I hereby declare Sundays a day for random ramblings from Frugal Dad. I’ll share a bit about what’s going on personally and professionally, but I can’t promise any of it to be ground-breaking news. It will likely be entertaining, and occasionally I’ll throw in a bit about a few frugal living ideas. Let’s even make it interactive - read on to find out how.

Homemade Birthday Cake

This is an especially tough time for us guys, financially. It’s even worse when your anniversary, wife’s birthday and Mother’s Day all fall within two weeks of each other! I’ve learned over the years to take it one financial hit at a time. In the spirit of frugality the kids and I baked Mom a birthday cake. I handled the mixing and the baking, and the kids handled the decorating. Not bad, if I say so myself. Mommy was awfully proud of her kids, and her husband, for managing to operate a mixer and an oven on the same day without causing structural damage! And yes, honey, that is a big 3-0 on the cake. I told you that you would catch up with me eventually.

The Square Foot Garden Graduates

Our popular square foot garden project has been very successful. So successful in fact that we had to find new homes for several of the vegetable crops because they were crowding out the adjacent squares. We decided to dedicate a little plot of backyard to in-ground gardening, and spent much of this afternoon digging and preparing a soil bed. We transplanted two large tomato plants and two rows of squash and cucumbers. I added a few tomato and cucumber seeds back to the square foot garden box to grow additional starter plants. We also dropped in a salsa pepper mix seed pack to start a few pepper plants for some homemade salsa. No pictures yet as I wanted to wait until it is more presentable. A threatening thunderstorm had us moving fast just to get the plants in the ground!

Frugal Freelancing

I had my first freelance writing proposal accepted by a major publisher this week, and I’m now off to complete the manuscript. More details to follow, but this will make a significant dent in the debt snowball! Hopefully, I can land a few more of these over the next couple months and knock out my remaining debt while building up our emergency fund.

Still No Economic Stimulus Check

Still no sign of the economic stimulus check. We plan to spread it out over our accounts at ING Direct, and put some on debt, so it it not like I’m waiting for it to make a big purchase. However, I would like to see that balance increased soon.

Your Turn

For next week’s Sunday Conversation I would love to answer a few of your questions, sort of in a mailbag format, but less formal. Just leave your questions in the comments and I’ll respond to them during next week’s conversation. If you would rather email me that’s fine, too.  If you do email me, indicate if you would like to remain anonymous, otherwise I’ll mention your first name and/or your website if provided. Any topic is open for discussion (well, almost any topic - this is a family-friendly environment!). I look forward to hearing from you.

Is it just me, or has this not been the worst allergy season on record? I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much trouble with my allergies. It seems like every time I mow the lawn it takes me two or three days to recover. Maybe it is the lack of rain that has allowed the pollen to run rampant without being washed away. Maybe I’m just getting more sensitive to it the older I get. Whatever the reason, it sure is annoying to keep a three month cold every Spring! I know, I know…enough whining - on with the roundup!

A Few of My Favorites this Week

Inexpensive Frugal Mother’s Day Gift Ideas. It’s not too late, guys, but you better hurry! (@Cash Money Life)

Sunkist Continues Popular Free Lemonade Stands for Charity Program. Here’s a neat idea for summer - a lemonade stand sponsored by Sunkist that helps teach kids the principles of entrepreneurialism and giving. (@ParentDish)

The Rise of Suburban Farming. My own square foot garden has produced much more than I ever thought possible, so I’m expanding to an in-ground garden with a few rows in the backyard. I love the idea of growing my own fruits and veggies to help offset rising food costs, and maybe even give some produce to friends and family. Apparently, I’m not alone. (@Get Rich Slowly)

52 Tips to Make Your Home Irresistible to Buyers. The home-selling market is tough, but implementing these tips will give you a competitive advantage. (@The Wisdom Journal)

Getting a Joint Bank Account and Making it Work. Excellent post to generate ideas on merging bank accounts with your new spouse. (@The Writer’s Coin)

Making Your Own Homemade Oatmeal Packs. Trent shares his recipe for homemade oatmeal - and saves some money, too! (@The Simple Dollar)

Want Some Extra Income? Try Odd Jobs. I make a decent amount of money working extra small jobs each month - it really does add up over time. (@The Digerati Life)

Reality Check: Are You Doing What It Takes to Get Ahead in Life? I thanked Jeff in the comment section for hitting me right square between the eyes with this post. I am still overweight and need to do something about it. No more excuses! (@My Super-Charged Life)

Healthy Eating on a Budget. I’m planning my own post on this next week. I think it is time to increase the food budget a bit in the name of eating healthier. Eating cheap, processed convenience foods just isn’t cutting it. (@BeingFrugal.net)

*I’d also like to thank Lynnae for including me on her list of Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs. It was a quite a list, and I’m honored to have been mentioned in such great company.

