The ultimate low-water dishwashing method

Due to a bizarre string of circumstances which, in the words of Michael Flanders, I'll tell you all about some other time, we currently have no water at our house. For the past 46 hours or so, we have been unable to bathe, do laundry, or do anything else that requires a large amount of water, and we'll probably be in the same position for at least 24 hours more.

In the absence of running water, we've had to get a bit creative. My enterprising husband has taken to hauling up buckets of water from our rain barrel to flush the toilet with, and for brushing our teeth, washing our hands, and cleaning dishes, we've been relying on our emergency stores of water from the basement. I brought up two 2-liter bottles yesterday as soon as it became apparent we were going to be without water for a while, and I used up part of one right away for washing my hands. I assumed I'd have to go down and get at least one more after dinner, so Brian would have enough to wash the dishes with.

Instead, to my astonishment, I looked up from my book to discover that he'd already done them all—and not only was the second bottle of water still full, there was still some left in the first. He'd actually washed the entire dinner's worth in less than a liter of water. And all this without even having a dishpan to soak them in.

I was so impressed by this that I insisted on watching him clean the breakfast dishes this morning so I could observe and document his low-water technique. As you can see here, he started out with a good sinkful of dishes: one big plate, one cereal bowl, the two cat dishes from the previous night, a cocoa cup, a juice glass, the filter cone I use for coffee, and a baking pan we'd used to bake a cake for the Minstrel concert the night before.

And here's the amount of water he poured out for himself to start with: about ten ounces. That's it! He ended up needing just a little bit more to finish rinsing that last pan, but as you'll see, it wasn't very much.

As he worked, he explained to me the basic premises of his low-water washing technique. The most important rule, he said, is to make every bit of water you use do as many jobs as possible. So, when you rinse off a dish, don't just let the rinse water run down the drain; make sure it runs off into another dish, where it can start the process of soaking. It's kind of like the way the family in Little House on the Prairie used to bathe on Saturday nights, letting the children bathe first, then Ma, and finally Pa (the largest member of the family, and thus presumably the one with the most dirt on him), all in the same tub of water, because hauling and heating up a fresh tubful for each of them would have been five times as much work. The point is to avoid wasting any amount of water that could still be useful, no matter how small.

He demonstrated this by taking the little bit of water he'd left in the cats' dishes overnight to soak them and using that to moisten the plates. Then he gave each of them a quick once-over with the dish scrubber wand, using the little bit of water he'd just added to work up a lather. If they had any residue clinging to them that the dish wand couldn't easily remove, he used the green scouring pad for a slightly rougher treatment. Up to this point, he'd actually used no additional water beyond the tiny bit that was in the cat dishes.

Once he had everything soaped up, he began using the water in the measuring cup to rinse the dishes. He started with the smallest dishes and worked his way up to the biggest ones, and as he worked, he let the rinse water from each dish run off into a larger one. Here, for instance, he's rinsing one of the cat dishes and emptying the rinse water into his cereal bowl.

And here's a three-fer: he's emptying the water from the juice glass, pouring it out over my cocoa spoon to rinse that, and letting it empty into the baking pan.

When he got to the biggest dish of the lot, the baking pan, he found he didn't have quite enough water left to rinse it. So he poured out just a little bit more from the bottle into the measuring cup—not more than two ounces—to finish the job.

Counting this and the little bit of water that was left over in the cat dishes, he didn't use more than a pint altogether to clean the whole sinkful of dishes.

As Brian pointed out, doing dishes this way does involve a trade-off: while it uses a lot less water, it also takes more time. So it's not necessarily something he would want to do when water is plentiful. But after demonstrating the technique for me, he started to think that maybe, with a bit of practice, he could work some of these water-saving strategies into his normal daily dish-washing without taking too much extra time. So even when our household water is flowing again, we might be able to use less of it. If that helps us stay in the bottom tier of usage on our quarterly water bill, saving us $18 a pop, then I'm all for it.

Money Crashers: How to Prevent Child Identity Theft

While doing research for my article on freezing your credit, I discovered that it's also possible to set up a credit freeze for a child younger than 17. On the face of it, this seems like a puzzling thing to do, since kids that young can't legally borrow money and shouldn't have a credit report in the first place. And it's true, they can't open credit accounts for themselves—but that doesn't stop other people from creating accounts using their information. In fact, the very fact that kids can't create their own credit reports makes them particularly appealing targets for identity thieves, because they can create a fake credit profile with a young child's data and use it for years without getting caught.

