Avivah Werner

Blog

  • Building resilience by paying down mortgage

    Whether you saw my last post about working on paying down our mortgage before a technical issue caused it to disappear or not, I’ll continue with related thoughts as to what motivated me to make paying off the mortgage a goal.

    I’ve always had a desire to be debt free, and other than our mortgage (and two car loans that each were two months long), we always have been. But the mortgage loan amount was so daunting that it was hard to believe that small extra amounts put onto the principal could make a difference.

    A few things happened that caused me to reevaluate an early paydown, and resulted in me focusing efforts on aggressively making extra principal payments.

    Five years ago, a medical product was being very strongly pushed to the people of the world, a push that was very, very strong in Israel. I was skeptical of a product that had intense marketing without demonstrated safety and efficacy studies being shared, and wasn’t interested in being a guinea pig.

    Many people who shared my hesitations felt compelled to participate since their employment was at risk. During this period I had a lot of anxiety about what would we do if my husband had to face that choice. As a one income family, how would we manage without his salary if push came to shove?

    Thankfully, though his company made recommendations to take it, he wasn’t faced with being fired.

    • I hated having to consider compromising our bodily autonomy because we were dependent on his job, and it highlighted to me that we didn’t have the financial resilience I wished we had.
    • From mid 2022 through 2023, due to rising interest rates and inflation, significant layoffs were made to the hi tech sector, which my husband’s job is associated with.
    • Around that same time, Chat GPT was released. I didn’t immediately think about the significance of that, but it wasn’t long before I felt concerned about the impacy of artificial intelligence on employment. The people who were most knowledgeable about AI were predicting many jobs would be lost in the coming five years, and it would be the white collar workers who would be the first to be downsized.

    Without being fearful or anxious, I considered what would help us weather potential job loss. Being free of a large monthly expense would make us more resilient in the event of a layoff.

    • The next thing was thinking about retirement. We were late to the game for building retirement funds, and I saw that the anticipated monthly amount we would have from my husband’s retirement account wouldn’t be enough to pay our monthly mortgage payment (which were scheduled to continue a few years into retirement), let alone living expenses.

    What if we didn’t have a mortgage? Would we still need such a large sum saved up? No. We could live on much less in retirement if we owned our home outright. The mortgage payment was a large monthly outlay we would no longer have, and we would need correspondingly less of retirement funds to cover our expenses.

    These were some of the primary factors in the last few years that coalesced into a burning desire to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible. I viewed being mortgage-free as building a financial shield of sorts for our family.

    Is this the only way to be proactive financially? Obviously not. There are other ways to build resilience that may be better options for others. But this goal has been very motivating for me.

    Avivah

  • Why we got a new dog for the family

    I was telling my married son about a comment a teacher recently made to me at a PTA meeting, that I’m a person who likes to be busy, and how I emphatically denied that to her. He laughed and said, “What are you talking about? Of course that’s true! Every time I speak to you, there’s another project or activity you’re involved in.”

    I used to burn the candle at both ends when I was younger, so my current pace feels deliberate and slow. But I suppose others look at me and don’t think the same thing.

    Well, here’s my newest project:

    Fifteen minutes before my last dog was hit by a car, my husband presciently asked me something we had never discussed: “Do you think after Sheleg dies we’ll get another dog?”

    “Definitely not”, I assuredly pronounced. My husband commented, “Well, I don’t know. I think we could have another dog, maybe a small one.”

    I began thinking about if we would want another dog a few weeks later. I thought and thought and thought, thinking about why we would want a dog and what qualities it needed to be a good fit in our home.

    Then a month ago I began keeping my eye open for dogs being given away. There are so many dogs that need homes, and if possible, it’s best to adopt rather than buy.

    However, I spend a lot of energy in my day to day life dealing with children who have experienced trauma before coming to us, and I didn’t think I had emotional space to also deal with a traumatized dog.

    I looked for dogs being given away from private homes, with the thought that they’d have less trauma than a dog abandoned, abused and living in a shelter. Personality is the most important thing for me – I need a very calm dog that likes people, and is very safe around young children. Many dogs with a hard background are fearful and reactive, and that would be difficult for me to work with in our home.

    I wanted a dog that was already neutered or spayed, since according to Jewish law that’s not a surgery I can have done for them.

    I preferred a younger dog that could get used to us from the beginning.

    And lastly was the appearance. I don’t care about designer dogs, but I do care about having a dog that looks friendly so that people aren’t afraid when they see us on a walk (I live in an area where many people are very nervous about dogs).

    When I saw the above picture of a young dog that was already spayed, was friendly and was being given away by a private individual, I called.

    I didn’t immediately realize that the dog was actually in a shelter and I was speaking with the volunteer who privately posted her picture. If I had known, I would have right away said I wasn’t interested.

