Coupon coup

As I've noted before, Brian and I aren't big couponers. Although extreme couponers like to promise that their strategies can save you 50 percent or more on "every single item you buy," my previous experiments with coupons have shown that this only works if you're willing to restrict your diet to whatever happens to be most deeply discounted in any given week. And since we can't really live on a tube of toothpaste, a can of shaving cream, and a candy bar, we simply don't bother with coupons most of the time.

So on those rare occasions when we actually do manage to score a majestic deal, it's such a thrill that I want to share it with the whole world. Or at least the subset of the world that reads my blog.

To that end, check out our haul from a trip to the Stop & Shop yesterday. We got two small (8.9-ounce) boxes of Cheerios, two boxes of pasta, one large can of diced tomatoes, and one little cup of "Sabra Snackers"—a single-portion cup of hummus with pretzels. (This is exactly the kind of ridiculous, overpriced, overpackaged item that we normally avoid, but you'll see in a minute why it made it into our cart.)

Now here's the total price we paid: $2.69. That's less than the regular price of the hummus cup alone, and we got the entire bagful for it.

How, you ask? Well, it's all thanks to the digital coupons that I get with my Stop & Shop loyalty card. This week, it sent me a "Free-Day" offer for the little Sabra hummus cup, and when I clicked to download it to my card, I saw a couple of other good offers on the site as well. Fifty cents off two boxes of store-brand pasta...75 cents off a big can of store-brand tomatoes....and, best of all, $1 off two boxes of certain General Mills cereals. Which happened to be an especially hot deal because the store was running a special three-day sale on those General Mills cereals for just 99 cents a box. Now, at our new baseline price of 12 cents per ounce, that's already a good price, even for a tiny little box. But with a dollar off on two boxes, that works out to less than 50 cents each, which is not merely good but fantastic.

Put all those deals together, and you get a bagful of groceries, including the one pricey packaged item we wouldn't normally buy, for less than three bucks. (Brian can keep it in the fridge at work as a healthier alternative to cocoa for emergency fuel.) We didn't merely win the register-receipt game (the one where the goal is to have your "total savings" at the bottom of the receipt exceed your actual spending); we saved $10.65—nearly 80 percent—off the regular price.

But the very best thing about this particular deal is that the bargains didn't end there. Because when we rang all this up at the checkout, the clerk, rather than treating us like we'd stolen something, actually handed us a store coupon for $1.50 off three boxes of General Mills cereals—the very same cereals that were still on sale for 99 cents a box. And when I dug through my small stash of clipped coupons in my purse, I discovered that I also had a manufacturer coupon for $1 off three boxes of the exact same cereals. And as anyone with any couponing experience knows, store coupons and manufacturer coupons can be stacked.

So today, the last day of the special three-day sale, we went back to the Stop & Shop and bought three more boxes of Cheerios, using both coupons, for a grand total of 47 cents. Three boxes for 47 cents, when the regular price of just one box is $3.69! That's a savings of over 95 percent! Our previous shopping coup pales in comparison.

If we had kept all three of these, our total tally for both trips would have been five boxes of Cheerios for a grand total of $1.45, or 29 cents per box. But we were so happy with our earned blessing, we felt like sharing the wealth, so we dropped one of the boxes in the food bank collection box on our way out of the store. So we still got four boxes for just over 36 cents each, and someone in town who's down on their luck will get to enjoy a bit of ours.

If we really wanted to, we could rinse and repeat yet again, because at the checkout we received yet another store coupon, this time for $1.50 off four boxes. (This is a common coupon strategy: offering first a great deal, then a merely good one on the same product, then a so-so one, until they've got you hooked.) So in theory, we could go back there yet again today and buy four more boxes for $2.46, or 61.5 cents each. But that would give us a total of eight boxes of cereal to store, and there has to be a limit somewhere.

Money Crashers: 6 Health Insurance Options If You’re Self-Employed

It's now been over 15 years since I first left my job to become a freelancer. It was an uncharacteristically daring move on my part, since freelancing meant an uncertain income and, more seriously still, no benefits — particularly health insurance. I think the only reason I had the nerve to do it when I did was that Brian and I had just become engaged, so I knew I'd soon be able to get health insurance through his job. I just had to sign up for pricey but short-lived COBRA coverage to see myself through the few months before the wedding.

