Of budgets, eggs, and general penny pinching

Kent and I have pulled together a spreadsheet we keep on Google Docs. We’ll use this spreadsheet to track our spending, list future purchases so we can save for them, and continue saving for retirement. If you’re interested in budget resources, I bet you can find something that suits you here.

Speaking of eggs, I paid $3.49 for a dozen eggs two weeks ago. I ended up short for a recipe I was making, so I headed out to Whole Foods and paid dearly for not realizing I didn’t have enough. To make things worse, I dropped one egg in the sink. At 29 cents an egg, that hurt. The best price for eggs that I’ve found here in Boston is about $1.99, but that’s on sale and only rarely. Butter is worse, I’m lucky to find it under $3 a pound. I bet you feel better about the cost of your groceries now, huh.


In the general penny-pinching category we have these lovely napkins. We’d already greatly reduced how many paper towels we use—not really out of any great initiative to save the environment, I’m sorry to say, but because we keep the paper towels in the cabinet under the sink. And that cabinet is almost always secured with our Velcro ties to keep them safe from Wally. We use the tea towels Kent’s grandmother made for him (mentioned in this blog entry), and they work really well.

This week I thought hey let’s do the same thing with cloth napkins. So I bought the four new napkins you see in the picture to go with the solid red napkins we already have. I sprang for ones from Crate & Barrel because I think they are really cool-looking and we’ll use them for a long time. The green glasses are our patio drink ware, and they are also from Crate & Barrel.