What Could You Learn from Shopping With Your Grandmother?

 

What I Learned Food Shopping With My Grandmother

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I would never need to buy ketchup again! That's like 12 dollars a year or something.

I would never need to buy ketchup again! That’s like $12 a year or something.

I have come to believe that all grandmothers have special powers in the kitchen—especially when it comes to stretching a dollar.

My grandmother keeps more food in her house than any person I know.  She always has 45 pounds of pasta on the stove, five-course meals available to reheat in the fridge, and a larger variety of cereals than the supermarket.

And yet, I’m pretty sure my grandparents’ food bill is less than mine (which consists of instant coffee, ramen, and Reese’s Pieces, if you were wondering).

***

My grandmother has more tricks for cooking meals on the cheap than she does varieties of cereal. I recall a past shopping trip with her and the lessons she shared with me. I should probably start taking her advice before my blood pressure skyrockets from daily ramen (aka salt in a cup).

Come Prepared

Going to the store, my grandmother always has a grocery list and a flyer full of coupons. “You have to have a list,” she said. She adds that, “If you don’t have a list or haven’t clipped coupons, most of the bigger sale items are usually advertised at the front of the store. Look through that first.”

“And you can’t have an empty stomach. You’ll end up putting all sorts of garbage and junk food and snacks in the carriage.” I note that this is probably how I ended up with six packages of mega-stuff Oreos last time I went shopping solo (at three times the filling for a limited time, I can’t help but think it was worth it).

The list my grandmother keeps usually centers on bigger sale items (which she has planned her meals around) like meat. She also carefully calculates the amount she has in coupons, so she knows exactly how much she’ll end up spending and saving at the checkout.

In-Store Strategies

Our trip took us to BJs. List in hand, we first stopped in the meat section. My grandmother rummaged through the packages to find the most recent time stamp. “If you’re paying the same amount, you might as well get the freshest cut,” she explained. “If I don’t use it all today, it will last longest in the fridge.”

After finding a pot roast cut that had been packaged minutes before we arrived, my grandmother directed us to the sample carts (BJs is notorious for setting up carts throughout the store around lunchtime). She wouldn’t be cooking until dinner, and rather than spend money on lunch out, we taste tested all the featured food products.

At check out, the cashier’s grand total was different than my grandmother’s pre-calculations. She was not afraid to ask why and realized a coupon did not ring through. The cashier immediately rectified the problem.

“You don’t have to be rude about it,” she explained. “But there is nothing wrong with wanting to understand where the mistake is.”

Saving Up At Home

After bringing our groceries back to her house, I began unloading. My grandmother explained how her grocery saving habits began. She married my grandfather at 19 and was “very poor,” she said. “I started clipping coupons and learned from there. We … pinched every penny we could.”

In the fridge, I recognized the small container filled with ketchup packets and other types of sauce from various take-out restaurants. She always asks for extra. (“If [we’re] not going to use it now,” my grandmother said, “we can use it later.”)

Also, there were Ziploc bags and Tupperware filled with leftovers.

“Most things can be cooked twice,” she said. “You can make ham or potatoes or egg into a salad with a little bit of mayo; you can bake most things into a casserole dish or even sauté them up in a pan. I never throw out food.”

***

It’s always hard to believe that the wonderful aromas wafting from the kitchen are rejuvenated leftovers, but every time I put the first bite of food to my lips, I relearn the same lesson: waste not, want not … or maybe just that grandmothers are the best. I don’t know.

Let us know how you save on food in the comments!

(Photo: xajondee)

About Sasha Laferte

Sasha Laferte is an intern with the SALT Blog and a junior at Emerson College. She is paying her loans while attending college full time. Find her on twitter @SashaLaferte.