Today, freelancers have a much wider array of options. Instead of having to pay through the nose for COBRA, freelancers can buy a policy on their state healthcare exchange. This is significantly cheaper even at full price, and cheaper still for those with low enough income to qualify for an ACA subsidy.

However, with Obamacare perpetually under siege, first from Congress and now from the courts, it's unclear how much longer freelancers will have this option. And even if it remains available, there's no guarantee it's the best or cheapest way to get coverage.

So if you're a freelancer, it makes sense to learn about all your options. In my latest Money Crashers article, I cover all the different ways freelancers have of finding health care coverage, including Medicaid (for low-income freelancers), Medicare (for those over 65), coverage on a family member's plan, and coverage through organizations. I also discuss the possibility of getting a part-time job that provides benefits.

6 Health Insurance Options If You’re Self-Employed

Money Crashers: 8 Things to Put in Your Safe Deposit Box (and What to Keep Out)

Just a quickie post here to let you know about my new Money Crashers article on the subject of safe deposit boxes. If the very phrase sounds hopelessly 20th century to you, consider this: even today, there are times when only the original paper copy of a document will do (like when you need to renew your NJ driver's license with our arcane 6-point ID system). So you need to have these documents, and that means you need a safe place to keep them. And while you could just buy a safe to keep at home, it's going to be either incredibly bulky or pretty easy to steal, lock and all.

So, what are these old-school boxes actually good for? In this article, I review the eight things that most experts say it's a good idea to keep in a safe deposit box, as well as eight things you probably shouldn't.

8 Things to Put in Your Safe Deposit Box (and What to Keep Out)

How to make dairy-free bread pudding

Our journey toward a dairy-free lifestyle is still in progress. Some steps are big (like finding a plant-based milk that ticks off all our boxes for flavor, texture, availability, and cost) and others are much smaller, but even the small ones get us farther along the road. This past week, we overcame yet one more small hurdle in our way: figuring out how to make bread pudding without cow's milk.

The first time we first tried making a dairy-free version of this dessert, using some walnut milk we got as a freebie, it didn't work at all well. It took ages to bake, and even when Brian finally gave up and pulled it out, it was still kind of soft and soupy, not firm like a bread pudding should be. And when we tried the same experiment with our favorite almond milk, the result was much the same. Based on these two failures, Brian was inclined to suspect that bread pudding just wouldn't work without dairy, and if we were serious about giving up milk, we'd have to give up this dessert, too. However, I'd seen dairy-free bread pudding recipes online that looked like they had the right consistency, so I thought there must be some way to do it.

As it turns out, one of our early failed experiments along the dairy-free road proved to be the key to this particular puzzle. When we first started looking for a sustainable and inexpensive alternative to cow's milk, one of the first things we tried was homemade oat milk, which we quickly rejected because it turned so thick and gluey when heated as to make hot cocoa undrinkable. However, it occurred to me that this bug could actually be a feature where bread pudding was concerned, since thickening up was exactly the result we wanted and couldn't get with the nut milks. And since oats are cheap and we always have some at home, it wouldn't cost much to try the experiment.

So, last week, when I happened to spot happened to spot a loaf of white bread on the "free stuff" table at a local church, it struck me as a perfect opportunity to try out this new recipe. However, in my eagerness, I snatched it up without noticing the words "gluten free" on the label. When I discovered my error, I was all set to abort the experiment, because using this bread would mean changing two variables at once from our original recipe. If it was a failure, we wouldn't know whether the bread or the milk was to blame; if it was a success, we wouldn't know whether it would still work with regular bread. But Brian persuaded me it couldn't hurt to try, since we already had the bread, the milk would cost us little, and more data is always a good thing.

For the test, he whipped up a batch of homemade oat milk using 1/4 cup of oats and 1 1/3 cups of water. He soaked the oats in the water for around 10 minutes, then blended them. This produced 1 1/3 cups of unsweetened oat milk, which he then used in our standard bread pudding recipe. And as soon as it came out of the oven, we could see the results looked more promising than our previous attempts with nut milks. The surface looked firm and lightly browned, just like it should. But the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Would the taste and texture be right once it was dished out?

