5.25% Checking Account: Not Buying It

Today I received a tempting email from my credit union: 5.25% checking! That's amazing these days: my Vanguard money market is at .1% (if that); my high-yield savings is at 1.3%; I am considering a 1.9% CD.


With La Cap's All Access Advantage checking account, you have the chance to earn dividends as you make purchases.* With no monthly fees and no minimum balance, it's a great way to make the most of your checking account. It's just our way of showing you that we care about giving you the best rates and services possible.

Open an Account Now

*APY = Annual Percentage Yield. La Cap Checking (Share draft) Accounts are variable rate accounts. La Cap may change the dividend rate for your account as determined by the credit union Board of Directors. Dividends are posted and compounded monthly. No minimum balance required to maintain the account. Applicable fees and conditions could reduce the earnings on your account. Qualifications to earn dividends: - 25 or more non-ATM debit card transactions posted per month: - 5.25% APY on balances up to but not exceeding $5,000 - .15% APY on balances exceeding $5,000. If qualification stated is not met: - .15% APY on entire balance.

Read the fine print. The offer is only for your first $5000.00 and you must make at least 25 non-ATM debit card transactions per month.

Let's do the math. If you have the whole $5000.00, you can get about $262.00. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Let's do the math some more. The earnings total about $5.00 a week. That's much less tempting. I don't have a debit card; I don't buy something 25 days of the month. For $5.00 a week, I can do other things that I enjoy more than keeping track of debit transactions.

I can go to Big Lots and save $5.00 on food. Ditto for looking at the grocery ads and planning my menu around something on sale. I can check 2 movies out of the library. I can hand wash a sweater rather than sending it to the dry cleaner (I do that anyway). You get the idea.

Since I find keeping track of things extremely stressful, I don't use that supposed Holy Grail of frugality: the grocery coupon. I don't know how to sew and am glad that, because of a small fire in the home ec room, I never had to finish my skirt, since I was on my way to getting a bad grade.

There are so many ways to be frugal! Aren't we lucky that we can find ones that suit our temperaments? Which are your favorites?

LL Bean Hunter's Tote Bag: On Sale, as toted by Andre Leon Talley

Far be it from me to encourage unnecessary shopping. But LL Bean is having a Friends and Family Sale. 20% off if you have their Visa (I do); 10% off and free shipping if you want to use any old credit card. Code is LLBFRIENDS10. Good though Tuesday.

Normally, I scoff at a mere 10% or even 20% off. But LL has some items that NEVER go on sale. Like their Hunter's tote. I wrote about my tote search a while back; you can see my deliberations, plus a pic of the LL tote here.

I ALMOST got the camo tote (and was going to get orange monogramming, as suggested by Duchesse), but chickened out, and got plain old olive drab with black initials. I got the one with the zipper. It IS a great tote, except that the handles are a little short; I'd like the option of using it as a shoulder tote while traveling.

Embarrassing confession: I have become fascinated by the review sections on many websites. The customers definitely have distinct personalities, depending on the store. LLB customers are generally pleased, but very crabby about any perceived lapse in quality, as indeed they should be.

In the reviews for the tote (the non zipper version), there is a one that divulges the following W magazine-worthy tidbit:

A magazine-editor-friend-of-mine has this tote, and one day saw Vogue's Andre Leon Talley carrying the exact same bag in the elevator!

I wonder if ALT went for the camo, the black, or the olive?

I never heard of LL Bean till I went to college. I didn't understand why everyone had the same sweater and nightgown. But now their fame has spread far and wide, beyond the sphere of preppydom, to the point that every 3rd grader in my little town insists on one of their backpacks.

I resisted for a while, and finally bought one (navy) for Frugal Son. He uttered a sentence that has since become part of the Frugal Family lore: "I have reached a level of normality I never dreamed possible." Even then he knew I was pathologically frugal.

Meanwhile, 14 years later, he has his second backpack, which was replaced as per LL's guarantee about 7 years ago.

So, use the code if you see something you desire. Do you buy anything form the famous purveyor of preppy classic and not so classic?

