The Agony of Defeat

A few weeks ago, I decided that it was time to replace our kitchen sink, which had been losing pressure for some time. We'd replaced it when we moved in, but it wasn't super nice to start with. We'd also replaced our garbage disposal, and it was nasty so I got one of those and figured I'd just do all of the things at once.

I got the faucet installed with no problem, but had some trouble taking the garbage disposal off, because it was all rusted and corroded, so we had trouble getting to this snap ring you have to break loose to get the base installation piece out of the sink.

Between James and me, over a few hours, we managed to get it all off and installed the garbage disposal! 

The only problem is that our old disposal was hard-wired into the electric system, and this new one (and all of the new ones) had a plug. So we did call an electrician to wire it for us. We asked about getting an outlet installed instead, since this is the standard now, but that was going to be about $450 instead of $235, so we just asked him to connect it.

In the end, he said that doing so would have invalidated the warranty on the garbage disposal, so he did install an outlet but he only charged what he'd quoted for the visit. Huzzah!

About a week later, I checked and noticed that some water was leaking under the sink. Some investigation showed that it was coming directly from the sink, from what below is labeled "sink flange."

Photo from familyhandiman.com

I pulled everything apart, reinstalled it, and it seemed to be holding tight. Great!

Fast forward to yesterday, and I told James, "I haven't checked it in a few weeks. I will just assume it's working okay.

But me being me, I did pull stuff out and felt around... and the bottom of the cabinet was damp. Not super wet, but the particleboard was swelling and it felt kind of slimy. 

"Is it time to call a plumber?" James agreed that it was.

I had to leave to take Mal somewhere, and in the meantime the plumber came out, found that the sink flange was bent, and fortunately had another one on his truck so we didn't have to buy a new disposal because I guess those single pieces are hard to find??

Later in the day, I was going through my email and saw the invoice from the plumber: IT WAS OVER $700. 

I immediately called the company, which we've used before but on big things that we knew would be expensive, and their service manager got back to me. He said that, yes, that was the price and they don't charge by the hour but by the service. He said they told James the price before they started, but I'm the one who usually does this kind of thing and if I'd been home, I would have told them no, thank you (and I'm pretty sure they would have still charged the $95 visit fee for nothing). 

I got on reddit and asked if I was crazy. People in Austin said they would expect to spend about that if they were also getting the disposal from the plumbing company, and also that this is the kind of jobs plumbers don't necessarily want to do, so they might overcharge for it to discourage having to lie at a weird angle or whatever. They suggested that next time I just get a general handyman. 

James mentioned that yes, they'd told him... and that he just was thinking about needing to get it done but that he might ought to have questioned it. Regardless, this seems egregious to me and I don't think I'm out of line. 

The service manager asked what I thought this should cost, and I said, "$250-300." He said, "Oh, yeah, we don't do anything that cheaply. We are not a sub-prime business." The general consensus on the local reddit thread was that $350 would have been reasonable. 

What's dumb is that the manager who told me that they don't charge by the hour also said, "He did spend two hours there." James then told me that the first hour was spent trying to sell us this platinum service plan. When I mentioned THAT to the service manager, he did offer to refund the $95 trip fee, and I said okay. He asked, "Will that make it better?" I said, "It will make it better, but not okay." And I was upset so I hung up on him. 

Why was I upset? 

Because I try SO HARD to steward our resources well. Obviously, I do minor home maintenance on my own when I can. I bought a couple of shirts yesterday for $5 each because a high-end store sends me a $20 gift card every year for my birthday and I go in, head straight to their clearance racks, and pick out things I'd never pay full price for. (Literally both of those shirts were originally $45-50, and there's just no way.)

Then something stupid happens like I get in an accident and have to have body work done on the car. Or a plumbing company charges us 10x what the garbage disposal cost to install it. 