The answer was yes, mostly. The texture was firm, not soupy like the puddings we'd made with nut milks, but it was a bit sticky. We have no way of knowing whether this was an effect of the oat milk, the gluten-free bread, or a combination of the two; we'll have to try the recipe again with a conventional bread to see. Also, this pudding was noticeably less sweet than it is when we make it with dairy milk, presumably because cows' milk contains some natural sugar and oat milk has essentially none. Brian figures if we try the recipe again, he'll soak the oats a little longer and add a tablespoon of sugar to the milk. But even with these minor flaws, the pudding was definitely edible, and much closer to the original recipe than we'd ever come with either walnut or almond milk.

Now, this bread pudding recipe isn't truly vegan, since it still contains eggs. However, as I've noted before, our goal isn't to develop vegan superpowers; we're just trying to reduce the carbon footprint of our diet, and eggs are fairly trivial offenders as far as carbon is concerned. We might still experiment later with combining the oat milk this recipe with an egg substitute (such as soy flour and water, or ground flaxseeds) to see if we can make a genuinely vegan version, but that's mostly a matter of curiosity. If we can just perfect a dairy-free version, we'll be satisfied.

Next challenge: coming up with a vegan whipped cream to serve with it that isn't a complete fiasco.

My 24-hour Internet fast

It’s been many years since I fasted on Yom Kippur. Even back in the days when I did it every year, I never really believed that I was obeying a command from God or that I would be punished if I didn’t. Partly, it was a matter of cultural identity; I fasted because I was a Jew, and fasting is what Jews do on Yom Kippur. But also, I believed that on some level, it was good for me. Good for me physically, because a 24-hour fast would shrink my stomach and make me less likely to overindulge in the new year, and good for me spiritually, because going hungry for a day would make me more sympathetic to people in need.

Over the years, though, I began to have doubts about whether my yearly fast was really having the desired effect. It certainly wasn’t making me feel better physically; on the contrary, it usually left me with a throbbing headache and an uneasy stomach that didn’t want to accept the food it needed. And these discomforts, far from making me feel spiritually uplifted and sympathetic to all humankind, made me cranky and snappish with the humans in my immediate vicinity. I eventually reached the conclusion that fasting wasn’t doing either my body or my soul any good and quit doing it.

But I never felt entirely easy with my decision. Although I knew that fasting hadn’t done anything to make me a better person, it still felt wrong not to do something special on Yom Kippur — something that would give the day the same weight and significance it had in the lives of my ancestors back in the shtetl. So this year, as I attended the evening service with my parents, I found myself wondering: was there something else I could give up on Yom Kippur, something that really would be physically and spiritually beneficial even if it was difficult? And suddenly the answer came to me: I should go 24 hours without connecting to the Internet.

I quickly realized that doing this would be, in some ways, more of a challenge than going without food. No Internet definitely meant no work, since my job is pretty much entirely online these days — a mixture of Internet research, composing articles in Google Docs, and connecting to coworkers via Gmail, Slack and Trello. And most of the things I normally do as a break from work — checking email, answering online surveys, clicking on whatever intriguing article has popped up on Pocket — would also be off-limits. I wouldn’t be able to solve my daily cryptic crossword (downloaded from BestforPuzzles.com) over breakfast, listen to a podcast in the shower, or read the day’s top headlines from the New York Times. It would be a complete disruption of my routine.

And in a way, that was the point. An Internet fast would force me to take a break from all my daily habits, both good and bad — and in the process, step back and get a clearer look at which was which.

So, after a little initial hesitation — what about the emails I hadn’t answered that afternoon? What about other urgent messages that might come in during the day? — I decided to give it a try. And I made a further decision: as I went through my Internet-free day, I’d document it to see just how it had affected me, for good or bad.


Here's what happened.

***

Tuesday, 10 pm: Upon my return home from services, my husband Brian gets onto my computer to answer, on my behalf, the one email message I feel I can’t afford to leave dangling for the next 24 hours. He then ceremoniously disconnects the Ethernet cable from my computer to ensure that I won’t slip up and connect to the Internet without thinking about it. So now it’s official: I’m doing this.

