Avivah Werner

Author: Avivah

  • Alternatives to sugar

    I’ve mentioned before that I don’t use any sweeteners of any kind for myself, and for my family I absolutely avoid white sugar.  So I’ve been asked a number of times, what sweeteners do I use, and why?

     I try not to use many sweeteners, even those that are healthier and have nutritional value, because I think that sweeteners are meant to be used in small amounts.  What I use the most of is sucanat – this is dehydrated cane sugar juice.  It is rich in minerals, and is very easy to use as a substitute for sugar in baking.  It’s granular and can be used in equal amounts and in the same way.  This is pricier than white sugar (I pay over $1.50 a pound, but that’s because I buy in bulk – usually it would be more), but it’s still the least expensive of the alternatives.

    The next thing I buy is honey.  Raw honey is best, and I’m sometimes in an area where I can buy this at a price that is similar to regular honey, so that’s what I get then.  But generally I buy a large container of regular honey – 12 pounds for a little over $30.  I use this mostly for sweetener for teas (right now I’m using it a lot of homemade cough syrup to alleviate a cough that my littlest ones picked up – a couple of cloves of garlic, sliced into a container with equal amounts of raw apple cider vinegar and honey, the garlic flavor steeps into the mixture, they don’t eat the pieces – I give a spoonful every couple of hours). 

    I also use agave nectar. I don’t use a bunch of this, but my kids can put it on pancakes, in plain yogurt for breakfast,  etc.  I bought a couple of kinds of molasses, blackstrap and regular, thinking they would be good to use for baking, but this wasn’t a hit in our family.  Consequently, they don’t get used often unless a recipe specifically calls for it.  Stevia is helpful to add sweetness to something, but is used in very tiny amounts.  I bought a small container of this a year ago and have hardly used it so far, so this is something I have around but can’t give many useful suggestions for what to do with it. 

    I don’t use maple syrup, only because of the expense.  I have date syrup that someone in Israel brought, but have used it sparingly – probably because I know we can’t get it, so I never want to use it!  But nutritionally, they are both excellent.

    There are those who will say that using alternative sweeteners are too expensive, but we’re able to include these regularly instead of turning to cheap and unhealthy white sugar because I’m frugal in other areas of my budget.  This is an area of frugality that is often overlooked – frugality isn’t about doing without, but allotting your resources in a way that is meaningful for you, and creating ‘space’ financially to do what is most important for you.

    Avivah  

  • Oat walnut burgers

    Last night we had these oat walnut burgers for dinner; my kids always enjoy them.  My oldest son asked me what it is that makes them taste like they have meat in them, though they’re vegetarian (vegan, actually).  I think it’s the combination of flavors more than one particular ingredient that does it, but I’ll give you the recipe and you can make your own guesses.

    Avivah’s Oat Walnut Burgers

    • 4 c. water
    • 1/2 c. Bragg’s amino acids (available at health food stores)
    • 1 c. finely chopped walnuts (I buy the halves or pieces and whiz them in the food processor)
    • 1/4 c. nutritional yeast (I usually don’t have this around so I leave it out)
    • 1 T. dried basil
    • 1 t. onion powder
    • 1 t. sage
    • 4 c. rolled oats

    Combine all ingredients except for oats and boil.  Stir in oats once mix boils.  Remove from heat, let cool.  Make patties – I use a 1/4 c. mixture for each burger, and flatten it slightly once it’s on the baking pan.  Bake on oiled sheet (I used parchment paper instead) and bake for 12- 15 minutes at 350 degrees, or until browned.

    Avivah

  • Toilet training

    A couple of weeks ago we decided now would be a good time for our 2.5 year old to become independent of diapers during the daytime.  This marks a bit of a departure for us from our traditional approach, which is to wait for warm weather and signs of interest on the child’s part.  All of our girls were trained by this age, but most of our boys we waited until around three.

