Epic Food Week: Perpetual Food Plan

Food. For many Australians it accounts for the second or third biggest chunk out of their budget, after housing and/or transport. Poor food choices are also leading to an increase of “lifestyle” diseases, such as Type II diabetes and heart disease. Four Australian personal finance bloggers (Adventures with Poopsie, All About Balance, Enough Time To... and yours truly) decided to get together and offer an in-depth look at how we all “do” food in our households. It doesn’t matter whether you like to plan or just wing it, whether you have gourmet tastes or enjoy simple food, or whether you love or hate cooking; we’re sure you’ll find some tips and tricks to eat healthier and find ways to save.

Food in the FIRE household

This was actually chilli
cheese fries, very heavy
on the cheese!

Eating well on the cheap is always a problem for Mr. FIRE and I because, well... he's difficult. Mr. FIRE refuses to eat vegetarian, he's not a fan of beans, and he can't be trusted not to bring home chocolate, chips, expensive cheese... you get the idea. He also has a tendency to order pizza if I leave him home alone, or eat the wrong leftovers.

Surprisingly though, food isn't a sore point in our house. We are happy to eat pretty simple foods, we don't stress too much about variety, and we've figured out how to eat some tasty comfort food on the cheap. 

The biggest challenges we hit are preventing food waste, and making sure we have enough easy meals for lunches and roller derby nights. We tend to cook bulk meals, and take leftovers for lunches and roller derby nights when I don't have time to cook before running out of the house.

Perpetual Meal 'Planning'

Firstly, we don't meal plan in this house. Setting specific rules for what we eat Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday always leads to us getting to Friday and really not wanting what we have planned. Instead we do what I am coining as 'perpetual meal planning' which is an ingredient based planning system.

Mr FIRE makes pizza!
This is why I love him

For ingredient based planning we rely heavily on Evernote as a recipe book. Mr. FIRE and I look up recipes whenever we want to try something new and save them to an Evernote notebook. This makes them easy to find later, but also gives us the ability to search by ingredient - which is the cornerstone of ingredient based planning.

The best way to explain this is with an example - Celery. Can we all take a moment to agree that celery is the most annoying food item out there. Every recipe I have calls for two or three sticks of celery, but you can't buy less than half a celery which way more than I actually need.

One of my favourite cheap easy dishes is Cajun Chicken Jambalaya (I'll put the recipe at the end of this post). Depending on your serving size and ingredients it comes down to $1.00 - $1.50 per serve and it's super tasty. However, it only calls for two sticks of celery, which means I end up with half a celery in my fridge going to waste unless I follow a perpetual meal plan.

With Evernote this becomes super simple, because I type in 'Celery' as a search item and recieve a list of recipes so I can use up my celery.

This becomes the list of what I am making this week. I'm a huge fan of this method because it reduces waste, gives me an easy list of meals to cook and saves me from actually thinking. Lazy meal planning is the best.

This becomes a perpetual meal plan for two reasons. Firstly, there will be something left over after I make all these recipes - for example Chicken Soup is on the list, and it requires one leek. Everywhere I shop for leeks they are sold in pairs so leek becomes the next ingredient. Secondly, we stock our Evernote recipe list with things that result in lots of leftovers. One celery normally results in four recipes, which results in twenty to thirty meals. By cooking four times, I feed us for two weeks of lunches and dinners.

Tracking leftovers

Managing leftovers is an important part of meal not-planning. When Mr. FIRE and I first moved out together we would often dig something out the back of the freezer and have no idea what it was or how long it had been there. The chickens ate well those days.

Hawaiian Chicken
Delicious! but not a cheap meal

Saturdays I do a leftovers check and work out what we'll be eating the next week. Generally we need fourteen things to get through the week - five lunches each, plus dinners on the nights I have roller derby. If we are running short we have a few tricks before we panic.

Firstly, lunches are an easy change. If we're short of leftovers then I don't take leftovers for lunches and simply buy sandwich supplies instead.

On the (very rare) occasions that we have more leftover than we need, I turn again to my trusty ingredient based, perpetual meal plan. If I have a leftover leek, then I can use it to make Irish Stew or Potato and Leek soup. The stew is great for also using up leftover carrots, but the soup is easy because it contains very few ingredients. If I'm in a place where I have too many leftovers, I pick the recipe that will use up my ingredients and leave me with as few perishable items as possible.

While I call it the perpetual meal plan, it's important for it to stop at some point otherwise you end up with far, far too many left overs and not enough time to eat them all. Admittedly, this is great because it gives us a week off cooking and still plenty of options to choose from.