Time Sink of the Week: Time Machiner. Fun little tool that allows you to create email reminders for yourself in the future. I emailed my future self to remind me what it’s like to be in debt - and to never go back!

That about wraps it up for week ending May 10, 2008. Be sure to check in Monday for what I think will be the most inspiring post I’ve ever written here at Frugal Dad. I heard a radio segment yesterday on a talk radio show that really struck me - so much so that I pulled over to the side of the road to write down what the guest speaker said. Tune in Monday to find out what has me so happy to be alive!

photo by zenobia joy

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A couple weeks ago my wife and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Since we are working to become debt free, and this time of year brings about additional expenses (weddings, graduations, etc.), I decided to plan a frugal anniversary date with a twist. Instead of hitting the same old restaurant, movie theater and ice cream shop in our home town, we took a day trip back to the place we met and recreated parts of our first date. This may not be a feasible plan if you have since relocated across the country, but if you are still in the same geographic region it can be a memorable experience.

photo by blmurch

College Sweethearts

The great thing about this anniversary gift idea is that if you are recreating your first date, and you married young, you are probably reliving a time when you were flat broke (at least that was the case for us). For this reason, the costs to recreate those magical memories should be low. My wife and I met in college and spent nearly two years there together before we both returned to our respective homes to finish school locally. I was no good at long distance dating so instead of relocating I proposed! Thankfully, she said yes.

Back to School

We lined up Grandma to watch the kids and spent the Saturday morning following our anniversary riding over to our old college town (about 2.5 hours away). Besides attending the occasional football game, neither of us had been back after leaving school and it was surprising how much things had changed. My plan was for us to have dinner and then go back to the little hole-in-the-wall place we had an ice cream on our first date there nearly twelve years prior. Unfortunately, the hole-in-the-wall ice cream place was now just a hole in the wall - it was no longer there. Plan B? Find another ice cream place nearby where we enjoyed a peanut butter fudge ice cream from a second floor balcony and watched the sunset over the school’s campus.

“We Feel Old”

If there was any downside to our anniversary trip it was that we felt old strolling around a college campus. We are too young to have kids of our own attending, and too old to be grad students, so we felt a little out of place. Oh well, it was fun to see the old sights and spend time with my former college sweetheart. If any of you have an anniversary coming up I highly recommend a first-date recreation. Go a step further than I did and make sure the place you plan to visit is still there. Nothing kills the mood like finding the place you had your first date reduced to a pile of rubble.

Ask the Readers: What did you do to celebrate your last anniversary?

I remember the point of my financial meltdown very vividly. It wasn’t as much a meltdown as a wakeup call that things could no longer continue the way they were going if I wanted to live a successful life. I was working for what seemed like peanuts and my wife and newborn daughter were at home. Money was tight, but we weren’t starving by any means. We covered basic expenses, but charged luxury items to a credit card and paid for them over time. My decision to return to school added significant expenses to our budget, and again we financed a large portion of my tuition and books compliments of Visa. The minimum payments began to rise, and my income stagnated.

Things Began to Tighten Up

Do you remember those classic action movies like Indiana Jones or Star Wars where the heroes are trapped in a room, and suddenly the walls began to close in from all four sides? That sort of sums up our situation about ten years ago. At first we had plenty of space, despite low earnings and no savings. Over time the walls began to creep in. Student loan repayment, current educational expenses, credit card minimum payments, a car payment, insurance, medical bills from the birth of our first child, etc, etc. all began to eat away at our monthly income.

The Soggy Hotdog

I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember the events of the day like it was just yesterday. It was a normal day on the corporate treadmill. I arrived at work and logged on to my credit card account online to discover I was over the limit - doh! I knew that would come with a $29 fee and could potentially reset my interest rate again. I was kicking myself for using the card to pay for new cell phones earlier in the week. Oh well, I’d make a big payment to bring it down under the limit as soon as I got the rebate from the cell phones. Lunch time rolled around and I headed out to the nearest fast food restaurant. I never carried cash, so I drove around to the first window and handed over my check card. Declined. What? That couldn’t be right. I had over $100 in my checking account (or so I thought)! So there I was at the McDonald’s drive-thru with a dead check card, an over-the-limit credit card, an empty wallet and exactly fifteen cents in the change holder in my truck. Embarrassed, I made up some excuse about it being a new card and drove away apologizing for the mix-up.