What is the TRUE cost of education? A look at Debt and Jeffery Williams’ “The Pedagogy of Debt”

It’s very apparent that the cost of education is getting a bit out of control. Not only is the actual monetary commitment too high, but our current system of financing education through mega-banks creates serious opportunity costs as well; students have to cater their educational experiences to the reality that they will be paying for their education long after they graduate. In that sense, a holistic approach to education- education catered towards the human development and skills acquisition- is fundamentally being forced into obsolescence. Education as a meritocracy has waned and shifted to a zone where students feel they must accumulate a degree in fairly specific areas of study- such as law or business- to feel they will have the financial stability to pay for their education.

In his engaging and insightful essay The Pedagogy of Debt, Jeffrey Williams argues that the several decades long shift from education being truly state-subsidized service to a privatized service administered by mega-banks has changed our cultural understanding of higher education. No longer is higher-ed a social good but it is now understood as an individual good. He writes, “those who attend university are construed as atomized individuals making a personal choice in the marketplace of education to maximize their economic power.” While ostensibly good for American society as a whole (all the constituent parts, or atoms, adding up to a more prosperous economy), the reality is that it “is based on the conception of society as a market driven by individual competition rather than social cooperation, and it defines social good as that which fosters a profitable market.” Debt, it would seem, has come to dictate our educational processes and decisions, and in that sense, debt is the paradigm around which education, on an individual level, is designed. Debt is the new American pedagogy. Williams points out that initially, higher education was meant to provide a sort of ‘safe-zone’ for young adults, preventing them from being forced into the marketplace prematurely. “The traditional idea of education is based on social hope, providing an exemption from work and expense for the younger members of society to explore their interests, develop their talents, and receive useful training, as well as to become versed in citizenship, in the belief that it will benefit society in the future…the reasoning melds citizenship ideals and utilitarian purpose.” The reality now, though, is that loans from mega-banks are the major source of funding for education and they are designed so that banks are the beneficiaries and not students. According to Williams, “the new paradigm of funding sees the young not as a special group to be exempted or protected from the market, but as already fair game in the market, before they have developed skills and a purchase in the [marketplace]. It extracts more work, like workfare instead of welfare, from students, both in the hours they might clock while in school as well as in loans, which are finally a deferred form of work. Debt puts a sizeable tariff on social hope.” The reality is that the current mode of funding, the structure of federal lending, provides little safety net for students; what should be consumer protections are, in reality, a safety net for banks. Williams cites that despite the bearish state of the market (his paper was written in 2006, so the housing bubble hadn’t yet burst) Sallie Mae had returned an incredible profit rate of 37%.  This all while graduates are struggling to find work and pay off their loans really just trying to stay afloat. There is obviously a huge imbalance in the way higher education is being funded. It would seem that debt has come to supersede an individualized and holistic education and, doing so, that debt becomes the omnipresent pedagogue of our generation. Where education used to be about development and the well-being of the student, it is now more about economic positioning than growth and pursuit of passion. The current system of funding has skewed the scales of opportunity; instead of closing the educational gap and progressing educational meritocracy, it has in fact widened the educational gap. No level of financial literacy education can bridge that gap; the reality is that a fundamental rework of educational financing is the only way we can return to the post WWII ideals of citizenship training and purpose driven approach to education.

