Making Bread - A Lesson in Patience

I didn't have the self control to wait until I had taken a
picture before having a slice.  Hence the loaf in the
back right corner.  

Ever since my university years I've been experimenting with making my own bread.  I've done sour dough, white sandwich bread, and my current favourite whole wheat sandwich bread.  In fact this weekend I took the opportunity and ended up baking 6 loaves of bread.  (5 of which promptly got stuck in the freezer.)  During my baking spree I came to the following conclusion.  Everybody on the planet should make bread from scratch (with out a bread maker) at least once in their lives.

Why?

First off it will give you an appreciation for the dying art and an understanding of where your bread comes from.  The same way that cooking from scratch and growing your own vegetables are beneficial making your own bread brings you back into touch with that you are putting in your mouth.

Secondly, the taste of fresh home made bread is heavenly.  If you make it and taste it just once you may never want to go back to the store bought loaves that don't go mouldy.  (Seriously, are you going to trust something that doesn't rot?)

Finally, and most importantly, making bread is a lesson in patience.  If you hurry through a step your bread may not rise and you'll end up with a brick instead of bread.  If your concentration is elsewhere you could very well end up killing your yeast and wrecking the dough.  I am not the most patient person on the planet, truth be told I hate waiting for things to happen.  I'm going to assume that a fair portion of the planet is with me on this as the human race continues to come up with more and more sophisticated ways to make our world go faster.  When it comes to bread though, you simply have to accept that it will rise when it rises.  It will not follow your schedule and if you try and change it's schedule you'll end up with a mess.

Like so many things on the planet there are no short cuts, just the prudent use of time spent waiting.

Goal Review End June

Given the general chaos cause by my brothers wedding my goal review got pushed back and ended up on today, the 5^th of the new month.  I guess it’s better late than never.  Let me first comment on my usual Food Waste Friday.  Turns out that upon leaving my house mate hid some vegetables in the bottom of my fridge.  (Ok, I wasn’t looking all that hard to begin with, I was a tad busy.)  Anyways last night I had to do something with the cabbage that she left and which was going bad.  So I made my very first coleslaw (which wasn’t half bad!)  The next part is my monthly goal review. 

Financial

- Set up RRSP investments with my return of value pension from the military and contribute $359 a month for the year, along with any tax refunds. CHECK [My RRSP and Locked-in Account are all set up and my savings are chugging along, though I do need to see my bank about some more investments.]

- Pay off house in 5 years.  I should be able to accomplish this by doubling up every payment and paying a 10% lump sum every year.  CHECK [I’m keeping up with the payments and now that my emergency fund is full and my car fund is almost full I can pay each monthly double up (total of $1,422.56) from my pay check.]

Educational

-Start Masters of Science / Masters of Science in Nursing in the fall.  CHECK [I’m in the process of signing up for classes, doing some review, can’t wait to actually start.]

Social

-Join two new clubs in the local area.  CHECK [Quilting has stopped for the summer but writing group’s still going as long as I host.] 

Other

-Have my novel accepted to be published.  I plan to have it ready by the end of the month (January), so I can start sending it out. CHECK [Unfortunately after sending three chapters in to an agent they decided it wasn’t for them, oh well, there are other fish in the sea.]

-Become a respite foster parent. CHECK [I’ve done 6 of the 10 courses so far and I have another 2/3 meetings with my assessor.  Hopefully I’ll be done by the and of the month.]

-Take a big backpacking trip solo. CHECK [I’m still saving for this but I get the feeling I’m going to be revisiting this goal (more later.)] 

-Finish my current crafting projects.  CHECK [I did finish the table cloth I was making in time for my brothers wedding (you can see it here) though it did mean a couple of late nights to get it done.] 

Once again I pulled in a marvelous 100%.  That said I’m going to have too look at adding new goals/updating the ones that I have.  In July I want to focus on a couple of things.  1.Get some studying done for my Master’s 2. Get my manuscript back out there.  3. Take a good long look at my travel plans. 

Pay Day July 2013

So my monthly pay check is in for a total of $3,598.39.  During the month of June I also earned $400 from renting one of my spare rooms and $158 tutoring.  Both extra amounts went against my mortgage.  

Housing 40% - $1,439.35

Mortgage - $646.62

House Maintenance - $315.00

Housing Taxes - $192.00

House Insurance - $72.00

Utilities – $213.73

Total – $1,439.35

Savings 10% - $359.83 – All going to my RRSP

Debt 10% - $359.83

Transportation 15% - $539.75

Bus Pass – $68.25

Train - $0

Other - $0

Car Savings – $471.50

Total - $539.75

Life 25% - $899.63

Emergency Savings - $233.15

Travel - $175

Food - $160

Cell – $30

Internet - $50

Health Insurance – $23.52

Clothes - $10

Gifts - $10

Misc - $20

Big Ticket Item - $100

Entertainment - $10

Social/Sports - $5

Financial Planning - $14

Slush – $58.96

Total - $899.63

Of Note:

-My Emergency Fund is now fully funded meaning that this money will be redirected to paying off my mortgage. 

-My financial goals have been updated here (except the house my mortgage payment only come out on the 8^th), and I have moved forward in all goals (except the house)

-I continue to be able to put most of my transportation budget towards savings for a car since I have been able to get around with only my bus pass and the occasional ride from a friend

-Some reshuffling concerning budgeting methods and financial goals will be coming soon, stay tuned!

Wedding Season

Let me first wish each and every one of you a happy Canada Day.  There is nothing like spending a day celebrating the fact that you live in one of the most privileged and peaceful places on earth.  But I digress.