    But since he’ll be three in April, and it will still be cold, and since we learned with child no. 6 that waiting longer can often result in a significantly more difficult toilet training process (I never realized until then that there’s a window of opportunity that when missed, is missed) so we don’t want to wait until past three to begin, we decided to go ahead at this point and encourage him start the process.  I wasn’t excited about it, to say the least, because of the time and effort I thought it was going to require on my part.  But my husband very clearly remembers what happened last time, even though it’s been three years, and really didn’t want to go through that again, so he scheduled all of the older kids and himself one weekend to be responsible for taking him to the bathroom every two hours.  Three days of that was enough to get E. to get used to going to the bathroom, and after that we didn’t need to schedule anyone.  At that point, whenever I noticed it had been a while, I’d either take him myself, or ask whatever child was available to take him.  He preferred when his siblings took him, since they would sit on the step right outside the bathroom and read him books.  🙂

    I didn’t post anything about this until now, because though he was staying dry most of the time and didn’t have many accidents, I don’t consider a child toilet trained until they take themselves to the bathroom when they need to go, and recognize what they’re doing before they do it.  And though he was going when we took him, he didn’t take himself and would tell us he needed to go as he was wetting himself.  But this week I saw him asking people to help him when he needed to go, or just going himself, so it looks like I can say in all honesty that he’s now toilet trained! 

    So to sum up what we did: recognized he  had cognitive ability for it now, then took him on a regular basis (and it only takes once or twice for them to go in the toilet to understand what to do) for a couple of weeks, and now he goes himself.  He still wears diapers for naps and at night, though he often stays dry during his naps.  We still have the baby in diapers now, but no one misses changing a toddler’s dirty diapers.  🙂

    I’ve never found this process to be a big deal (except for last time), and I think it’s in large part because don’t make a big deal about all of this, or put any pressure on a child for the process to happen at a certain speed.  I trust that they’ll enjoy feeling clean and dry, and will accomplish that when they’re ready.  I think most problems with toileting arise from starting a child before he is ready, and/or the parent having too much of an emotional involvement or vested interest in the process.  When I referred to waiting too long sometimes being a problem, I think it’s because once a child recognizes their body signals, knows what they are doing, and has learned to ignore those signals, it’s much harder to resensitize them to this. 

    Avivah

  • The best biscuits!

    I’ve made a number of biscuit recipes in the past, but this is hands down my favorite, and I got rid of all the other recipes I had written down once I made this one a few times. I got it from someone on an online discussion board, and she called them Grander Biscuits.  That’s what I call them too, but they’re really good, and worth the extra step of refrigerating overnight (which most biscuit recipes don’t call for).  I make the dough before I go to sleep, and put them in the oven when I get up, and they’re ready in time for breakfast. 

    • 1 c. warm water
    • 4 1/2 t. yeast
    • 2 c. buttermilk (or 2 c. regular milk, with a tablespoon of vinegar for each cup of milk, or you can thin plain yogurt with water until it’s the consistency of buttermilk)
    • 1 1/2 t. salt
    • 4 t. baking powder
    • 1/2 c. sugar (I use sucanat)
    • 1/2 c. oil
    • 1/4 t. baking soda
    • 6 1/2 c. flour (I use all whole wheat)

    Mix in the above order.  Refrigerate overnight.  Flour hands, shape into rolls.  Put into greased pan (can be pretty close together, they’ll rise into each other but that’s okay), and bake at 375 – 400 degrees until golden. 

    Eat fresh from the oven with butter.  Mmm!

    Avivah

  • How to make polenta

    I love polenta, and so do my kids.  It’s a quick and easy dish that lends itself to different variations for any meal of the day – I make it for breakfast or sometimes lunch. If you buy it in the ready made rolls in the store, it’s expensive, especially since it’s considered a specialty Italian food, but it’s cheap and simple to make on your own. 

    • 1 c. coarse cornmeal (the texture is important, otherwise you’ll end up with cornmeal mush – you can get it in the bulk section of health food stores or in regular grocery stores in the Spanish food section – I buy the 2 lb package from Goya)
    • 1 c. cold water
    • 1 t. salt
    • 3 c. hot water

     Combine the cornmeal and cold water in a bowl – this is to keep it from clumping up in the next step (though my kids were disappointed when I learned this and there weren’t any clumps in the polenta – “but we liked the lumps!”).  In a pot, combine the salt and hot water, and bring to a boil.  Stir in the cornmeal mix and bring to a boil. Continue stirring; after it boils, reduce heat to low.  Simmer ten minutes, then serve. 

    I add butter to this after it’s done – not while it’s cooking, because the boiling cornmeal bubbles furiously (I once heard it described as ‘volcanically’ :)) and if there was oil in it, it would be a painful burn if any ended up splattering your hand.  I also like to do things the fastest way possible, so I boil the salt and water, and cook the cornmeal at a high temperature until it’s finished, stirring all the time.  Oh, the best spoon to use when stirring this would be a long handled wooden spoon.  I don’t lower the heat or simmer it at all. 

