cmonkey's journal

[spoonman]

Gosh, 1700 for two people is hitting it out of the park by any standard! Your frugal kung fu is good!

[cmonkey]

Thanks for the words of encouragement spoonman. Our core bills are 578/month or 6400/year. Divide everything above that in half and that's really the per person amount. About 1138/month for everything {roughly} if I were not married.

I have plans for reducing the core bills even more. We are getting rid of garbage service when we ERE, and I am attempting to get cheaper internet. Half of our housing expense is home insurance which I am not convinced I need at this point since I don't have a mortgage anymore. The price has been rising +10% each year. I am going to get the opinion of this forum on that.

I think I can get our core bills to about 375/month, 4500/year in the coming months/years.

[cmonkey]

We decided to try out ordering some items through Azure Standard and picked up our order last night up in Davenport, IA. I was not quite sure what to expect but the entire process went very smooth. The semi stopped in a Cinema parking lot with plenty of room for people to park and get their stuff. We showed up and everyone was unloading all the cargo for the month and putting in 'rough' alphabetical order based on last name in the parking lot.

We ended up getting 18, 40 LB bags of chicken feed, a 50 LB bag of oatmeal (for $45) and a 5 LB bag of cocoa powder (for $27) (all organic). The price per pound for the chicken feed was about .85 to .90 cents per LB shipped, which is MUCH cheaper than ordering through Scratch & Peck's site and significantly cheaper than purchasing from our local department store. We now have enough feed to last at least a year (I think) based on how much they've been eating. It was the first time we really got to use the pickup for what we wanted it for in the first place - hauling hundreds of pounds of load. Our load was about 785 LBS! Shipping costs are 8.5% of your total order amount and we ended up paying about $54 total for all our items.

In fact, everything we ordered was much cheaper even with shipping costs. Going forward we are planning to use Azure for staples like oatmeal, flour, sugar, etc... It's all organic and cheaper than conventional from the stores.

The drop coordinator was quite surprised at how much chicken feed we had ordered, stating "you can just order what you need each month and pick it up!!". Well, then we would have to drive 25 miles through rush hour/city traffic each month as well on top of wasting a lot more gas. Her answer was "well people drive 2 hours each month for their pickups and they get just a few things (essentially)". Wow! It wasn't surprising to hear, there were lots of 'soccer mom' types there in their Suburbans and Tahoes.

I think we'll be doing 2 orders a year based on usage of staples and such. I might try getting that down to a yearly order eventually. I'd like to order all staples (except dairy) through them. Dairy might eventually come from some goats, we haven't decided yet.

Highly recommended and interested in anyone else's stories of Azure Standard.

[EdithKeeler]

I love your journal, and especially love the pics of your place and the chickens! I'm also very impressed by the amount of work all of this represents.

[cmonkey]

@EdithKeeler, Thank you! We do put a lot of work into it, spending almost all our free time outside. Probably 3-4 hours in the evening for me and all day on the weekends.

[spoonman]

Sounds like you're getting a killer deal there. I assume the items you're getting have a shelf life of at least 6 months, that's the only factor that would complicate such as scheme.

Maybe now you're home grown food is substantially cheaper than a grocery store.

[cmonkey]

Agreed on the shelf-life. I have ordered in bulk from other places and haven't had a problem. Azure is simply the cheapest yet. The chicken feed should last a long time as long as I keep it pest free.

Once they start laying I'll let you know. For now they are the most expensive investment we've made in home grown food.....negative ROI.

[thrifty++]

It looks awesome what your doing on your property. I am sure you will reach economies of scale to make it all much cheaper than buying your food with the size you have to use and the way you are going about it. I experimented a while back with growing my own food. However I live in the CBD and just have a little apartment balcony. So the costs I was experiencing were enormous. I was growing the most expensive produce in town. Now I only focus on growing things which look cool and that's it.

In addition to the savings you will be getting lovely aesthetics. Your place looks amazing. As well as health benefits, exercise a frugal hobby and amazing satisfaction in using your own fresh food.

[cmonkey]

Thanks thrifty++!

So the costs I was experiencing were enormous. I was growing the most expensive produce in town. Now I only focus on growing things which look cool and that's it.

I am curious what made it so expensive? We have a container garden on our deck that is pretty full and it didn't cost much. I suppose the soil wouldn't be cheap if we hadn't had compost.

[thrifty++]

It was a number of things. The soil was expensive. I tried to economise with potting by using plastic buckets from the Warehouse (an NZ version of Walmart - kind of) for pots but they still ended up costing a bit. I also had to buy trellises for growing beans which were very expensive. Ended up using tomato cages and turning them upside down (looked very cool at least). I bought some organic fertiliser to ensure the plants would be healthy (expensive). The plants also kept getting diseases and then would die so I didn't get a lot of food out of them.

I did try my best and grew everything from seed as well. It might have been my lack of gardening skill. Who knows. I would be interested in hearing from any one who has made a cost effective food garden on a small balcony though and how they did it.

[cmonkey]

Some of the things we are doing/have learned to do but haven't done yet to turn gardening into a nearly free hobby..