Debt is not a ‘necessary evil’ associated with, but extrinsic to, the goal of higher education; debt dictates a host of the lessons actually learned in college. Debt teaches that higher education is a transaction and that students- should i say consumers?- are subject to the market franchises associated with, even intrinsic to, education. Debt informs students’ career choices: students are shying away from careers or passions that don’t provide a certain level of monetary compensation. It doesn’t make financial sense to work a menial part-time job in order to scrape by while working on your creative masterpiece, be it novel, film, collection of poetry, etc. Williams directs attention towards the evidence, “the warp in majors toward business…liberal arts have faded, in real terms, whereas business has grown by more than double, from about 8% before WWII to 22% now. This is not because students have become more venial or no longer care about poetry or philosophy; rather, they have learned the lesson of the world in front of them and chosen according to its, and their, constraints.” Debt has also come to inform our generation’s major worldview; that is, debt teaches that the capitalist market is the primary organizational structure of our time, indeed it teaches that democracy is a market and that there is no reality alternate to that market, “ideas, knowledge and even sex (which is a significant part of the social education of college students) simply form sub-markets.” Civics are now taught by debt as well; if the public sphere operates as a market, then what better way to administer it than as a privatized service? Students are educated to understand that success is predicated on an appropriately capitalist competitive spirit; if you’re not maximizing your economic productivity, you’re engaged pursuits that aren’t worthwhile, even lazy. Furthermore, if a student has to spend a decade (or 2) indentured to the banks, why should that student believe in social entitlements? Taking that a step further, you can draw the conclusion that debt even informs a persons value; there is little distinction between intrinsic qualities and extrinsic qualities when value is measured in financial potential (remember, debt dictates path of study often towards earning potential) and so education is value-added for a student. Williams argues that, in defining people, debt dictates that “you are how much you can make, minus how much you owe. Debt thus teaches the intractability of class. The disparities of wealth are an issue of the individual, rather than society; debt is your own problem, or failing, so you should not complain about it but get a job with a salary to pay it off.”

Now the commentary has no value without suggesting solutions, otherwise it is just a lot of complaining. Williams does provide solutions or at least ideas that may be the start of potential solutions. I feel that for the purposes of this blog post, though, the value exists in discussion about his argument and whether or not the outlook is so bleak as he presents it to be. I do believe that the way higher ed is currently funded is ultimately destructive and self-defeating. However, while the lessons debt forces on students may decidedly inform socio-cultural understandings, I do not believe that extrinsic and intrinsic valuations of an individual are melded to the point that ‘quality’ in a person is derived only from their economic potential, or economic performance. The truth is, though, while that may not yet be the case, if we don’t rework our current system of educational financing, there will be generations of students learning the decidedly harsh lessons discussed above, and who knows, a few generations down the line we may not be looking at things through the same rose-colored lenses. Stay tuned for a discussion of ways in which we can begin to influence change in educational financing….
-Mike

The Deadline has Come and Gone. ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Update

As anticipated, US lawmakers reached an 11th hour agreement last night, which prevents tax rises of $600 billion and across-the-board spending cuts; the deal removes immediate pressure to prevent the fall back into a recession. While it deals with some issues of concern, it by no means addressed the largest issues facing the economy, and so is seen as a sort of ‘bridge’ deal to allow some time and room for maneuvering until a comprehensive deal can be reached in two months time.

The deal has averted some of the immediate concerns making up a portion of the ‘Fiscal Cliff’, such as
  •  tax cuts for individuals earning less than $400,000 have been made permanent.
  •  $65bn of automatic spending cuts for have been postponed for two months
  • benefits, worth $26 billion, for the long-term unemployed will be maintained for another year
  • an $11bn cut in Medicare payments has been postponed for another year.
Some tax increases were allowed to pass, including:
  • The Bush-era income tax cuts for individuals earning over $400,000 is expired, with the top rate increasing from 35% to 40%
  • Certain income tax deductions for individuals earning more than $200,000 are phased out.
  • higher taxes on dividend income, capital gains and inheritance for these same top earners
  • The expiration of the payroll tax break, raising payroll taxes from 4.2% to 6.2%. The expectation is that $95 billion in additional revenue will be raised from the tax increase.

In many ways, as we’ve expected, the deal is a kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to solving overspending by the government.  While economists seem to feel that the expiration of the payroll tax breaks will be the biggest single influence on US consumer spending, the reality is that the much larger issues, the ones that will influence long-term economic growth the most, have not yet been dealt with. The real work will come over the next two months, while lawmakers attempt to reconcile their positions on spending cuts and entitlement programs.

 

An Update on Last Minute Fiscal Cliff Negotiations

So, At The Final Hour, How Do Things Look?

