Wishing you all a peaceful Christmas

From our family to you and yours, may your day be filled with joy and the love of  Christ at this Christmas.

Cuppa Joe

For some of us, it's a treat.  For the rest it's a necessity. Coffee.  Whether hot or cold, it serves a purpose.  Comfort, caffeine or confection, it's part of the American story. Studies are showing that it's for good reason, as well.  Yup, medicinal value just puts the frosting on the cup.

So how to cope when a cup may be hard to come by?  How about roasting your own stored green beans?  I looked for a 'deal' on canned beans for several years. The few places I found were no bargain, often $20 a pound or more.  Not very frugal, for sure.  But now, Costco has begun to carry the green beans at a great price. They sell them at $90 for a 22.5 pound case, delivered, here:

http://www.costco.com/Rainforest-Alliance-Green-Unroasted-Arabica-Coffee-6-x-3.75lb-Cans.product.100054969.html

In case you don't feel like doing the math, that's $4 a pound.

Why store green coffee?  Mostly because you need to really be on top of rotation for roasted coffee, even if not ground. Given your conditions, you may need to rotate every few months. Not so much with green coffee. The beans, especially canned, can last a decade.

The Costco beans are environmentally friendly and come with roasting directions on each can. We roasted some and the recipe works! I'd add that if you use a cast iron skillet like we did, keep the coffee 1 layer deep until you improve your expertise.  We'll try the old-fashioned popcorn popper next.

For grinding, we used a Kyocera ceramic hand grinder. It was great. In addition to being non-electric and adjustable, you can screw the grinder on to any regular size Mason or Ball jar.  If you break the nice jar it comes with, you are not out of business!.

Apologies

I'm not ignoring this blog, just out of gas for right now.  In the mean time, if you remember the cool walking stick from here, you can now order one from this great guy. They come in 3 heights, mostly based on how tall you are.

Planning for a Frugal Halloween

Here's a formula for a frugal Halloween that I've practiced for years. Only lately have I seen how it also dovetails with preparedness. Let me explain:  We are part-time residents of a subdivision with 1/8th acre lots less than 10 miles north of the US-Mex border. We're here for Halloween each year.  For us, it consists of between 60 and 80 children coming to the door, of which 20% are local kids and 80% who have come up from Mexico for the event. This creates two concerns for me: having enough and having the treats do no harm.

First step in my method is deciding how much I want to spend PER CHILD.  I aim for not more than 25 cents.  At 80 children, that would cost me $20.  I head to Big Lot and go first to the gum rack. I look for their 4 packs for $1 of sugarless gum. In a good year, that's most of what I give out, though I will usually get one package of other treats for children too small to chew gum.

This year, I was not so lucky.  I was only able to cover 20 kids with the 4/$1 gum.  So on to other treats.  I read labels and decided on some Nabisco multipacks. each contained 12 bags of low-fat crackers and cookies for a unit cost of around 22 cents each. 

How does this tie in with preparedness, other than the frugal part? Back to the variability in the number of children who come to the door.  If I plan for 80 and only 60 arrive, I will have left overs.  I plan to give out the cookie/cracker bags first. If I have chewing gum left over at the end, it goes in my preparedness stash.

Some day, if things are not great around us, what (other than a long, hot shower) could be more refreshing than a stick of nice, minty gum?

What are your trigger points?

By now you should have at least a vague idea what you will do when an emergency situation happens. Power goes off for more than 6 hours, natural gas is shut off for days due to high demand and you're on the wrong end of the service denial, you name it.  Pack up for Grandma's, hunker down in place, or whatever. 

There are other kinds of emergencies that have less obvious starts and ends. For example, what if the EBT card problem had continued beyond a few hours? Do you live in a community that may have seen riots or looting? What is your plan for that?

We had a forest fire 3 years ago, and my employer expected employees who were evacuated from their homes to continue to come to work. They would let you have a few hours to get settled in your new location, but after that, get to work. Do you have a contingency plan that includes work clothes and commuting to the job? What about child care if your kid's school is closed but your employer wants you there?

How will you know when and where to go in the case of a longer or progressive emergency? Will you wait for authorities to tell you to go and fight it out with the crowds, or have you identified your triggers to leave?  Here are a few examples:

1. Electrical outage: If it is widespread and has been continuing for more than 4 hours, is that time to activate your contingency plan? Should you start sooner, knowing ATM's and most gas pumps won't be working?

2. Riots: If there is civil unrest or riots in larger cities back east, and it seems to be spreading, when do you activate your emergency plan?

