Elizabeth writes that she has changed her consumption habits as a result of rising food and energy costs. She’s not alone.
Gas prices have come into the calculations about what we’re going to do for vacation this year. This summer, we have to go to my in-laws shore house in North Carolina. We decided to drive down, rather than fly. We were also thinking about driving all the way to the mountains for half the week, but the time crunch and the gas tank crunch might nix those plans.
The trusty, old 1981 Toyota Corolla with the rusted out fenders died a few months ago. RIP old red car. We kept it around for weekends when we sometimes needed two cars. But after Jimmy the Mechanic hauled it away to the dump, we chose not to replace it. Why buy another hunk of metal that doesn’t get a whole lot of use, except for that rare time when both boys have baseball games at the same time?
I would like to be cutting back more than we are. But things keep coming up. The boys needed new bathing suits. All of my jeans exploded at the knees at the same time. I have to buy birthday gifts and wine for parties. Money is hemorrhaging around here, and it’s bugging me.
Apt. 11d 
I’m spending a lot lately, but it’s more like summertime investment in the future. If I can get all my ducks in order over the summer, my house holds together for the next 9 months or so before it reaches a state of chaos in May again.
My saving mechanism is that I buy used whenever possible. My daughter needs a bigger dresser (and it has to be white), so I haunt Craigslist instead of paying the $300 minimum the local stores want me to pay. I’m also looking for a bed (frame, not mattresses) to replace the simple keep-mattress-off-floor metal frame we have. Last summer I painted the living room and my son’s room, and this year my goal is to paint my bedroom, get new bedding and curtains and a new bed.
And today I just got back from buying storage stuff to try to get our basement/toy room in order. But I need garbage bags and diet Coke, so I have to go out again. Both kids are having birthday parties this month, and though my goal/hope is that they will be outside, I need a rainy day plan, and I don’t think 14 6 year olds will fit in my living room comfortably. Therefore… the basement gets cleaned up.
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How are you coping? (1) More home cooking. We were never huge restaurant-goers, but we have definitely cut back. I feel bad for the restaurants, though; they are getting hit by higher food prices and fewer customers.(2) We’re definitely not flying this summer. ($700 RT to the West Coast!)(3) Deferred clothing expenses. Hey, I’m a prof. Nobody will even notice. 🙂
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Maybe this sounds weird, but, I bought a Toyota Prius back when there was still a long waiting list for them, so I feel like I invested in this a while ago. Now the car is paid off, and the higher gas prices making me feel like I’m saving money the more I drive.
This may seem impossible to people who are from the Philly area, but the other day there was no traffic on the Schuykill Expressway! The time and gas I saved not sitting in traffic at least made up for the higher gas prices.
Also, higher food prices haven’t trickled down to most of the restaurants, and I eat out so much that the higher food costs haven’t effected me much. And the Ragkids are such fussy eaters that I’d give up lots of other stuff before I changed the food purchases.
I feel like such an ugly American.
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I’m going back to taking the bus, which will mean we spend less on gas than we did when it was half the price. But, it is hard to cut. This past weekend, I was puttering and I noticed that we need to replace the wood behind the gutters on about half of the house in addition to the work we had planned for the summer (exterior painting and some re-pointing). On the plus side, we have now owned a house long enough that I can putter convincingly.
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RCinProv – Clothing may not matter if you’re a guy professor. Too many repeat outfits, and it shows up on my student evals.
re: restaurants. One of my students owns a couple of Domino pizza stores. He sold them this spring, because he wasn’t making enough money. He had to pay his drivers more and that money just comes out of the bottom line. He said that the prices of flour and cheese have gone up so much that he wasn’t making enough of a profit. He said he should have sold earlier, because he got 30% less for the businesses than he would have gotten three years ago.
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Speaking of male professors, was it just my alma mater or do all male philosophy professors look like they should have a social worker to pick their clothes? Poli sci graduate students were dressed better than the chair of the philosophy dept. at my undergrad school.
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Spam!
