Is Getting Your Own Food Cheaper, Part 3

One big part of sustainability (to me) is food.  What you eat, how often you eat it, what your food eats, where it comes from, how it gets to your fridge and so on.  There are so many variables to how your food comes to your plate that affect all of my favorite topics: finances (cost), sustainability (transportation/”food miles”, growing practices/feeding, inputs/fertilizers/hormones/etc) and health (what you eat/how much/how often).  In an effort to lower my own impact, I’ve been focusing on getting my own food – mostly meat, but hopefully next summer I can try my hand at gardening.  When I do go out and get my own food, I like to do a bit of cost/benefit analysis.  Was it worth it for me to get it, or should I just save the time/money and buy it at the store?  If you’re curious you can find part one (halibut) and part two (duck) on the site.

This time, the hunt was for elk.  Here’s what it cost:

  • Elk Tag: $52
  • Conservation Stamp for 2011:  $12.50  – This is something anyone in wyoming who is hunting or fishing has to purchase.  Usually they use the money for land conservation.  The stamp is good for 1 calendar year.
  • Conservation Stamp for 2012: $12.50 – Unfortunately, these stamps are good for a calendar year, not from year to date purchase.  Since I didnt get an elk in 2011, I had to buy a new one.  Feeling like I was buying these things all the time annoyed me (and I didnt want to forget), so I bought a lifetime conservation stamp for $180.50.  I just used the yearly cost here though.  If the price stays the same, I’ll be money ahead in 15 years, and sooner if the price goes up.
  • Gun/Ammo: Borrowed/given to me – but this will be an expense in the future.  Obviously the gun will be a 1 time expense, but not the ammo.
  • Gas: $200 – This area isn’t really close to my house at all and I’d guesstimate I used 3 tanks of gas I wouldn’t have used otherwise.  I went up a total of 5 times and I took my truck 2 of those times, using a full tank both times.  The third was for meeting the rest of my group.
  • Foil/Saran Wrap: $8 – Yes, even though I bought some in Alaska, I needed more to process my elk meat.
  • 750 mL of whiskey: $11 – Needed.
  • Grinding: Free – Usually I pay to have the tougher cuts ground into burger meat, but a co-worker has a grinder that she is willing to let me use, which is a huge score!

Obviously, that’s quite a long list, and the total is $297, which is about what I spent on the halibut (go figure) but  is still a whole slew of money.

Before I went out last Saturday, I was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing, figuring that I’d thrown all that cash down the drain and not gotten anything from it (for the second year in a row)!  Even after I ate my lunch on Saturday, and we had finished our loop and were headed back to the truck, I was ready to go home and had made the decision to give it up for the season.  Thankfully, we stumbled upon some tracks and I was able to bring one down after some stalking.  So once I drug the thing back to the truck (2 miles!) and went home, I had to get to work processing and weighing. After everything was deboned, I had 58 lbs of meat.  This is meat of all different grades and qualities, from things that need to be slow cooked or ground because they aren’t tender to things that are very, very tender and tasty.  (Pictures: Pre deboned meat from 1 rear leg, and a de-boned rear leg [pic1, pic2]).  I basically spent most everyday from Saturday to Thursday trimming the silver off, and spent about 3 hours last this Saturday wrapping everything up.  Obviously, it doesn’t end once you’re out of the field.

I had to cut all of the silver off so the meat wouldnt taste gamey, and I’m guessing that was about 5 pounds, leaving me with about 53 pounds of useable meat.  This puts my total cost per pound at $5.12, which I think is pretty good.  While not all of what I got is “steak” quality, it is all organic, grass fed, pasture raised, etc.  Overall, that’s a pretty cheap price per pound for meat like that – I’ve done the math on buying a side of beef and it comes out somewhere between 6 and 7 bucks a pound (at least around here).  I figure this is a pretty good comparison, so I’m happy with the results.