Paring Down the Pantry: White Bean and Pesto Soup

I don't understand it. I hardly spend any money on groceries, yet my pantry, which includes freezer, fridge, and REAL pantry, is STUFFED. I am aware that Thanksgiving is only about 6 weeks away.

I love Thanksgiving. It is a holiday based on a family meal. It is marked by great sales on staple foods. It yields wonderful leftovers, including and especially, broth.

As I did last spring, I am limiting my expenditures to $25.00/week, to force a paring down.* Mr. FS and I have the day off, so we looked through the freezer: steak, meatballs,various vegetables, tons of ratatouille from garden eggplant, tons of lemon juice from tree, shrimp, and, WHAT'S THAT? How embarrassing: BROTH from November 2009. We defrosted it and it was OK. We also found some frozen white beans.

I whirled the possibilities around: white bean soup with lemon, white beans with shrimp (a nouveau-Creole dish that proved somewhat disappointing), white bean bruschetta, white beans with tuna, eventually settling on WHITE BEAN SOUP with PESTO.

This is from a seemingly forgotten cookbook author: Perla Meyers, whose first book
The Seasonal Kitchen made a huge splash. Yes, you can now buy it for a mere 8 cents plus shipping on Amazon. How I wanted that book, first published when I was in college.

The white bean soup is from another book, The Peasant Kitchen. (OMG someone is selling this on Amazon for $247! Sadly--for me--there are other versions available for a penny).

I won't give you the exact recipe, since I didn't have the right amount of anything. I threw into a pot some of those caramelized onions from my slow cooker, added the frozen white beans, broke off a chunk of frozen stock, and added a few canned tomatoes. After a while, I pureed it with my trusty immersion blender. Then I cooked a few handfuls of macaroni in the puree. When that was done, I added some PESTO we had frozen last month.

Note that because everything was either frozen or canned, I didn't have any prep work. Such is the blessing of the freezer/pantry.

Do you ever cook like this? Send me a list of your ingredients and I'll see what I can come up with.

*No sooner did I make a vow than I broke it. I just ordered a 50 lb. sack of oat groats.

Frugality, Decluttering: Paradise

OK. So I've been teaching George Herbert, wonderful 17th-century poet. Went to class. Heard the B-word. B is for BORING.

I ditched my plan and showed them this poem first.

Paradise.

I Bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
To thee both fruit and order OW.

What open force, or hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM,
While the inclosure is thine ARM.

Inclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Then let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgments SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Ev’n fruitfull trees more fruitful ARE.

Such sharpnes shows the sweetest FREND:
Such cuttings rather heal then REND:
And such beginnings touch their END.


I said, "What do you think is going on with the words at the ends of the lines?"

Then I looked down at my book for a while, using the trick of silence I learned when I taught at a Quaker college.

Eventually, a student said, "It's about pruning and paring, as he says in the next-to-last stanza." Yes!

Now, look at the title: through PARING, you get to PARE-ADISE=PARADISE.

Certainly, I didn't go into Renaissance literature because of the religious content: it just so happens that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British lit is IMHO the greatest ever, and not just because of Shakespeare.

And isn't it true that PARADISE is all about PARING DOWN, whether one is talking about frugality or about decluttering one's space or wardrobe?

My blogpal Duchesse, by the way, is challenging us to limit our wardrobes, another kind of paring down.

How are you paring down these days?

Frugal Preppy: Preppy Frugal

In betwixt and between grading this and that, and reading George Herbert, I am continuing my search for frugal gems in (seemingly) non-frugal places.

Imagine my surprise when I came upon a plug for frugality in a preppy blog! The writer, known--natch--as Muffy, evaluates various preppy offerings and discriminates among the many shades of preppy, from the vrai to the faux.

For a whole lot of reasons, by chance and by choice, I am very, very far from preppyness, or preppydom. When I went to college in 1971, I couldn't understand why everyone at my purportedly left-wing college was wearing the SAME Norwegian navy sweater with little cream dots. Or why all the girls on my floor--save me--had Lanz nightgowns.