Sometimes we will be very very short of leftovers. Generally after having too many and taking time off cooking, oops. If we are very short of leftovers, then I plan to cook something big the next night, which leads in to the next important consideration for food - shopping.

How we shop

Here's a trick that keeps our food costs down. Mr. FIRE and I hate shopping. We make snarky comments about sales items, laugh behind our hands at people buying bottled water and we hate slow walkers. We're those people. We get in, we get out and we don't meander or get distracted by shiny things.

Unless choc mint biscuits are two-for-one. We all have our Achilles heel, that one is mine.

To keep track of what we need, we use Evernote (are you sensing a pattern here?). Evernote is a shared document system, so we can update it on our phones are any time, and if once of us goes and buys bread we can take it off the list before the other person buys a second loaf.

Our list is split into three sections - Markets, Butcher and Supermarket. Mr. FIRE is responsible for the butcher and goes once or twice a week. I go to the markets 2-3 times a week for fruit and vegetables. We both swing by the supermarket as needed, generally after visiting the butcher or the market. We have no set shopping routine, we just head out to the shops whenever we need something.

Unlike Mrs. ETT and Adventures With Poopsie we don't shop at Aldi, we watch for specials at Coles and Woolworths, but generally we just head to the closer store. There are two reasons for this - firstly we don't do a bulk weekly shop and secondly we don't have an Aldi nearby. We pick our supermarket by convenience.

Homemade beef and black bean
burgers. I made the buns myself
so these were pretty cheap.

After investigating Mrs. ETT's shopping list I don't feel like we would benefit greatly by switching to Aldi. Shopping at the markets means that my fruit and vegetables are significantly cheaper than shopping at supermarkets, especially because I buy the ugly fruit and vegetables, which is often heavily marked down. The prices I pay are similar or better than those Mrs. ETT is paying at Aldi. Yay for markets!

While conventional wisdom is to do a big weekly shop to avoid impulse buying we have a different method. As I mentioned, we both hate shopping, but on top of that Mr. FIRE has minimal cooking skills (past making brilliant pizza) so he doesn't bring home anything he doesn't understand. I occasionally impulse buy vegetables, but I ride a bicycle to the shops. While I'm tempted to buy things, I always have to weigh up (literally!) if I could get it home on the back of my bike.

Managing costs

Finally the question becomes how do we keep our costs down week to week with such a haphazard system? No prizes for guessing this one, we use Evernote (and google docs). I track our spending through google docs and when our spending is low we eat whatever we want. When our spending starts to creep up, I pull out Evernote and I search recipes by cost.

I have tagged a bunch of our cheaper recipes with prices per serve - if our spending is looks like it will go over for the month then I search by price and pick out a recipe that we already have ingredients for around the house. Unsurprisingly, the 'Under One Dollar' search turns up a lot of soups.

We have one magic recipe that doesn't sit in our recipe book called 'Pasta Bake'. Pasta Bake is made from:

• 500g of pasta ($1.80)
• 1 tin of diced tomatoes ($1.60)
• a jar of pasta sauce ($1.50, always stock up when they're on special)
• 500g of beef mince ($4), or 500g of diced chicken ($5)
• 500g of pureed beans ($1)
• whatever veg you have lying around the house or can buy on super special - I recommend zuchinnis, onion, carrot, eggplant - ($3 - $4)
• Top everything with a massive handful of cheese - ($2.50)

Cook the pasta in one pot, and everything else (except cheese) in another. When the pasta is done pour it into your biggest baking dish. Top with sauce, stirring as needed. Then top with cheese. Bake in the over for 20 minutes. Enjoy for days.

Pasta bake works out to less than $2 a serve and uses up all the sad leftover vegetables. It also seems to turn into a perpetual pasta sauce situation where I make far more sauce than I could ever possibly use. That sauce gets tossed in the freezer and next time I make pasta sauce I use the old sauce as a base for the new one.

Getting even cheaper - meatless lunches for me. 

Remember how I said Mr. FIRE won't eat vegetarian meals? Yepp, it's super annoying. I bulk out mince with grated carrot, zucchini and beans, but he gives me the stink eye when he sees me doing it. 

Sweet potato nacho
bake thingy... delicious, but
very weird.

One on hand, my kitchen my rules. On the other hand, I like Mr. FIRE and I try not to deliberately antagonise him. To balance out my desire for a super cheap grocery bill with Mr. FIRE's desire for meat, I occasionally cook us separate meals for our work lunches. 