I also don’t think I’ll need to do this again next year.  H is a vegetarian, so I’ve got all of this to eat myself or give away.  I’ve already given some away  and will probably give away more. I’ll save the ground elk meat for my bachelor party this summer and probably keep the rest and hopefully find some good elk sausage recipes or elk chili recipes (shockingly, I had enough freezer room after my quest to eat freezer stuff).  The unfortunate thing about this is that I could have spent all of that money and came up with nothing, but that is just how it all works.  Buying a tag isnt like buying the meat off the carcass – it does take a considerable amount of time and effort, but to me it’s worth it.

Since this was my first elk hunt, I needed to do a lot of work to figure out what I needed to bring and everything else like that. There were a lot of great hunting websites around, and one of the best was at www.huntinginsight.com.

Some thoughts on the cost: I try not to put a price on the time I spend outdoors in some gorgeous country (if you want to know what the area looks like, check my facebook picture) because that is subjective, and I could derive more value from it than others (or less).  I also don’t count the benefit of the workout I get, but I do count it towards my workout total for the month – it’s a lot of walking.

Readers: Do you hunt, or are you interested in it?  Are you lucky enough to have a friend that just gives you meat instead of you having to go get it yourself?  Have you ever considered hunting as a (long-term) strategy to save money and increase the quality of your food?

December 2011 Monthly Review

Sorry this is so late – my posting calendar got filled up with end of year things over the holdiays, and I just forgot this was in here!

I’ve been feeling rather uncomfortable with my finances and my debt repayment lately, and I havent been able to quite figure out why.  Looking over my numbers, it looks like I’m making progress, but it doesnt seem like I actually am making progress.  Very frustrating situation, let me tell you.  It also seems like I’ve been having to make  quite a bit of forward purchases that are rather expensive (like my wedding suit).  Obviously, I’ll be able to wear it more than once, but it was still a large chunk of money.  Through of 2011 I was only able to make (read: choose to make) 1 payment on my debt above the minimums, and even ended up getting screwed on that (thanks, direct loans).

This year, I’m trying to renew my focus on finances after taking a break of a little over a year.  I’ve got a few wedding related expenses that are coming up so I’ll need to watch out for those.  I still need to pay for my suit (I picked one out, but wont be paying for it until I pick it up), I need a shirt and a tie as well.  I’ve got to pay for some march madness tickets for a mini vacation in march with H and her sister and buy a conservation stamp for hunting.  Other than that, I dont think there will be any more big expenses, so I’ll need to keep up with the small stuff that typically breaks me during the month.

Student Loans

Great Lakes Loan $11,247($98)  I hate this loan.  It never goes down.

Truck Loan

Ford Credit: $9,161 ($302):  This one will be my next target.  Just made the minimum payment here, and am hoping to get more to pay towards it in january. I’m hoping i’ll be able to have it paid off by the time I get married.  I’ve also figured out another game for this to help me pay it down faster, which you’ll read about friday.

Health Goals

Though the year is out, i’m still going to keep this going in my monthly reviews.  Since I’ve got a goal of running a marathon for next year, i’ll be counting runs in this as well.  I’ve got my marathon training all mapped out, and I start at the end of this month!

Goal Workouts: 20

Total Visits: 8

Not great this month, but I was on the road for quite a bit and wasnt able to use my home gym.  Of course, that’s just an excuse, but now that I’ve got focused goals for next year, i’m hoping to blow this one out of the park for the year.  I’d like to keep up my weight lifting as well as adding running to the mix, so that should be pretty easy to make.  I wont start my marathon program until february, but I’ll be “priming” in january, running a few miles a couple of days per week (probably 3 miles a clip, 2 times per week for those curious.

One thing I am happy about is that this post used to be about 1,000 words, and now that i’ve eliminated 5 of 7 debts, it’s less than 500!

Sustainability Goals 2012

Since it’s the first week of 2012, I figured that I’d share my goals for 2012 with all of you.  I don’t list every goal in every category, but I do put the ones that I feel relate to the things we talk about on the blog.

