Food safety practices should actually apply all year round, but in summer and any time of warm weather, regular precautions might not be enough. For example, you might be able to leave food unrefrigerated for several hours in February without seeing any major effects, but the same practice may not work for you in August when the environment is warmer and bacteria multiply faster. Also, just because you can’t see any change, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Everyone knows that food goes bad, but it occurs to me that the average person might not be privy to all the specific details. Madoline and I worked in the very non-glamourous industry of food services for about 10 months in 2003 (more details in Our Family Financial History). When first hired, we had to go through food safety training and learned a lot of things that we otherwise may never have known had we not happened to get jobs in the industry.
Practicing safe food handling and storage will not only save you money by preventing food waste from spoiling, but more importantly, it will protect your family’s health. For some of you, it might be common sense, but my experience with the general public and relatives is that these are things the average person is simply not aware of. I won’t go into detail about bacteria and all that fun stuff; this is just a basic introduction to food safety.
Hand-Washing
These hand-washing practices should apply everywhere, not just in the kitchen, and especially when using the restroom - and even more importantly, when using a public restroom.
Before handling food - be it preparing, eating or storing - wash your hands.
Wash your hands in hot water and with an anti-bacterial soap.
When finished washing your hands, do not use your hands to turn off the tap. Whatever bacteria was on your hands (and the hands of every other person who used the sink before you) is also on the faucet handle.
When in your own home and you are able to control the cleanliness of the facilities, this may not be as vital as opposed to a public facility. When at home, I often use my wrist or forearm to turn off the tap after washing my hands.
When in public, use the paper towel with which you dry your hands to turn off the tap - after drying your hands on it. Yes, it leaves the water running for a few seconds longer, but it keeps your hands germ-free. I also use the same paper towel to open restroom exit doors before disposing of it. This may seem overly paranoid, but you never know when you’re in public what other people have touched and left on a door handle or faucet for you to pick up (and later ingest).
If using a towel, make sure the hand-drying towel is clean and used only for hand-drying. Change them frequently as damp towels in warm weather can mildew quickly. If using paper towels, make sure the paper towel roll is clean - hasn’t fallen on the floor, isn’t often handled when hands are dirty or used for cleaning around the house.
Some people may call this behavior paranoid or obsessive-compulsive, but it is important to be aware that bacteria is transferred by touching. This is an important factor when it comes to safe food handling. When working in food services, we were taught that if your hands touch anything that has not been sanitized, they are dirty and must be washed again before handling food.
I have a lot of favorite movies (maybe because I’m indecisive and can’t just pick one favorite) and Fiddler On the Roof is definitely there in my top … 50. Yes, it is old, and some of it a little silly, but it is a classic and teaches some good lessons, all the while maintaining a good balance of comedy with serious issues. We recently watched it for the first time after several years, and now that we are personal finance bloggers, we couldn’t help but appreciate the money lessons (or maybe they’re more like jokes) to be had in this movie.
Tevye: Again with the rich! What’s wrong with being rich?
Perchik: It’s no reason to marry. Money is the world’s curse.
Tevye: May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!
If I Were a Rich Man
One of my favorite songs in this movie is If I Were a Rich Man, wherin Tevye fantasizes of the (sometimes imprudent) ways in which he would live his life and spend his money were he a wealthy man. Play the video below to watch it performed as can be done by none other than the great Topol. (You can watch the whole movie here, too, if you’d like.)
There is a difference between simple living and forced poverty.
Not everyone enjoys the rat race.
It’s a choice.
It’s a form of retirement.
Some live the frugal life because they have no other choice.
Frugal does not mean “easy,” but instead takes work and ambition.
It’s the means to an end.
I thought I’d add my own opinion to this and go more into why we live the way we do - sort of a continuation/elaboration on Our Family Financial History which tells how we came to be where we are today. The answer to this question, as evidenced above, is different for everyone depending on your station in life - age, personal goals and lifestyle preferences.