    I made an appointment to see her but after learning she was at a shelter, I felt like I was getting into something I knew I didn’t want to do, and was close to positive I wouldn’t take her. When I walked into the shelter and heard the cacaphonous barking of all the dogs richocheting all around me, and saw almost all of the dogs frantically leaping against their gates from their desire to interact with a person, I was sensorily overstimulated and even more sure that I didn’t want to proceed.

    However, I was already there and together with the vet, took her to the dog run next door. After ten minutes he left me alone with her. I observed her for quite a while, noticing how quickly she calmed down and how easygoing she seemed. I put on a leash and took her for several rounds of walking, each time showing her how to walk next to me. She learned fast.

    After an hour, contrary to all of my expectations and intentions, I thought that actually, she was a really good fit for our family.

    I returned to adopt her several days later, and Nala has been with us for several days now.

    ———————–

    My older kids have all asked me why I wanted to get a dog. They know that I agreed to the last dog because my preteen son, who really didn’t want to leave RBS when we planned to move to Yavneel, asked me if he could get a dog if we moved here.

    But now, no one is asking for a dog. And I live in a community in which dog ownership is unusual, to say the least. So why?

    The easy answer is that I have four children with special needs and having a dog will be therapeutic for them. And that’s completely true.

    But the real answer is deeper than that.

    As a child born in the seventies, I grew up with lots of time outdoors, interacting with people and the environment.

    The reality for kids today is so, so different from how I grew up. Most of their time is spent indoors and on devices.

    Times may have changed, but I’m doing my best to help my kids live like kids in the past. I want them to feel the sun on their faces and play outdoors for hours every day. I want authentic, real life experiences to be an integral part of their lives.

    It’s for this reason that I still have goats, even though it’s not frugal at all to have them – because I want my children to have the experiences associated with them.

    There are many lessons you can learn from having a pet, but more important to me than the lessons are the interactions that children have with a dog. At a time when a toy puppy that walks, runs and climbs is being advertised as the best holiday present for a child (“so real that even a vet can’t tell the difference”), I want my children to experience an animal that runs to and with them, that responds to them with genuine emotion.

    Yes, having a dog is an investment of time, effort and responsibility. But the interactions do something wonderful for the dog, and they do something wonderful for the children.

    And it’s not just for children. It’s good for adults, too.

    Nala is a different dog than Sheleg was. But as she’s laying curled on the floor resting next to my chair as I write, it feels very familiar, and very nice.

    Avivah

  • Reupholstering my bedroom set

    About seven years ago, I would wake up every morning with an aching back. I knew the problem was the mattress, but new mattresses are expensive and at the time I had no budget for any kind of mattresses.

    Soon after I began thinking how much I wanted new mattresses, I was walking somewhere with my kids. As I walked up the hill, I absentmindedly noticed that someone had put two twin mattresses to the side of the street for giveaway and glanced at them.

    I stopped in my tracks in disbelief. They were name brand mattresses in pristine condition, clearly swapped out by someone replacing them for a new set. I called a taxi company, asked them to send me a taxi with a roof rack, and took the mattresses home.

    When my neighbor saw us unloading them, he admiringly asked where we got them. He was shocked they weren’t new.

    The first night I slept on one my back stopped hurting. G-d sent me just what I needed, when I needed it! I felt so grateful and blessed.

    The mattresses were a meter wide, wider than our bedframes. I looked for used bedroom sets for a while, but 1 meter wide isn’t a standard Israeli bed size. Finally, it became apparent I wasn’t going to find used bedroom sets with the features I wanted that would fit our mattresses.

    I kept an eye on the furniture stores and when there was a sale on beds, went to a store where I was able to customize the bed size, the headboard design and the bottom of the bed design so it included a built in storage area underneath.

    I rarely buy new furniture and when these beds arrived, it was such a prosperous feeling. They were beautiful, they fit the mattresses perfectly, and they were exactly what I wanted. I was so happy with them.

    But over time, I was dismayed to see the synthetic leather headboards and baseboards began to peel. I hadn’t had any previous experience with this material, but supposedly it was long lasting. It wasn’t.

    At first the peeling was very minor and hardly noticeable, but it got worse over time. Eventually, my beautiful beds looked shabby and beat up. I thought of buying new beds, but the mattresses are still in great condition, the beds are exactly what I want, and I really didn’t want to make the effort of buying new beds and having to sell our current beds. It was a lot of work I didn’t want to do.

    I felt a little stuck. I didn’t want to have beaten up furniture, but if I wasn’t going to buy new ones, something had to be done to make these look good. That meant reupholstering them, and the cost for professional upholstering would be formidable – not to mention needing to transport the furniture to the reupholsterer was more work I didn’t want to do.

