Less Excess Blog

The road to hell …

Sunny — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 06:35:01 +0000

… is paved with good intentions, as the old saw goes. Well, here’s why:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/28/new-years-resolutions-doomed-failure

But hope springs eternal, so here goes for my 2010 resolutions: I will declutter, I will spend less, I will lose weight. For the decluttering I’m going to try to follow the book One Year to an Organised Life by Regina Leeds. It’s divided into months, each devoted to one area, with four chapters for each of the weeks. January is Time Management and the Kitchen. I haven’t yet worked out a plan for spending less, for starters I’ll just write down everything I spend and hope that makes me think twice.
I’m writing about my weight loss efforts in my other blog, www.slimmercook.com

Gold Jewellery as an Investment?

Sunny — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:34:32 +0000

If you’ve come to this post looking for advice to invest your millions, I’m afraid I’m not qualified to help you. But then, if you have millions, you probably have your own financial advisers. What follows is aimed at an average middle-class person such as myself.
Gold is often recommended by the experts (and I must stress again that I am not a financial expert so please do your own research before taking this or anybody else’s advice as gospel). Gold’s price fluctuates but generally rises during recessions. This does not mean, however, an excuse to buy jewellery and call it an investment. I used to work in a jewellery store so I know that apart from the weight of the gold there is the added cost of workmanship, which would be lost if you tried to resell it–jewellery has its fashions so unless it’s an exceptional piece it would probably just be weighed and melted down. If you do want to wear your gold (and I prefer to enjoy mine rather than hoard a pile of coins), for investment purposes avoid gemstones and intricate hand-made designs, choose machine-made chains which have less added to their price for workmanship, and check that they have the carats clearly stamped on them, e.g 18K or .750 fine(pure gold is 24 Karats or 1.000 fine, but absolute purity cannot be achieved so gold ingots are stamped .999). It used to be a tradition in Greece to attach gold coins to chains to show off the bride’s dowry, and I still see some Roma women wearing these. In times of need it was easy to remove one or more coins, and resale value was easy to calculate if these were a standard size such as English sovereigns. In Greece it is still a custom to give a “gold pound” on a special occasion such as a wedding or the birth of a child. When we got married my German uncle gave us a gold Krugerrand and told us to keep it for a day when we might need it to buy food with. He was a teenager during WWII so I think he was speaking from bitter experience. I do hope the financial crisis does not get that bad!
When we visited Hong Kong many years ago we saw pure gold jewellery for sale by weight, at the price of gold on the stock exchange that day, plus workmanship (stated separately on the price tag along with the weight), plus 2% commission for the shop–a very low profit margin indeed. (It was the time when Hong Kong was still a British colony but people knew it would revert to China and I think people who were planning to emigrate were turning their money into gold, because the shops were packed with customers.) Nine is considered an auspicious number in Chinese culture, which may explain why ‘nine-nine-nine’ gold is popular there. It has a beautiful colour but is very soft, a .999 bangle I bought at the time bent so much that I ended up trading it in when I bought something else years later, but I still have a pendant and earrings. So most jewellery is alloyed with some base metal added to improve wearability. Alloys can also be used to change the colour of gold from its natural yellow to white or pink. The most popular carats are 18K=.750 fine and, in Greece and Russia, 14K=.585 fine. In the UK most jewellery is 9K or .375 fine, and in Germany they widely use .333 fine or 8K. My personal view is that anything that contains less than 50% gold cannot really call itself gold, and the colour is so pale that, again personally, I would not wear it and I doubt whether it would have a good resale value. The .999 bangle was obviously very easy to resell at that day’s stock exchange prices. In India the most popular alloy is 22K=.916.6 fine, and in Saudi Arabia I bought some “Saudi Gold” jewellery which is 21K=.875 fine. I have a few pieces in both these carats, they retain the lovely pure gold colour but unlike the .999 they are hard enough to wear, even as a ring, though for everyday wear I think 18K is best, combining good colour with sufficient alloy to make them durable, even e.g. my wedding ring which has not left my hand for 20 years. Also, anything less than 18K can be prone to tarnishing.
The bottom line is that gold jewellery loses some of its value at resale time due to the cost of workmanship, unless this is an antique or so exquisite a design that it has intrinsic value and won’t be melted down for its gold content (but these factors are difficult for a non-expert to price). If you are thinking of gold only as an investment, choose mini-ingots or standard coins issued by national mints (bear in mind that British sovereigns, American Eagles and Kruggerrands are only 22K, while Australia, Austria, Canada and China issue 24K coins–source: http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/22carator24carat.html where you will also see pros and cons of each, as well as a warning about coins below .900). Jewellery can still be viewed as an investment if it was bought at a time when gold prices were low, and the need to trade it does not arise when fixing prices are lower than at the time of purchase. To offset any loss at time of reselling is the years of pleasure derived whenever it was worn, including memories of a special occasion on which it was received, or a holiday in the country where it was purchased. And if–and I sincerely wish this for all my readers as well as myself–the need to resell never comes, jewellery becomes a family heirloom, to be handed down from generation to generation, evoking memories of a lost loved one each time it is worn. Some items of clothing, furniture, paintings or books could also take on that role, but jewellery is far more durable.