For us, the last answer, “It’s the means to an end,” is closest to our view of “simple living” or “frugal living.” For me, simple living is not just another terms for “giving up.” I like to think of it as “saving up” and making it possible to “live it up” in future years.
Though, I think this has much to do with where we are agewise in our lives. Madoline and I are in our late twenties and we have many years ahead of us. But for someone at midlife, retirement or late-life, it would probably be different.
Our Reasons for Frugal Living are:
To pay off our house as soon as possible
To save up to attend graduate school
To save up for a replacement car when the time comes
To make sure we and our pets have enough (or more) to live on in later life
To be able to live as comfortably and healthily as possible in later life
To be able to help extended family who may need assistance
To be able to travel and see the all the places we’ve been wanting to see
To own a small farm on which to keep horses, sheep and dogs
To be free of debt and worry
To be able to have the things we want be they large or small
To be able to pay our taxes - sad, but true
Frugal Living as a Choice
At this time in our lives, we cannot really afford to not live frugally. Our business is still in its development stages, and we are still considering other career paths. Because we prefer to avoid debt and our business is small, we have been using our cash to invest in sewing machines and materials for the business.
So for us, frugal or simple living is a choice because our present lifestyle is also a choice. At this time, we’d like to have a shot at making our business work because we prefer to work for ourselves and be able to work from home so we can be with our dogs who are our closest family. This is the reason we bought our house where the closest city is 40 miles away. We could move to a large city and get full-time jobs if we really wanted or needed to, but for now, we want to try to make our business work.
Frugal Living as a Means to an End
One of the ways in which we hope to make our fortunes is by investing. This also requires some capital other than regular savings and and emergency fund. So that is another reason we live frugally - to save as much money as possible to invest.
How about you? Do you live frugally? If yes, what are your reasons? And if no, why not?
Some people—especially those related to us—will surely ask us why we chose to adopt this little orphan when we already had two dogs to care for and our income has suffered noticeably in the current economy. We had actually discussed frequently over the past three years the possibility of adopting a small dog as a model for our pet costuming business.
Border Collies have long been our preferred pets and while Ludwig and Wolfgang are great models, using such large dogs to test new patterns and designs wasted a lot of time and materials, especially if we had to correct the patterns and sew them more than once. But we were worried that adding a third dog would disrupt the equilibrium of our family, that there might be personality conflicts and jealousy. That’s not to mention the additional burden on our time and finances such a change would bring.
A few months ago, we put a link on our blog for Dogs in Danger, a website featuring shelter dogs who are due to be euthanized if they do not find a home very soon. We had hoped placing the link would result in some adoptions of needy dogs. Well . . . . good news! It worked! Although we didn’t end up with one of the dogs on this website (the suitable ones being too far away), looking at all the pictures and descriptions of poor homeless dogs made us finally decide to adopt. After all, an adoption would benefit all parties. It would provide a home and family for the dog while making our business more efficient and hopefully more lucrative.
Another reason for adopting at this time is that foreclosures are causing many owners to give up their pets. By taking a dog out of a shelter, we could make room for another, reducing the euthanasia statistics by one. When the digit 1 represents a life, it’s not such a small number after all.
We began searching online for dogs at local shelters who might be a clothes model, pet, and little sibling for Luwie and Wolfie. There were so many cute ones that we were actually tempted to take two . . . or even three. But finances being a consideration, we had to be practical and choose only one.
There was a dog at the Lancaster Animal Shelter who instantly caught our eye. She was listed as a chihuahua, though we think she is half Italian greyhound or whippet. The poor little dog had actually been recently adopted and returned with the complaint that she was too big for a chihuahua and was very nervous and unhappy to be back at the shelter. Not only was she physically perfect for the job, having a neutral color and clean outline, but she was (and is) incredibly sweet and submissive, and went limp like a ragdoll when picked up.