Every year for the past 6 or so years, I’ve tried to set some yearly goals for myself.  I have found that instead of writing them all down on a piece of paper and trying to go after all of them at the same time, it was easier for me to break them down into categories.  That way, they didnt get to be too large, and by defining the large categories, I was also able to make sure that I was doing things that I truly find important, such as staying healthy, getting my finances in order and trying to live a more sustainable life all around.   I usually share those 3 categories on the blog, and on my goals sheet that I write everything down on, I have a few other categories, like personal and a grab bag category of sorts.  Last year, I didnt really set any sustainability goals specifically, but getting a job in the city where I lived definitely helped me be more sustainable because I was driving less.

This year though, I thought i’d come up with a few sustainable goals, which are heavily subject to change, mainly because I dont own my own place (yet).  I’ve thought about a few and if I cant do all of them, I’ll still give some of them a try.  Here’s what they are.

  1. Plant a freaking garden.  This, unfortunately, is subject to landlord approval.  I’ve already talked to him about it, but I’m not sure if he’s going to go for it.  It’s kind of in a dead patch in the yard, so all I’d really have to do is get some lumber (was hoping to use railroad ties, but the creosote kinda spooked me).  I really want to try this next year because I even wrote about how having a garden would green your summer.  Even though I’m sure I’ll be busy with wedding stuff most of the summer, I’ll still want to give this one a go.  It shouldnt cost that much either, because I can get a truck bed full of composted soil for about 20 bucks from the city.  If I dont get approval from my landlord, I’ll try to get something going in some pots – probably commonly used herbs around my house like basil and mint.
  2. Make some papercrete.  I really think this stuff is cool, and I’ve been saving paper at my office to bring home (dont tell H) and make some at some point.  I think this stuff would be perfect to use instead of lumber for raised garden beds, and I’m sure I could find some other uses for it.  Hopefully this stuff wont be too easy to make.  (If you’re curious about what it is, check out my guest post on sustainable personal finance)
  3. Continue using human power for most traveling.  Most of the places I go are nearby my home and office, so I’ve been walking or biking there recently.  This is not only good for my health, but it keeps the miles off of the truck and keeps the environment healthier, all while saving me some gas money.  The only places that I do drive are to the grocery store and to target when shopping needs to be done.  There have also been times when I’ve needed to go multiple places and pick something up, or it has been really cold when I’ve driven somewhere I’d usually walk.  I’d like to keep that up for 2012.  More walking and biking, less driving!
I think this is a good list, and there may be a few other things related to sustainability that I do this year, but I’m not going to put them on here – I’ll probably write posts about them though, so you’ll be updated either way.  Most of these are of the “pass/fail” style of goals – meaning that I’ll either end up with one of those two results, and nothing in between.  We shall see how it goes.
Readers:  What are your health goals for the coming year?  Do you have health goals, or are you simply trying to maintain what you’ve got?  Are you goals focused on weight-loss or something different?  

Financial Goals 2012

Since it’s the first week of 2012, I figured that I’d share my goals for 2012 with all of you.  I don’t list every goal in every category, but I do put the ones that I feel relate to the things we talk about on the blog.

At the beginning of every year for about the last 6 years I’ve set some goals for myself.  Over the years I’ve found that breaking them down into categories is the best way for me to go.  I typically break my goals into top level categories, such as finances and health.  From those categories, I get down into the nitty gritty – perhaps creating a goal in the “finance” category of “saving X dollars for Y purchase by Z Date”.  Picking the higher level categories allows for me to decide if that category is something that’s really worth focusing on for the year, and picking goals for that category allow me to advance my progress in that category.  My goals started with just a few categories and have now branched out to about 6 categories.