    The way I serve this for breakfast is in bowls, with some butter, and sometimes shredded cheese.  I used to sometimes have grits for breakfast as a kid which was similar to this; I loved it then, and I still like it!  You can also put it in a pan to cool.  It will congeal into the shape of the pan.  This is how the ready made polenta is sold, in congealed round rolls (the shape of sausage).  Once it’s cold, you slice it, and can fry it, bake it with toppings, roast it – there are lots of options.  You can use it as a base for a lot of things, like a tomato sauce with cheese or browned ground meat or roasted veggies on top.  I once was out of lasagna noodles, so I made poured a thin layer of hot polenta into two pans, and let them cool.  Then I used each layer in place of noodles.  It didn’t taste like typical lasagna, but it was tasty and showed me how flexible and creative you can be with polenta. 

    I have yet to successfully adapt this to the traditional foods approach I usually use when cooking – cornmeal should really be soaked ahead of time with lime (necessary to release the niconitinamide – vitamin B3, which otherwise stays bound up with the corn), similar to how grains like oats should be soaked in an acidic medium like whey.  If I have time before I go to bed tonight I’ll try it and see how it works tomorrow – the lime will definitely affect the flavor, so I’ll have to see how the kids like it.  I haven’t made doing this a priority since we don’t have a corn based diet, so avoiding pellagra (disease of vitamin B3 deficiency) hasn’t been a major concern. 

    The recipe above makes about four cups of polenta; we usually triple or quadruple it for a meal. 

    Avivah

  • Weekly menu plan

    I’m back from my weekend away, and it’s so nice to be home!  As I said out loud as I drove up to my house, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!”

    Here’s my menu plan for the week, a day late 🙂 :

    Sunday – b – shakes;  l – I think they made more shakes, I wasn’t here; dinner – chicken soup with rice and leftover cholent

    Monday – b – oatmeal, fruit, milk; l – sandwiches; d – sloppy joes, steak rolls, brown rice for those who didn’t want rolls, and cooked vegetables

    Tuesday – b – polenta; l – miso soup; d – oat walnut burgers, taco sauce, carrot-pineapple salad

    Wednesday – b – banana bread; l – cauliflower soup or casserole; cottage cheese pancakes

    Thursday – b – rice pudding – or maybe just hot rice with milk over it and some cinnamon and sweetner – the kids seem to enjoy it more like that; l – whatever leftovers are around, or sandwiches; d – minestone soup with kidney beans and whole wheat pasta

    Breakfast will include milk and fruit every day, lunch and dinner usually has some kind of vegetables but I don’t usually plan those in advance.  I stick to this as much as I can, but I shift the menu plan around to accomodate more or less of something so that I don’t end up with leftovers at the end of the week.

    Avivah

  • Going away for the weekend

    Guess what?  Tomorrow I’m going away for the entire weekend – without my family!  I’ll be spending the weekend with over one hundred other women at a special retreat.  I know some of them already, some I’ve gotten to know over the phone in the last year or so, and it will be really fun to match voices with faces!  My husband really encouraged me to go, which helped me overcome my feeling that I should stay home with everyone.  My baby is 15 months and no longer nursing, and will be fine without me, since he’ll be surrounded by everyone else in the family so nothing will be too different in his life.  My toddler is more likely to notice my absence, but again, it makes a big difference to be part of a big family in situations like this – almost everyone else he’s used to spending all day long with will still be there.   

    About seven years ago, my grandfather was very ill and I flew to visit him, and was gone for the weekend.  My kids still talk about the food my husband made that weekend – the biscuits that had so much baking powder that they were really bad, and the cholent (Sabbath stew) he made with hotdogs.  As soon as they heard I was going, they turned to my husband with excitement and asked, “Can we have hot dog cholent?!?”  They’re looking forward to a weekend with a different flavor while I’m gone. 

    As soon as my now 14 year old (she had a birthday a week ago) dd heard I was going three hours away for this convention, she immediately wanted to know if I could take her to friends in that state for the weekend.  🙂   I told her that I couldn’t chauffer her to any city in the state, but if it was within a reasonably short distance, I’d be willing to drop her off.  When she gave me the address to mapquest, we were both delighted to find out that her friend lives ten minutes from the hotel! 