Sorry! (and new website)

Sunny — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:29:52 +0000

My apologies to everyone who has dropped in here during the last three weeks and found nothing new. I was busy trying to set up my own website. It’s finally up and running!

http://www.slimmercook.com/

I’ll be using that blog to discuss my efforts to lose excess weight (I made a fresh start again yesterday) as well as the cookery book challenge, since the book I’ve chosen for the challenge goes with the diet plan I am following.
Another reason I haven’t blogged here lately is that I haven’t been doing so well on the less-excess-in-shopping front. I did keep within my ‘allowance’ as far as my own clothes went, in fact I’ve only bought myself one item of clothing since January 1st. But I took advantage of the sales to buy Son some clothes, nothing he did not need, but better quality (read: more expensive because of action figure prints) which I would not normally pay so much for, but found at half price in the sales. Unfortunately this meant he then wanted the DVD to go with one of the action figures. I finally found it on e-bay; I also got tempted by a vintage fur there but I resisted. I also bought several kitchen gadgets; all but one were things I had been meaning to get for a while, but I was waiting for the sales. And I couldn’t resist some bargain knitting yarns, so of course I needed a couple of new knitting pattern books to help me use up my stash. Which leads me to my main sin: Amazon. I’ve had an order open for months, delayed mainly because of some recondite academic books and a couple of cookery books from America. So every time I check my account to track the packages I’m tempted to add another book or two, since I don’t have to pay the basic handling charge and it’s not really a new order, so I’m not really breaking my New Year’s Resolution, am I? (I would get an A in a sophistry exam.)
Despite the long list above I feel that I’ve made some progress. I do stop and think, and I’ve ended up not buying quite a few things, including non-essential groceries such as ice cream. I haven’t kept records of the times I haven’t bought something vs the times I’ve given in to temptation, but I’m sure things will get better in this area when the sales finish next week. I guess it takes a while to break a lifetime of bad habits, but at least I’ve taken the most important first step, awareness that there is a problem. I’ll start writing down all my spending, not just my personal items, to help me identify areas where I am wasting money. And I’ll continue blogging here more regularly because I hope it will make me think twice before buying something if I know I have to confess it here for the world to read.