This seemed like a big enough deal to deserve an article of its own. So my latest Money Crashers article is all about the problem of identity theft. It covers:

• How child identity theft happens, and how it differs from adult identity theft
• Who commits this crime and why
• Which children are most at risk
• What it can cost the victims and their families
• Warning signs of child identity theft
• Ways to prevent it, including checking and/or freezing your kids' credit reports, protecting their personal information, being aware of risky situations, and talking to your kids about it
• What to do if your child is a victim

This information is vital for anyone who has kids, and useful for anyone who knows anyone who has kids. I'm thinking of passing the article along to my sister and my sibs-in-law, just to give them a heads-up so none of our niblings (did I mention that this is the official gender-neutral plural for nieces and nephews?) ever have to deal with this problem.

How to Prevent & Avoid Child Identity Theft – Protection For Your Kids

Money Crashers: Should You Buy a Starter Home?

When Brian and I bought this house, we knew we were in it for the long haul. We planned to take our time fixing up this house, and the yard, to turn it into the home of our dreams. This was where we would grow our own veggies, plant fruit trees, build a compost bin, set up a rain barrel, bake fresh bread, have friends over for games, and generally build our ecofrugal life together. If it wasn't going to be our "forever home," it was at least going to be home for the foreseeable future.

The ironic thing about that is, I realize that many people, looking at our modest little three-bedroom minimal-traditional, would consider it a "starter home." For them, this would clearly be a transitional house - not your dream house, but the place you buy to live in until you can afford your dream house.

So whose approach makes more sense? Buying a starter home just to get your foot in the door and eventually trade up, or waiting to buy until you're ready to buy a home for keeps?

Well, there's something to be said for both sides. In my latest Money Crashers article, I explore the implications of buying a starter home: what you have to gain, what you're giving up, and what factors to consider before you decide. I hope this will be helpful for anyone who's considering buying a first home, and possibly even for those who have already bought one and are now wondering how long to stay in it.

Should You Buy a Starter Home as a First-Time Home Buyer?

Plant-based milk experiments, phase 3: Aldi's almond milk

The biggest news on the environmental front this month, pretty obviously, was the October 8 IPCC report on climate change. Among other bombshells, it revealed that we're going to have to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, rather than the 2°C many nations have been aiming for, if we want to avoid major ecological disasters around the globe. (The Guardian offers a pretty good summary of what a difference this half-degree could make, including "extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.") Furthermore, we have only 12 years to hit this target, and it will take "rapid and far-reaching" changes in just about everything: land use, energy, industry, buildings, transportation.

Unfortunately, there's not that much any single person can do to make that happen. A recent Lifehacker story suggests several ways to put pressure on your elected officials and "take action yourself," but the steps it promotes—drive less, vote more, compost—are all things I've already been doing for decades. However, the Guardian's advice on the subject actually pointed toward one clear, concrete step that I could take to do my bit for the atmosphere: cutting down on dairy. In fact, it said cutting back on meat and dairy was "the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet," and pointed to yet another study, this one published in Science last June, to prove it.

After reading the Guardian's coverage of that study, along with a few other articles I found on the topic, I decided it was time to start getting serious about getting off the moo juice. Over the past few months, I'd tried tinkering around with various plant-based milk alternatives, but I just hadn't found one that seemed to tick all the ecofrugal boxes: eco-friendly, not too expensive, and reasonably good for all the uses we currently put milk to. But after seeing the new research on just how big an impact dairy actually has, I decided just about any alternative had to be better than cow's milk; it was just a matter of finding one that could work for me.

So I decided to start with the least expensive non-dairy milk I'd seen so far: Aldi almond milk, at $1.89 per half-gallon. On our last trip to Aldi, I picked up a half-gallon of it, planning to test it in all the applications we normally use cow's milk for: my morning cocoa and afternoon egg cream, Brian's breakfast cereal, and the occasional glass drunk straight. If it performed satisfactorily in all these tests, I figured we could take the plunge and switch over completely. It wouldn't end up costing us too much than dairy milk, and with three different Aldi stores within a few miles of our house, it wouldn't require too big a change in our shopping habits.