Sunday, Dec. 30th, Republicans and Democrats again picked up negotiations on how to deal with the combination of automatic spending cuts and the expiration of Bush-era tax reductions at the new year. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Vice President Joe Biden took part in what they called “good” talks late into Sunday evening, a McConnell spokesman said. There is a good chance that a failure to reach agreement by the end of today, January 1, could push the US back into recession; higher taxes would rise for virtually every working American and across-the-board government spending cuts will kick in tomorrow (Tuesday the 1st). Analysts agree that failure to reach an agreement could significantly reduce consumer spending, leading to a certain fall off the ‘Fiscal Cliff‘.

Sunday’s negotiations centered on the main sticking points of the as-of-yet to be made deal; primarily discussions focused on income threshold for higher tax rates and inheritance taxes. The income threshold line- and definition of the ‘rich’ have been a major sticking point in negotiations thus far. Yesterday, President Obama blamed Republicans for the deadlock, saying their “overriding theme” was protecting tax breaks for the rich. In an effort to reach some level of middle ground, Democrats have reportedly offered to extend tax cuts for families with income levels up to $450,000 per year, which is a significant increase in the previous earnings threshold sought by Democrats, which would only include tax cuts for families earning under $250,000 per year.

In the event that no agreement is reached in today’s last minute House and Senate meeting, senators will be given the opportunity to vote on a so-called fallback plan proposed by President Obama. The plan would maintain tax cuts on earners under $250,000 and would extend unemployment benefits, but it fails to address the significant spending cuts. Odds are that even if a deal is reached, political infighting will likely continue early in 2013, as the deal will do little to address the original issue of reducing the deficit and the government debt limit.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that on Sunday negotiations were at a standstill, as both parties were still divided over the primary issues noted above. Late Sunday, however, Senate Republicans stated that they have dropped the Republican proposal to slow Social Security payments, the proposal had been hotly contested by Democrats as it would have led to lower benefits to pensioners and the disabled. That is a good sign, as both parties seem to be making concessions in order to create some progress.

Senator McConnell has said that “there is no single issue that remains an impossible sticking point,” but that the problem, or ‘sticking point’ appears to be “a willingness, an interest or courage to close the deal.” In reality, though, it is clear that Republicans, some of whom have taken a cult-like pledge to never raise taxes, believe the deficit is a direct result of excessive government spending and would like to see the tax threshold at the level Democrats have just now acquiesced to – around $450,000, and that increased revenue should be driven by economic growth and cuts to entitlement programs (focusing on social security) that states provide.

Bottom Line
The best of a bad situation won’t necessarily be a great solution, more of a ‘lesser of many bad solutions’ scenario. The most realistic compromise would draw the income line for tax hikes at around $450,000, and potentially preserve top tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The problem is, that even if Biden and McConnell agree, it isn’t guaranteed that Harry Reid would be on board, OR that it could get through the whole Senate OR that it could even get past the House GOP which rejected Boehner’s Plan B deal just last week.

There are numerous competing ideological absolutes at work here- taxing the rich (or not, and how to define the rich), cutting entitlement spending (or not), overturning budget sequestration (or not), and hiking the debt ceiling (you guessed it, or not) just to name the most prominent. With so many factors to work out, it is hard to imagine, or expect, that so much can get worked out within a time horizon that is now measured in hours.

The optimal compromise would likely be straightforward, and would be a bill that simply preserves the status quo for a while, creating a post-election cooling-off period long enough for negotiations to start anew on solid footing. That compromise, though, is improbable if only because the ideological issues are now instruments in a political blame game where a “tie” like the aforementioned outcome (which would serve as a bridge to further negotiations) may not even be a viable outcome for the parties involved. It seems that with no good solutions in sight, market volatility and economic uncertainty will continue to be issues until we either fall of the cliff or we come to a last minute bridge to extend negotiations and the increase the probability of political, and fiscal, resolution.