Leftovers

Sunny — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:16:14 +0000

Another area where we can reduce excess in our lives is leftovers.
I often cook more than we can eat at one meal. Sometimes this is because of following a recipe for four although there are only two (admittedly greedy) adults and one fussy-eater child in the family, or because said child won’t touch my offerings and Husband comes home so late from work that he’s already eaten out. Other times this is deliberate, what can be called ‘planned-overs’, especially with foods that take a long time to cook such as beans. Unfortunately my freezer is not big enough to allow me to store many leftovers so I have to use them up within a few days, or they could pose a health hazard and have to be thrown out (or fed to the stray cats that persist in living on my back balcony) and of course this is not helping the food budget.
I keep all leftovers on the same shelf in the fridge so I can keep tabs on them. Sometimes we have left-overs night when I just reheat several things, but whenever possible I try to revamp them into something new the second time I serve them. For example, left-over chicken meat from Sunday’s roast becomes a pie or curry or is added to stir-fried veg with a Chinese sauce, and the bones can be boiled for stock which is used as the tasty base for a soup. Planned-over bolognaise sauce for one day’s spaghetti can become a shepherd’s pie or moussaka. Extra chickpeas can be removed before serving the soup, and whizzed into a hummus or tossed with onion, parsley and olive oil for a substantial salad later in the week. I think you get the picture.
A friend on an intranet cookery conference I belong to kindly posted this link:
http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ (sorry, I tried to insert their logo link but I don’t think I managed to)
There you can find lots more ideas for using up leftovers, and tips for saving on your food budget. In these difficult financial times it is foolish to throw out food, and more seriously, in view of global hunger, I think it’s unethical. I know that I cannot send my leftovers in a parcel to feed the starving children of the world, but if I save on my food budget I can afford to support a charity that will help.

Farmers’ Market

Sunny — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:00:18 +0000

One of the things I like about living in Greece is the farmers’ markets which come once a week to a street in each suburb of Athens. I love the vibrancy, the bright colours of the dewy produce, the smoke of packing crates being burn to give a little warmth, the goodnatured banter between competitors, the shouts as they praise of their wares: ‘suckling cauliflowers’ (meaning small, milky white ones), ‘morning fish’.

And I love the prices. Not necessarily much cheaper than the supermarket, sometimes even a little more expensive, but in the supermarket I would be tempted to buy lots of other unnecessary things so the total would come to more, and the produce would not be so fresh. Also, apart from bananas nearly everything is locally grown or at least grown in Greece, so it is in season and has more flavour and vitamins. Some stallholders are merchants, but I prefer to buy produce from the farmers because I want all my money to go directly to them, not to middlemen or importers.

Today I spent about EUR40 and with that in addition to enough fruit (pears, mandarins, oranges, green and red apples) and vegetables (carrots, leeks, beetroots with their tops, greens, endive, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, onions) for three people for one week (or more, e.g. the onions) I got 1kg mackerel for tonight’s dinner (I expect enough leftovers for one or two lunches), 30 small eggs and a large pack of toilet paper which should last nearly two months. Often on market day I make a vegetable soup, using any limp vegetables left from the previous week as well as the green tops of today’s leeks.

My main problem is that my eyes are larger than our stomachs and I usually buy more than we can eat in a week. I’m working on this, luckily I’m limited by the capacity of my shopping trolley and sometimes I deliberately leave the cart at home so that I have to stop buying when my hands start hurting. But it’s not an extravagance, all nutritionists recommend eating lots of veg and fruit and in our family we certainly get our ‘daily five’ portions, probably more because when I am dieting as now I often use veg to fill up. Fruit and especially veg are one area where I am not afraid of excess. While I wish he liked a greater variety I’m glad that Son (just turned seven) loves raw carrots and steamed broccoli, and helps himself to a green apple when he wants a snack. Also, when he comes home from school I have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice waiting for him.

Abundant and affordable produce. What a blessing!

Losing weight

Sunny — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:31:59 +0000

All foreseeable social events are out of the way, including Son’s birthday party yesterday, so I am finally ready to focus on the second of my New Year’s resolutions: losing weight.