    After thinking about my dilemma for quite a while, I decided to try reupholstering the beds myself. I figured that the worst thing that could happen was I would take them apart and do a bad job. Since I was already at the point of considering buying other beds, I wouldn’t have lost much if they didn’t turn out well and could move on to buying something new if I had to.

    I watched a few YouTube videos to get a sense of what was involved, and then I began.

    Here’s a picture of the first headboard before I started.

    I headed to the store and bought six meters of inexpensive black velvety material. Since it was going to be used on furniture that got minimal wear and I didn’t know what I was doing, spending on high quality fabric didn’t seem warranted.

    I took the headboard apart, and I learned that a headboard is basically just a piece of wood with smaller pieces of wood covered with foam and then fabric, all screwed together.

    Although when I ordered the beds the headboards were what I wanted, styles have changed and now I preferred a design running vertically rather than horizontally. I was pleasasantly surprised that rebuilding the headboard was easier than I expected.

    Here’s what the headboards look like now.

    Finishing the headboards was so gratifying.

    Then I moved on to the fabric frames of the bottom section of the bed. That was a little more challenging since I needed to maneuver into awkward spots inside the underbed storage area. But they also turned out beautifully.

    For 175 shekels of fabric and several mornings of my time, I was able to give new life to my bedroom set. I’m very happy with how they look!

    How do you think they turned out? Is this the kind of project you would do?

    Avivah

  • Success leaves clues

    Today’s my fifty second birthday, and I feel incredibly blessed to live the life I do. It has everything in it that’s important to me and I am so thankful; I am a wealthy woman. As I look back over the years, thinking about what I did well and what I didn’t do as well, I want to share my thoughts with you.

    I never want to convey – not about money or parenting or health or anything else that I write about – that I have all the answers. I don’t. I want to share what has been helpful for me, but I don’t want to give the idea that I know it all – because I absolutely don’t.

    I also don’t want to give the message that any success I’ve had in any area is all thanks to me. It’s not.

    When seeing others who are struggling in areas that I’m doing well in, I remind myself, “There but for the grace of G-d go I.” I don’t assume I did everything right and they did everything wrong. I have a lot of gratitude and recognition that any area I’ve done well in has come from G-d, and that if something happened differently along the way, my life could have looked very different.

    At the same time, we aren’t passive actors in our lives. We are given the circumstances we have, and what we do with those circumstances is a huge part of the outcome.

    That’s why I have a negative reaction to hearing someone say how lucky someone else is, because it’s a way to deflect responsibility from himself. All of us have good fortune that others don’t have in some way and at some time in our life. All of us have challenges. I very much agree with the statement of the ancient Seneca: “Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet.”

    It’s wrong to be excessively ‘humble’ and insist that you don’t know anything about anything when you’ve experienced success in some area. It isn’t honest or kind or helpful to others.

    People need the guidance of those who have successfully walked a path to share their experience and wisdom. Success leaves clues; it’s never purely a matter of luck. There are similar ways that people become successful in every arena, and we cheat ourselves and others by saying or implying that the lives people end up living are the luck of the draw. They aren’t.

    Let’s look at marriage. Most people with happy marriages will tell you very similar things they’ve done to have a good relationship. Choose wisely, value and respect yourself and your partner, continually invest in your relationship. Adapting specifics for your own relationship, if you do the same, you’re likely to see your relationship grow in a positive way as well.

    Parenting. Every family is different, and yet there are universal things that benefit families. Spend time with your children, listen to them, value each as an individual. Learn to manage your own emotions. Get on the same page as your spouse. It builds over time to a wonderful family culture. I write about a lot of this.

    Health. Make wholesome unprocessed foods the foundation of your diet, get out into the sunshine, move, think positively. Do it imperfectly and you’ll still benefit; the results build over time. When people are younger they think it’s uncessary and you’re a health nut if you care about these things. But by my age, many are are suffering from chronic ailments and unwellness; in Israel the majority of people in my age group are taking prescription drugs on a regular basis. I’m grateful to need no medications of any sort and have never taken any, not for physical or mental health.

    Acquiring wealth. Rich people have a different way of doing things; you see that people who lose their wealth very, very often make a lot of money again, because of who they are and how they interact in the world. I don’t look at them with envy; I don’t have their mindset and I don’t take those kind of actions.

    Achieving financial stability and abundance. This is a different mindset and skillset than the very wealthy. A person can slowly and steadily build their financial resources; thoughtful and intentional spending is a critical part of this. This is the opposite of the ‘get rich quick’ approach; it can take years to see the plus side on the balance sheet adding up.

    We’ve lived on a modest income most of our married lives and faced major financial challenges; frugality has been my path up and out of extremely constrained finances. I write a lot about this, too.