James has to work almost 50 hours to pay for that repair, and that's basically two weeks' worth of work since he's still part time. We're fortunate to still have a little cushion, but what about genuinely poor or cash-strapped people who need home repair? We really need to replace a bunch of wood on our porch and get it all re-stained. It will be $7500-$10,000. We can't afford it, so we're going to end up like I did with the house in Sherman where there's so much deferred maintenance that we eventually have to sell low to an investor. 

That's why I'm SO frustrated. I cheap out on groceries; we almost never buy meat, and I always get the store brands. I look for sales. I say "no" to things all of the time. Then my stupid nickle-and-diming feels pointless when something huge like this happens that is totally outside of my control. 

That's it. I could rant all day, but I won't. You're welcome.

What's one little drive train among friends, really?

Remember how we had our dishwasher unclogged right before we went to Louisiana? It's clogged again and making the absolute worst metallic-sounding noise. The same guy is coming out to look at it this evening. Maybe. I'm getting "ghost" vibes from them, so we'll see.

Furthermore, one of our cars has been running rough... I guess; I don't drive it, but going by D's description, the mechanic said, "It sounds like it could be the drive train." Perfect. They have the car so I get to take D to work the next few mornings. I'm up, anyway, but I don't usually have to drive in morning traffic so that will be a fun time.

You know how they say that youth is wasted on the young? Well, I guess you could say that money is wasted on the old, but you won't have to worry about that with us! We're spending our retirement savings on near-constant break-downs. 

Public Assistance

James does have a severance package, but it's taking a long time to process... apparently because in addition to the normal "review the paperwork and make sure you're not going to sue us" waiting period, since James is 50+, there's additional time to make sure he's not going to sue them for ageism. 

In the meantime (and, honestly, until James gets another job), we're tightening our belts and trying not to buy anything we don't need to buy. We've been really fortunate so far the past month...

First, Leander Independent School District has free lunches for kids. We've only gone twice, but one meal a week is still better than nothing. They also have breakfast, but that's only from 8-9 AM, which is way early for us! Mal actually tried nachos for the first time and found that he loves nacho cheese (not the spicy kind, of course). Granted, it's not Brussels sprouts, but any new food is good, as far as I'm concerned! He did try a carrot the other day when I was making dinner, and decided it's not for him. I was proud that he tried, though! This is much better than turning up his nose at food he thinks he's not going to enjoy.

Second, a woman in Lago Vista (who must be a saint) goes to south Austin every week and picks up a thousand pounds of food to distribute to at-risk households in Lago. She always ends up with a whole lot of food left over, and so she opens it up to the public on Friday afternoons. For the past two weeks, we've been able to get produce, bread, and some pantry items. It's hit or miss what will be available at all, and they hand out numbers then draw so the order is random. But the first week, James got big bags of walnuts and hazelnuts, dried split beans, rice, everything bagels, cheese bread, apples, a cantaloupe, a mango... And yesterday, we got probably $30 worth of bread (we were close to the end and no one had claimed a bunch of it; most of it is in the freezer), butter lettuce, apples, onions, cinnamon raisin bagels, corn on the cob, and some other stuff. Both weeks, I think we've been able to get enough food to feed a single adult for a week, assuming that adult had some pantry items like salt, seasonings, and maybe butter or oil. It's very kind of her, and I know takes up a lot of her time and effort. 

Waiting to get our shot at some gratis groceries!

Third, I've been getting stuff through the app "Too Good to Go," where businesses sell food they'd otherwise discard at the end of the business day. It tends to be about 1/3 of the price of what you'd pay retail, and we've really enjoyed it. We got two bags from Whole Foods prepared food department last weekend that had amazing sandwiches and salads... one of the ciabatta sandwiches was marked $13.99 and we only paid $10 per bag, where the sandwich was about 1/5 of the contents! We got some great bowls from Honest Mary's last week. I got 4 TacoDeli bean, potato, and cheese breakfast tacos from a coffee shop for $3.99; they're $3.50 a piece on the TacoDeli website!

We're not hard up just yet, but it's kind of fun putting my former necessity-based frugality into action!