Weight is another area of my life where I have identified excess. According to my BMI (the Body Mass Index, or ratio between height and weight) I am currently overweight but not obese (though I have reached that level in the past). Still, even a few excess kilos can add unnecessary strain to heart and joints, increase the risk of diabetes and other health problems. I’m not medically qualified so I’ll say no more on that, your own doctor can best advise you if there is a medical condition that can be prevented or alleviated by weight loss. But for most of us carrying a few excess kilos, the main motivation is aesthetic. (I’ll discuss this further in another post.)

Excess weight can lead to other excesses such as buying new clothes because the old ones no longer fit, or buying the latest diet fad books, or magazines just because of the word ‘diet’ on the cover, or special “slimming foods” or dubious pills, creams or garments that promise to “melt fat away”. I like to think that I’m intelligent enough not to fall for the promise of magic pills, but I’ve certainly got a huge collection of diet books, including some faddish ones, and I am still tempted by the occasional magazine. So part of my pre-New Year’s binge on Amazon was a couple more diet books, and I’ve decided on one that is, I think, sensible and balanced. I’ll post the link once I can work out how to do so.

The plan is based on calories and emphasises low-GI (glycaemic index) and low-fat (5% max) foods. It also uses standard measuring cups of varying volumes (1/3, 1/2, 1, 1 1/3) to simplify portion control. The first fortnight is the strictest, 1,200 calories a day divided as follows: Breakfast 200, Lunch 300, Dinner 400, two snacks (mid-morning and mid-afternoon) for 100 calories total, and 450ml skimmed or semi-skimmed milk (can be 200 calories’ worth of soy or other plant milk) to be used in tea or coffee and with cereal. After two weeks one or more 100 calorie treats can be added, according to how much weight one still has to lose.

There is a daily menu plan but I am not following this slavishly because some foods are not seasonal or not available in Greece, or they are things I know the others in my family won’t eat–I don’t want to cook three different dinners. This is not a problem because there are lists of alternatives to choose from, and so long as I stay within the calorie limits and observe low-GI/low-fat principles, I can make up my own meals. But I realise this can make it easy for mistakes to creep in so I’ll stick to the book whenever I can.

Today’s weigh-in: 75.5kg, BMI 28.1, body fat 35.8% which means 27.1kg fat. I’m quite pleased with this because six months ago I was 83.8kg, and since mid-November when I stopped systematic dieting I’ve only regained about one kilo. So one could say that my weight has sort of stabilised for two months, and it’s now time for a new fat attack.

I’ve had my wake-up pot of tea with milk from the allowance, now I’m off to have breakfast: 1 cup cereal with milk from the allowance.

Please wish me success!

Cash

Sunny — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:51:14 +0000

One of Maggie’s comments showed how useful credit card statements can be to help us see where our money is going. This kind of analysis is a valuable first step in identifying areas where we need to be more careful or where it would be easy to reduce excessive spending without too much pain.

However, this does not always help us to stop spending the money in the first place. I would like to propose another way: good old-fashioned hard cash. You will recall I have decided to give myself EUR50.00 a month “pocket money”. I’ve put this in a separate zippered compartment in my bag. Every time I spend something on myself (including internet or other credit card purchases) I take it out of that compartment. When it’s all gone I’ll have to wait until the 1st of the next month to get more. It’s very tangible and the visual impact of the dwindling stash is sobering.

In a way I’ve been doing the same thing with my credit card spending. I have a standing order with my bank to pay off both my cards in full from my savings account (at the same bank) each month. I check my balance from time to time and if it’s low I stop using my cards. Full stop. I’ve never paid a cent of interest on my cards, in fact they are totally free (no annual charges) and were offered to me by my bank as a promotion (they bear the emblems of football clubs).

The principle of separate compartments for cash could also be extended to groceries and other household expenses.

Sunny

Penny wise, Pound foolish

Sunny — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:45:33 +0000

The English language has several wise proverbs regarding money. Yesterday I was making myself a hot drink to soothe my still-sore throat, honey with fresh ginger. I’ve always hated waste, so as usual I rinsed the nearly empty honey tin with hot water to get the last drop of sweetness out of it. Then it struck me how true this proverb is for me: penny wise, full of frugal tips, but pound foolish, how easily I threw away those $27.00. Which brought to mind another proverb, most apt in my case, a fool and his (or her) money are soon parted.