I find it very difficult to write my finance goals list for this year.  Last year it was simple-pay off one student loan and try to pay off the truck.  While I didn’t pay off my truck, I made good progress and I didn’t go into more debt, so I was fairly happy with my results.  This year though, my financial goals won’t just be “mine.”  I’m getting married in July so I can’t have my own financial goals anymore (not that this is a bad thing).  So, it’s something that I’ve been trying to deal with over the final month of the year.  Luckily, H and I have similar financial habits (now that I’ve changed mine, for the most part) and we both enjoy the same things: travel, friends, food, family, etc.  Liking the same things will make it easier to prioritize and make it easier to create goals.  Like me, she’s very debt averse, so that will factor into all of our decisions.  Unlike me, she’s really interested in buying a house.  I’m not against it, I’m just still trying to figure out exactly what I’d like in a house so that I can better communicate that to her and try to get us on the same page.  A potential house purchase is something we have been talking about for some time, and we are starting to get closer and closer to what we want in a future home.  As it’s looking now, me figuring out what I want isn’t going to happen right away, so we may just set a large savings goal for a house downpayment (in addition to what we’ve been saving for the past 15 or so months) for the end of the year, to be used sometime in the future.  I told her a long time ago that I wasn’t willing to sign a 30 year note (15 years for this guy), told her why, then showed her the numbers – she seemed to be OK with that, so that’s something else out of the way.

Unfortunately, all of this leaves me in a lurch for 2012.  Whether or not I complete my goals is no longer a matter of how low I can get my expenses, how high I can get my income, and simply paying off debts.  Now I have to think about what’s best for both H and I, given our goals for the future and taking into account both of our situations.  I can’t just say “pay off truck in 2012” I have to see if that’s the best use of our available cash, and how H feels about doing that.  I’m not getting married until July though, so I think I’ll set some first part of the year goals and then revisit sometime after we get married and get situated and used to married life.

The first goal that I’ll have is to not add any new debt from now until the wedding.  This shouldn’t be that hard, but it could be a bit difficult, so I just want to put it out there.  I’ve got a lot of things to prepare for in terms of wedding clothing, gifts, etc.  I’d love to be able to cash flow all of the things that I need to buy (which I will post about later).  I think this will also keep me from going overboard on weddings (much easier than you’d think).

My next goal is to pay down half of the truck loan.  I initially thought about trying to pay off the remaining ~9,000 by the wedding date so that when I got married, the only debt that I would bring is my final student loan.  Though I don’t think I’ll be able to make that, i’d really like to lower the amount on this loan quite a bit before I get married.  I think I can do this by keeping my wedding expenses to a minimum and getting creative in other areas, such as going out and travel.  If I can cut these things down, this goal should be no problem.

The final goal is to create joint financial goals with H after we get married.  Obviously, once this is done we can continue to move forward as a couple with our joint goals, and work to complete them together.  Right now, I’ve got a bit of an idea about what will shake out of that conversation and be transferred onto paper.  Once that happens, I’ll probably update you all on the new set of financial goals, and our methods to get there.  .

Readers:  What are your health goals for the coming year?  Do you have health goals, or are you simply trying to maintain what you’ve got?  Are you goals focused on weight-loss or something different?  

Health Goals 2012

Since it’s the first week of 2012, I figured that I’d share my goals for 2012 with all of you.  I don’t list every goal in every category, but I do put the ones that I feel relate to the things we talk about on the blog.

Every year for the past 6 years, I’ve created goals for myself.  I wasnt too good with the tracking thing in  the early years, but I’ve gotten better recently.  (also, while editing my goals posts, I wrote I’d been having goals for different amounts of time in every post i’d written).  I decided to break up my goals into categories last year, and I’m doing the same this year.  The following are my goals for getting/staying healthy throughout the year.

This year of course comes with a little added incentive because I’m getting married.  While I dont mind looking like a tool at my wedding, I dont want to be overweight or unfit – in fact, just the oppisite.  I’d rather be in the best shape of my life, or close to it anyway.  Hopefully the goals I’ll set will help with that.