Wednesday, 7 am: Since Brian is still going to work today, even if I’m not, the alarm wakes us at the usual time. After I take my pills and brush my teeth, I realize I’m not sure what to do with myself next. Since I can’t eat breakfast until half an hour after taking my pill, I’d normally spend the next 30 minutes checking email and printing out my morning puzzle before breakfast, but those activities are now off-limits. Instead, I pick up yesterday’s copy of the Daily Targum — a college paper I normally get only for the crossword — and actually read it.

Wednesday, 8:40 am: After Brian departs for work, I sit down and start writing this article (in TextEdit, which I can use offline). I quickly discover how much I’ve been in the habit of taking mini-breaks throughout my workday, every time I get stuck on a tricky paragraph, to check my email or play a quick game of 2048. Unable to engage in these diversions, I root around on my computer’s hard drive and unearth an old copy of Montana Solitaire, which I can play without benefit of Internet.

Wednesday, 11:10 am: I decide it’s time for a shower. Clicking on iTunes, I realize that I still have part of yesterday’s Hidden Brain podcast left over that I didn’t finish listening to, and since it’s already downloaded, I can listen to it today without breaking my Internet fast. It feels a little like cheating, but I do it. The topic of the episode is outrage: how it’s “hijacking our conversations, our communities, and our minds.” As the presenter and his guests talk about how social media, in particular, has become a constant stream of vitriol, I mentally run over all the emails that have entered my inbox over the past few days and are probably continuing to pile up this very minute. How many of them were from one political mailing list or another, shrieking about the latest travesty in the political realm and the urgent need for MORE MONEY, NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, to combat it? All of a sudden, I feel a lot better about not being available to receive them.

Wednesday, 12 pm: Time for lunch. As my tummy rumbles, I feel thankful that I’m skipping Internet today rather than food. Then I wonder how ironic it is that not fasting is making me more appreciative about eating.

Wednesday, 1 pm: After consuming my soup, biscuit, apple, two squares of chocolate, and a chapter or two of Ngaio Marsh’s last novel, I find myself once again at loose ends. I can’t do any work, and I can’t do most of the things I normally do for play, since they all involve going online. So instead, I sit down at my computer and start putting together a scenario for “Honey Heist,” a silly little role-playing game I’ve been meaning to run for a while. This is a task I’ve never managed to find the time to work on; during the day I was always either too busy with work or allowing the wonders of the Internet to distract me from work. Apparently a day offline was the kick in the pants I needed to get started.

Wednesday, 2:20 pm: Got so absorbed in planning my Honey Heist, I didn’t even notice it was past my usual time for my afternoon walk. It's chilly and damp out, but not too cold once I get moving. Since I have no work to get back to, I feel free to take my time strolling around town, gathering fall leaves, and stopping into the store to pick up some snacks for tonight’s game.

Wednesday, 3:50 pm: Back from my walk. Take my time arranging my newly collected leaves in their basket and fixing myself a snack (hooray for not fasting). Go back to “work” on the Honey Heist.

Wednesday, 5 pm: Brian comes home from work. I ask him if he knows what time sunset is, since I can’t go back online until then (and I can’t visit Accuweather to check for myself). He checks for me and reports that sunset is at 6:27 pm, so I still have about an hour and a half to go. He also brings me a fresh copy of the Daily Targum, so I have plenty to occupy myself until then.

Wednesday, 6:40 pm: The moment of truth. Having finished dinner, I reconnect to the Internet. In the course of this one day — counting from 5:30 last night, when I left for services — I have accumulated 40 emails (not counting survey invites) across my three email accounts. These include five work-related messages, six about dance practice, four about the concert series, five concerning a friend’s request to borrow a couple of board games from us (which Brian handled for me), one about our weeknight gaming group, and two shrieking political messages. The rest are all newsletters and other trivia that don’t really require my immediate attention.

It takes an hour or more to go through all these accumulated messages, sorting them and responding as necessary. If I'd dealt with them as they came in over the course of the day, it would probably have taken at least as much time, but it would have felt less burdensome because it would have been spread out into shorter blocks of 15 minutes or less. By the time I'm done with it all, I feel almost as tired as if I'd really fasted all day, and more than ready to collapse on the couch with some Netflix (courtesy of my long-lost friend the Internet).


***

So, now that it's all over, what conclusions do I draw from my experiment?

