Groceries

I have been thinking a lot about groceries lately. How much I spend on them, ways to reduce that amount. I have had an account on Mint.com for over a year so I have last year's records all neatly compiled. There are still a few mistakes and uncategorized items but the vast majority are correct. That's why I know that last year I spent an average of $20 a day on groceries. That's $140 a week. This doesn't count eating out, of course. I'll deal with that another day.

One way to cut back on groceries is to reduce the number of processed foods I buy. Sometimes processed foods - by which I mean frozen or refrigerated ready-to-eat-quickly foods - are just what I need. When I can't stand to cook anything I can usually throw something in the microwave, and really, that's cheaper, usually, than eating out. However, these meals are usually not the healthiest I could eat, so I have another motivation for cutting back.

I have been reducing the number of veggie meats and cheese I buy, in particular. These items tend to be pricey and do not have real health benefits (except as compared to animal meats and cheeses, which I do not buy at all).

I also purchased an electric pressure cooker and a juicer this year. I have been making good use of them both.

Some things affect the total:
* when I am in Las Vegas visiting daughters I often buy groceries for several of us.
* I bought a Groupon for a vegan food delivery service (frozen food) that kept me using the microwave for several days - I think I bought the Groupon in December but I've been using it just recently, so it is not included in the totals this year.

So, acknowledging that such calculations are not perfect, how am I doing so far this year?

In January and February I spent $1111.35 on groceries.  That's $18.82 per day. Down from last year, so far. My modest goal for March: bring the three-month total down to $18 per day. To do that, I will need to spend no more than $509 this month on groceries. Honestly, you'd think a single person would have no problem with that! And yet.

Utilities

Expenses. I aim to reduce my expenses. To do so, I need to know what I am paying, so I can set goals.

I'm starting with an item that isn't much of a hot button: utilities. I pay "submetered" gas and electric bills along with my space rent each month. I live in a mobile home park. This means that somebody checks my meters once a month, and it isn't always consistently on the same day.

I have created a spreadsheet showing my gas and electric bills over the past year, compared to this year:

Variables to consider:

* Meters not checked consistently every month

* Weather affects use of gas especially

* Utility companies increase rates from time to time

* I travel, sometimes for ten days to a couple of weeks

I want to reduce my electric bill especially. Even though I feel I use gas more, it costs less, so I am less concerned about it. To that end I have started to shut off my computer every night (I had been leaving it on just about forever) and I am trying to curb my daytime television habit (something I picked up when recuperating from my first knee replacement). This is a vague goal but a goal nonetheless. I started making these changes some time in February, so my March bill may reflect the change. Let me go look (I haven't paid it yet but will in the next couple of days).

Hmmmm. The electric bill is $77.90 (gas is $49.74). Sheesh. The gas bill is way up. That may be because I got my heater working and I reveled in its warmth, keeping it at 72 degrees and even higher. The weather was also unusually cold. So far not what I'd call progress.

Resurrection Time

I am back. I'm taking this blog to the next level: getting serious about my money. Watch for revelations! Hear me cry!

I am going to reveal here as much as I can stand of my present situation, in the hopes that I will find ways to reduce my spending and get my income to exceed my outgo. Yes! You heard it here first!

Mail from Lending Club

I got this in my inbox today:

Dear Judith,

Lending Club has started a process to register, with the appropriate securities authorities, promissory notes that may be offered and sold to lenders through our site in the future. Until we complete the registration process, we will not accept new lender registrations or allow new commitments from existing lenders. We will continue to service all previously funded loans during this period, and lenders will be able to access their accounts, monitor their portfolios, and withdraw available funds without changes.

The borrowing side of our site will remain generally unaffected by this registration process; borrowers can continue to apply for loans and new loans posted after April 7, 2008, will be funded and held only by Lending Club.

Until the registration process is completed, the company will undergo a quiet period and will not be able to respond to press and other inquiries about Lending Club or the registration process during that time.

Q&A:

Q1. What about money I have begun moving, but is still in transit to Lending Club?
A1.1. If you are in the process of verifying your bank account, you will be able to complete that verification but will not be able to add new funds
A1.2 If you have initiated a transfer, the funds will be displayed in your Lending Club account balance as soon as those funds are available.
A1.3 If you have uncommitted funds, you may request that Lending Club return those funds via the same method used to load the funds. For example,
• If you have initiated an ACH to add funds, these funds will be transferred into your Lending Club account but you will not be able to lend these funds out. You can go into your Lending Club account once the ACH transfer has been completed and withdraw funds back into your linked bank account..
• If you've wired funds into your Lending Club account and have not yet committed these funds into loans, you can send a request to support@lendingclub.com for us to wire these funds back to you at no charge.
• If you've sent funds by check, and have not yet committed these funds into loans, you can send a request to support@lendingclub.com for us to send you a check by mail for the same amount at no charge.

Q2. What about referrals?
A2.1 The current referral program is terminated. If you have referred someone who has already signed up as a lender or a borrower, or if you have been referred by someone and have already signed up as a lender or a borrower, you will be receiving your referral payment within the next few days.