The first health goal for the year will be to run a marathon.  I don’t really think this will be that difficult.  Im a very function oriented person (if X, then Y) so my plan is to pick a marathon that I’d like to do before the wedding and then follow a simple training program.  I’ve already found a training program that i’d like to do, and have identified a few marathons that I’d like to do (both are in june, providing me 6 full weeks to get really fat before my wedding).  I think that H may run it with me, but she’s only interested in running a half marathon, so her training wont be quite as extensive as mine, but at least I’ll have a training buddy.  As far as I’m concerned though, I just have to follow the steps on my training program week in and week out, and I’ll be fine.  That may be simplistic thinking, but I dont need to get all worked up over it.  As of right now, I’m looking at 2 races, both in the beginning of june pretty hard, and one potentially in may, but it is a trail run so I’m not sure that I’m quite up for that yet.

The next health goal is slightly subjective (which makes for a poor goal) but I’m going for it anyway.  H and I will be spending plenty of time lounging around on the beach during our honeymoon, and obviously I dont want to look like a troll.  Unfortunately, there’s no way I’ll look as good as she will, but either way I’d like to be in good shape for my honeymoon.  How I’ll define this I havent figured out yet, but hopefully I’ll come up with something.

I’d also like to eat more veggies.  Next summer, H and I are going to be getting veggies in our CSA along with our friut, and I’d like to make sure that none of that ends up in the compost heap.  In order to do this, I’ll need to eat more veggies next year, both as snacks and sides, as well as main dishes.  So, one of my goals for next year will be to eat vegetarian at dinner 3 times per week.

I think that those goals should keep me occupied in the health sector for a while, and nothing looks like it will be too difficult (other than following the plan).  One thing I was told to watch out for is my marathon – It seems like there are quite a bit of injuries during training for a race, so I’ll need to watch out for that.

Readers:  What are your health goals for the coming year?  Do you have health goals, or are you simply trying to maintain what you’ve got?  Are you goals focused on weight-loss or something different?  

Year In Review

There are only a few days left in 2011, and it was quite the year for me.  I did a lot of traveling, did a lot of writing, lots of interaction with the yakezie and even my first blog conference.  I’d like to go back and look at how I started the year and how I finished the year (just like last year) to give everyone hope that debt repayment is possible and one reason I think you should focus on it: freedom.  Unfortunately, I didnt pay off as much debt as I did last year, but I was able to thoroughly enjoy the fruits of my labor from last year.  I had more cash flow, and I participated in quite a few weddings and bachelor parties, all out of state.  I didn’t have to say no to any of my good friends when they asked me to stand with them at their weddings or just asked me to attend because I “couldnt afford it”.  That in and of itself was awesome.

Along with all the travel this year, I also got engaged to an awesome woman and someone that I’m excited to share my life with.  I got a new job  so that I didn’t have to drive 100+ miles every day to and from work, and while the savings in dollars didn’t materialize right away, I do enjoy having a 7 minute commute instead of having a 50 minute one (though it sucks when it’s cold out).  Along with all of those, I did tons of work toward finishing my masters, and it should be officially done by May, 2012 – 3 years after I was supposed to be done, and 5 years after I started in the fall of 2007.  Better late than never?  I kept up with my goals for the year 2011 as best I could, and didn’t really totally fail at anything.  Though my spending got off track for a while, it was because I was taking money that would normally be used for debt repayment and spending it on something that I enjoy (spending time with friends and traveling) – which is more than OK with me.  Even though I would have liked to be totally out of debt before I did this, I didn’t add any new debt, so that’s all that matters.

Debt:

At the beginning of 2011, I had debts from 2 student loans and 1 vehicle loan, totaling $33,854(!!!) broken down as follows:

  • Truck Loan: $17,695
  • Student Loans (2):  $16,158
This was a far cry from all the old demands on my paycheck, when I had 7 different debts that I had to make minimum payments on.  That was a lot of people coming after my check before I could use it how I wanted, and the tax man isn’t even in those 7.  I was able to eliminate 4 of those in 2010, leaving me with 3 in 2011.  My goals for 2011 were to pay off the smaller student loan (~6k) and the truck loan.  I was able to pay off the student loan (despite tons of problems), as well as make significant progress on the truck thanks to a low interest rate on the loan and a hail storm.  After all that progress, here’s where I am now:
  • Truck Loan: $9,466
  • Student Loan (only 1 left): $11,359
The total remaining for my debt is $20,825  and it has gone down by $13,209.  Last year, I was able to pay down 17,964.  This year was a little bit lower than last year, but I’m still happy about the total.  The number is going down and not up, thankfully.  The only reason that my debt didn’t go up at all is because I worked so hard in 2010 to make sure my finances were on the right track.  However had I not done that, I would have either had to skip out on close friends weddings and bachelor parties, or put everything on a credit card.
How did you do this year?  Did you build up reserves, pay off debt, or do neither or both?  What are you looking to do next year?