Anyway, I found a wonderful paean to frugality chez Muffy. With pictures of various items in both their new incarnations and their holey, fraying, mended older selves, Muffy avers that even the older versions are atill serviceable, and still (her word) loved.

And I love this acknowledgment of the preppy paradox: A frugality combined with an appreciation of more expensive items, and Why well-off people embrace and expect the use of well-worn items.

Love: that must explain why I am drawn to the still-worthy and serviceable, but sometimes worn, and definitely unloved items I see at thrift stores. In fact, over the past year, I've gotten two of those iconic LL Bean Norwegian sweaters at Goodwill: a grey with navy pullover for Mr. FS, and a navy with cream cardigan for me.

Speaking of paradoxes and love, George Herbert writes beautifully of both. Here is the last poem in The Temple):

LOVE (III)



Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Salt Water Gargles and Colds: Frugal Healthcare

This one is dedicated to Mr. FS: he has been gargling with salt water, lo these many years. Most of the other old wives' remedies to which he subscribed have been proven false. But this one has been endorsed by no less than the New York Times.

According to the Mayo Clinic, for best results, dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in a full glass of warm water and gargle the solution for a few seconds before spitting it out. Adults who want a more palatable remedy against cough and sore throat can try mixing warm water with lemon and honey. No need to spit it out.

THE BOTTOM LINE Gargling with a saline solution can ease symptoms of a cold.

Oh, how I love when the frugal way is the good way.

For a good read, check out this former best seller. Frugal Son liked it a lot.

Skirting the Edges of Too Frugal?: Garbage Edition

Now that the temperature is no longer in the 90s, Mr. FS and I ventured out for a stroll through our neighborhood after dinner. As I mention now and again, my neighborhood is filled with big fancy houses and little tiny houses. There are even some medium-sized houses, such as the one in which I reside. I like the diversity, so unlike the cookie-cutter suburbia in which I grew up.

It happened that one of the streets has garbage pick-up tomorrow. As an amateur sociologist I find it interesting to scan the recycling bins. People drink so much alcohol and diet coke!

You can probably see where this is leading. To add a bit of suspense, let me ask: have you ever read Laurie Colwin? I love her fiction, which features urban people with lots of education and interesting careers. She also wrote wonderful books on cooking.

One of her novels, Happy All the Time, features a character named Misty Berkowitz. I kind of identified with Misty because she has these great one-line zingers, not that I could ever have thought of them. Misty is also sullen and moody, just like me. In spite of her moodiness, the wealthy Vincent Somebody-or-Other falls madly in love with her. He lives off a trust fund, but works as a garbage analyst, writing important studies.

One of Misty's zingers to her garbage analyst is "Rich people make me sick." I can't remember what prompts this comment, but it does not deter the smitten Vincent.

Anyway, Mr. FS and I passed the once-beautiful, now falling-down house, that, according to Frugal Son who knew two of the girls who lived there, has rooms filled with garbage.

We went by the new, fancy house that sold for almost a million dollars. It was built on the site of a house that was torn down. A man who had killed his mother had lived there after he was released from a mental institution. The new house is quite ostentatious. There, next to their garbage can, was a giant cardboard box. I stepped closer to investigate. I never did figure out what was originally in that box, but I saw a grocery bag filled with hangers. At the top of the bag was a new-looking pair of white shoes.

Now I don't wear white shoes, but I took them anyway. I will donate them to Goodwill, where someone will be delighted to get a pair of Sesto Meucci flats.

We continued on our walk, stopping to talk to people who run a business called Holistic Pet Care. When we got home, I said to Mr. FS, "I'm going to go back and get the bag of hangers. The thrift stores are always asking for donations of hangers."

So I walked back and got the bag. Once I was home, I peeked inside. Under the hangers--neatly folded--was a pile of clothing, quite current, from Talbots and Rickie Freeman for Teri John. The latter, especially, were of the genre I call "rich lady clothes."

UGH. Why don't people donate these things? How horrible to just throw them out.

What would Misty say?: "Rich people make me sick."

Misty, by the way, ends up marrying the garbage analyst.

If you need some wonderful escapist reading, check out Laurie Colwin.

Her real masterpieces, I think, are her books on cooking.