How My Frugality Now Looks Different Than a Decade Ago

Right about the time our Instacart came up for renewal, Walmart Grocery started offering delivery to our address (which isn't exactly out in the boonies, but seems like it is to townies). I have no particular affection for the WM, which I partially blame for destroying my first marriage, but... their apps are so reliably functional and the product prices are so much less than Instacart's partner stores'. As what I'm certain is an intentional dig at the grocery delivering giant, Walmart also placed their annual delivery membership at exactly one dollar less than Instacart's.

All of this means that I have not gone to the store to buy ingredients for our cook-at-home meals (5 a week, more or less) in at least a year. It's probably even less, because I was doing Walmart Pickup or HEB Curbside and awful lot before that.

When D was little, I LOVED going grocery shopping. Whereas now, I pick meals from eMeals' offerings and get that stuff, supplementing with snacks and cereal, etc. back then, grocery shopping was a game that I played with great relish.

I clipped every coupon from the Sunday paper, even if I didn't think I'd use it. That was actually pretty cool, because if I were in line behind someone who was getting, say, a particular brand of cat food when I didn't have a cat, I could pass the savings on to them.  People knew I couponed (though I was never an "extreme couponer"), and often gave me extra inserts.

When the grocery sales papers came out on Tuesday, I'd look through and choose which store to visit. We had an Albertson's and a Kroger in Sherman, and I almost always chose Kroger. It was not as "nice," but it was a lot less expensive. Also, Kroger doubled coupons up to $.50 and tripled coupons up to $.35.

I'd look at what items were advertised as on sale that corresponded to my coupons. I'd make a list on the outside of an envelope, and stick the coupons that I definitely planned to use in there, taking the other coupons with me in case I found something in the store that wasn't advertised.

I headed to the store with an open mind, sure that if I found, say, hamburger on sale, I could find some cheap tomato sauce and pasta, and supplement that with a head of lettuce and some boiled eggs as a side salad.

Using this method, I went years without paying for toothbrushes, deodorant, salad dressing, or yogurt. For some reason, those were often both on sale and had coupons that meant I could stock up on several at a time.

I never shied away from perishable clearance items: meat, dairy, prepared produce. If it looked okay in the store, I knew we'd use it before it went south.

At the time, I had an "allowance" of about $400 a month for groceries. I'd try to spend $75 or less during any grocery run, and then have some left over in case we wanted to grab a soda or eat out sometime when I didn't have a mystery shopping job.

When I'd arrive home with a giant haul for just $75, I was proud. I wanted to tell everyone how I'd gotten 4 2-liters of soda for $.50. I know no one really cared, but it was exciting to me.

The main differences between then and now is that, first of all, stores (including my beloved Kroger) stopped bumping the value of coupons. That made the somewhat labor-intensive process of couponing -- some parents got absorbed in their phones when their kids were playing; I often used the down time to go through my accordion wallet of coupons, extracting the expired ones and fronting the ones that were about to run out -- less valuable.

Secondly, I started working, and really had to choose between couponing and mystery shopping. I still wanted to take my kiddo out to a restaurant on a single-parent budget, and got more mileage out of the shops than the coupons.

Thirdly, and most importantly now that I have nothing but leisure time anymore (have you noticed this is the fourth blog post this year??), going to the grocery store with Mal, with the intent of buying a lot of specific products off of a list, is just not fun. When he was little, he was just fussy. Now, he wants to look at toys... and, actually, he's at the age when I could just tell him to look at toys and I'd find him when I was done, which is what I did with D, but substitute "books" for "toys."

However, spending an entire hour in a store with a to-do list and that child is not the leisurely romp it was when I had a more compliant and self-entertaining child. Oh, memories are coming back. I distinctly remember listening to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on my Walkman, using a splitter and two pair of headphones, when D was much too old to be sitting in the cart but was, anyway, and laughing so hard at Hermione sputtering through happy tears, "You boys... are so... STUPID!" What's funny about how memories work is that I know I was reaching into the freezer for veggies when that happened. (I was in the produce section solo, listening to "Forrest Gump" once, and blushed, grateful that other shoppers couldn't hear what I was hearing. The book is way grittier and more sexual than the movie!)