1. Stinging Nettle soaked in a five gallon bucket filled with water for 3 weeks makes great nitrogen feed concentrate. Mix 1 cup concentrate to 1 gallon of water and feed weekly.
2. Comfrey, soaked in the same way, is great for phosphorus (for flowering and fruiting time).
* These will get VERY smelly, so cover with a lid.
3. Long sticks for trellises.
4. Garden centers often give away plastic containers as they will be recycled anyway. Same with pallets which are always handy.
5. Long grass is your friend! Maybe not in the garden, but some where close! We keep ours long in the orchard and it -

• a. Keeps disease spores from being splashed up on the trees in rain (sort of like a filter). We noticed a huge difference in disease spread this year so far.
• b. Home for all sorts of predatory insects

6. Baking soda mixed in water and sprayed on plants creates an alkaline (high pH) environment that is not conducive to disease growth.
7. Learn to save seed! It is quite easy and fun and your saved seed will remember your growing conditions from last year and improve itself. Done over many years your plants will be much stronger.
8. Save eggs shells as a calcium supplement for blossom end rot and general plant health.
9. Save old coffee grounds (or find for free from Starbucks) for low pH/ericaceous plants (like blueberries).

[cmonkey]

Debt Free

I have spent the better part of the past few weeks pondering whether I wanted to just discharge our truck loan with some of the cash in our cash accounts and have decided to do just that. Employment is stable and we frankly don't have any use for the large cash fund right now and the pychological relief of not having the loan in the back of my mind is very wonderful.

So I am happy to announce that we are officially and forever debt free (once they cash the check).

Starting next month we will be achieving at least a 50% savings rate. Outside our core expenses we can achieve up to a 75% rate. I am hoping to settle about 65-70% for the rest of the year.

This month is the worst of the year at about 30% and most likely will stay that way due to a couple of large expenses. Even so I am still light years ahead of my fellow citizens. I will post more details in July.

[llorona]

Thanks for the ideas on gardening! I just wrote about trying to reduce gardening costs in my own journal.

Where do you get stinging nettle? Does it grow wild near you? How are you able to identify it? I looked at photos online and it looks like any green plant to me.

[cmonkey]

Thanks for the ideas on gardening!

@llorona, No problem!

Stinging nettle grows wild where I live and most likely where you live as well. It can be found in wooded areas mostly. Usually near the forest edge, but can also be found in fields and ditches. Look in the wettest area you can find, it loves moisture. It is very easy to recognize once you know what it looks like. It has pairs of fairly large, oval, jagged leaves that grow up the stem across from each other. Also, it hurts to touch! The plant is covered with hollow prickles that act as hypodermic needles which, when touched, inject a host of chemical irritants. Make sure to wear gloves when handling.



The plant looks similar to the mint family IMO. It is also a great food source surprisingly, since when you boil the plant all the needles are rendered useless and safe.

Or if you are up for a real challenge try doing like the brits do and eat it raw.

[llorona]

I appreciate the photos. Thank you! I'll let you know if I find any stinging nettle to try your nitrogen feed idea.

[spoonman]

Congrats on knocking down that loan. It's great to have a balance sheet with zero liabilities.

Btw, I really like the photos, especially the close up photo.

[cmonkey]

Thanks spoonman! It feels good but at the same time a bit lack-luster. It really didn't change our day-to-day and we won't yet realize the savings potential until the end of next month.

Speaking of which, I have spent some time this week working on a less transparent way of tracking our progress. After a few unsettling text messages ( asking how much money I have in my bank accounts { who asks that, by the way, after months of no contact?? } ) from someone that I helped out financially several years ago (but is no longer a part of my life) I have decided to shroud our situation a bit more.

I am no longer going to give balances but will give the ROI we are getting at Lending Club, the number of defaults and the income we receive going forward. I will still share expenses but no more income or savings amounts. That way it's a bit more work to figure out how much we have (something the mooches can't do ).

I have settled on calculating our Forward Annual Income as a metric for how we are progressing and when we'll be FI.



I credit a couple of people for inspiring me to make this, namely spoonman for the idea of forward income, and C40 for his awesome charts.

You can see we are currently sitting at $292.20 of FAI as of May 2015. This is based on a SWR of 7% for Lending Club (based on expected returns of 8-9%) and all Dividends from the dividend fund. It should start to rise with my August/Sept update since the end of July will see the beginning of our investments.

This chart matches the calculations I have fine tuned over the past year or so and has us reaching FI for our core bills in mid-2018, FI for all of our expenses in mid-2020 and reaching a runaway level about a year later in late 2021. The yellow stars are the achieved goals.

So about 6 years. Visualizing our path makes us very motivated!

[thrifty++]

Great graph Cmonkey. Freaky that someone contacted you asking such questions. I had liked to think we were all fairly anonymous and here and that people would not recognise who we are. Its a tough one as the transparency can make it more real and helpful to other people to take tips and advice and make it more real, but I get what you are saying. Touchy information.

[cmonkey]

Thanks thrifty++.

Sorry I should have clarified, text messages, not forum messages. That would be truly freaky!

[Angela]

Thanks for sharing your journey. Congratulations on being debt free!

I used to use Azure, will think of doing it again. Dry commodity storage is challenging on my farm, I've got a rat problem at the moment and only so many galvanized cans with lids.

Enjoy those hens. I sure like mine and am spoiled with the amazing daily fresh eggs.