And here’s a Greek proverb that I’m going to try to live by. I ftinia troy ton para. (I’m trying to render pronunciation, not the spelling.) It means that cheap things become expensive, either because we (I!) are tempted to buy more of them because they are “a bargain”, or because poor quality does not last and they need replacing soon. And here’s another one, which confirms my Saving Coins post: fassouli fassouli yemizi o kubaras–bean by bean the piggybank gets filled, in other words, every small saving counts because it adds up in the long run. Conversely, every small expenditure also adds up, e.g. the bottle of water or snack when one is out, when it does not take much planning to pop a couple of supplies in one’s handbag before leaving the house. As I said, I’m good on the penny wise front, this year I’ll have to work on my pound foolish side.

Would you like to add some more proverbs related to money? It would be particularly interesting to hear from other languages, as long as you can translate them into English so every reader can understand them.

First spending of the year

Sunny — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 09:32:45 +0000

Yesterday I spent the first money of the year, without even leaving the house. A friend came, bless her, to pick up my son and take him along with hers to an ice-skating rink. Of course I gave her the EUR10.00 for the entrance ticket. Well worth it as Son was getting bored cooped up indoors for days, and I managed to have a very long sleep in the afternoon, which helped the fever go down.

However, this morning I blew USD27.00 (EUR20.01 via Paypal) on easy downloads for some free ebooks and programmes, a “once only offer” which would be more expensive if I were to subscribe after opening the site. Foolish waste because so far I’ve only found half a dozen items of interest, and I could have got those completely free by subscribing, then later unsubscribing, to their authors’ newsletters. I got taken in by the promise of convenience but basically I was paying for a pig in a poke. Lesson learnt, I hope. (I won’t say the name of the site because the ebooks that I did print seem worthwhile, the promise of easy downloads was kept, and my needs are probably quite different from yours–somebody else may have found all or at least most of the items of interest.)

Question now is, do I deduct that payment from my EUR50.00 monthly allowance? I guess I should, since this was personal expenditure. Gulp, that’s nearly half my month’s allowance gone then. But I’ll count Son’s ice-skating ticket as part of household expenses.

I’ve got a diary in which I’ve started to record all the money I spend. Only the two above entries so far. Bonus, there’s a recipe on every four-day spread.

I think I’ve used up all my energy, I’ll rest a bit on the sofa.

Let me know if you want any recipes.

Sunny

Saving Coins

Sunny — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:22:00 +0000

My son was born one week after the Euro was introduced.

As soon as coins from other Eurozone countries started appearing in Greece (where we live), I suggested to Husband that we start collecting these in a piggy-bank. Son had been given a very large piggy bank in the shape of a baby bottle, which contained brush and comb, rattle etc., so we used that. It took nearly four years to fill it but we were amazed to find we had collected nearly Eur 1,500! All quite effortless, every time we get change we look at it and if it is from another country we put it in a different pocket or compartment in my handbag, and straight into the piggy bank when we get home. I opened a joint account in Son’s name and deposited the money there. Now I empty the piggy bank more regularly, , every time it reaches a few hundred Euros, because it’s easier to dispose of smaller amounts of coins (the bank won’t accept them and I have to go to supermarkets to exchange them for notes).

If you don’t live in Europe you could still apply this principle by choosing a coin of a particular denomination, e.g. 50 cents/pence, or all coins from 20cents/pence and below, and consistently putting them aside every time you get one in change. I think you’ll be surprised, as I was, by how much it all adds up to without really trying.

I’ll keep today’s post short because I’ve got tonsillitis and am running a fever.

Thank you to everybody who visited my new blog yesterday, and I hope you continue to visit.

Warmest wishes

Sunny