My weekend absence from this blog was for a very good reason.  My brother got married on Saturday, which naturally necessitated a three day long celebration (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.)  I must say that their wedding was exemplary in it's sensibility.  (I know that's what every bride wants to hear.)  But it really was nice and only once did I see someone running around like a chicken with his head cut off (and that fire was but out quite quickly.)

Instead of pomp and circumstance the emphasis was on spending time with family.  Friends supplied both the venue and the play list.  Family hosted the parties on Friday and Sunday, and supplied the cakes.  Knowing that most family members would be coming a great distance to join in the festivities the bride and the groom requested that there be no presents.  For them having family come to spend the day with them was present enough.

Of course several family members brought presents anyways, myself included.  (Let's be realistic now, it's been years since I did what my brother told me.)  That said, I didn't go over board on the present.  It cost me maybe $10, oh yes, and about 150 hours of work.  I don't think that popular culture appreciates home made gifts as much as they use to.  Even though making something yourself takes much more effort and thought than picking something up at the store (no matter the price) ever could.

Bad Scenario Game

I like to play something that I call the bad scenario game.  The idea is to imagine a scenario that you could plausibly find yourself in that would cause you some level of hardship and create a theoretical plan for how to deal with it.  For example:

Say tomorrow I lost my job.  What would I do in the short term (next couple of days), medium term (months) and long term.

Short Term
- Immediately go to the bank and return my monthly mortgage payment to it's normal amount (I currently pay and extra 10% each month to pay it off faster)
- Take stock of everything I have laying around in various savings accounts
- Collect my last pay check and make sure that it will cover two months worth of expenses (which is pretty easy when you live of 50% of your income)
- Contact my disability insurance company and let them know that I lost my job (which means in two months time I would be able to start collecting disability benefits to the tune of $3,535.50 a month gross)
- Update resume

Medium Term
- Begin Master's program as planned
- Use disability payments to save the amount that would be required to support me between the end of November 2014 (when my disability payments run out) and April 2015 (when I would be finished my Master's degree
- Look for work as a Teachers Assistant and/or Research Assistant with my University
- Depending on my success for finding a TA/RA role, scope out possible RN jobs in the community that I would be physically able to handle
- Build portfolio of skills that would increase employability, which would likely include becoming involved in a number of different research and teaching areas

Long Term
-Use Veteran's Affairs assistance and my priority hiring status to find a stable long term (physically undemanding) job
- Job search would likely extend beyond provincial borders, so I would prepare to transfer my qualifications from my current college to another one

The short and long of it is that there are a lot of things that I could do in the short and long term to recover from the crises.  Some of these steps I have taken in the past when facing job lose some are unique to my current situation.

The point of the Bad Scenario Game is not to freak you out at all the things that could possibly go wrong in your life time.  The point of the game is to prove to yourself that even when the worst happens (yes, bad things are going to happen in all of our lives) you have the capability of getting through it and being happy during the process.

Every one need superhero's . . . Even bloggers

No, I'm not talking about a guy in tights and a red cape, I am talking about an idol.  You know, the person either real or fictional who embodies a set of ideals that you wish to live up too.  That sort of hero.  I have recently found a financial superhero who embodies what I find to be the highest level of financial thinking and commitment to common sense principals.  His name is Mr. Money Mustache.

As you can see by the link above he runs his own blog, which a ran across a couple of months ago.  At first I was blown away by the fact that I had finally found a personal finance blog that wasn't all about getting out of debt. Instead it was about a philosophy of money that is shockingly close to my own.  I read the entire backlog of articles in a couple of months and would frequently find myself smiling and nodding to myself at what I was reading, it just made so much sense.  It's well researched, well written and funny to boot.

That said I believe that I can say with confidence that I am a Mustachian through and through, even when I didn't know it.  Reading about the MMM family I can look forward to what my life could very well look like in as little as 10 to 17 years.

I am a Mustachian, I am proud of it, and I am on the road to financial freedom!  (Hope to see you along the way.)

It's not about the elastic

Meet my current hair elastic.  I say current because I tend to only have one on the go at a time.  I put it on in the morning, it keeps my hair out of my face all day, and then it sits on my bedside table while I sleep until it is time to wear it again.  As you may have noticed it looks a tad ragged.  About 2 months ago it popped while I was putting it in my hair, the elastic had snapped.  Not having a spare on me at the time I made do with it until I realized that I wasn't making do, it was working as well as it ever had. Two months later and the elastic has broken in 7 different spots.  Believe it or not, it still works.  But, as the title says, this post isn't about the elastic.

This post is about the attitude.  I'm not going to calculate the savings that result from using a worn out elastic.  Quite frankly I don't care.  What I care about is the impact of it, or lack there of.  Imagine for a moment that you lived on an island.  For every new thing that you created a square inch of the island would become desert, and forever unusable.  Every time you abandoned an item, be it from boredom or  breakage, it would perpetually take up one square inch of the island.  And since this thought experiment is my own little game, the garbage isn't sitting in your otherwise useless desert area, it's in your backyard.

If this though experiment were true how quickly would you throw things away?  How quick would you be to buy or make new things?  Could you avoid running out of space?  The reality is that we are on an island.  An island in the middle of space, with no where else to go.  The exchange isn't one for one, when it comes to the making of new things or the disposal of old.  There is, however, and exchange.

This post isn't about elastics or hairpins.  It's not about toasters or chairs or supersonic jets.  It's about the utilization of resources, and the disposal of things no longer wanted.  This is about our island, and keeping it a place where we all want to live.