Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

3 Ways to Record Your Stuff for Personal Property Insurance

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So, you’ve got auto insurance for your car, health insurance for your health, flood insurance for your property, and home insurance for your house.  Everything’s covered!  Yay!  Whoa there.  Not quite.  These days, it seems like you’ve got to insure everything if you want it covered in case of loss.  There’s pet insurance.  Celebrities are insuring their body parts.  And, while you probably don’t need to insure those killer legs, you probably want to check to make sure you have some sort of personal property insurance (or personal belongings insurance).

Despite what you may think, your home insurance doesn’t necessarily cover your personal properties.  They might have some small rider that will pay out a small amount to replace certain essentials like clothes and such, but if you’re ever in need of it, you’ll quickly find that it will fall far short of replacing much of the personal property that you owned.  Some of the things will have caps on them for value.  Got a killer gaming computer?  Not covered to it’s full value.  Many people are choosing to add a personal property policy to their list of insurance policies.

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Part of getting a personal property policy is being able to identify the item, it’s value, and prove both.  Here are three ways you can use to record the property that you own, and do it easily.

  • Spreadsheet — Create a spreadsheet for each room and list the items you are insuring from that room.  Be sure to record any serial numbers and model numbers that you can.  A short description can also be helpful.
  • Take Pictures — Combined with a simple spreadsheet, take pictures of the items that you own in each room.  This can help identify the items, and act as proof of serial and model numbers as well as condition.
  • Contents Video — Take a camcorder (or any device that records decent quality video) and walk through each room of your house, recording each item that you’ll be insuring.  Again, be sure to record serial numbers and model numbers.  You can use the ability to record voice to add in descriptions as you go.

Properly recording and keeping track of your property can make purchasing your personal property insurance a much easier task and make sure that you’re insured for the proper amounts and items so that you don’t find yourself trying to replace expensive items that you though your home insurance would cover.

photo credit: 111 Emergency

7 Frugal Date Suggestions

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frugal date suggestion: walk on the beachWhether you are dating or married, one of the best ways to maintain closeness in your relationship is to have a date night.  However, with the high cost of entertainment, dating can put a serious kink in your budget, but it does not have to.  Here are some frugal date suggestions that will kindle your relationship and protect your wallet.

-Cook together.  Dates don’t always have to entail a dinner and a movie.  Consider making a meal together.  My husband and I both love to cook and eat, so during our courtship we frequently cooked together.  We tried new recipes and varied what we prepared.  Sometimes we would make an economical stir-fry, while other times we bought crab legs from the grocery store and treated ourselves.  We bought the crab legs on sale for $9.99; still much cheaper than a night out on the town, and we could talk while we cooked.

-Go to a free concert.  If you live in a metropolitan area or near a college town, there is no shortage of free events.  Take advantage of them and plan your date around the event.  We attend blues festivals and food festivals as well as concerts in the park.  They provide several hours of enjoyable entertainment for free.

-Rent a movie.  Rent a movie or two from Redbox or the local library.  Redbox only charges $1 per movie, and the local library may offer them for free or for a nominal fee for $1 or $2.

-Star gaze together.  If you live in a rural area, take advantage of the darkness and put out a blanket on the ground and gaze at the stars together.  My husband and I bought a constellation map and spent hours trying to identify all of the constellations.  It’s also fun to watch shooting stars.

-Hike together.  If you live somewhere with trails or hiking paths, take a hike together.  It is free, and you can’t compete with the beautiful scenery.

-Have a picnic.  In this modern society where we are trained to go, go, go, it seems simple to pack a meal and have a picnic somewhere, but you will appreciate the time to talk and just focus on one another.  My husband and I frequently went to a local waterfall in the evenings and just talked.  It was so refreshing to hear the water in the background, and the scenery was amazing.

-Grab a bite to eat during happy hour.  Many restaurants offer ½ off appetizers between the hours of 3 and 5 and after 9 p.m.  Plan to dine out during that time and enjoy some half-price appetizers.  (This is fun to do sometimes; I went to grad school with a guy who would only take his dates out for half price appetizers.  I am still amazed that he found girls to go out with him.)