    Then my 12 year old dd wanted to come along when she heard about the plans – one of her favorite friends in the world is the younger sister of the friend my older dd asked about going to.  So I said, sure, the more the merrier.  Turns out my older daughter’s friend (and four other friends she has in that neighborhood) all have a school Shabbaton (activity/trip) planned for that weekend, so she’ll stay with another friend who lives just a couple of minutes away instead.  And now the other girls are arranging their schedules so they can come see her on Friday afternoon, after school ends and before they leave for their trip.   I kind of marvel at how many people she’s friendly with that she feels comfortable spending the weekend with.  I’m so grateful that the hotel is so close and it will be easy to accomodate both of my daughters.  All of my kids are very undemanding and appreciative of what they get, so it’s a pleasure to do things for them, and I’m really glad that I can make this happen for them, particularly for my 12 year old dd.

    The plan is to drop them off on the way to the hotel, and then the other four women who are coming along with me and I will head off for a weekend of adult conversation.  (It’s good I have a large van to hold everyone!)  I am really, really looking forward to it!  It’s already midnight, and since I’ll be leaving soon after breakfast, I really need to get myself packed up.  I also have to take all the food I’ll need until Sunday afternoon when I get back, so I have plenty to still do until I’m ready to go!  Since I’ll be doing the driving (though one friend offered to drive for me if I get tired), I also need to get a decent night’s sleep in (particularly since my toddler was throwing up last night so I didn’t get to sleep until after 3 am).

    Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll try to update you Sunday night. 🙂

    Avivah

  • Kashering used glass jars

    Several weeks ago, I got 16 dozen free canning jars, most of them quart sized.  I was thrilled, since this is the size I use the most often, and you can never have too many canning jars – especially when they are free!  Even if you can find them in the stores, they are pretty expensive and it takes quite a while to amortize that cost.

    Some of you have asked me, knowing that I keep kosher, how I am able to use jars that may have been used for non-kosher food.  Firstly, glass has a status that is different from let’s say, china or plastic.   This is a very important factor, the most important factor.  We were told that we could kasher (the term for making kosher) these used jars after making sure they were spotlessly clean, regardless of what they had been used for, by doing hagolah (boiling).  They then have to be toiveled (ritually immersed) and can be used without any further steps.

    Because some of you have asked your rabbis and were told it wasn’t permissible to use second hand jars, you wanted to know who I asked.  I don’t generally share this kind of info, because I think everyone has to ask their own rabbinical authorities who they know and trust.  But because I don’t want people to think I’m relying on lenient interpretations of Jewish law which makes it possible for me to get inexpensive jars but puts it out of their budget, I’ll share that we asked Rabbi Moshe Heinneman of the Star K in Baltimore, and this was what he told us to do. Anyone who knows him knows that he is not lenient at all, and is very, very knowledgeable about Jewish law and particularly the field of kashrus. 

    So this is what I’ve been doing today, kashering dozens of glass jars.   I’m satisfied with the number that I finished today, and will toivel them tomorrow.  It’s more work to do them all at once in some ways, but makes keeping track of what state of usability each box of jars are much easier!  I might have finished kashering all of them before going to sleep tonight, which would have been very nice, but I have some late night canning to do. 

    This afternoon I took several packages of turkey pieces from the freezer to make room after ordering a bunch of chicken wings  (they’ll be here tomorrow).  At 99 cents a pound and with kosher chicken prices being what they are, I couldn’t not get some, right?  I ordered 40 lb (using all but the last dollar I had left in the food budget until the 15th :)) and will pick it up tomorrow.  Even though canning the turkey pieces means more work for me now, I really appreciate having the ability to take advantage of sales that I would have passed on for lack of space in the past.  I chose to can the turkey pieces instead of chicken wings, because the pieces are meant to be stewed or sauteed, so the canning process is perfect for them.  Canned chicken wings didn’t sound appetizing to me, though. 🙂

    Avivah

  • Is saving $ on your food bill time consuming?

    I often hear/read comments to those who are frugal in general areas, about how unrealistic and time consuming it must be.  I want to address that as it applies specifically to food planning.  After all, saving on your food bill generally means cooking from scratch, shopping carefully, and planning ahead, so obviously only a tiny percentage of the population could ever find time for that!  After all, the rest of us actually have a life!

     I think the amount of time that people estimate has to be spent in the kitchen is significantly over estimated. And in fact, cooking from scratch doesn’t need to take much longer than buying ready made food, particularly when you take into account the time savings of planning ahead (for example, it keeps you from running in and out of the stores several times a week).

    I’m a busy mom with eight kids ranging from 1-15 years old, all of whom are home all day.  That means I need to homeschool everyone while taking care of a one and two year old, run my business, have time to spend with my husband and kids in a relaxed way, and have personal time as well as time for my friends, in addition to serving three meals a day! How in the world could I keep our budget to $600 a month for our family of ten (I’m not yet used to the sound of such a  high monthly amount, since I raised it by $100 recently :)) if it meant hours every day in the kitchen?!? 