    ————————

    Not all advice is equally valuable; some things sound good but they don’t pan out well in reality. Look at the life of the person you’re taking advice from; do they or their role models have long term results? If you see someone who has accomplished something you value, ask them what they did. If you take similar actions, you’re likely to see things get better for you, too. It often takes time to see results, but slow and steady really does win the race.

    Don’t assume someone got lucky. Don’t dismiss him as an outlier or minimize him down for having done something no one else could or should do. Don’t give away your own personal agency, because when you do, you’re giving away your power to change and make your life better. Think about how you can apply those principles in your life, and take action.

    Avivah

  • Saving money on groceries – loss leaders

    This full cart of groceries that cost just 400 shekels was filled with loss leaders. Today let’s talk about what loss leaders are and how to take advantage of these amazing prices.

    A common strategy is to offer very discounted prices on select items to get customers into stores. It’s known that once the shoppers are there, they’re likely to buy other items to fill in their shopping, items that are full price and have a high profit for the store. So they advertise the sales items that they don’t make money on, and maybe even lose money on – the loss leaders – to get you into the store.

    Last week, loss leaders were carrots, onions and cabbage at 1.90 a kilo, and I bought a lot of them all. This week the onions and cabbage remain on sale, and fennel has been added to the sales line up so I got a big bagful of fennel.

    They don’t usually have fruit as loss leaders in this store, but this week they had oranges and clementines on sale for 1.90, so I got two bags of clementines. The kids love having these in their lunch for school. (I have clementine and orange trees but the fruit on them isn’t yet ripe.)

    When you see a loss leader, how much do you buy? I try to get as much as I can realistically store and use before they go bad. Most produce stays fresh much longer than people think.

    How did I store what I bought last week?

    Cabbage has a long shelf life in the fridge, and can stay fresh for weeks out of the fridge if it’s super hot that time is obviously less.) I bought four large heads to make a big batch of sauerkraut with. Even though I didn’t have room for them in the fridge and haven’t yet gotten to making the sauerkraut, even with the hot weather we’re having (in the 90s), they’ve stayed just fine.

    Carrots also store well in a cool and dry spot. I keep the bags of carrots in the fridge.

    Onions store well in a cool, dry location. I have a four tier storage basket system in my kitchen where I keep produce that doesn’t need refrigeration, and now one and a half of those baskets are filled with onions. Onions last such a long time – months. Even in super hot weather, I’ve been able to keep onions without any special storage for weeks, though I did keep an eye on them in case something got soft so that it didn’t spoil.

    Here are the sweet potatoes that I bought last week at 3.90, now 9.90. Sweet potatoes last a long time stored in a cool, dry place. One of the baskets in my stacking system is filled with now filled with them, all bought at a discount. .

    Here are the avocadoes this week, also 9.90:

    We love avocados and eat a lot of them when they come into season. But not at this price point. I bought loads last week when they were loss leaders at 3.90 a kilo. I chose avocados that were rock hard; I keep in the fridge until I’m ready to take them out to ripen, a few at a time.

    Whenever you see a loss leader, think about how you can integrate them into your budget to maximize your savings. You’ll probably have to shift your way of thinking about grocery shopping, but it’s worth it – your home can be well stocked with groceries for much less than most people are paying.

    Avivah

  • Save money on groceries – figure out unit pricing

    We all know that with inflation, food prices have gone up and it’s impossible to stay in a budget.

    I want to reassure you that you can still keep to a budget using smart shopping strategies. Last week I emerged from Shufersal, not a cheap supermarket, with this big cart of groceries for 400 shekels. I did that by stacking my savings strategies, and today I’ll talk about one of them.

    One thing you need to pay attention to when grocery shopping are the prices per unit – not the total price. If something isn’t on sale, this is easy – the unit pricing will be on the price tag above or below the the item.

    Looking at the smaller print in the red section below the highlighted price in the picture above, we can see the regular unit price is 12.90 a kg. However, the unit sales price is never listed, so anytime you’re buying a sale item, you’ll need to figure the unit price yourself. In this case, 20 shekels divided by 3 is 6.66 a kilo. So this jasmine rice is almost fifty percent off the regular price, and if you like jasmine rice, it’s the time to stock up.

    However, there’s another rice also on sale: Thailand rice. The usual price is 7.90, and the sale price is 2 kilos for 12 shekels, so 6 shekels a kilo.

    The two options are now very similar in price: jasmine rice for 6.66 kg, or Thailand rice for 6 shekels a kg. What do you buy?

    In my case, I bought the jasmine rice, even though it was a little more expensive, because that’s what I preferred. But if the price difference was more significant, I would have gotten the less expensive one since I’m not enough of a rice connoisseur to spend much more on it.