Now, in an ideal world, this story would conclude with the news that Aldi's almond milk passed all its tests with flying colors, and we were now one step farther along the path to achieving vegan superpowers. But unfortunately, it didn't go down that way.

The almond milk did fine on some of my tests. In fact, for drinking straight, I'd say I actually liked it a bit better than cow's milk. Brian was also quite satisfied with the way it worked on his breakfast cereal. However, when I used it in my morning cocoa, something about it tasted just a little...off. It was hard to put my finger on, but there was a faint off-taste that clashed ever so slightly with the chocolate. This odd flavor was even more noticeable when I tried it in an egg cream, and on top of that, the fizz seemed to go flat much quicker than it does with regular milk.

So after four unsatisfying days on almond milk, I felt like I was back at the old drawing board once more, searching yet again for that perfect milk alternative that I knew must be out there somewhere.
Seeking inspiration, I tuned in this morning to a Science Versus podcast on plant-based milks, in which pun-loving host Wendy Zukerman posed the question, "Are they udder bull?" (along with as many other puns as she could manage to "milk" the subject for). She spoke to Joseph Poore, one of the authors of the Science study, about these plant-based milks (or as she called them, "schmilks"), and he revealed that, unfortunately, they all come with their share of environmental problems. Almond milk, of course, has its heavy water use; rice milk turns out to be much more carbon-heavy than other nondairy milks, due to the methane produced by rice paddies; and soy and oat milk both use rather a lot of land to produce.

But here's the thing: even with these problems, all these "schmilks" are much, much better than dairy milk. Switching to any of them, Dr. Poore argued, would result in much lower land use, water use, and carbon emissions. The bottom line is, it doesn't really matter which one you pick: they're all so much better than cow's milk that you pretty much can't go wrong. Just figure out which one you like enough to drink it regularly, and go with that.

So instead of obsessing over which is "the best" ecofrugal milk alternative, I'm just going to settle for finding one I can live with. Since I've already rejected the cheapest variety I could find, I'm moving on to the second-cheapest: Shop-Rite store brand coconut milk, which costs $3 per half gallon. That's about twice as much as we currently pay for cow's milk, but looked at in perspective, we're only talking about an extra $6 a week here; that's not going to break us. And besides, with only 12 years to save the planet from climate apocalypse, we don't have time to pussyfoot around.

Money Crashers: 6 Ways Pinching Pennies Can Cost You Dollars

Several of my recent articles for Money Crashers have dealt with fairly weighty topics, like rising interest rates, credit freezes, and the infuriating Obamacare family glitch. So I'm pleased to announce that my latest article to pop up on the site is on the lighter side. Called "6 Ways Pinching Pennies Can Cost You Dollars," it deals with all those situations in which cheaping out can actually end up costing you more in the long run. Here's a sneak peak at what it covers:

• Ill-advised bulk buys (such as six avocados, all at the peak of ripeness, for $5, instead of one for $1.25)
• Cheap products with pricey parts (such as the notorious printer ink cartridges that cost half as much as the printer itself)
• Time-consuming strategies for saving money (such as making your own laundry detergent, which I've never quite seen the point of)

And that's just three of the six topics. Check out the full article to learn about all the different ways pinching pennies can cost you dollars, and leave a comment if you can think of any more I left out.

Recipe of the Month: Quinoa Salad with Lemon, Spinach, and Poppy Seeds

Brian and I don't tend to take vacations, the way most people think of the word. Aside from spending a week or so with his family at Christmas, we only take the odd long weekend here and there to visit friends or go to a Morris dance event. This leaves Brian with a lot of extra vacation days every year that he can't cash in or carry over. So instead, when the year starts drawing to a close and it's apparent he won't need all those vacation days for something unexpected, he starts taking Fridays off, basically giving himself a bunch of long weekends in a row.

This weekend was the first of these, so we took the opportunity to go to our local farmers' market together. Brian usually doesn't get to go to this, since it's open only on Fridays from 11am to 5:30pm; if he took off early enough on a Friday, he could swing by and catch the very tail end of it, but that's not as much fun as heading over in the middle of the day and taking the time to see everything. So we walked down together, browsed the booths, and bought a couple of things we needed—a dozen eggs, some apples—and then tried to figure out if there was anything else we wanted. We already had plenty of butternut squash and green beans out of our own garden, but one fall crop we've never been able to grow properly is spinach, so I suggested picking up a bunch of that. Initially I was thinking of putting it into a pasta dish we make that calls for wilted spinach or arugula, dried cranberries, and almonds, but Brian reminded me that we were out of dried cranberries. Rather than make a special trip to buy more, we decided to get the spinach, take it home, and then browse through Mark Bittman for ideas on what to do with it.

