Monday Q&A | Bread Questions & a Savings/Budget/ING Question
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
First, several of you asked if I could put a link to Joshua's 365 blog beneath my header, and I'm pleased to say that I did get around to that. I actually put a link under the header here and also under my 365 header. Hopefully that'll make it easy for you to find his blog. And of course, subscribing by email is a good way to go if you want to make sure you don't miss a post (it's free and we promise you won't be spammed! Just enter your email address in the box on the right side of his blog.).
I was wondering if you could talk more about how you got into baking so much of your family's bread supply. Is it something you eased into, or did you just jump right in? Is it a tradition in your family to make homemade bread? When did you start bread-making? Which recipes are your favorite?
I started baking bread early in my teen years. My mom made homemade bread on and off when I was younger, and since I enjoyed eating it so much, I wanted to learn to make it myself so that I could have it more often!
Once I'd learned the basic of making yeast bread, I baked up a storm for my family. I made everyday sandwich bread, a sweet bread for breakfast once a week, and plenty of breadstuffs to go with our dinner meals.
When I got married, I didn't do quite as much baking because the only two people available to eat my baked goods were Mr. FG and me. But two years after we were married, Joshua was born, and then the other 3 babies followed within a few years, and we now have a little crew of hungry mouths. So, I bake a lot more now than I did back when our family was smaller.
It's hard for me to pick a favorite yeast recipe because I like pretty much every yeast bread I've ever tried (except for a rosemary loaf I made as a teen. The rosemary was like pine needles in the bread!). I really love a fresh-from-the-oven slice of whole wheat bread, though, and I have to say that the cherry danishes I recently made are probably one of my favorite sweet breads ever.
I have two bread baking questions. The first is about the rolling of the dough out, and then rolling it into a loaf shape -- if a slice can sort of be unrolled along the original lines, should it be more tightly rolled up?
The second is, I have frequently read that you can tell that a loaf is done if when you tap the bottom it sounds hollow. If it doesn't -- will it be OK to pop it back in the oven or will interrupting the proces be detrimental to the baking?
The loaf in your first question actually sounds like it might have too much flour. My bread dough is usually soft enough to kind of stick together as I roll it up. A dough that doesn't stick to itself when rolled up is probably a little too dry, so I'd recommend trying to use less flour next time.
You can indeed tap the bottom of a loaf to tell if it's done, though that's not an entirely scientific method. If you're gentle, and if the loaf is nearly done, you should be able to take the loaf out and tap the bottom without causing harm to the loaf.
Cook's Illustrated always recommends using an instant-read thermometer to test for doneness (is that even a word??). They say that "rustic breads should be baked to an internal temperature of 200 to 210 degrees, while richer breads are done at 190 to 195 degrees."
I've been baking bread for so long, I can almost always tell if a loaf is done just by looking at it, but until you're that comfortable, you could use the thermometer method.
If you do use a thermometer, stick it into the side of the loaf, not the end. That way the hole will only go through one slice of the bread instead of multiple slices.
Been thinking about budgets with the new year just around the corner and am wondering if you have any advice on the envelope system. Seems like from your posts that you use ING accounts like savings envelopes. I totally get how you divide big payments by 12 and save the amount each month. Which works in theory but not if your car insurance bill is due in January! No one ever seems to address how to get that system rolling when you don't have a spare $5000 in cash to use as seed money until your accounts get built up.
We're not in dire straits. I can pay my car insurance bill in January, but then I may not have enough to fund all my envelopes fully that month. I was planning to pull everything out of our savings except the last $1000 to fund my IRA. The remaining $1000 would be left for emergencies, but the car insurance would be half of that, leaving us with a pretty small emergency fund. And car insurance doesn't seem like an emergency!
Would love to hear any thoughts or help you have to offer!
-Jenny
Hmm. To me this sounds more like a cash flow issue than a savings envelope issue. If you don't have enough money to put away each month for your car insurance bill, you may need to adjust your budget (put less in your IRA, put a little more into your car insurance category).
If your bill is due every January, then you should start saving for that bill right after you pay it. $416 should go into a Car Insurance ING savings account
every month, and if you do that, you'll be able to pay the bill in January. This is how our Christmas and vacation accounts work...we start saving again for Christmas in January and we start saving for vacation as soon as we come home from the beach.
If you still feel like you need to jumpstart your ING accounts, you could consider taking on some side work on a temporary basis or you could sell some of your belongings to raise some cash.
(if you're new around here, I must tell you that I think ING savings accounts are the bomb-diggety-bomb, and I highly recommend opening one! or ten.)
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Have a lovely Monday! I'm off to the gym after breakfast (since Monday is Mr. FG's day off, I get to go in the morning, which is lovely. Well, as lovely as a sweat-inducing activity can be!).
Today's 365 post: Bubble Lights
We used to use ING savings accounts for things like car, medical, etc and then make transfers back to pay ourselves back when something came up in those areas. However, with cash flow issues (my husband is paid once at the beginning of the month and then my pay checks are different amounts each month) and the delay that you have with transferring from ING, that sometimes could cause issues.
So, we've recently started using YNAB (You Need a Budget) which is a great budgeting/money tracking software (available for both mac and windows). You can change your budget each month and so you end up building up amounts in the bottom of your checking account for designated areas. If you overspend in a budget category, you can either change your budget to adjust and borrow from another category, or YNAB will automatically adjust for it in your income available the next month and forces you to pay yourself back.