    The unit pricing for the rice was easy to figure out. Sometimes you have to do a drop more figuring to know what’s the better price, since the packaging sizes aren’t consistent and it makes it more confusing for shoppers. To figure out what gives you the most value for your money, it’s worth pulling out a calculator if you’re not comfortable with mental computing.

    Below are the two different sizes of tomato paste on sale. There’s a tendency to assume that the larger packaging will always be less expensive, and often that’s true. But not always. So don’t assume.

    Above is a 260 gram package of tomato paste; it’s usual price is 4.90 each/1.88 per 100 grams (again, listed on the first line in the dark red below). So right away you can see that for 3 shekels a container, that’s a nice savings from the usual 4.90 price.

    Since I noticed that in the front of the store – located completely separately from these so it took more effort to price compare – there was tomato paste in 100 grams also on sale, I took the time to figure out the pricing for that.

    The usual price is 2.90 each/2.90 per 100 gram. At the regular price of both items, we can see that the smaller container is much more expensive. What about now that it’s on sale?

    First we need to figure out how much one container is: 15 divided by 12 is 1.25 per container/1.25 per 100 grams, so we can see this is also a good sale of more than fifty percent off. But is it a better price than the larger container above?

    To know that, we need to make one more calculation: how much is the unit sale pricing is for the larger container? To make a price comparison, we need to know how much 100 grams is for each one.

    To figure that out, we divide the total cost by the total weight in grams: 3 shekels for the larger container, divided by 260 grams is .0115 per gram, times 100 is 1.15 shekels per 100 grams.

    So what’s the better price? In this case, the large size at 1.15 per hundred grams is a better deal than 1.25 per hundred grams, even though the percentage savings on the smaller size is higher.

    Now, it may be more economical for you to buy the smaller size because you the bigger size is too much for you and would be wasted. But now you can make that decision based on the numbers.

    While it’s wordy to explain how to do price comparisons and sounds like it must be time consuming, it generally takes just a quick moment to do some figuring.

    Does all of this nit picky detail really make a difference to how much you spend on groceries? Yes, it matters tremendously because small things add up to big numbers. I routinely save thirty percent or more off my grocery shopping, by looking for sales and paying attention to unit pricing.

    Avivah

  • You do you, I’ll do me – not judging anyone for their choices

    It seems that my post about not spending money you don’t have rankled some readers.

    >>sorry, i think this post was super judgmental. no one should homeschool if it’s against their values because they can’t afford tuition in the school that aligns with their values, and if it carries a social/emotional cost. <<

    I would never, ever suggest to anyone that they make choices that don’t align with their values. I’m wondering why suggesting that people struggling with the costs of tuition consider other options seemed judgmental? I want to encourage people who feel they are financially drowning and feel doomed, who feel there’s no way out because this is the cost of life – I want them to think outside of the box so they can find contentment in living a life aligned with their values that is financially doable for them.

    If they can afford it and their lives are working for them, then there’s no reason to make a change. However, there are a lot of struggling families – a lot – and these are whom I’m addressing. I’d love to hear your suggestions on how families can minimize the struggle.

    The beginning of change is recognizing that something isn’t working in your life and you need to stop doing what you’re doing. You can’t make anything better until you reach this point. Once you are honest with yourself, it’s the beginning of finding solutions.

    You may not like my ideas that focus on each family taking personal responsibility to find a way out, but criticizing someone who suggests looking with a creative eye at how to live within ones means, isn’t constructive in finding solutions. I can validate how frustrating and difficult the struggle can be, but I’m not helping anyone to sympathetically agree, ‘yes, it’s impossible to live nowadays, of course you can’t manage’. And I can’t agree that if you want something you can have it regardless of your financial capacity. That’s not my belief and it’s not my lived experience.

    If it were easy to find solutions, then they’d already have been found. We’re going to have to do very creative or very hard things to change the direction things are moving in, as individuals or as a community. The cost of Orthodox Jewish life in the Tristate area of the US is reaching a crisis point (this is what was being discussed in the podcast I wrote my reflections on) and there’s a lot of community conversation happening about what to do. (While this was a specific community issue, it’s worth discussing since rising costs and the fear of not having what everyone around us has are affecting all communities.) I’m adding my thoughts to the wider discussion. As with everything, you can take them or leave them.

    I’ve never advocated homeschooling for everyone. Never. I wrote in the post following the one commented on: “I’m the first to agree that homeschooling isn’t for everyone. My point is that while educating one’s child is a need, there’s flexibility in where and how that education happens. When people begin to realize this, it can get their mental gears to brainstorm possibilities. This is my position about every expense: we have to separate between what is a need and what is a want, and find solutions so that our needs are met.”