Now that I had wasted the first twenty minutes of my lunch break there was no time to head home for a bite to eat. I had no money, and no snacks back at work. I opened my wallet and found my Chevron gas card. It was the one card that would still work. I drove to the closest Chevron station which had a convenient store attached. I went inside and got two of the worst hotdogs I had ever eaten in my entire life. The buns were under the hotdog rotisserie and the condensation had turned them into a soggy mess. I’m still not sure the hotdogs were even real meat, and the mustard was watery. I charged the $2.12 to my gas card and returned to my truck.

As I sat there in the heat eating those crappy hotdogs a wave came over me. No, not just a wave of nausea. I was too smart to live this way. Here I was forced to charge my lunch on a Chevron gas card because I was too irresponsible to properly plan for meals, food budgets, etc. It was time to grow up. I choked down the remaining lunch and returned to work, thoroughly disgusted with my financial life, and with a bad case of indigestion.

A Lifetime of Learning Begins

That night while surfing around for information on money management, I discovered a website by some guy named Dave Ramsey. I began to listen to his archived shows online. I subscribed to financial magazines such as Kiplingers Personal Finance and Money Magazine. Reading personal finance books became a side hobby, though it wasn’t until much later that I really developed a taste for this genre. My television was often on CNBC or Bloomberg’s. My favorite section in the newspaper became the “Business” section. I started reading old Wall Street Journals at work when my boss was finished with his copy. I wanted to learn everything I could about money, even though I had none. One day I would have money and I wanted to know how to handle it better. I had learned nothing in high school about personal finances, and chose to make bad decisions early on because I bought into the mentality, “I can always pay it off later.” Later never came. What did come was a small mountain of liabilities that trapped me in a dead end job for years because I had no options.

Our story is a cautionary tale for newlyweds. In our excitement to live the lifestyle of our dreams, we sacrificed much of our future. We are still not completely debt free, but have made that our number one mission. And when we do reach debt freedom, we will never go back - and I mean NEVER!

So there’s my story, I’m interested to hear your “soggy hotdog” moment?

The other day I read an excellent article over at Cash Money Life, How to Evaluate a Job Offer. It was a very thoughtful review aimed at helping job applicants compare the true benefits of a particular job offer. With any offer there are tangible and intangible benefits to consider, and it is the intangible ones that are usually the most difficult to evaluate. When I’ve gone on interviews in the past I have used the opportunity to learn a bit about the health of the organization by paying close attention to the work environment.

A Stale Company Website

It is always a good idea to review a company’s website before going on an interview. A well-conducted interview should involve questions from both parties, and if you don’t do your homework you may not have any intelligent questions to ask. Phrases like, “I read on your website…” or “I see from your company’s website that you are involved in…” show an expressed interest in the company, and in the job. Interviewers like this sign of initiative. While perusing the site take a look at news items, or a recent projects section. Are these areas outdated? It could be the sign of a lazy webmaster, or it could be a sign that little is happening at the organization. Review the executive staff bios, usually found under “About” or “Management” tabs. Do any of the bios indicate someone is the “acting” director/manager? This could be a sign of a recent shakeup as the eliminated position is now being covered by another executive.

Empty Offices

Nothing says “we aren’t growing” like vacated offices, unless there is only one empty office and you are you are hoping to occupy it. Corporate headcount has a natural ebb and flow, but an abundance of empty offices is a warning sign. Either the company is in the process of “restructuring” and has failed to replace workers, or they have not grown into their space according to anticipated plans.

An Empty Snack Machine

Empty snack machines can mean one of two things: the vendor is slow to replace items, or items are consumed rapidly. It is the latter that we are most concerned with. Employees working long hours frequently have to hit the snack machines to supplement what should be their dinner hour at home. Low snack supplies could also be a symptom of workers plowing through their lunch breaks (which is fine occasionally, but shouldn’t be the rule).  Pillows, blankets and cots (yes, I’ve seen them stowed under cubicles) are also obvious red flags.

No Personal Belongings

A worker who feels content in their position likes to decorate. Family photos, plants, souvenirs, etc. all tell me that the employees feel their position is stable and that the employer encourages a work/life balance. If I don’t spot any of these comforts, and instead find lots of empty walls, cleared desks and a bland decor, it tells me that the employees are “traveling light.” This is a sure sign of discontent, or a nomadic lifestyle, neither of which say much for the stability of the work environment.