Mr. FIRE has a very simple go-to meal - 2 chicken breasts, rice and frozen vegetables. I flavour the chicken in whatever seems like a good idea at the time (Lemon Herb, Honey Soy, Sweet Chilli, etc.) and split it out to five meals. Mr FIRE's lunches are under $10 for a week, but he says they don't entirely fill him up so we round it out with some baked treats.

This means I can cook myself my absolute favourite vegan lunch with mushrooms! Mr. FIRE is allergic so I have to cook this while he's out of the house. I got the recipe from the Frugalwoods, a simple delicious beans and rice recipe that is really filling and under $1 a serve.

The take away

This has been a big post, so let me do a quick wrap up.

Meal 'planning' tricks

- Cook things that create leftovers

- Plan based around an ingredient
- Keep track of what leftovers you have available

Shopping tricks

- Shop as quickly as possible

- Always have a list

- Don't take the car, the less you can carry the less you can buy

Keeping costs down

- Categorise your recipes so you can find the cheap ones easily
- Have some cheap go-to options
- Eat the occasional vegetarian meal. You'll survive, it might be delicious.

More Food!

Want to know how other Aussies are eating cheap while chasing the financial independence dream? As part of Epic Food week there are three other excellent posts your can peruse in case the Perpetual Food Plan doesn't tickle your fancy.

• Enough Time To... is a solid meal planner, and she provides a list of all her plans for this week, plus a copy of the receipt so you know exactly what it cost.
• Adventures with Poopsie also makes solid meal plans. She kept track of their household eating and shopping for for a month in preparation for her post. You've got to admire that dedication!
• All About Balance is even more relaxed than me about planning. As a foodie she knows how to mix flavours and get a healthy balanced of meats, veggies and grains. Check out her post for a balanced approach to food.

Cajun Jambalaya Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast (approx 300g)
• 2 ham steaks
• 1 brown onion
• 2 celery sticks
• 1 green capsicum
• 2 cups rice (uncooked)
• 1-2 tablespoons cajun spice mix
• 3 cups of chicken stock (hot)
• 1/3 cup of tomato paste
• Cooking oil

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180degrees. 
2. Dice chicken and ham steaks, then brown in frying pan with cooking oil of your choice.
3. Dice celery, capsicum and onion.
4. Place all ingredients in a large baking tray and cover with alfoil
5. Bake until rice is cooked through (approx 45minutes)

Done - it's super easy and super tasty. You can serve with fresh tomato and sour cream if you want but I've never bothered because I'm lazy.

Use up the rest of the celery with a basic chicken noodle soup, minestrone soup and a chicken chow mein. Aim to end up with six servings of each recipe so you can take advantage of delicious leftovers.

Free books with Amazon Kindle Unlimited

Do you like books? I like books. Do you like paying for books? No, me neither. I re-read books time and time again to keep my book intake up without thinning my wallet.

Normally this is where you'd get a recommendation for a magical place called a 'library'. Except to get to a library you have to go outside where there are people, or wait weeks to borrow an e-book.

Thankfully, there's another option!

Amazon Kindle Unlimited

Amazon Kindle Unlimited is offering a 30-Day Free Trial where you can download and read any book you want immediately (assuming the author has signed up for Kindle Unlimited). It's like a library, but better because you don't have to wait for someone else to return the book.

If you're a big reader Kindle Unlimited can be amazing for your budget. I tend to buy a book a month for somewhere between $6 and $17. Kindle Unlimited is a measly $13.99 a month (or $10 if you're in the States).

I keep my book budget down by re-reading things constantly. I don't buy a new book in a series until I've re-read the start of the series, which means buying things less often and generally not at brand new prices. However it does mean that I don't get to read as many new things as I would like.

I read an average 2-3 books a month. With Kindle Unlimited I could be reading 2-3 new books each month, for pretty much the same price as buying one book. So it's not unlimited free books, but 30 days of free books, followed by heavily discounted books.

Read anywhere, without a Kindle

Okay, but LadyFIRE, I don't have a Kindle - no worries at all my good friend! You can download the Kindle reading app to your phone, tablet, or you can just read on your computer. This actually works out great for me because I have a tendency to forget my Kindle at home, or just forget to charge it.

Authors get paid!

Here's something important that happens with Kindle Unlimited that doesn't happen at your local library - authors still get paid. This is kind of important to me because I want authors to be able to eat, and put a roof over their head. These nice amenities tend to lead to authors wiring more books that I can read.