Brian looked up "spinach" in the index and hit on a recipe that looked like it could hardly miss: Quinoa Salad with Lemon, Spinach, and Poppy Seeds. And that title is pretty much the entire ingredient list, aside from a simple lemon vinaigrette dressing (olive oil, lemon, salt, and "plenty of pepper"). What makes this salad interesting is that, unlike most recipes, it actually uses the whole, not just the juice and/or the rind. You peel it like an orange, cut it into little chunks, and toss them with the cooked quinoa, tossed spinach, and dressing. The small bunch of organic spinach we'd shelled out three bucks for at the farmers' market was just enough to make one batch, and we just happened to have all the other ingredients on hand.

As salads go, this one was pretty tasty. The flavors of lemon and spinach play well together, and the juicy lemon chunks, chewy quinoa, and crunchy poppy seeds give it an interesting blend of textures (though those pesky little seeds also have a tendency to stick in your teeth). However, I must admit that even with all that protein-rich quinoa, it wasn't really hearty enough to make a meal of on its own. We ended up supplementing it with some leftover Butternut Squash Pizza with Sage, and the salad plus a slice of that was about the right amount for a satisfying dinner. I imagine this salad would also pair well with any simple protein dish, such as baked chicken or broiled fish. Or maybe you could make a meal out of it just by adding a fairly hearty bread.

So will we be making it again? Well, maybe. The snag is that, as we discovered at the farmers' market, fresh spinach—even in season—can be pretty pricey, and we've never had any luck at growing it ourselves. So although we both liked this salad, we probably didn't like it enough to pony up three bucks for a bunch of spinach just to make it. However, if we happened to buy a fairly big bunch of spinach for another recipe—like the pasta dish, or Spinach with Raisins and Walnuts—and had some left over, a suitably scaled version of this recipe could be a good way to use it up without having to buy any special ingredients.

Money Crashers: How to Deal With the Family Glitch in the Affordable Care Act

Have you heard about the "family glitch" in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)? A month ago, I hadn't. I stumbled across an article about it in Consumer Reports while researching something else — and the more I read about it, the madder I got. Because here's the thing: This so-called "glitch," which has left an estimated 2 to 4 million Americans with no access to affordable health insurance, was by no means accidental. On the contrary, it was a deliberate move by the IRS and the GAO to interpret the wording of the law in a way that would grant health care subsidies to as few people as possible, saving the government money.

Here's how it works: Say you're a worker who has access to a health plan through your job, and the premiums cost only 9 percent of your income. So for you, everything is fine. The problem is, your family also needs insurance, and your workplace doesn't provide any subsidies for them. So if you were to enroll your spouse and kids under your workplace plan, your premiums would shoot up to 15, 20, even 25 percent of your income. So you would think your family should qualify for a subsidy, since they clearly don't have access to "affordable" health insurance through your job.

Except, according to the way the IRS has chosen to interpret the wording of the ACA, they do. Because the part of the law that talks about whether a workplace health plan is "affordable," for purposes of granting subsidies, bases it on the employee's "required contribution" toward the premiums, which can't be higher than 9.56 percent of income for the year 2018. But that same phrase, "required contribution," also appears in the section of the law dealing with the individual mandate. And in this section, the term refers to the percent of the worker's income that they'd have to pay for a "self-only" policy—one that covers the worker only, and not any of their family members. If the required contribution toward a self-only policy is over 8 percent, this section says, you aren't subject to the individual mandate and don't face a penalty for failing to buy insurance.

So the crafty IRS and GAO looked at these two passages and said, "Oh, would you look at that! This section defines affordability based on the 'required contribution,' and that section defines the 'required contribution' based on the cost of a self-only policy. So, clearly, that means if the worker can buy a self-only policy for less than 9.56 percent of household income, that means the family, by definition, has access to affordable care—no matter how much it would actually cost to cover the rest of them. Yes, we know, this will leave a lot of families with no access to affordable care, but what can you do? That's what the law says! If you want to fix the loophole, you'll have to get Congress to agree on an amendment to the law. Good luck with that!"