With a payment of just $38.00, this little girl became our Sophia (pronounced “so-FYE-uh” in the 18th century way), Sophie for short. And we are glad to announce that everything worked out happily. We are fond of Sophia, who is our first toy dog, and she seems quite satisfied with us. Wolfgang is delighted to have a new friend and Ludwig is beginning to get curious about her after raising his eyebrows (he really does) and saying “What’s this?” for 24 hours.
Sophia has started a new life as a little princess with a big wardrobe and has reached the happy ending of the doggy fairy tale which is a “forever home.” Of course, we couldn’t wait to dress her up and already made her two new outfits. Isn’t she lovely?
Happy 5th of July, everyone! I hope you had a nice 4th. We just relaxed at home and ate yummy food (pizza with garlic, olives & feta cheese and Taiwanese style fried chicken, the recipe of which I plan to post here some time soon) and watched the Lost Episodes of the Lucy Show on DVD with our cousin who has never seen the show before. (Mr. Mooney is my favorite.)
It’s been a somewhat hectic and busy month what with 100+ degree weather just about everyday since the beginning of June, car trouble and my messed up sleep schedule. I know my posting has been rather irregular, and I apologize to my regular readers. Our cousins’ 3-month visit is winding to an end - she’ll be leaving on Tuesday July 7th - so we’ll be trying to spend as much time together as possible in the next few days. After that I hope to be able to get back to posting a little more regularly.
That said, the past month has gone quite well for Our Fourpence Worth. Our Money Management Monopoly Game Expansion series has met with pretty good reception in the financial blogosphere, 2 of them having been chosen as Editor’s Picks in recent blog carnivals and quite a few mentions at other blogs. This also means we’ve had to do a lot of test-playing of our expansions, which hasn’t exactly been torturous labor.
I’m also really excited to be slated to host the Festival of Frugality on August 19, 2008 and the Money Hacks Carnival on August 20, 2008. We’ve also received the honor of being included in the Personal Finance category at alltop.com.
OK, now on to our round-up for this month.
PF Bloggers
First of all, I would like to announce that the PF Bloggers network is starting a monthly group writing project wherein each member of our network will be writing about a pre-selected topic on the 15th of each month. Our first topic will be our personal/family financial history and basically what influenced or inspired us to live frugally and/or aspire to financial freedom.
Whenever I used to hear this quote, my reaction would be something like “Yeah, okay.” I’d figure that it was probably true but never really gave it much thought, and it pretty much went in one ear and out the other. But now that I’m getting a little on in years (the big 3-0 inching eerily closer), I’m beginning to see why this quote is so-oft quoted.
Some of you may have noticed that my posting has been a little inconsistent lately. As I explained in my recent roundup of personal finance articles, our cousin has been visiting us since April (and will be here until July 8th). Because most of our relatives live overseas, when we do see each other, it is usually after a span of several years. Despite the physical distance between us, we have always been very close to most of our cousins, and consequently, there have been a lot of late nights of catching up on the last half decade or so - chatting about other family members (there are a lot of us), reminiscing and laughing about our childhoods and complaining about the “grown-ups” who still treat us like children even though most of us are now in our late twenties and early thirties.
While these late night chats have been priceless, they have also taken a toll. We often all stay up together till about midnight, and after the others turn in for the night, I usually spend several hours catching up on work (for our other businesses or this blog), and it isn’t unusual for me to go to bed at sunrise. While it’s great to have these quiet and uninterrupted hours in which to work, there is also a price.
Some people—especially those related to us—will surely ask us why we chose to adopt this little orphan when we already had two dogs to care for and our income has suffered noticeably in the current economy. We had actually discussed frequently over the past three years the possibility of adopting a small dog as a model for our 
Happy 5th of July, everyone! I hope you had a nice 4th. We just relaxed at home and ate yummy food (pizza with garlic, olives & feta cheese and Taiwanese style fried chicken, the recipe of which I plan to post here some time soon) and watched the Lost Episodes of the Lucy Show on DVD with our cousin who has never seen the show before. (Mr. Mooney is my favorite.)