After a bit of digging around I've pulled together some numbers. For a straight out sale via Amazon, an author pays a 30% commission. So for that $10 book you purchased, the author only recieves $7. When Amazon does their daily deals and you pay a measly $1 for a book, the author only sees 70cents.

On the other hand, when you are using Kindle Unlimited, authors are paid by page read. This appeals to me in two ways - one, when I buy something that sounded great but turned out terrible the author still got my money, and that makes me a little grouchy. However, point two - if the author writes something amazing and I read it again and again, they get paid every time!

Kindle Unlimited uses a system called Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (they're up to version 2.0). This is to prevent authors from using large font or paragraph breaks to try and push up their page count. With this system authors are paid approximately $0.005 per page. While that doesn't sound like much, it means that a 300 page book is worth $1.50 every time it's read.

Of course, for a well known author like Margaret Atwood (read the Handmaidens Tale! It's been out since the 80s!) $1.50 for 300 words is well below their usual earnings, but for an indie author just starting out Kindle Unlimited creates a great system where they don't have to convince people their books are worth paying for. You can test out a new author without committing money to them.

Not another subscription service

I'll be honest, I'm normally against subscriptions. A lot of people are wasting money with them by paying for things they don't actually use (remember Foxtel and having hundreds of boring channels) or they are wasting time by watching way too much Netflix. If you want to go to the library and wait for weeks for books to become available then that is better for your wallet.

However, Kindle Unlimited skips both of these issues because books are amazing. Non-fiction books can make you a better investor, teach you woodwork or a whole new language. Fiction books, well escapism is great and depending on your chosen genre you might end up knowing a lot more about the difference between a dragon and a wyvern that you could ever need (hint, count the legs).

Plus, in case you missed it at the start of the post, you can try it for 30 days for free. Don't like it? Don't pay for it. But give it a crack and see how you feel about the bliss of endless books.

Boring disclaimer time! Links to Amazon Kindle Unlimited are affiliate links. You still get a 30-day free trial, you pay the same price as everyone else, but I get a teeny tiny kickback from Amazon. If enough people sign up I could buy a coffee!!

July Highlights - Best Posts in the Blogosphere

Happy Friday! It's been a crazy hectic week in the FIRE household, which means it's time for another blog appreciation post!

I've been swamped with freelance work, joined the board for my Roller Derby league, and my 9-5 job has picked up. Unfortunately, I haven't had any time for writing posts, but I've read some great ones, let me tell you some of my favourites.

How The Pursuit of FI Almost Ended My Life

Over at the Retirement Manifesto Fritz fell off a roof. He didn't almost fall off a roof, he actually fell off a roof! He recounts the story in a humorous and slightly terrifying way, while skillfully making me question what lengths I'll go to in the pursuit of saving a buck. Having nearly been killed twice in 24 hours by inattentive drivers while riding my bike to work, this really resonated with me.

The Point of Retirement Inevitability

The Frugal Vagabond writes a very comforting post about the concept of retirement inevitability. This is the point where (if left alone) your investments will grow enough to guarantee you can retire comfortably. From that point you only need to earn enough to cover your day to day expenses. 

Naturally the first thing I did was check my own 'retirement inevitability'. If I count my home equity in my net worth, I will inevitably have enough to retire in 17 years at the still young age of 43. If I only count my actively invested funds, it will take 32 year, at 58 I'd still be retiring early by two years!

Reaching Milestones on the Journey to Early Retirement

This is a short sneaky post by Adventures with Poopsie, but i's such an exciting milestone I need to call it out. Their July dividends were enough to cover an entire years worth of Bills! That's a line on their budget line they can official call covered by their investments.

Congratulations AWP!

Lessons Learned as a Lifeguard

Mustard Seed Money takes us back to our childhood when jobs were simple, they could be fun, and in his case it was outdoors in the sun! He outlines important life lessons like backing yourself, perseverance and carefully selecting your workplace. The kicker for me was how easily this post awoke my longing for a simpler time of being a youngling, and the craving for a job I truly enjoy, the sort of thing I could switch to once I was happy with my Retirement Inevitability.

What a Frugal Weekend! July 16

Mrs. Picky Pincher runs a regular weekly spot where she talks about what she, Mr. Picky and their cat Zap got up to over the weekend. While it won't be the magic light bulb moment that changes your life, this post contains the best damn granola recipe I have ever come across. I've been caught standing in the kitchen eating this stuff by the handful, it's that damn good!