Learning that this huge loophole exists, and has existed for over five years now without ever coming to my notice, made me think this was a subject we clearly needed to cover on Money Crashers. I tackled this topic hoping to educate readers about, first of all, what the "family glitch" is and how many people it affects, and second, what people caught in this gap can do to get around it. And I feel like I succeeded in the first goal—but with the second, not so much. Because the more I researched, the more I discovered there are no good solutions here.

That's not to say there are no solutions. For instance, most children caught in this coverage gap—though not all—can get insurance through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which  covers children whose parents can’t get affordable coverage for them at work but aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. But for spouses, well, that's a different story. Your options are pretty much (a) pay the exorbitant rates for the workplace plan, (b) sign up for the cheapest plan you can find in the Health Insurance Marketplace (if that's any cheaper), (c) sign up for a cheap but crappy "short-term insurance" plan that provides next to no coverage, or (d) get a job solely for the insurance benefits.

I wish I could offer some more useful advice here, or at least some glimmer of encouragement that the problem will be fixed soon—but with the atmosphere in Washington these days, I think we shouldn't hold our breath on that. But we can, at least, make some noise about it. We can pester our Representatives and Senators ad nauseam, demanding that they do something about this problem, and spread the word about it as much as possible to others in the hopes that they will do the same. It may not be much of a chance, but it's the best one we've got.

How to Deal With the Family Glitch in the Affordable Care Act

Money Crashers: How to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck

My latest piece for Money Crashers is about another topic I have been fortunate enough to have no personal experience with: living paycheck to paycheck. Apparently, this places me in the minority, as a survey I found at CareerBuilder says more than three-quarters of American workers currently live this way. Even among people making over $100,000 a year, nearly one in ten said they always or usually lived paycheck to paycheck.

Based on this survey, it looks like simply making enough money isn't the key to escaping the paycheck-to-paycheck trap. So what is?

I looked into what experts at Forbes, The Balance, U.S. News, and Quicken Loans had to say on the subject, and boiled their advice down to a six-step plan:

1. Track your spending
2. Make a budget
3. Cut your expenses
4. Boost your income
5. Jump-start your savings
6. Stay on target

There's more to it than that, of course, and you can learn all the details in the article, as well as what definitely won't help (relying on debt). Read about it here: How to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck.

Money Crashers: 4 Fears That Cost You Money

I got the idea for my latest Money Crashers article after reading some article or other about investing. I forget just where it was, but it pointed out that trying to keep your money "safe" actually has risks of its own: if you've stashed all your money in a bank account earning 1 percent interest while inflation is at 2 percent, it will steadily lose value. This got me thinking about how the fear of losing money, in this case, actually costs you money, and I wondered if I could spin that idea out into a whole article.

After mulling it over, I decided this wasn't enough material for an article all by itself. However, it occurred to me that there were probably other kinds of fears that could be equally costly, and after some pondering and poking around the Internet, I came up with three others to cover: fear of missing out (FOMO), fear of social isolation, and fear of failure.

The new article covers how these four fears can bypass your reason and lead you into foolish, costly decisions—and what you can do to overcome them. Read it here: 4 Fears That Cost You Money and How to Overcome Them

Money Crashers: How to Lock or Freeze Your Credit and Why You Should Do It

When Equifax got hacked last year and let a bunch of people's personal data slip into the hands of thieves (oopsie, our bad!), I read a lot of articles urging me to freeze my credit. Although the experts argued convincingly that a credit freeze was the single best way to protect your stolen data from misuse, I was resistant to the idea. For one thing, it seemed like a lot of hassle: I'd have to contact each of the credit bureaus separately to set it up, and get a separate PIN from each, which I'd have to make damn sure not to lose or else I'd never be able to thaw my credit again. And when I did want to thaw my credit, I'd have to wait two or three days for the thaw to take effect, which would mean I couldn't just decide to, say, shop for a new auto insurance policy (a process that involves pulling your credit file) whenever I happened to have a few hours free. And finally, to add insult to injury, I'd have to pay for it—a separate $5 fee to each of the three bureaus.

Despite these objections, I finally did decide to go ahead and put the freeze in place (after I'd finished my insurance shopping). I figured I wouldn't need to open any new accounts for a while, and when I did, I'd just have to plan ahead and deal with the hassle and the expense.