    As I said in that post, I also suggested that people can look at less expensive communities, in which tuition is much more manageable. For example, I know someone living in a PA community where the school limits tuition to 15% of family income.

    >>ditto for seminary, if it’s an important life stage that you actively want your daughter to experience (from what i hear, excellent seminaries exist in the US, israel is not a requirement, but i can make a financial case for israel- a girl who experiences it and wants to remain here may end up costing the parents less as she marries).<<

    Like everything else, if it’s important to you and you can afford it, go ahead and pay for your child to have that experience. I’m not telling anyone how to spend their money. I’m grateful I was able to go to seminary in Israel and it was very impactful on my life, and I was able to do that because I worked hard to save money to attend. I’m saying if you can’t afford it, then you have to look for options or you need to accept you don’t have the financial resources you’d like to have.

    >> do you say the same about yeshiva gedola tuition for boys? that it’s “optional” if you can’t afford it? sure, in that case, send them to public school. it’s free. <<

    I’m very consistently saying the same thing, again and again. If you can’t afford something, you have to look for options. That doesn’t automatically mean doing without; that can also include possibilities that many have accessed such as asking for scholarships or requesting family assistance, work-study arrangements, or agreeing to pay a lower monthly tuition for more years. I’m sure many more things have been negotiated.

    >>no- we are moser nefesh (self sacrificing) to educate our children with our values, and there is value in having a mainstream school experience.<<

    Being self sacrificing means you’re giving something up in order to have this experience. Someone who is sacrificing is accepting that everything can’t be a priority. If you want to have one thing, making that choice ipso facto means you’re not going to be able to have another.

    Self sacrificing doesn’t mean we insist we can have whatever we want, whatever the cost. If something is important to you, find a way.

    >> and, yes, conformity is a basic human need. children who feel weird will make life decisions based on those childhood feelings, and that often backfires.<<

    Conformity isn’t a basic human need. Belonging is a basic human need. A person can conform and not belong. A person may not conform but still belong. You may think you need to conform in order to belong and there is some overlap, but they aren’t at all the same.

    >>from your posts, i understand that you and your family expend extraordinary time and effort to be frugal. <<

    No, we actually don’t spend extraordinary time and effort being frugal. Perhaps it seems that way because I detail various things we have done, with the intent to help others see there are different ways to achieve your goals. I don’t aspire to live in deprivation and lack, and my finances aren’t endless, so I choose to take alternative actions to live a life that is abundant to me.

    While we don’t spend enormous efforts being frugal, it would be accurate to say that we’re probably more intentional than most about spending our time and money in a way that gives us the most value.

    >>living where you do might be cheap and enjoyable, but you know better than i do that it has high external costs (e.g., waking up at 4am to commute to work by public transit, because you have one car and work is in the center of the country).<<

    Where I live isn’t cheap, and in fact many people considering moving here have been surprised and discouraged by the cost of housing. Yes, I do find it enjoyable to live here, and am grateful that by selling a smaller apartment in a more expensive part of the country we were able to buy a larger home here while keeping the housing costs the same.

    Your example of high external costs references a post in which I explained why we chose not to continue having two vehicles. I don’t think that’s a good example of the discomforts of living in a less central location. To clarify: my husband took the train even when we had a second car. The second car was used for him to drive to the train station instead of taking a bus there. We agreed to do without the second car and he takes two buses a week instead.

    He has the option to take our car to work if he wants and avoid public transportation altogether, but he chooses public transportation because it’s easier and less stressful than driving to Tel Aviv in rush hour traffic. While this may sound like something that would be difficult for your family, for us it’s not a high cost at all, but a choice we’ve made that fits who we are and what we want for our lives.

    >>our family’s cost-benefit analysis is different, which you address in your post, and we aren’t in any debt, but it’s irrespective of the objective cost of living. we’re planning a simcha now BH, and are being very mindful of staying at the lowest end of acceptable – as we’ve done for all our previous simchas- and at the same time making sure we’re not weird outliers. thankfully we’ve chosen a community where the standard is very affordable.<<

    That’s wonderful! You’re making choices that work for you. That’s what my message is, for everyone to make choices that work for them.

    Regarding the two comments you made about being weird, I’ll simply state that my family and children are all well integrated into our/their communities. Even though I refrain from sharing the positive sentiments regularly expressed about our family, it’s because I think it’s unseemly for the ‘rich’ to flaunt their ‘wealth’, not because we’re ‘weird outliers’.

    Avivah

  • Getting maximum value out of company lunch vouchers

    As I out of the supermarket with a full cart of groceries for just 400 shekels this morning, I was thinking about sharing the different ways I saved on this purchase with you.

    Then I realized that it might be more helpful for you if I detail each strategy separately.