So, what IS the ‘Fiscal Cliff’? The Short and Sweet of it

It has been a busy time of year for the Peer Financial Assistants program here at U. Maine Farmington, so, while this particular post may be a bit tardy, it is as relevant as ever with the Dec. 31 negotiations deadline looming. For brevity’s sake, this post is meant to provide a working understanding of the core-concepts at work with the Fiscal Cliff, and is by no means a totally comprehensive analysis of the monetary impacts of the decisions lawmakers are faced with making.

What is the “Fiscal Cliff?”
The Fiscal Cliff is a popular term for the problematic budgetary situation that U.S. lawmakers are currently negotiating. It refers to the potential economic effects facing the US in 2013 from tax increases, spending cuts and and the corresponding reduction in the US budget deficit if laws are not changed by the end of 2012.

Why Dec. 31?
At midnight December 31 the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is set to go into effect. The Budget Control Act was the compromise to resolve debt ceiling negotiations. Major programs like Social Security, Medicaid, federal pay (including military pensions and pay) and veteran’s benefits are exempted from the spending cuts. Broad and shallow spending cuts to defense, federal agencies and cabinet departments known as budget sequestration would be results of the Budget Control Act.

Cuts to Government Programs
Spending cuts agreed upon as part of the debt ceiling negotiations of 2011 will begin to go into effect. In fact, Barron’s reported that over 1,000 government programs – including Medicare and the defense budget are facing “deep, automatic cuts.” The laws that lead to the fiscal cliff include the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and planned spending cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Expiration of Tax Cuts
Last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts are set to expire (ie- workers experience a 2% tax increase). The end of the calendar year will also mark the expiration of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax and expiration of tax cuts from 2001-2003. The Fiscal Cliff would also see the enactment of taxes related to President Obama’s health care law.

What are the Options?
To be honest, none of the three options lawmakers are facing in dealing with the Fiscal Cliff are all that attractive.

  1. The first, and most obvious option is to do nothing. If lawmakers allow the current policy scheduled for 2013 go into effect we will see a number of tax increases and spending cuts.
    PRO: The deficit (as a % of GDP) would be halved.
    CON: Tax increases and spending cuts would likely bog down economic growth and possibly send us right back into a recession.
  2. Another option is that lawmakers cancel some, or all, of the tax increases and spending cuts.
    PRO: Could further ‘stimulate’ short-term economic growth
    CON: Would increase the deficit, debt, and the odds that the U.S. could provide a powerful and convincing ‘second act’ to the Eurozone debt crisis.
  3. The third option is a logical progression from the first two, The Middle Ground; lawmakers would opt to address budget issues to a modest extent, extending Bush-era tax cuts but cancelling automatic spending cuts, which would lead to an equally modest impact on growth. If Congress takes the Middle Ground
    Pro: Modest impact on growth, no major economic hit
    Con: Mediocrity; modest impact on growth

Can We Reach a Compromise?

The most relevant factor to consider is the highly partisan nature of the current political environment which has ultimately made compromise difficult to attain. We’ve seen the Fiscal Cliff coming for quite some time (lawmakers have had over a year to deal with the issue) but Congress- bogged down by chronic gridlock- has delayed the search for a solution rather than working to solve it directly. Below, I’ve listed the abbreviated positions as delineated by party affiliation.

Republicans- Cut spending and avoid raising taxes altogether.

Democrats- Find a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

While both Democrats and Republicans wish to avoid the Cliff, compromise is difficult to achieve (especially in an election year!). It is likely that Congress will wait until the 11th hour (as they have). In light of that fact, it’s most likely that the outcome will ultimately be a series of stop-gap measures that would delay permanent adjustments to policy until 2013 or beyond.