Fortunately, as it turns out, I no longer have to. In fact, most of my objections to freezing my credit were overturned by a new federal law that took effect last month. You can now freeze and thaw your credit at will, without having to pay a fee, and without having to wait more than an hour when you want the freeze lifted. So nearly all the problems that made me hesitate to freeze my credit are now gone, while all the benefits that made me decide to do it after all still apply. In short, it's a better deal than ever.

In my latest Money Crashers article, I explain what freezing your credit means and outline the benefits of doing it, along with the few drawbacks that still remain. Then I explain how to do it with each of the three bureaus. I also talk about the potential benefits of freezing your child's credit to protect them from identity thieves, who view a child's pristine credit history as pay dirt. (Doing this is a lot more work than freezing your own credit, but it could be worth it for the peace of mind it gives you.)

How to Lock or Freeze Your Credit and Why You Should Do It

Yard-sale haul 2018

This year, Brian and I weren't able to devote quite as much time as usual to shopping the local town-wide yard sale, which took place this weekend. We'd already arranged with my dad to go to the Princeton football game on Saturday if the weather was good, and as of Friday the forecast was calling for "cloudy and delightful," so we had to limit our Saturday sale-hopping to just a couple of hours in the morning in order to make a 1pm kickoff.

So we planned out our abbreviated trip strategically, examining the list of sales and focusing our attention on a two-block square on the south side of town that had the highest concentration of sales—and particularly, the most sales that were limited to Saturday only. We walked out on Benner Street, turning off here and there to catch any scattered sales we passed en route, then went down the whole length of Felton Street (which is basically one big yard-sale block party) and back up South Second, then across Raritan and back home by way of Montgomery to grab an early lunch and take off for the game. We covered perhaps two miles in total, but probably managed to hit about 30 sales.

Most of these, not surprisingly, had nothing we needed. Our house is pretty much fully furnished and equipped, and while I took the time to browse every rack of women's clothing we passed, I knew the odds of finding something that fit both my size and my tastes were pretty slim. And the one item Brian had really been jonesing for—an accordion—we'd actually managed to pick up at a flea market for $60 the previous weekend. So basically, we were just cruising the sales looking for targets of opportunity: interesting books, board games, and any little miscellaneous items that looked like they'd either be useful for us or make good holiday gifts for family and friends.

However, since we managed to hit so many sales in this relatively short trip, we actually found several things that looked worth the price (which was never more than two bucks, so we pretty much grabbed anything that looked potentially interesting). Here's what we got:

• Three books for ourselves. At the very first sale we passed, I picked up an English translation of the "Figaro trilogy" by Beaumarchais, which was the original bases for the operas "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro." (I hadn't previously been aware there was a third play in the series, so that will make an interesting new discovery.) At one of the Felton Avenue sales, we found the second Rabbi Small mystery, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, which I started reading to Brian that very afternoon on the way to the game. And at one of the last sales we passed on our way home, we got the first volume of "Lumberjanes," a comic book series co-written by Noelle Stevenson, whom we've seen and appreciated as a guest on "Critical Role."
• Three possible gift items. First, we picked up a young adult fantasy novel that looked like a promising gift for one of our older niblings (side note: this word is apparently the gender-neutral form of "nieces and/or nephews"), though we're not sure which. We also found this set of princess-themed wooden beads for my princess-obsessed, four-year-old niece. Finally, we took a gamble on a box of card tricks, since we recalled that one of our nephews used to have a mild interest in magic; if we learn that he's over that by now, maybe we can pitch it to one of the other niblings.
• Several potentially household useful items. One item I was specifically on the lookout for was wooden clothespins, since I ran a load of laundry last week and actually had to leave some things off the line because I ran out of pins. So when I found a big Ziploc bag full of them for 75 cents, I grabbed it, and now the limiting factor on how much we can hang is the amount of space on the clothesline. We also spent 50 cents on a new multi-meter, since our old one, which could no longer measure anything but voltage, had been converted into a prop for Brian's steampunk costume. Brian also spent $1 on an orphaned luggage strap, which will replace a broken one on his new accordion. And we picked up a nice little wooden box that a seller offered us for free; we're not quite sure what we'll do with it, put it should be useful for something.
• One game. For $1, we found a copy of the quirky game Guillotine, in which the players are French revolutionaries competing to assemble the most prestigious collection of heads. We'd played it before and enjoyed it, so we figured it was worth a buck even if it might be missing a few cards—but when we got it home, Brian was able to verify that it was in fact complete, so this was a particularly good deal.

