Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.^[1]

It’s hard to believe I have not blogged for almost a year now. I am still continuing my frugal journey, but my reasons have actually increased. My job is of course in flux, the economy is in the crapper and I’m looking at spending the rest of my time trying to make my way in this cold hard world. I turn 41 this year and most people have already had their children, and are settling down to the place where the kids are almost raised and the mortgage is almost gone. I have yet to purchase a house. For me, having a house, means having someplace to call my own and to plant the roots of my life. I will go to a First-Time Home Buyer seminar this coming tuesday. My goal is to have a house within the next year and a half. I have come to hate apartment living. You would think after so many years of it that it would be o.k. It’s not! I want my own space to grow a garden. My landlords let me dig up the yard and plant one here at the apartment, but the rain pouring off the roof pretty much drowned the hell out of everything. On top of that, the soil was mostly sand and chunks of cement. I did manage to get some produce out of the garden, but really nothing like we used to get when we were kids growing up. This year I am rebelling at the horrendous cost of groceries and I am attempting to do some container gardening. Who the hell knew I had a green thumb? I certainly didn’t! I started some: tomato plants, green pepper plants and some leaf lettuce from seeds. Not only did every single one of my seeds sprout, but I have more than enough starter plants that if I lose some they are easily replaced. I have already harvested my first batch of leaf lettuce. It was not a huge amount but it supplemented the lettuce greens from the store. There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction from creating something that allows you to have sustenance. Gardens produce food for the body, and gardening provides food for the soul. Today was a gorgeous warm day so I took my sproutlings, and repotted them in some wonderful, organic soil. Of course, with the uncertainty of Iowa weather, there is an advantage to container gardening. Pots are portable and can be taken inside if the weather is too cold or wet or whatever. The other advantage of gardening is that you can control what has been used on your food. Unlike Mexico, I will not be adding raw sewage to my garden. For the first time this year I am going to attempt to grow cucumbers in a large pot. It makes sense that it might be possible as I have always planted cucumber seeds in little mounds in a garden. I made a mound of dirt in the pot and carefully planted my seeds. It will be approximately 7-10 days to germination and I will be able to tell if was successful or not. A couple of things that I dearly wish that I had room to plant are: Zucchini, Yellow Squash, Green Onions, Radishes, Sweet Potatoes, Red Lightning Hybrid Tomatoes and of course my Rainbow Heirloom Mix of Tomatoes. I know enough about the heirloom tomatoes to know that I need to keep them separate from my regular tomatoes due to pollination issues. Currently, the tomatoes in the stores have no flavor. Mass production and hot houses have ruined the lovely flavor of tomatoes. One of the reasons I want to try the Red Lightning Hybrids is for the sweet, tangy flavor that they have. As people move farther and farther away from producing or knowing anything about the food that they eat, it’s no wonder that we as a nation are getting fatter. We dine on foods filled with fillers, dangerous chemicals and sugar in it’s myriad of forms, and still we do not feel nourished. I want to return to being able to produce something that I am proud of, that nourishes me as it nourishes my soul to produce it.

Around the time that I started getting serious about getting out of debt things started changing at work. My job became less certain and the vehicle I purchased through my company became my main priority. I had a 5 year car loan that needed to be taken care of just in case I found myself looking for another job. I rolled all my extra cash into the car payments and managed to knock out the car loan in 3 years instead of 5. The job situation later improved but I had no way of knowing at the time if it would. Looking back though it was one of the best things that could have happened because I watched myself payoff 18K worth of debt in 3 years. That inspired me to see if I could find ways to shave my monthly expenses down to the bare minimum. I redoubled my efforts on the credit cards and within a year and a half I managed to get rid of the balance to the tune of $10,400.00. This left the bulk of my debt which was my student loan. During the time that I was doubling up on my car payment and my credit card payments I went into repayment status with my student loan. I was able to pay down my balance to approximately 28K by the time the credit cards were gone. Now I have only my student loan debt which is currently at $6,800.00. I have had a change in life plans so I am now saving for a down payment on a home and have had to ease off on extra payments to my student loan currently. I will have the student loan paid off probably within the next year and a half.

What’s a girl to do when she finds out that she is knee deep in debt and doesn’t want to get in any deeper? Well she either sinks to the bottom or she learns to swim. As I’ve always been a survivor, I wasn’t about to give up now. I needed a plan and I needed it badly. When you live paycheck to paycheck there is always fear that something catastrophic will happen and in that one instance your life will go to hell in a handbasket. I sat down(while eating my crappy peanut butter sandwich) and added up everything that I earned and owed. I made a list of minimum payments and interest rates. I decided the best course of action would be to snowball my debt. I needed to start with the smallest debt that I owed and make minimum payments on everything else. The sad reality was that before I could even take that small step, I had to have at least a small cushion for an unexpected bill. I decided I was going to start off with one month’s rent in my savings account. On the hierarchy of needs shelter is right up there food and water. It was humbling to have to scrimp to save even that amount, but once it was finally done I felt a small measure of control. I would be able to do this if I could make myself stay the course. I was now ready to start attacking my debt like a crazy woman. I had two smaller store cards that needed to go first. The interest rates that T*rget and S*ears charge should make them hang their heads in shame. At times I was only able to send 20-35 dollars additional towards each payment but it added up. Within the first three months I had knocked out my first store credit card. The next step was to add the minimum payment that I used to pay on the previous card as well as any spare cash to knock out the next credit card. I would be lying if I said this came easily to me and that I never faltered. I wasted some cash along the way but I made myself get back on track. Worrying about money caused an inordinate amount of stress in my life which of course affected how well I reacted to stress on my job.

My journey towards frugal living has not been a smooth one. Somehow I woke up one day and found myself about $58,452 in debt. How did I get that way you may ask. It was surprisingly easier than one would imagine. I started and stopped going to college a couple of times, each time using student loans to pay for the semester. The student loans all by themselves comprised the bulk of my debt and accounted for about 30K of the total. I had an accident in my car and decided rather than fixing the one I had, I needed one that would last a while. This added another 18K to my total debt. Additionally, having more month than money meant that I used credit cards to pay for basic things like groceries and utilities. Credit cards were responsible for the remaining balance of $10,452.00. When I look back at the computer I convinced myself that I “needed” and the various other items and shake my head at how naive I was. At the time I was sharing an apartment with my brother and money was already tight. I had counted on having a couple of additional years of sharing the bills before I had to worry about expenses on my own again. Well to make a long story short he met and fell in love and decided to get married. I knew I would not be able to afford the place we were in on my own, so I found an apartment that I could afford. By the time the dust had settled, utilities were hooked up and bills paid I literally had no money left. I spent that month eating peanut butter sandwiches every day and plotting how to make changes. I knew things would not get better financially unless I made them better. I decided that I needed to adopt a frugal way of living. Growing up poor gives you a good headstart on frugal living. However, growing up poor gave me a skewed sense of what my “wants” versus my “needs” were.