    No, cooking from scratch and shopping with an eye for bargains definitely doesn’t take nearly as much time as you might think.  I probably spend less time shopping than the majority of people – I take one day a month and buy everything, with another hour thrown in later in the month to restock the veggies.  The main factor involved in cooking from scratch is: planning ahead.

    For example, dried beans have a reputation for being time consuming and unrealistic to make at home.  But dried beans actually take less than five minutes of hands on time.  That’s hardly longer than the time it would take to open a couple of cans of beans!  Here’s what you do: first you soak them overnight – fill a pot with water, and dump in the beans – less than one minute.  Once they’re soaked, put fresh water in the pot and put them on the fire – another minute. Cooking them takes a while, but once you’ve turned the fire on, there’s no other energy involved except being home and turning the fire off when they’re done.  That can be done when you get home from a long day of work, and they can be turned off before you go to bed – in other words, anyone could find time to do this.  It doesn’t take any more time to do a large amount than a small amount, and if you do a big potful, you can bag them into portion size amounts, and put them in your freezer. 

    What about breakfast?  Hot cereals take just a few minutes to prepare.  And if you soak your oatmeal, for example, the night before, then you can further cut down cooking time, and in the morning all you need to do is heat it up and it’s ready to eat – five minutes, max.  And that means even a large amount for a big family – it could take almost that long to pour bowls of cold cereal and milk for everyone!  Mixing up a batch of muffins for breakfast or baked oatmeal takes more time, but even this takes only about fifteen minutes, can easily be doubled or quadrupled (so your time and energy are maximized, and you have future batches to pull out of the freezer for your own fast food), and can be mixed up the night before.  The next morning, just pop it into the oven when you get up, and by the time everyone is dressed and at the table, pull out a fresh batch of muffins or a breakfast loaf.  Scrambled eggs are another quick dish.  French toast, pancakes, and waffles can all be made ahead and frozen, though I like to make them fresh, usually on Sundays, when our schedules are less full. 

    What about dinners?  There are lots of kinds of dishes to make, but I keep it simple.  I enjoy cooking, but I enjoy relaxing over a good picture book with my toddler or reading a chapter book to my middle kids more, so that’s where I’d rather spend my time.  Baked potatoes, pasta, and rice make for quick and easy side dishes, and you can quickly teach your kids how to make these.  There are so many possible dishes that I can’t really even start to list ideas here, but I already mentioned that we do a lot of stew-type meals in the winter – throw a bunch of compatible ingredients together and heat.  🙂  Tonight I defrosted some chili, mixed it with cooked beans in the fridge, and heated them together.  We had tacos with the chili mix and brown rice for our main dish, with some carrot kugel on the side – again, not much  hands on time spent, but a tasty and filling dinner. 

    Now I know that some families expect something much more elaborate than that, but frugality isn’t only about saving money.  The time I have is limited and of value to me, and I spend it as such.  I won’t make three different meals to accomodate picky eaters – which is probably why none of our kids have ever been picky eaters, and I won’t make a three course meal every night.  My goal is tasty, nutritious food that nourishes everyone, eaten together in a relaxing environment where we can talk, share, and connect.  Life is all about making choices, and fancy foods aren’t going to enhance my goals, so that’s one decision made. 

    Remember, most of the time it takes to prepare food is spent not in preparing it, but in actually baking or cooking it, but that’s a passive process that doesn’t involve any of your energy.  Once you organize your prep time, you’ll find you can get a lot done in much less time than you might have previously expected.

    There are things that I do that take more time than this, like canning or dehydrating.  I’m not going to try to convince you that doing it will save you time.  I don’t do those things to save time, I do them to save money and for the convenience of having it there when I need it.  That includes situations as simple and common as when I’m out all day and didn’t think to pull something out of the freezer to defrost early enough, to the less likely scenario of losing power and the food in my freezer being spoiled.  But these aren’t necessary to keep your food bill low by any means – I didn’t start canning or dehydrating until this year, and my food budget has been very low for many, many years.  In some ways, I’ve probably added to my food costs by doing this, because I buy more than what I need for the month in order to preserve some for later on. 

    Avivah

  • Watch where your money is going!

    I’ve periodically told my kids that’s it’s important to pay attention when you go shopping, and since I’ve had several instances this past week that came up, I thought I’d share this thought with you.