Can you get filthy rich by spending more money every year?

I feel like it's cheating a bit including my own post, but I really loved writing this. In this post our two case studies, John the Great Dane, and Cindy the Poodle show two different kinds of lifestyle inflation. Strangely, the dog who spends more money with every passing year retires first. Take that lifestyle inflation haters! It can be done, kind of... check out the post.

Frugal date nights: Board Games

With winter well and truly set in frugal dates like fishing, picnics and hikes are few and far between. Mr. FIRE and I are still looking for ways to spend quality time together and while they largely involving building a nest on the couch, enjoying the wine and cheese and projecting a movie straight onto a wall sometimes we like something a little more intensive.

We play board games. Somehow we're still together....

Board games have been pretty integral to our relationship since it's early days. The first time I met Mr. FIRE's friends was over a long weekend and a game of Munchkin. It was also the first time I yelled at Mr. FIRE's friends, insulted a couple of them and did my absolute best to sabotage their game. Munchkin is a vicious backstabbing game that largely consists of bending the rules as far as possible and picking on whoever is in the lead. It was great fun.

Unfortunately Mr. FIRE and I are both the kind to bend the rules as far as they go, and our regular gaming group isn't particularly willing to break up our arguments. Many a game has ended with someone throwing cards down and leaving the room in a huff. We aren't allowed to play Munchkin anymore - in four years it's the only serious argument we've ever had. That and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Anything where the rules are wiggly and open to interpretation doesn't end well in the FIRE household.

However we still love gaming. We have friends over at least once a month to eat like teenagers, play Offspring too loudly and swear over dice rolls. We're all an introverted nerdy bunch of weirdos and having some structure to our interactions is great.

On top of playing with friends, Mr. FIRE and I like to game together occasionally. Unfortunately most games are made for 3+ players. Oh, they might say 2-4 players on the box, but they're pretty dull with just two people (looking at you Takenoko, with your cute panda and terrible gardener).

However there are some games that play brilliantly with two people. Paired with a small glass of mead or port, and some home baked snacks, they make for a brilliantly frugal date night.

Disclaimer: All the links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. If you go on to buy the game I'll make a little bit of money at no extra cost to you. Click a link and feed a starving blogger? :) 

Lords of Waterdeep

This is a favourite in our household. In Lords of Waterdeep: A Dungeons & Dragons Board Game you don't play any lowly adventurers seeking glory - you play the Lords sending the cannon fodder adventurers to glory. Of course you take a cut of their glory.

Lords of Waterdeep is a worker placement game. In each round you can take a certain number of actions to do things like visiting places in town to recruit adventurers to your cause, building new stores in town and collecting quests.

The game is brilliantly balanced so that building new stores brings you ongoing benefits - if people visit the store, and certain quests give you extra abilities moving forward like bonus points. Halfway through the game each player is given an extra action each round - if no one has built a building by this time, then there won't be enough actions available each turn.

Playing this game in our house is reasonably quiet as you try and plan each move, and build up fallback plans in case something goes wrong. Most actions can only be done by one player each turn (for example, only one person each round can visit the plinth and recruit a priest) so certain spaces are a hot commodity. While we plan in near silence, there's always a little friendly abuse if Mr. FIRE takes the space I needed to finish a quest.

To add an extra twist to the game, each player is assigned a Lord at random at the start of the game. Lords receive bonus points for completing certain quests, for example Brianne Byndraeth earns an extra 4 points for each Arcana and Skullduggery quest, while Mirt the Moneylender earns 4 bonus points for each Commerce and Piety quest. These aren't revealed till the end of the game, so while you can take a guess at the bonus points, you never quite know where your opponent is up to.

Side tip: There is also a Lord call Larissa Neathal, aka 'The Builder'. She scores 6 points extra for each building. While this is great in a multiplayer game, in a two player game there isn't really enough competition for spaces to make her worthwhile, I suggest taking her out.

Photo credit: deskovehry.com

Lords of Waterdeep is a rather deep game that takes around an hour for a good solid play through. The first game may take a while as you work out all the rules, but you won't play much faster as you get more familiar because there are plenty of intricacies and plans to be made and games often come down to one or two moves.

If you already have Lords of Waterdeep, I strongly recommend adding the expansion Scoundrels of Skullport into your collection. It's actually two expansions in one, the 'Under the Mountain' expansion, and the 'Skullport' expansion. Under the Mountain is a simple 'more stuff' expansion that creates more town spaces, and gives you a couple more Lords.