Sincerely,

Patrick Gannon
Senior Vice President
Lending Club
440 N Wolfe Road
Sunnyvale CA 94085
www.lendingclub.com


What this means is that uncommitted money I have in my account can't go to work there. I have to take it out to get it working, for an unspecified amount of time. What it means is no more referrals. And all this is out of the blue. I'm not impressed. But I've got his address. And so do you.

Credit unions: why I am considering a move

The other day I received a notice from my bank - Washington Mutual - that five debits had not cleared my account and therefore I was charged $30 per transaction for the overdraw - a total of $150. I discovered the problem when I was glancing at my accounts for another reason, before I got a notice from the bank.

I made a mistake. I have two checking accounts there and each has a debit card. Somehow the card I normally use had gotten shoved down in my wallet and the other one, which I normally do not use, was staring out at me. I used the wrong card for those transactions and therefore overdrew that account.

I wrote to the bank to ask

1) why don't they let me know the day the overdraw occurs, and
2) how about reversing some of those charges.

They wrote back. Sorry can't reverse the charges. For my convenience they did overdraw the account rather than bounce the checks.

I wrote back. What about my first question? And why are your fees so ridiculously high?

The answer: WaMu does offer the option of sending alerts. The message went on to describe how to set it up to get alerts. Fees are always being reviewed to be competitive with the industry.

Of course I already get alerts. Just not in time. And fees being set to be competitive? How about setting them to draw customers or keep the ones you have? The messages clearly were standardized. I guess the person answering picks out a couple of key words and sends the appropriate response.

In other words, I got no satisfaction. My daughter Elaine mentioned that she is looking into getting a credit union account instead because of the ridiculous fees and the delays in clearing checks whenever she and her husband deposit a large check.

I am now in the midst of choosing a credit union myself. What I hope to find is one that offers the options I find most valuable - free billpay, for example - as well as better rates for savings and lower fees for everything. My first step was to go to bankrate.com.

Bankrate.com offers a page: Six ways to find a credit union. For me, the big find on this page was CUNA: The Credit Union National Association.

On this site I found a page that helps one find a credit union. Because I am not employed right now and do not belong to any organizations (other than animal rights and eco types) or to any church, I simply entered my city, county, and state. Five matches turned up. I am now set to evaluate those matches.

Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Levitt and Dubner repeatedly say that this book does not have a "theme". And in the sense that Blink or The Tipping Point have themes, they are right. But it does have a fundamental focus: on "conventional wisdom".

Levitt, as an economist, has made his name by asking different questions - like "do teachers cheat?" - and by finding ways to sort data to get the answers he is looking for. Dubner interviewed Levitt for a NYT article a while back and soon a collaboration was born - the collaboration that yielded this book. Both Levitt and Dubner appear to be good writers, as evidenced by the Freakonomics blog at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/, where both post individual as well as joint articles. I sense that the overall style of the book is more Dubner than Levitt, based on my seeing Dubner speak at Prosper Days (see my articles on Prosper Days at http://fightdebt.blogspot.com/search/label/Prosper%20Days).

In this book we find answers to a wide range of questions that few people would think to ask, about topics from sumo wrestlers to parenting. What does it have to do with economics? Simply that it has to do with how people get what they want - and how people can be encouraged to do the right thing and avoid doing the wrong thing. The outline of the entire book can be found in Dubner's original article, which is included as part of the additional material in this book, along with selected blog posts and heavy-duty footnotes.

I for one really did want a bit more of a theme than this non-theme, but I do think the basic premise is sound and a good reason for people to read the book - it is important to question conventional wisdom. For example, at one point another economist read Levitt's original article on the relationship between abortion and the drop in crime, and he said (I'm paraphrasing), "I have read this over and over and I can't find anything wrong with it, but I still don't believe it.". This is how most of us are: we can be faced with incontrovertible evidence but we find it difficult to let go of what we have believed for so long.

Portfolios: Prosper vs Lending Club

*edited 3/26/08
I recently joined Lending Club and added $500 to my account. I received an incentive deposit of $50 - I think because I joined through someone else's link. (You too can get an incentive when you join - click on the link to the right.)

Today I created a portfolio on Lending Club. I have six portfolios on Prosper. Here is a quick comparison of the two:

Lending Club:

There are actually two types of portfolios on Lending Club. The notes below apply to the automatic portfolio, known as LendingMatch. The other type is formed when you choose individual loans.

• $500 minimum for each portfolio
• Choice of "risk levels" from low to high but no other options
• $25 bids on each loan are automatically set - that is, the portfolio automatically bids $25 on each loan that fits the criteria. You can change the amount of each bid when you "review" the portfolio.
  

Prosper:

• No minimum for each portfolio
• Wide range of options in addition to risk levels. Can choose to exclude "auto funding", can set no. of delinquencies that are acceptable, can choose to include only those loans that friends of the borrower have bid on, for example.
• You choose the minimum bid ($50 or more).
  

What then?

On Prosper, it takes several minutes before a portfolio chooses loans that meet the criteria. On Lendingclub a list of loans is chosen immediately and you can select some from the list to delete if you like. (On Prosper you can't withdraw from a bid that is placed automatically by your portfolio.)

It takes less time, then, to set up a Lending Club portfolio and you get immediate results. On Prosper, though, you can add more criteria to tailor the loans you make. What works best for you obviously depends on your goals and preferences.