Also, it encourages you to live off last month's paycheck, which is particularly useful when you have variable income month-to month. When you are paid, you simply designate whether the money is for this month or next. So, you can spend what you made last month (once you get to that point) and know exactly how much you have to budget, instead of trying to guess what your paycheck might be and then possibly ending up with less.
As long as you keep it up to date, you will always know if you are overspending and you will not dip into your savings for different categories without knowing it. Of course, with any tool, actually using it with discipline is the key, but we have found it to be very freeing and easy to designate those areas that come up once a year. For instance, we are saving a small amount each month this year for Christmas presents!
Go to YNAB to find out more. They even have a lot of online tutorials as well. (And no, I don't get paid for referrals--though I see they have an affiliate program-- I just think it's great enough to share!)
Concerning budgeting matters: It is usually not possible to fund every category in your budget when you begin living on a budget. But if you diligently follow budgeting practices, your budget will catch up with your income, and vice versa. We found the following plan to work for us.
With each paycheck we first allot those budgeted items that are immediate: Tithe, food, gas, allowance. After removing these budgeted amounts from the paycheck
(for us this is a check written out for tithe, cash for groceries and allowance, paper deposit of budgeted gas money), we take the remainder of the paycheck and deposit it into monthly, on-going expense accounts: Mortgage, utilities, car payments (if any), credit debts (if any). If any money is left, after depositing into these paper budget accounts, we go on to our next categories (these are annual, semi-annual, or occasional expenditures): Insurance, home maintenance, auto maintenance, clothing, vacation, gift accounts. After we budget for these accounts, if any is left over, we budget additional savings, whether short-term or long term. In this way, every penny of income has a place to go; it is not just "spent" without thought.
This system has worked for us for years. But we first began by figuring out how much money we anticipate coming in each year, then determining what our expenditures are for a year. We then divide the yearly income and expenditures into 12 (for each month). If there was too much expenditure for the amount of money, something had to be cut. Example: Instead of 50 dollars a month for clothing, reduce it to 30 dollars. After seeing (on paper) that we could add something to every category on our list, it became an exciting challenge to see how much money we actually had in our account for new clothing (example). It became a challenge to see what we could do with the amount allotted. Our goal is always to stay within the budget. But if one budget category goes over in spending, that overage has to be taken from another account to balance the books.
This may seem like a lot of work and may be confusing, but believe me, after living this way for 25 years, I am very grateful that we live this way. Insecurity and frustration are taken out of our finances. Our income is not stupendous, but we know what we can and cannot spend, each step along the way. And yes, when our car insurance (which by the way is also due in January) comes due, we have the money to pay it. I might add, this is right after Christmas, and in the midst of seven family birthdays. Hope this may help and not be too confusing.
For Jenny: My credit union allows you to open secondary savings accounts. They are all tied into the same main account number, but each is assigned a sub-category number. IMO the best part is those sub-accounts are not accessible from my ATM card, but I can transfer it to my checking when I am ready to use it. You may want to inquire about this at your own bank or credit union.
Oh, how neat! I wish my credit union offered that option.
We are very fortunate to be able to bank with USAA, and there are no limits on how many savings accounts we can open. I feel much better knowing that all of our money is in one bank, if that makes sense.
That is nice, Shannon, I will have to enquire if mine has that option.
What we have decided to try for this year is to lump all our expected but infrequently occurring expenses into one budget category. For us it includes: car insurance, house insurance, property taxes, heating oil, and snowplowing. We'll divide this number by 12, and set aside that much each month. Since we have car insurance and a snowplowing bill due this month, it will be over the monthly averaged payment, but we have the funds to cover it. And we'll put less aside next month to even it out. Since it happens that most of these events come in the second or last quarter of the year, we should have enough built up to cover them by then. So far (could change at any time!) our snowplow bills have been very low this winter so that will hopefully give us a cushion in case the price of heating oil goes up.
I have two categories for items such as these.
1. If the billing is montly or more frequent, it goes into "recurring montly expenses."
2. If the billing is less frequent than once a month, it goes into "capital expenses."
It helps when the bill is predictable - such as car insurance - but most of mine are not.
I also use ING, but before I did I would just deposit all the money into a single savings account and keep track of my budget categories (and how much is allotted to each) in an excel spreadsheet. It's a little but more complicated than having separate accounts or envelopes, but it's a way to start, and it offers the double validation of seeing a large lump of savings and a specific break-down of how much is available to each category.
I would just recommend starting! Even if you're not fully funding every savings category, start with a little and as it gets more comfortable/possible, save a little more. For a while you will have two systems going as you transition to saving, but it's worth a year's budget hassle for long-term savings!
You are so organized to do it that way. I majorly fail at keeping spreadsheets updated, so ING is the way to go for me. lol
Oh and just to clarify my last comment. We still have a couple of ING accounts for more long-term savings goals, but for the more regular categories or ones you might see popping up once a month or so, bringing it all back into our checking account is helpful. After all, the amount of interest we were getting on small accounts is pennies.
I started baking all my families bread this last fall after reading your blog. For me the biggest factor to making my own was the weird stuff they put in store bought bread. I use your whole wheat sandwich bread recipe 2 or 3 times a week and LOVE it. In fact I gave everyone in the family a loaf and a jar of jelly for Christmas. I have had the problem of the roll lines showing in the sliced bread when I get to much flour on the board, then roll the loaf up. Kinda like a cinnamon roll only flour instead of the sugar, I just dust the extra off as I roll the loaf up. It's homemade, the love in it makes it purfect no matter what!
This is always a good post. I was wondering though I heard about dumpster divers. What do people think of them? Any one want to talk about that? Are they risking their lives and blah blah?