Sunday dinner, and the last is in our freezer for a future meal.

I hope I’ve inspired you to do your own kitchen alchemy. If you have a frugal dinner worth drooling over, I’d love to hear about it!

*There were only 3 of us in attendance, but I purposely cooked enough for 6, so that we would have leftovers.