    Don’t assume that whatever you’re charged is what you’re supposed to be charged.  Sale items don’t always ring up as such, and some stores have a policy that if you’re mischarged for an item, they’ll give you the item for free. But even without that policy, pay attention when you’re checking out in the grocery that everything has scanned properly.  The thrift store I’ve shopped in for years has a new computer system, one that makes it almost impossible to see if you’re being charge correctly when you check out, as the discounted price doesn’t show up on the screen.  It took me fifteen minutes after I got home to figure it out last week (I couldn’t work it out in the store, it was way too complicated), and it had six errors on it.  Fortunately, the mistakes evened out – I was overcharged for some things, undercharged for one, and not charged at all for another – so I didn’t need to go back.  By the way, I feel that if there’s an error of any sort, even not in your favor, that it should be corrected.  A number of times I’ve gone to customer service (this happened again last week at the grocery store for a 9.95 charge) when an item wasn’t on my bill after checking out that should have been, and asked them to ring up the missing item so that I could pay for it.  Spending your money responsibly is important, but being ethical is even more important, and I don’t believe there are any true savings on dishonestly aquired money or things. 

    Last week I noticed that I was credited only $14.50 for a rebate I submitted online to my drugstore, instead of $20.  When I saw that and realized I had thrown away my receipt, I didn’t think I’d have much luck getting the full rebate (since I couldn’t ‘prove’ what I paid), but I called anyway to ask about it.  They didn’t ask for my receipt (because they were charging the same amount on this across the country in conjunction with the rebate, so they knew what I said I paid was true), told me it was a processing error, and refunded the $5.50 immediately (and since I had it put on my store gift card, I received another 10% on top of that!).  So it took me less than five minutes to ‘earn’ $6. 

    Several days ago I called my phone company to remove one of the additional services I have for my line, after seeing that we really don’t use it and the extra cost isn’t being justified.  While I was on the phone, the customer service rep told me that they would take the monthly charge of $5.50 for that feature off, but would also lower my monthly total bill by another $10.99 (it’s a special they’re giving to those who call to make changes, it seems, not advertised), increase my internet connection speed, and otherwise keep all the same features.  I’ll get this price for another year, before it will shift back to the regular price I’m paying.  I was on the phone for a few minutes, and that will save us $16.50 every month (not including the tax on that) – it may not seem like a lot of money, but we’ll have over $240 more in our pockets in the course of a year than if I hadn’t made the call.

    Today I was expecting a delivery that I paid extra for in order to get it quickly.  Though the company emailed to say it would be here today, it never showed up.  I called the company (and waited on the line for at least ten minutes until I got a rep – I browsed the internet and checked my emails while I waited), and was told that it wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.  I told them that the email they sent said it would be here today, and offered to forward it to the rep so he could see for himself.  No need, he assured me.  The full amount for the rush shipping (over $38) was refunded to my credit card while I was still on the line.  Was it worth the time?  I thought so…

    Though I usually try to pay a little extra on the mortgage every month, I’ve never been able to do more than that.  Our mortgage is a significant portion of our take home pay, but after two years, for the first time last month I was able to make an extra month’s payment.  When I paid it, I clearly labelled it ‘additional principal’.  Imagine my surprise when my mortgage statement came a couple of weeks later, and said that this month’s bill was paid, but the principal wasn’t decreased at all!  They had applied my principal payment towards the coming month’s payment (meaning mostly interest).  I called the bank to straighten this out, and had a chance to practice being patient as the representative repeatedly told me that I had paid my mortgage payment for this month so I didn’t need to send in anything else until next month.  Finally she looked at the records and agreed that I did make an extra payment, but because it wasn’t labelled as intended to go towards principal, they automatically apply it in a way that benefits them (she didn’t use those words to explain it :)), and told me that I was at fault for not making a note of it.  I told her it had been labelled (and since I pay online, it would be very, very easy to show proof of this), and she quickly apologized for their error and took care of properly crediting it to our future principal.  This would be fun to figure out how much we saved by following up with the bank, as it saved us another 28 years of interest at 6.5% – I can’t figure that out in my head, with all the amortization rates, but I’m sure it’s significant.

    None of these are earthshaking or exciting, but little things add up, and it all comes from paying attention to the details.  I see this as a matter of being a good steward of the money that we have – I gladly pay what I need to for the services or goods we buy, but it’s senseless to spend unnecessarily for no additional benefit!

    Avivah