The Skullport expansion introduces the concept of corruption. There are quests and town spaces that give you a lot more money and units than usual, but they also give you corruption tokens. These cost you points at the end of the game, and the more in play the more costly they are. The spaces are oh so tempting though, and it's hard to keep a clean slate.

The Skullport expansion has a lord call The Xanather who gains 4 victory points for each corruption token. Unfortunately he still has to take the penalty for having the corruption, so he's pretty worthless. I'd suggest removing him from the game.

Carcassone

Lords of Waterdeep is a big intimidating game with a 24-page rulebook and at least 15 minutes set up on your first game. By contrast, Carcassone has a trifold pamphlet that you can skim read in five minutes or less. There is also zero set up for the game, you can play straight out of the box. All you need is a big open table, put the box within arms reach, and you're ready to go.

Our version came with a mini-expansion called 'The River' which gives us 30 seconds of set up time, and a bit of structure for starting the game. Once again, all you need is the box within arms reach and a big open table. To set up The River expansion, grab the river tiles out of the box and play them first, then go on with the rest of the game.

Carcassone is beautiful, relaxing and deceptively simple. You can your friends (2-5 players, and good with any number) and slowly putting together a countryside by laying tiles. With the river expansion you start by placing the source tile (the start of the river) and lay out the river one tile at a time before ending at a small pond. After that you can expand out into building more of the country side.

The rules are pretty simple, pick up a tile and place it down. You have to place your tile against an existing tile (which is why The River expansion is so nice, it gives you somewhere to build from) and your placement has to make sense - for example there are roads, towns and open fields. When placing tiles roads must touch roads, towns against towns, and fields against fields.

Photo Credit: The Board Game Family

Whenever you place a tile you have an option to place down a meeple (cute little person shaped tokens) on the road, in the town, or in the monastery. Each feature scores points, once it's completed. For example roads start and end at towns or villages, once a road is completed you score 1 point for each tile. Towns are worth 2 points per tile, and need to have a complete wall. Monasteries are worth 1 point for the monastery, and 1 point for each surrounding tile, scored when the monastery is completely surrounded.

There is also the option to play a farmer - by claiming a field the farmer scores 3 points per adjacent completed city at the end of the game. The field stops at any road, river or city - to be honest we've never played with farmers. We treat it as an optional extra and have enjoyed the game without it plenty of times.

In the game you have only 7 meeples, and you don't get them back until they score so it can be stressful committing your last meeple to the board. You can also force and opponent to share their hard earned points by connecting your road or town to theirs. If you have an equal number of meeples, you both score the full points, however if one player has more then they get all the points and the player with less gets nothing.

Other than that, Carcassone has very little opportunity to back stab your opponents, it's largely a peaceful game of building a beautiful countryside. Beautiful isn't an exaggeration either, the artwork in this game is wonderful, with plenty of cute little details, but still simple to understand at a glace. It's a wonderful, easy to play game that even Mr. FIRE and I can't fight over.

Pandemic

Finally, sometimes it's nice to work together on a board game. Pandemic pits you and your friends (2-4, more players makes the game harder) against four virulent diseases that have broken out worldwide. You take on various roles of CDC researchers and you travel the world curing breakouts and trying to research a cure before mass panic breaks out and everybody dies.

This game is brutal. Absolutely horrendously evil. At the start of each turn you draw from the player deck, what you hope for is cards that will help you develop a cure. Sometimes your turn up an Epidemic, where all hell breaks loose.

To understand why Epidemics suck (apart from the obvious implications of the name) you have to understand the 'infection phase'. In a normal, not horrible round, you draw from the player deck, and then run the infection phase. In the infection phase you flip cards in the infection deck and place disease tokens on a city as instructed by the card. The harder you've set the game, the more cards you flip. Once you've pulled a card it goes into the discard pile, and you don't have to add diseases to the city again. Unless...

If you've drawn an Epidemic then you first grab an infection card from the bottom of the pile and place three disease cubes on that town. You then shuffle the discarded infection cards and place them on top of the infection deck. Then you draw your infection cards, piling more diseases onto the already sickened cities. If the game asks you to add more disease cubes to a city that already has three, you have an Outbreak and you need to place disease cubes in every adjacent city. If one of the adjacent cities already has three disease cubes, then other Outbreak occurs, and the disease keeps spreading.

It is nasty. You then have four actions in your turn (move, heal, research a cure) to try and mop up the damage.

To win at Pandemic you need to research all four cures. Thankfully you don't need to wipe the diseases off the board, just figure out how to do it. The mop up happens post game.