Mal and I went to Walmart last night, and all I needed to get was some make-up remover and a couple of frozen meals for D. We can handle that. We spend about 20 minutes looking at toys, and he's content to ride "like a trash man" on the cart so he can jump off when something catches his eye. Short trips without a strict agenda, we can do. Otherwise, I'm grateful for grocery delivery. I'm not engaging in hyperbole when I tell you that it's changed my life.

Benefiting from Other People's Mistakes

We've hit a run of good luck lately, in the form of confused cashiers, mostly.

First, we went into Chick-fil-A last week to redeem our February calendar card offering. I'd looked in the app before we went in, and the choices were either of the soups or an ice cream. When we went in, I told the cashier that I wanted the chicken noodle soup for me, and the ice cream for Mal. She asked someone via her headset about the February deal (it was a mystery offering, and this was maybe February 2?).

"It's soup or chicken nuggets," she told me. I told her that was fine; I'd take nuggets but still wanted to order an ice cream because I'd already promised Mal. We also got a large fries and a large drink.

When the cashier rang it up, she looked surprised and said, "Oh, it didn't take the chicken nuggets off." Meaning I was right. She finished the order, and when I looked at the receipt, I realized two things: First, I should have gotten the soup I got and then a tortilla soup to bring home to James because the soups are $3.89 and the ice cream is $.89. But also, she'd gone ahead and given us the nuggets for free, too. So we paid $4.14 for a large drink, large fries, soup, 8 nuggets, and an ice cream. Woo hoo!

Next was yesterday at Chuck E. Cheese. I went because this week only, they have a buy-one-large-pizza, get-one-large-thin-crust-pepperoni-pizza free. Their pizza isn't great, but the larges are like $13, so for two pizzas, which Mal loves, it'd be worth it. Plus, we had some credit left on our play cards from last time.

I told the cashier, "I'd like to get a large cheese pizza, and then I have this." I handed her my phone, which she looked at, and put the promo code in. I ordered a drink and upgraded to a take-home cup because Mal loves them. She said, "That will be $4.30." So she gave me the pizza I ordered for free, with no other pizza purchase. We ended up spending less than five bucks, had a ton of pizza, a fun time, and Mal got a rocket launcher, Airheads, and some gummy ring pops with his tickets.

Also, not to brag, but on our very last play credit, I did the wheel and got 100 tickets. It was quite the drama.

But still...

For all the money we saved and free stuff we received, yesterday I made a mistake that cost me a bit, too.

Chuck E. Cheese is really close to James's new office, so we went to meet him for his lunch after our lunch. In fact, he ate two slices of pizza while we walked around the Domain. I promised Mal we'd go to a candy store, and the closest one to where we were?

When we walked in, I realized that we were screwed.

See those little boxes? They're $7.50. EACH.

Mal ended up with this one box of gummy pig mommies and babies. It's interesting; he will only eat one or two at a time, then asks for (plain old, cheap) gummy bears. I don't know if it's because these aren't candies aimed at children, so they taste different, or if he has some inherent sense that they're special and doesn't want to waste them. I'm sure it's the first, though.

Oh, but there was cashier confusion here, too. The total, including tax, was $8.12. I handed the very well-dressed gentleman a five, 3 ones, a quarter, and two pennies. HE HAD AN IPAD IN FRONT OF HIM. Why he didn't just punch it in is bizarre to me. But after probably 15-20 awkward seconds of his staring into his palm, I said, "I just did that so you could give me back 15 cents and I wouldn't have any pennies." He looked at me blankly, and I willed "15 cents" to him so he would MOVE IT. He finally punched in the numbers and handed me back my change.

Sheesh.

(Incidentally, all of the candy here is $7.50 per box, or you can get three in a "Sugarfina" blue box-sleeve kind of thing for $25. So I guess the message here is "no free boxes." Sheesh II. It's not Tiffany's.)