Update on Michael and financially planning for illness

He did end up having the flu. I got a touch of it--no fever, but a little bit of cold symtpoms, and so far the boys don't have it.

We still ended up spending money that was not budgeted in advance and I felt like our spending was a little out of control this week. This morning Michael and I talked about planning better for illness. For one thing, it makes sense to make sure we have enough in our Medical Envelope to cover co-pays for everyone in the house. Michael's is $25, and we didn't even have that in the envelope. Then there was the $25 co-pay for the tamiflu. I went and bought more cod liver oil, and occillococcinum when I started feeling bad, and I had to run out and buy more ibuprofin. I bought the occillo at the health food store, and found out later that it was on sale at Walgreens for much cheaper, so if I had planned in advance, we wouldn't have had to spend so much and I wouldn't have been so stressed out running around to get everything we needed. We also ended up buying some extra groceries (not much--$15 worth), because we had nothing in the house and I was feeling too yucky to really make meals.

Michael is better at actually organizing stuff, so today he is going to go through the medicine box and see what we actually have and try to organize it. He's making me a list of his preferred OTC meds, and I'll add mine and the kids. I'll shop around to make sure we have stuff specifically on-hand, and I'll make sure we have stuff on hand to treat the flu since this flu season won't be over for a long while. I'm going to make a list of meds to keep on hand, and we're going to keep cash in our medical envelope with money for :

Doctor co-pays for each of us
1-2 prescription co-pays
money for vitamins and OTC meds
$20 for emergency groceries

That way, the money is right there and on-hand for if we get sick. I was way too stressed with all of it this week, when I needed to be taking it easy.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to plan some easy and healthy meals for if I am sick and can't cook. It seems like we eat the worst when we're sick because no one has the energy to cook! I might just start working on a list of quick, inexpensive meals. It would be good just to have that on-hand anyway.

This should win me some kind of frugality award

So I read in my Tightwad Gazette about a way to get more out of a container of deoderant. The reader said she would save 3-4 old deoderants with just the little bit left in them and use the leftovers to make another half full container of deoderant. So I thought I'd try it.

I had four leftover deoderant containers, and I took a knife and scraped out every little bit that I could out of them (a knife with a sharp point, like a steak knife worked best). I pulled out that little plastic thing, and there was a whole bunch underneath it. I dumped all the tiny bits into a coffee mug and nuked it for ten second increments, until it was liquidy enough to pour back into one of the deoderant containers.

My husband actually thought I'd lost my mind. He stood there watching in wonder in the kitchen at what his crazy wife was doing with all these leftover deoderants. He asked me if I thought the deoderant was going to catch fire in the microwave.

I poured the liquidy deoderant back into one of the containers, and stuck it in the fridge to harden for a little bit. You would never know I did this--it looks like perfectly normal deoderant. I ended up getting about 1/3 of a container of deoderant out of it. I was curious how long it would last me, so I put the date (7/26) on top. I just used it again this morning, so I'm currently at 18 days and counting. It should last me at least another week.

This really made me realize something. Just think how much is wasted when we don't use every bit of a product in a package. Think of how much more packaging is created by all the new product that is made, when we could have just tried to finish up every last bit of something! I know when I get a new package of something, for some reason I just feel this urge to use it, even if I still have some of the other product leftover. My husband does this with toothpaste. I'm the one who usually ends up using all the dregs in the toothpaste tube. I once showed him that he stopped using the old toothpaste and had moved onto the new tube, and it took me 2 full weeks to get through the rest of the old tube! I've noticed this with contact solution too. It always seems like the bottle is just about empty, but sometimes that last little bit lasts another full week or two.

I would have never thought to do this with deoderant, and I'll admit it's a bit weird, but it really proved to me how true the old saying "waste not, want not" really is.