Possible Outcomes

No Change– If the laws slated for 2013 are enacted, economic impact would be swift and decisive. While it is true that the combination of higher taxes and spending cuts would reduce the deficit by more than an estimated $550 billion, the Congressional Budget Office  has estimated that the policies would diminish U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by around 4 percentage points in 2013, which would be enough to send the economy into a state of negative growth (aka- recession 2.0). The CBO also predicts that unemployment would increase by nearly 1% which translates to a loss of nearly 2 million jobs (Page, Benjamin (May 22, 2012). “Economic Effects of Reducing the Fiscal Restraint That Is Scheduled to Occur in 2013”. Congressional Budget Office.). Indecision is likely to effect the economy (as projected market volatility implies and recent market volatility events are confirming) in the form of shifts in household and business spending.

No Deal- Say a deal does not occur before the Dec. 31 deadline. Congress has the ability- which it will likely exercise- to retroactively change the laws after the deadline. The reality of the situation is that the idea of an imminent ‘Cliff’ is largely a byproduct of our headline-oriented media and that not reaching a deal doesn’t necessarily mean we will go into a recession or experience market crashes. Short term volatility events, though, are almost guaranteed.

Either way, the Fiscal Cliff is only a portion of the larger problem facing our economy. Eventually, probably within the first quarter, the US will again come up against the ‘debt ceiling’ which happens to be the issue that prompted the spending cuts that make up a large part of the fiscal cliff.

Stay Tuned!

Sun Journal Editorial!!


UMF Helping Students Dodge The Debt Trap
It’s hard for an 18-year-old to imagine what some big numbers might mean for their future.

Like $35,000 at 7 percent interest for 10 years. The answer to that is $4,877 a year, or about $406 a month, or about $94 per week.

The meaning of those numbers likely becomes disturbingly clear about a month after college graduation when loan repayment looms and the search for a good job is taking longer than expected.

At best, there may be some squeaky lean times ahead. At worst, combined with charge-card and car-loan debt, the numbers might spell a full-blown financial disaster.

The University of Maine at Farmington has begun a program to help its students curb their college debt and prepare for a financially secure future.

With many students graduating with more than $29,000 of debt, Michael Angelides, a senior and intern in the financial aid office, was asked to develop a program to help students.

Nationally, student loan debt is a big issue, recently reaching $1 trillion and exceeding total charge-card debt. Some predict it might be the next big debt bubble to burst.

Many students making the trip through college and then post-graduate school end up more than $100,000 in debt.

A ten-year repayment schedule on that sort of money can easily exceed more than $1,000 per month, which might be half or more of a young employee’s take-home pay.

The goal of the UMF program is to “provide students with personalized money management strategies and debt management guidance.”

That means helping students understand how much debt they are accumulating, how to manage the money they have and then prepare for repayment of their loans after graduation.

Angelides was hired by UMF in September to “champion the cause.” The school then hired six undergraduates as peer financial advisers to tweak and promote the program. The interns conduct workshops on campus and offer private sessions to students.

They have even developed an online course for all students that is available at Prezi.com, called “Budgeting as a College Student,” which has been viewed more than 50,000 times.

Best of all, they are beginning to take their show on the road to local high schools, hoping to reach students before they select a college and begin taking out student loans.

As we have said before, today’s students need to be aware that a college education is a great investment in the long run, but borrowing too much money to obtain one is not.

And just how much is too much? That’s the difficult question that students and parents need to explore as they make career, college and debt decisions.

Schools vary widely in cost, from extremely expensive to relative bargains. They also vary in the amount of student aid they are willing to offer students.

Average starting salaries are easy to obtain on the Internet, and they can vary very widely between petroleum engineer and social worker.

From that, it is prudent to think about how much debt load a student can likely shoulder after graduation.

Thinking clearly about these issues sooner rather than later can head off a lot of painful financial heartbreak down the road.

Good for UMF for initiating that discussion.

rrhoades@sunjournal.com

UMF students interested in learning more can sign up for a one-on-one informational meeting, come to an on-campus presentation, or visit finaidumf.wordpress.com.

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