To lose at Pandemic... well, there are so many ways! If you run out of disease cubes and cannot place them on the board when required, you lose. If more than seven outbreaks occur you lose. If you run out of cards in the player deck, you lose. In each case the in-game explanation is that the people of the world have panicked, rioted, and probably died. Yay!

Despite this, Pandemic is a great couples game. I suggest playing with cold drinks and cold snacks, because you'll be so engrossed in planning saving the world that any warm food will go cold before you remember to eat it. Pandemic isn't really played a turn at a time - you'll map out your plans for the next three to four turns, agreeing on an action plan to save the world. And then, halfway into your plan you'll draw the wrong card and have to start all over again.

When we first played Pandemic we lost horribly and constantly. After about twenty playthroughs, we actually started to win consistently. So we bought the expansions.

We have two of the expansions and since we have never beaten the second expansion, we haven't bothered to buy the third (State of Emergency, if you're curious).

The first expansion is On The Brink. It comes with two ways to make the game harder, Mutation events or the Virulent Strain challenge. In Mutation events one of the diseases mutates (surprise surprise) and you now have a fifth purple disease to cure. In the Virulent Strain challenge one of the diseases becomes extra bad with horrible rules like 'put down two disease cubes instead of just one'. We've beaten both of these challenges, but not at the same time. This game is hard, did I mention?

The second expansion is called In The Lab. You can't just wave your hands and research a cure anymore. You need to collect samples of the disease and process them through the lab. This is impossible. Losing still makes for a great date night, but we've never won this game.

(Technically, Mr. FIRE won this game once, but I wasn't there so it doesn't count. He was playing with a guy named Jesus - miracles are required to finish this game!)

Frugal wins?

At a glance board games are expensive. I bought mine for $60-$80 each. The current prices seem to be sitting around the $20-$40 mark, which isn't so bad. It all comes down to how much you play the games. If you only play them once or twice then they are a huge expense, but you can easily play them enough that they come down to a $1 an hour dollars to fun, or even less.

After the initial outlay for games the only cost for a date night is dinner and wine. Since you eat every day anyway (I assume) date night can be 'free'. However to jazz it up a bit Mr. FIRE and I play games with a glass of wine and a bowl of snacks. Depending on your budget this could be a fancy antipasto platter complete with stuffed olives, or a name brand packet of potato chips.

Whichever way you choose to go with dinner, you can knock out a wonderful date night for $20 or less. You have to interact with each other, probably yell at each other, and you'll have to focus on each other - no one wins a game with a phone in their hand. And winning is the most important thing. Right..?

Can you get filthy rich by spending more money every year?

I want to retire early and take back my free time. I'm willing to forgo expensive luxuries to get there earlier, but I don't want to retire to a life of poverty and pauperism.

However, if I have a couple of years of ridiculously lean living at the start of my journey, it could supercharge my retirement accounts.

So I feel like I'm presented with two choices. I could live the life I want now - knowing it will take longer to get to FIRE, or I could live like a monk for a couple of years to supercharge my investment accounts, then ease into a slightly spendier, but still frugal existence that I could maintain for many years of retired bliss.
 
Let's investigate this idea with our case study participants, John and Cindy.

John, 25, fresh out of University, ready to take on the world!

 

This is John. He's just finished studying a Bachelors degree in DefinitelyGettingAJob. A couple of months later he scores a job as a RegularWorkingDude for SomeWellKnownCompany. John's starting salary is $35,000 a year and he's pretty pleased with himself.

Cindy, 25, fresh out of University, ready to take on the world!

 

This is Cindy. She's just finished studying a Bachelors degree in DefinitelyGettingAJob. A couple of months later she scores a job as a RegularWorkingLady for SomeWellKnownCompany. Cindy's starting salary is $35,000 a year and she's pretty pleased with herself.

Fresh out of university: the winner is?

Well, right now our two contenders are identical. That is the point. Let's see how they do.

No longer a poor student, John is okay with things the way they are

 

John likes his life the way it is, his couch might be falling to pieces, but it's comfortable. He hangs out with friends, goes hiking and plays video games, just like he did when he was a student. He lives in a run down apartment with a couple of flatmates he's known since the start of university. 

He's happy to keep living like this for a while, but he finds all this money is piling up in his account, so he opens a Vanguard investment account and starts putting away $20,000 a year and earning 7% returns. He's used to living on the cheap as a student, so the $15,000 a year he has left is still pretty nice.