3. Volcanic eruption: Remember the Mount Saint Helen's eruption in 1981? A lot of people died because they didn't believe it could blow, and then it did. There were lots of warning signs, but even the regional officials were lax in defining exclusion areas because they didn't understand the power of the volcano. Don't become a Dave Johnson or Harry Truman. For those of you along the west coast, Alaska and Hawaii, if it starts to rumble, get out. Don't wait for the big plume to shoot up, as it probably will be too late to leave by then.  Getting boiled in hot ash like the folks in Pompeii is a lousy way to go.

4. Currency Restrictions or Bank Holiday: It has happened in other countries in the last year or so, does your preparedness plan work in this type of situation? If so, what specific measures will you phase in to keep your cash-on-hand from dwindling too soon?  No spending by any family members without parental approval? Quick trip to the grocery and gas station to top off as soon as you hear about the closures or restrictions?

Knowing what your trigger points are, what you need on-hand for them and what specific actions you and yours need to take when they occur, could transform your emergency experience from a nightmare to an inconvenience.  Planning that includes trigger points and appropriate actions to take when they occur may also save your lives.

Live in or near a city? Pay attention!

If you haven't read or heard about the near riots resulting from the electronic benefits card (also called SNAP, replacement for food stamps) 'computer glitches' last week, listen up.

The 'glitch' lasted several hours. In 17 states the cards showed zero-balance and holders could not purchase food. In one state, the cards showed unlimited purchase power.  Both conditions led to near riot reactions.  Articles show photos of a Wal-Mart that looks like it as looted as card holders in the 'unlimited' state took full advantage. Others, in states with zero-balance show multiple full carts abandoned in the stores.

This was after only a percentage of the population was affected for a few hours. Even if this wasn't engineered as a message about the power of government, you might want to ponder it as such.

Bottom line is that it showed how fragile some segments of society are right now.  Even if you are temporarily reliant on government benefits, or like me are a federal retiree, tuck away some non-perishable food and supplies with a few bucks a month. Don't forget your K-Mart rewards points -- they translate directly to cash you can spend on canned or dry food.  (Even FEMA is now suggesting 2 weeks of food and supplies.) If the system had gone down for longer, grocery shopping could have been problematic.

Frugal Grocery Tid-bits

National Preparedness Month is almost over. If you've been overwhelmed with THINGS-TO-DO, remember that your can start small.  The little things really do add up. As recently mentioned by K of Planning and Foresight, a price book or list is an important tool in the process of living, and especially preparing, frugally. Here are a few examples from just the last week.

A neighbor's husband just got the good news-bad news.  Good news was that he's not on the lay-off list.  Bad news is that he's getting a 15% pay reduction starting 1 October.  They are going through the process of reducing their family's overhead. We're close enough that we occasionally pick up things from the store for one another.  They have a favorite brand of TP, for which I had coupons for $2.50 off 24 rolls at Target.  I did the math in the store and found that it would be 60 cents a roll ON SPECIAL ($1 off 24 rolls), plus the $2.50 in coupons. Not sure about you, but my price target is the best I can find below 40 cents a roll for either of the 2 brands we find...acceptable. I couldn't bring myself to buy it for them. With a 'regular' price of 70+ cents a roll, assuming they use 2 rolls a week, that's an EXTRA $31.20 a year for TP.  That will buy 25 pounds or beans or rice at Walmart. See how easy it is to be more prepared? Just switch TP -- you're going to throw it away anyway!

Try not to hurry through your shopping, either.  When you have the time, proceed thoughtfully and pay attention. I was in K-Mart to pick up prescriptions and Dear Husband's Crystal Light Orange flavor, which was on special. I stumbled across Seattle's Best Ground Coffee 12 ounce bags on clearance for $2.00 per bag (about $2.70 per pound).  The 'best by' dates are in April 2014.  That price was way below my price for good coffee as an occasional treat, so I bought 3 and vacuum packed them.

We also mix cereals in a cereal container to balance cost and protein content. One-third is the more expensive high-protein cereal plus two-thirds Cheerios and/or Kellogg's Red Berries (all bought on special with coupons) can yield a 6 protein gram per bowl morning breakfast. Kellogg's Special K varieties were on special and had a 'buy 3 get 1 free' offer.  I had $2 worth of applicable coupons for a total of less than $2 per box.

Having a little food and staples buffer stored allows you to buy when prices are low, rather than buy at whatever the price is when you run out of whatever.

If you haven't read these two recent posts, they are certainly worth your time and go into more detail about broader reasons and ways to be prepared.