“..Sales of Spam — that much maligned meat — are rising as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets..”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_on_bi_ge/spam_sales
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Are people actually eating the Spam, or is it just some sort of survivalist thing? Spam is just the thing to stock your bunker with.
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MH,
According to a probably false but entertaining legend, one of your local philosophy luminaries showed up for an interview at the department (no doubt in the sort of ensemble you are describing), and the secretary gave him $5 and told him to go away.
On the other side of the gender divide, I have seen way too many mature female professors wearing sleeveless sundresses and ethnic ensembles with big gaping armholes, revealing way too much middle-aged torso and inadequate use of support garments. Sleeves are your friends, ladies.
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Laura, your institution actually *listens* to student evals that comment upon your wardrobe?? Seriously??
Amy P, I would argue that what constitutes appropriate attire, and baring or not baring of too much skin, should not vary based upon age. Especially if it’s a standard that only women are being held to.
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jen,
I’ve never seen a middle-aged male professor wear a sleeveless garment with gaping armholes to class. But if I do, I’ll be first in line to condemn the ensemble. One of these days I’ll do my bit to preserve civilization by getting my husband his first tweed jacket for winter wear. In the meantime, Dockers and button-down shirts will have to do.
I think a big part of the issue is that a lot of academics of both sexes just don’t buy clothes, and are coasting on a wardrobe purchased decades earlier. Here’s a bit of dialogue on this subject from a graduate student party I once attended.
Me: Where do professors get those clothes?
Male graduate student: They closed that store a long time ago.
On the other hand, as an SAHM, my wardrobe consists mainly of sherbet-colored polo shirts and navy yoga pants, so I’m no fashion plate, but I do manage to get through my week without ever gaping out of my clothes.
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I’ve never understood how anyone can keep clothes that long. I get a year or 18 months out of pants and maybe three years from a shirt. I’m talking about a hole clean through or something or that nature.
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MH,
Whenever the subject comes up, every woman I’ve ever spoken to has had to purge her husband’s wardrobe of at least a decade’s worth of awful clothes, with items not infrequently dating back to junior high. I suppose the clothes one doesn’t wear last practically forever.
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Amy,
Yes, but if you aren’t wearing the clothes, your students aren’t mocking you about them.
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MH,
True–that was bothering me, too. I suppose we have to assume the existence of a huge depository of horrible clothes, large enough so that each garment is essentially immortal. Or maybe the idea is to buy clothes and “age” them for a decade in the closet before wearing them.
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Mostly, I just gape wide-mouthed at the grocery bill total as it rings up. Last week, it was $160. And I didn’t buy anything terribly fancy. (We do buy mostly organic…but not 100%)
We are shopping more at Farmers Markets and have joined a CSA. Both tend to be more cost effective than the local grocery stores.
But the Walmart/Sams Club conglomerate is suddenly looking like a viable option…
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I was joking about the students writing bad evals based on my clothes. Mostly. The little buggers will give me the once over when I walk into class. It’s not unusual to get a comment about how I did my hair that morning or ask where I got my sweater. One kid told the entire class that I looked like Hermione Granger. I need to be a bit more forbidding.
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That reminds me, people keep saying we should join Costco. There’s one about a mile from us that just opened last year.
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I had a student once raise their hand during class so that she could comment that the blue in my sweater didn’t quite match the blue of my skirt. It was great to see what she was focusing her attention on during the lecture! Some teachers dress as nondescriptly as possible so that students have nothing to focus on or have their attention distracted from the content.
We already only own one car and a motorcycle but I notice that I save up errands for longer periods of time that require me to drive longer than 20 minutes. The sticker shock at the grocery store is still a surprise every week and I do find myself thinking that I should check out those ‘save $$$ by using coupons’ websites.
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Costco is great if you want to live high on moderate means and the produce is fantastic compared to standard grocery stores, but going to Costco requires a lot of self-control. When we lived in DC, I used to take the metro to the Pentagon City Costco about once a month, stock up on diapers, baby wipes, fruit, brie, smoked salmon, whole wheat ravioli, hummus, and this fantastic eggplant spread, and then take a taxi home with the loot, but it wasn’t really bargain shopping. First, Costco pulls you towards higher-end groceries, and second, it’s easy to wind up with expensive non-grocery items while “saving” on high-end groceries. (The NYT eventually did a story on that Pentagon City Costco and how it draws the DC power elite. It was one of their more ridiculous pieces. As a friend who posts here occasionally said, what next, a breathless piece on how Washington’s movers and shakers have discovered Target?)