    The first thing that would surprise people is the store I was shopping at: Shufersal. This is one of Israel’s more expensive supermarket chains, so why am I shopping there?

    A common perk that companies give to workers in Israel are vouchers towards lunch for the days they work; ours is called Ten Bis.

    For years we didn’t get much use out of this perk, since the daily sum wasn’t enough to cover whatever my husband would have wanted to eat at the providers that accepted them. It was cheaper for him to take lunch from home than to pay out of pocket to subsidize the restaurant meal.

    At some point the policy changed, and the Ten Bis credits could be used toward food purchases at specific supermarkets (naturally, only the expensive ones like Shufersal); the money for the month was loaded for each employee at the beginning of the month. This was good news, as finally this perk could benefit our family food budget.

    For a few years, my husband would load the sum onto paper coupons loaded for 100 or 200 shekels each. Once printed, they were able to be used for months. I had to keep a running balance in my mind as I shopped, since I wanted to stay very close to the voucher amounts.

    However, I began having problems with the printed vouchers occasionally not scanning properly. It was unpredictable and very frustrating to get up to the register only to find out that the coupons weren’t usable. (One time someone behind me in line saw this and offered to pay for my purchases for me; after thanking him for his thoughtfulness, I reassured him I had enough money, it was just a technical issue.) I began dreading paying with them, not knowing if they would go through at the checkout or not.

    We applied for refunds for these unused coupons that showed error codes when scanned, but never got money back for any of them, so those were a complete loss of hundreds of shekels.

    Also, if the coupons were lost, damaged or you didn’t use them in time, you would lose the value of them.

    One day I was complaining to my husband about the coupons not predictably scanning, and he told me there is an option to load the lunch credits onto a supermarket card, and asked me if I wanted him to do that. I did, and I’ve been really happy with this option. It allows me to pay exactly for what I’ve bought, and not have to add on items to round off to the coupon amount.

    The only caveat that I was unaware of for the first couple of months, is that when there’s a balance remaining at the end of the month, it disappears on the first of the new month. I purposely didn’t use my full balance since I didn’t need it at that time, planning to save it for the following month. The first time teh money from the previous month disappeared I thought I must not have remembered my balance correctly, but the second month I had left several hundred shekels on my card so I was positive it was gone. I was disappointed that I hadn’t realized this from the beginning, but that was my own lack of awareness of the parameters of using the card. Now I’m careful to spend the balance before the end of the month.

    Overall, shopping with the Ten Bis card has been easy and drama free. No more technical payment refusals, and the money loads onto the card without having to do anything extra like print them out.

    You have to register at the supermarket from the list of available stores before you can use this. Sign up! You can buy a lot more in groceries than the prepared food you would otherwise get.

    In my next posts, I’ll share about shopping strategies that work even in an expensive supermarket.

    Avivah

  • Make your own spice blends

    One of the little money saving things I do is to make my own spice blends.

    A few months ago it occurred to me that I regularly season certain foods with various spices, and it would save me time if I put those seasonings together into a mix.

    You can buy specialty spice blends for a premium price, or you can make your own. I decided to do a search for some recipes since it’s fun to try new things rather than stick to the familiar all the time.

    I buy spices in bulk 1 kg bags and I have a nice variety of spices so I can make spice blends very affordably. I’ve made a chili spice blend and pumpkin pie spice in the past that I keep on hand, and now I’ve added a steak seasoning mix, a chicken seasoning mix, and a shwarma seasoning mix.

    This is so easy but it is already saving me from having to individually measure out multiple spices when I cook. I measure the ingredients into recycled peanut butter jars and label the top of each jar so I can see at a glance what’s in each one.

    I also added the recipe I used for each one and stuck it to the front, so that if I want to make more once it’s finished, I won’t have to spend time searching for what recipe I used.

    As I said, it’s a small thing but it makes my cooking go more quickly and every little bit of savings of time and money adds up!

    Avivah

  • Life is expensive…but let’s look for solutions

    After receiving this thoughtful and detailed comment, I’ve decided to respond in a post of its own.

    >>Life is expensive. What you were able to do raising your children thirty years ago may not be possible for your children to do today. the cost of living has skyrocketed everywhere, and so many families are scrambling to keep up, no matter where they live. <<

    Yes, costs have gone up quite a lot, and while my bills are paid, I feel worried for how many families are managing.

    To be clear, while I began raising my children over thirty years ago, what I write about is how I’ve raised my children throughout the years and continue to raise them to this day. Being intentional about spending has been important for me throughout the years, and is a timeless practice that will benefit others just as it continues to benefit me.

    Thirty years ago, people were also scrambling to keep up. It was in 1990 that Amy Dacyzyn (author of the Tightwad Gazette book series) decided to begin a newsletter for frugal people to combat the idea that was popularly touted in the media that it was impossible to live on one salary.