If you go the traditional route of dinner and a movie for a date, you could spend upwards of $50 for two people for just a few hours of entertainment.  Instead, try some of these frugal date suggestions or alternate expensive dates with more frugal dates.  After all, the point of dating is to have fun and enjoy one anothers company, not spend as much money as you can.  Enjoy!

photo credit: ai.dan

How to Implement a Weekly Menu Plan

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We talked last time about why you should create a menu plan.  Today, we will tackle how to menu plan.  Honestly, there is no correct way to menu plan, but here are some of the most common methods:

Assign a Meal to a Day of the Week

Some people make it very easy on themselves and create a designated meal for each day of the week.  For instance,

  • Monday—Mexican
  • P1640073Tuesday—salad
  • Wednesday—pasta
  • Thursday—pizza
  • Friday—casserole
  • Saturday—leftovers
  • Sundays—soup and sandwich

Then, they just plug in a meal for each day.  Maybe one Monday they will have fajitas, the next Monday they will have tacos, the next quesadillas.  Whatever they eat on Monday is some type of Mexican food.

Make a Menu Plan Once a Month

With this method, you look at your upcoming monthly calendar and plan meals accordingly.  For instance, in my case, my son has tap dance class every Wednesday night.  I know on these nights not to plan anything time intensive.  On Wednesdays, I either choose crock pot meals that allow me to do the prep work in the morning and then require no additional work from me, or I schedule that day as a day to eat leftovers.

Similarly, if you look at the calendar and see that you are taking Uncle Joe out to eat on the 20th and you know he will want to go to a steak house, you probably won’t schedule another beef meal on the 19th or 21st.

This method works great for people who generally dislike menu planning and prefer to get a month’s worth of planning done in one setting.

Choose Your Menu Plan Based on What Is on Sale

Probably the most common method of menu planning is to center your meals around what is on sale at the grocery store.  So, you get your supermarket ads on Sunday and see that ground beef is on sale as well as whole wheat pasta.  Salmon is also on sale.  Maybe you choose to make spaghetti (spaghetti sauce recipe) on Tuesday night, lasagna on Wednesday night and a salmon salad for Friday night, for example.

If you don’t regularly stock up on groceries when they hit rock bottom prices, this is the method of menu planning that will net you the largest savings.

Choose Your Menu Plan Based on What You Have in the Pantry

This is the method that I prefer because I regularly stock up on groceries when they are at rock bottom prices.  Before I make my menu plan for the week, I look at what ingredients I have at home and make a menu centered around those items.  Recently I bought Tilapia on sale, so we will be having a fish meal this week.  I also bought imitation crab meat on sale two weeks ago (prepackaged), so I will be making crab cakes.  However, I don’t want all of my meals for the week to be seafood based.  I see that chicken is on sale for $1.49 a pound, so I plan two chicken meals and also buy some extra chicken to stock up in the freezer.  I also have tomatoes and avocado that need to be used up, so I plan on having taco salad another day.

Final Thoughts on Menu Planning

The most important part of menu planning is choosing the method that works best for you and your family because then you will be most likely to stick with it.  In addition, remember to be flexible with yourself.  If you have a meal planned on Monday that you don’t feel like cooking Monday night, it is okay to jump to Wednesday night’s meal.  It really doesn’t matter which day you prepare which meal as long as you prepare all of the meals within a week’s time so you don’t waste ingredients.

Finally, if you are ready to take the leap to menu planning, one of my favorite free online resources is food.com.  You can easily search for the type of meal that you would like to make and find hundreds of recipes, many of which have been ranked by other users.  I tend to only use recipes that earn 4.5 to 5 stars out of 5.

You may feel as if you don’t have time to meal plan, but often menu planning saves an enormous amount of time.  If you don’t  do it already, I hope you will try it.

photo credit: Emily Barney