Now that we’re in Texas, I’m finding it helpful to do practically all our routine shopping at our local grocery, which the college kids call “the ghetto HEB.” It doesn’t have everything, but it keeps our purchases basic. I have a detailed grocery list, and I buy exactly what’s on the list and we do a big shopping once a week, with maybe one small run for juice, milk, and fruit. When I buy $140 worth of groceries at our HEB, I can barely budge the cart. We can get frozen blueberries (a crucial family staple) much more cheaply in bulk at Walmart or Sam’s Club, so we stock up there, but I try to limit those visits, which somehow always wind up being expensive. An important part of our family food strategy is the college’s excellent dining halls. We eat dinner there as a family (about $8 for the four of us) as often as we can.
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Carpooling with some coworkers which is actually very fun and somewhat productive when we talk about work.
Side jobs: what’s more fun that you regular job? A side job doing things you have fun doing. Mine is coaching.
Veggie garden: time to grow one if you want to save.
Brewing beer: it takes a few weeks with some of up front costs but there goes the need to go out to a bar/restaurant especially if you switch it around every few weeks.
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I just can’t get past this business of students commenting on clothing in class. I have at times had direct reports straight out of college make comments about other peoples’ clothing. I take them aside after the meeting and tell them to knock it off. It’s not part of the business world.
To Kip’s point, I’ve also started growing veggies this year. Although for me it’s more about the environment … and fabulous home-made salsa.
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I once made a joke in a summer class about wearing the same pair of sandals to every class, and how I knew I needed to get a new pair, etc, and the students all laughed, and then in one of the evals, a student wrote, “I definitely noticed your sandals and am happy to hear you’re getting a new pair”! My husband thought I was joking when I said I figured the students had already noticed, so I might as well make a joke of it.
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MH — I was once accosted by a bum in LA, asked for money and then, just before he finished, he said “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re on the street yourself”.
I wear clean pants, doc martins, a white shirt from Lands End (most of them mongrammed with someone else’s initials, because you can pick them up for $5 or less), a jacket (always a jacket) and, for the past 6 years, a tie. I’m not the best dressed person in my (Philosophy) department.
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That sounds like one of my professors except that you need to make it the same jacket every day for a semester and lose the tie. And be sure everything is frayed.
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My husband’s philosophy department recently got a visit from a high administration person who remarked that they dress like the geology department. This was apparently not meant as praise.
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We’ve made some adjustments to grocery shopping and made a extra special effort to ALWAYS take my car if we’re going over 10 miles or so.
But the biggest change we’ve made is nixing cable. Shocking, I know! It was an experiment to see if we could “do it” and it really hasn’t been bad. We realized we really only watched 2-3 shows (Lost, The Office, and Grey’s Anatomy), all of which can be viewed for free over the internet. So we just hook the laptop to the TV – many shows are even able to be viewed in HD. Sure, you have to wait 8 hours after the show first airs, which was extremely painful waiting to watch the Lost season finale.
It also does not feel quite so stone age since we have Netflix. All of a sudden, a fairly large bill became totally expendable.
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Gardening is out for us because our yard only gets like two hours of sun. Opening the windows in the spring is also out (pollen just kills me). Maybe I’ll have to dress like a geologist to save money.
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MH,
Here’s an idea: how about starting an environmentally aware Thursday (a rip-off of casual Friday) where you rewear what you wore on Wednesday?
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Unwashed, naturally.
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Not to sound like a philosopher, but I already do that except in the summer. I have two offices and so I really don’t see how anybody can know.
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MH,
Have I got the outfit idea for you: cargo pants with one of those fishing vests that foreign correspondents love. I’m not totally sure how to accessorize it, but I’m sure you’ve picked up some good ideas.
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