    When I was chose to stop working to stay home with our children, it wasn’t the typical choice. When I didn’t carry any debt or overdraft even though we lived on a simple income, that was different from most people around me. As our family grew and our income didn’t stretch as far as we wanted it to, friends with similar family size and similar incomes went into debt and have stayed there for over twenty five years. We looked for ways to meet our needs within our financial means, and though we’ve gone through some tough times, we never went into debt.

    I saw a video clip about frugal families from the early 1970s and the young parents interviewed were talking about how much it easier it was for their parents to buy a home and how much the cost of everything had gone up. It was interesting to hear the exact same words coming out of their mouths that are coming out of our mouths right now! And yet, these were young Boomers speaking, whom are widely pointed to as the luckiest generation financially.

    The historical reality is that whatever we have right now seems very expensive compared to twenty years ago. My grandchildren in twenty years will be talking about how lucky their parents were to have the low expenses they do right now.

    >>Moving to a cheaper location often comes with lower salary, which offsets the gain. (Not even talking about people who are stuck in their expensive locations for medical or other reasons.) <<

    I’m not saying that everyone – or anyone – can and should move. I’m pointing out that there are options. Are they good options for everyone? Obviously not.

    Often when moving somewhere less expensive, you’ll come out ahead even if you’re making less money. A less costly area generally reduces material standards and community pressure, which also reduces the amount of money you need to live comfortably according to community standards.

    I moved to an area that is less financially prosperous than where I previously lived, and its been so beneficial for our family to live in a much less materialistic community. We feel no pressures of financial expectations and comparisons from others, and I love it.

    When we considered moving to the north, my husband and I discussed the job issue. He thought out of the box and asked his employer if they would consider him coming in to the office just two days a week, and to work from home the remaining days. (This was before covid, when working from home wasn’t the norm.) He made a good case for his position, they appreciated the quality of his work, and they agreed. Since then he’s moved to a different company and when he was hired, the terms he articulated were to come in to the office just one day a week.

    When you work from a possibility mindset and are willing to think out of the box, it’s amazing what you can come up with.

    >>And homeschooling is not an option for everyone, although I agree that it should be more of a consideration.<<

    I’m the first to agree that homeschooling isn’t for everyone. My point is that while educating one’s child is a need, there’s flexibility in where and how that education happens. When people begin to realize this, it can get their mental gears to brainstorm possibilities. This is my position about every expense: we have to separate between what is a need and what is a want, and find solutions so that our needs are met.

    >>Not sure why you say that people have historically lived within their means. <<

    I say this because the first modern credit card came out in 1950. Prior to that, if someone needed something, they needed to have money to buy it. Yes, if someone didn’t have money for food, they had to borrow it or do without. There was a lot of shame about needing to borrow money. As a result, there wasn’t a widespread tolerance for borrowing for things that weren’t absolutely needed.

    Now that it’s easy and socially acceptable to have debt, it’s creates a pressure that wasn’t previously there – it has shifted the societal perception about what are necessities, and we feel like we should have some of the things that were previously looked at as luxuries since we can put them on credit cards.

    >>The difference is that not very long ago, living within one’s means meant children going to bed hungry on a daily basis, people dying for lack of medical care, and children left to fend for themselves for hours while their parents worked. And all this and more was socially acceptable. Today, we would rather go into debt (read: credit cards) than face any of these scenarios.<<

    In 2025 in Israel, 1/3 of families spent more than they earn. In the US in 2025,39% of the 179 million people carrying a credit card balance from month to month have said they’ve lost sleep thinking about it, and almost half of the 179 million believe they’ll never be able to pay their balance off. That’s a lot of spending and a lot of stress. While medical costs and food certainly comprise some of the expenses, I’m extremely skeptical that’s what most of the credit card debt is from.

    A huge amount of debt comes from things that aren’t objectively necessities but the person making the purchase thinks they should have them. You can argue about each expense and who gets to decide what a luxury is, but the fact is that a lot of people are walking around with a lot of debt.

    While there have always been people who have struggled to make ends meet and experienced deprivation, I’d like to suggest that living within one’s means as a societal norm meant that there was less stress and increased security for many.

    >>So on the one hand, I agree with you, Avivah. People need to take a long, hard look at their spending habits, their goals, and their society, and at least try to live within their means. But I do think that along with all the planning must come a hefty dose of humility and prayer.<<

    I one thousand percent agree with this. We are responsible to make our best effort, and the results are in G-d’s hands. There’s no room for arrogance if you are blessed in an area, as even when you’ve made your best efforts, it’s G-d who has blessed you with success.

    May we all be blessed to have our needs taken care of in a respectful way.

    Avivah