For only two hours, this was a pretty good haul, and probably provided us with as much entertainment as watching Princeton mop up the field with Lehigh. (We left in the middle of the third quarter, when Princeton was ahead 52 to 7 and it was starting to rain. At least Lehigh won the battle of the bands, as theirs was at least three times the size of Princeton's.)

This morning, we ventured out again, this time aiming for a spot on the north side of town where I'd identified another cluster of sales, including several scheduled for Sunday only. Unfortunately, many of the sellers apparently were either put up by the weather (a light drizzle) or too tired out after the previous day to set up shop again. Many of the sale sites on our list had no sale in site, though some of them had boxes of slightly damp stuff marked "free" sitting out by the curb. We poked through those and through the tables at the few sales we actually passed, but found little of interest. However, Brian picked up a few items mostly for their amusement value: a yo-yo, a pair of colorful dice, and a "protein structure coloring book" dating from 1979. It was only a little set of photocopied sheets, but he just had to pick it up to show his coworkers, since his workplace recently developed two coloring books of its own.

But before calling it a day, we decided to cross Raritan and head down South First, which we hadn't made it to on Saturday—and there we encountered the madhouse that is the annual Congregation Achavas Achim jumble sale. This is basically a huge assortment of stuff all thrown together willy-nilly: clothing, books, games, kitchen items, and various tchotchkes all sprawling across numerous tables and the ground. When we hit this sale in 2014, we hunted through the mass of miscellany and found nothing of interest except a can of walnuts, but the price on that was good enough to encourage us to keep trying.

This time, our efforts were rewarded, as out of the vast unsorted mass, we managed to pick out two interesting-looking puzzles. One was a three-dimensional jigsaw of an old-fashioned globe, complete with a stand to display it on if you actually manage to complete it; the other appeared to be a wooden puzzle like these, but when we got it home and sorted out the pieces, it actually turned out to be two separate puzzles—both the sphere and the truncated cube from this set. We haven't decided yet whether to keep these or give them as gifts, but either way, they were a good enough find to justify the trip.

So, in total, we spent about four hours at the sales, covered maybe four or five miles, and picked up 16 items for just under $12. That's a pretty good return on our investment of both time and money, and a nice start on our holiday shopping.

Money Crashers: What Do Rising Interest Rates Mean for You?

Interest rates have been at near-zero levels for so long, everyone's kind of started to get used to it. Now that the Fed has finally started to slowly, slowly edge interest rates back up again, you keep seeing panicky stories about what the rising rates are going to do to the stock market and the economy as a whole.

So I thought maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to write a nice, calm, thoughtful story about what rising rates actually mean for consumers—both good and bad. Because yes, there definitely is an upside, especially for frugal folks like me who have been frustrated over the past decade that all the money we're keeping in the bank hasn't even earned enough interest to keep pace with inflation.

My new Money Crashers piece explains how rising interest rates could affect:

• Borrowers, who will now pay more on credit cards and variable-rate loans (but not on fixed-rate loans, like student loans or most mortgages);
• Savers, who will once be rewarded for keeping money in the bank;
• Home buyers, who will probably pay a higher rate for a new mortgage, but will also probably pay less for the house itself;
• Investors, who will see better returns on bonds, but more volatility in the stock market (though probably not the long-term losses that panicky investors are expecting);
• The overall economy, which could see a drop in consumer spending in the short term, but—surprise!—is actually likely to grow in the long term;
• The national debt, which has reached ridiculous levels and will become more and more costly to service, eating up a bigger and bigger share of our federal budget until...well, no one really knows what, if anything, the federal government will actually do to fix the problem, but it's not likely to be any fun for anyone concerned.  

Then I outline some steps ordinary consumers can take to adjust to the new normal (which is actually the same as the old normal, for those who are old enough to remember it), such as reducing debt, locking in interest rates on any new debts while they're still relatively low, shuffling investments, and building an emergency fund and plenty of insurance to get them through hard times if and when they hit.

Here's the whole, non-panicky story: What Do Rising Interest Rates Mean for You? – Effects & How to Prepare