First of all, I can say with relief that I'm not genuinely addicted to the Internet. Going without it for a whole day wasn't terribly burdensome; in some ways, it was actually quite pleasant. Being unable to work or goof off in the ways I usually do left me with time free to do things I normally wouldn't, like planning my Honey Heist, and more time to spend on offline activities I enjoy, such as reading and taking my afternoon walk, without feeling guilty about all the time I was taking away from work. It was definitely less painful than going a day without food.

That said, I have to admit that my life with the Internet is, on the whole, easier than my life without it. It really was awkward not being able to do the little things I've come to rely on: printing out my puzzle in the morning, checking the weather report, sending a quick email message. And while I didn't happen to miss any urgent messages during my 24-hour "fast," that was largely a matter of chance.

As to whether this Internet fast was good for me, that's a tougher question to answer. On the one hand, I think my day without Internet was, on the whole, less stressful than a normal day with it. But the time I spent recovering from the "fast" was actually more stressful than usual, because I had to clear out a 24-hour backlog of messages. And I'll probably have to continue putting in extra hours over the course of the next week or so to make up for the day of work I missed.

I certainly wouldn't say that Internet fasting is something I'd want to incorporate into my life on a regular basis. But as something to do every year on Yom Kippur, it has its points. It certainly does make the day feel different from other days. It forces me to take my mind off my usual everyday concerns and focus on different things — maybe not spiritual things, exactly, but things I might never find the time for on a normal day. And at the same time, it makes me more appreciative of the many blessings of the Internet when I finally get to go back to it. (And unlike regular fasting, it doesn't make me feel too ill by the time I break my fast to be able to enjoy it.)

And if I want to feel more connected to my ancestors in the shtetl, well, after all, they lived without the Internet every day of their lives.

Money Crashers: Income Sharing Agreements (ISA): A New Way to Pay for College

My latest article on Money Crashers is part of what you might call my Making College Cheaper series. I've done pieces on tuition-free colleges, the pros and cons of paying for your kids' college education, and free or cheap college classes for senior citizens. And in this piece, I'm tackling a relatively new way to pay for college: income sharing agreements (ISAs).

First pioneered in the U.S. via Purdue's "Back a Boiler" program, ISAs are now available at nine U.S. colleges and universities, as well as some non-degree-granting programs. These schools, in essence, offer to cover your tuition costs for you in exchange for a cut of your earnings after you graduate. But is this really a good deal for students? To be specific, is it a better deal than a traditional student loan?

The answer to this question, it turns out, depends on several factors, such as your college, your major, your chosen career, how much you need to borrow, and what your other options are. This article explores those points, along with the history of ISAs, how they work, and where they're available. It should tell you what you need to know to decide whether you, or the future college student in your life, should consider this financing option.

Income Sharing Agreements (ISA): A New Way to Pay for College

Money Crashers: How to Survive a Job Without Benefits

When I decided to quit my full-time job and become a freelancer, one thing that made it an easy call was that Brian and I had just become engaged. Within a few months, I knew, I'd be able to rely on his job for health insurance, so I wouldn't have to pony up for an individual policy—which, in the days before Obamacare subsidies, could be hugely expensive, particularly in New Jersey.

However, many Americans don't have that luxury—and their numbers are growing. According to a 2018 NPR/Marist poll, over 30% of all Americans who work full-time say their job doesn't provide health insurance. Retirement plans are even less common: 40% of full-time workers say their job doesn't provide one. And of course, all of us in the gig economy are on our own when it comes to vacation days and sick days. On the plus side, we can take time off whenever we want—we just have to go without pay to do it.

If you're in this position, my new Money Crashers article is for you. It provides info for freelancers and anyone else who doesn't get workplace benefits about how to supply your own health insurance, retirement funds, sick leave, and vacation leave. And if you're not in this position, you might want to check out the article anyway; the way the economy is changing right now, you could need this information soon.

How to Survive a Job Without Benefits: DIY Health Insurance, Retirement & Vacation

Money Crashers: 7 Things You Need to Do Now to Prepare for the Next Recession

Earlier this week, as I was looking at the traffic report for my Money Crashers articles to see which topics seemed to be the most popular with readers, I noticed something interesting: For the past several months, my story on getting help in a financial emergency received far and away more hits than any other. And that was interesting, because the article had first come out two years ago, and it certainly wasn't hugely popular at the time. But around mid-2018, it started creeping up the ranks, from 3% of all site traffic to 4%, then 5%, and now over 7%. Clearly, some time in the past year or so, more and more people have felt the need to know about this.