Year End Goals Review

It’s getting towards the end of the year, and it’s a great time to review the goals that I had for the year and how I fared with them.  I put some of my goals up on the site, and you can find them here.  I’ve also been doing some quarterly updates that you can read if you’re curious (Q1, Q2, Q3) but this is the final one  for this year, and soon will come goals out for 2012.  While I didnt put my goals all on the website, I did put goals for my finances and my health on here.  Goals not included were either mean to be a surprise or were not relevant to the topics on this blog, so I left them off.  So, without further ado, here were my goals and how I fared with them in 2011.

Financial Goals

  1. Pay off my Direct Loan.  The balance for this loan as of 12/31/10 will be right around $4,250.   While this wont help out my cash flow that much, it’s still by far the lowest loan balance  that I have.  I’m hoping that this will be paid off in Q1, and it should be if I can get back to my gazelle intensity that I lost in December.
Success!  I had a pretty ambitious goal of paying this off in the first quarter, but was rudely woken up when tax season came around.  I ended up using money that was supposed to be for debt repayment to pay both state and federal income tax.  After that, it was mostly traveling during the summer that ate up my extra money for loan payments, and once I was finally ready to pay it off, they lost the check.  Eventually (mid november) I was able to pay it in full.
  1. Pay Off Truck.  This goal is going to be a heavy lift, but I think that I can do it this year.  I’ve been debating if I should pay this off first or move on to the next lowest balance.  In the end, the truck is going to win out because of the amount of cash that it’s going to free up.  The balance on this note as of 12/31/10 is $17,979.
Fail!  Although I knew last year that this would probably be a bit too far out of reach, I decided to put it on here anyway so even if I ended up failing, i’d be pretty far ahead of where I was supposed to be.  I didnt make extra payments on the loan, but got a huge insurance check from a hail storm and was able to put that towards the value of the loan.  After borrowing 21,000 in December of 2009, The loan balance is near 9,000 now, which I’m more than fine with.  I originally financed the note for 6 years, but it should be long gone before then.

Health Goals

  1. Establish a routine at the gym.  I seem to be teetering on the brink of a solid schedule of gym attendance, and I’d really like to have it gel into a nice routine this year.  Unfortunately, this goal sits a bit at odds with my goal of paying off my debt (because I spend extra time working more to earn more).  I’ve got a spreadsheet tracking my progress, and I’m aiming for 4 days a week at the gym (if anyone cares, tuesday, thursday, saturday and sunday).  I think I can do this and stay focused on all of my other projects.  I’ll share these results in my monthly reviews so you can keep up as well.
Semi-Success.  I got into a pretty good routine during the first 8 or so months of the year, but kind of fell off after that.  Though I was able to regain a bit in December, I’ll be back in full force with all of the other new years resolution people in January and February, but I’ll still be there when they drop off in march.
  1. Identify an unhealthy eating behavior and stop it.  After thinking about this for a while, I’ve decided that instead of stopping an unhealthy behavior, I’m going to start a healthy one.  I’ve decided that I’m going to eat vegetarian 1 or 2 dinners per week (my breakfasts are sometimes vegetarian, and I can switch my lunch if I want).  This will give me 1 or 2 days of full vegetarian food per week, which should do great things for my health.
Success!  This went really well, quite unexpectedly.  H decided that she wanted to become a vegetarian (though she does eat fish) so that made my meal planning much easier.  When I wanted to do a vegetarian night, I’d just eat whatever she was eating.