To me, this looked a lot like a sign that, no matter what the official jobs numbers say, there's definitely some weakness in the economy. And right around the same time, I read a New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman—who was, let us not forget, one of the only economists to see the subprime mortgage crisis coming before it hit—indicating that he thinks so too.

And so I dropped a line to my editor and suggested that the article I'd written last year on how to prepare for a recession, which they'd been sitting on for several months, probably should be published now—because if we waited much longer, it could be too late to do anyone any good.

So here it is: my take on how to weatherize your life to ride out the coming economic storm. It talks about how to:

1. Improve your employability, so you'll be less likely to lose your job and/or better equipped to find a new one
2. Develop extra income streams, which will help you get by if your income declines
3. Increase your emergency savings, so you can survive a period of unemployment if necessary
4. Reduce your expenses, so you won't have to tighten your belt in a hurry later on
5. Pay down debts, so you won't have to struggle to pay them later on
6. Increase your insurance coverage, so a disaster won't bankrupt you
7. Adjust your investments, not to make them "recession-proof" (which is neither possible nor desirable), but to make sure you're not risking more money than you can afford to lose

Read all about it here: 7 Things You Need to Do Now to Prepare for the Next Recession

Recipe of the Month: Rosemary Potato Soup

At some point in the past couple of weeks, I was leafing through a magazine whose name I can't remember and spotted a recipe for potato soup with rosemary. I remarked to Brian that this sounded good, but I didn't bookmark the recipe, and I'd forgotten all about it until Monday night, when he called me to the dinner table and I walked in to find the kitchen redolent with rosemary. Apparently, the idea had stuck in his mind, and rather than go hunt up the recipe, he'd simply made up one of his own.

Not having any idea what was in the original recipe, he just worked with what we had. Our leeks in the garden are ready for harvest, though smallish, so he used two of those. And we happened to have some leftover silken tofu in the fridge that needed using up, so he pureed that and used it to thicken the soup. He also tossed in some garlic, a carrot, a bay leaf, five potatoes, salt, and a generous portion of fresh rosemary harvested from our herb garden. And for stock, he used our favorite vegetable soup base from Penzeys Spices.

Considering what a simple assortment of ingredients this was, the result was amazingly hearty and flavorful. Thick, creamy, savory, fragrant with garlic and rosemary, and full of mouth-filling chunks of potato and carrot. And it's vegan, too.

Now, technically, it was still September when he prepared this dish. But it was so tasty, I just couldn't resist the urge to share it with you as my Recipe of the Month for October. The only change I've made to it is to cut the salt; the version he made Monday used 1 1/2 teaspoons, which we both agreed was a little too much. But if your soup stock has less salt in it than Penzeys, you might want to use the full amount.

ROSEMARY POTATO SOUP

Heat in pan:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Sauté in the pan for about 5 minutes:

• 2 small leeks, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  

Transfer to stock pot along with:

• 6 c. veggie stock
• About 5 russet potatoes, cut into chunks
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, snipped into fragments

Cook 1/2 hour, then add:

• 4 oz. silken tofu, pureed
• 2 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in water
• 1 tsp. salt (or to taste)

Heat through and serve.

For us, this recipe was not only tasty and satisfying, but also remarkably cheap. Since the leeks and rosemary came out of our own garden, they were more or less free, and the other ingredients, by my calculations, cost about $2.90. The pot of soup provided five servings in total (two for dinner, three for lunch), so that works out to less than 60 cents per serving.

However, if you aren't lucky enough to have a garden, leeks and fresh rosemary could be a bit pricey to buy at the store. I think you could probably substitute a chopped onion for the leeks without really harming the flavor of the soup, though you might have to sauté it a bit longer before it softens. And technically, I guess, you could use dried rosemary instead of fresh, but I honestly think it wouldn't be the same. Much better to cadge some fresh rosemary off a friend who has a garden, or buy yourself a plant and find a sunny window to grow it in.