Living the high life, Cindy is splashing out!

 

Cindy is thrilled to be earning some real money at last! She gets her hair and nails done, buys all new furniture and goes out for fancy brunch every weekend. She rents a comfortable apartment, takes vacations, visits the spa and never misses a happy hour. 

Cindy is living it up! However she wants to plan for the future so she finds $5,000 a year and opens a Vanguard investment account with 7% returns.

Year One: our winner is..?

Financially, it's John - after all he has $20,000 in his account. Although I'm a little worried for his health because he's still eating ramen noodles for dinner every other night and the old couch has a funny stain on it.

Cindy's account balance doesn't look so great, but she's thrilled with her lifestyle. She has everything she wants and lives like a queen. She'd be happy to live like this forever.

Dog years, John goes to the office every day

Five years have passed and John still works for SomeWellKnownCompany. He's gotten itchy feet a few times and has been promoted up the chain, but not very far. He's gotten an average 2% pay rise each year and he spends it all. He's left his share house behind, got some nicer digs, he eats better and he's started taking local vacations.

He's not quite as spendy as Cindy, but having lived like a poor student for so long each little bit extra feels special. Back when he started at SomeWellKnownCompany he set up automatic payments into his Vanguard account and he hasn't touched them since. He checks the numbers one day and is pretty pleased to see he has $143,000 to his name.

Dog years part two, Cindy works in the same office

Cindy also still works for SomeWellKnownCompany and has gotten the same payrises. She's not enjoying work that much though and every time she gets a payrise she increases her investments. She's gotten comfortable in her nice life and expects the fine things. She still has regular brunches with the girls and is always beautifully presented. If there is a new fashion trend coming, Cindy is there leading the way.

On one of her many trips she met a ridiculously fun guy and married him. She's looking to the future of kids and free time to travel more, so checks her investment account one day to find she has $47,500 to her name.

Five years down, our winner is..?

Cindy is still pretty pumped with her life. She's been living on $30,000 a year for the last few years and knows how to stay on top of her finances. She's got a laundry list of places she's visited and wants to visit, although after that big trip to Europe she got a little tight on some bills. Still, she likes her life, and she's investing each year so she's happy with the way things are.

John has started eating home cooked meals with more than one food group and has bought a new-to-him couch. Most of his furniture is a little rough around the edges, but each year he finds himself with more money in his pocket. He's learned the value of making things last though so he doesn't buy anything without thinking it through first. He has a high quality mattress (because he loves a good snooze) but never bothered to upgrade the dining room table - it's big enough for his friends and no one minds the scuff marks.

Ten years on - John feels richer than ever 

John still works for SomeWellKnownCompany and the 2% a year payrises are still rolling in. Sure they aren't much but John feels like a king, constantly getting more money and having the freedom to spend it. He's settled down with a lovely Lady who shares his values and they are over the moon in love. John and Lady start talking about puppies and easing up on work. John peeks at his investments and is surprised to find he has over $275,000 invested.

Ten years on - Cindy is getting tired

Cindy is still spending her $30,000 a year on her lifestyle, but what once felt lavish and luxurious now feels tedious. She goes to brunch each weekend at the same cafe, orders the same meal and shares the same gossip. She wants to travel but feels like she's seen it all, and without spending a whole lot more she doesn't know what to do. She still works for SomeWellKnownCompany and is still pushing the 2% annual pay rises into her investments, but somehow she only has $130,000 to her name.

Ten year check in

John is leaping ahead in so many ways. His finances are more than double Cindy's despite having the same income and spending more each year. He's constantly thrilled with his life as each year he moves from spending like a poor student to a comfortable adult. He no longer worries about the bills, and eats well on delicious home cooked food with his Lady wife.

Cindy feels stuck, like no matter what she does she isn't moving forward. She wants to change up her life but isn't sure how. All her favourite restaurants serve the same meals every day, and she's tried all the hobbies she can think of. She isn't willing to increase her spending, but doesn't want to cut back either. She's restless with her life and looking to make a change.

Twenty years on - John is on his way up and out!

John and Lady are ready to hit the road! John looked at his bank account and realised he had enough money to never work again! When his boss asked him to work the weekend he politely told him where he could put that overtime and rode off into the sunset!

After 20 years of slowly increasing his expenses John now spends $30,000 a year, and lives like a king. Those early years of scrimping and saving have taught him valuable skills, and he can't imagine what he would do if he had more money.

The $20,000 a year he's been putting aside has turned into $820,000. John knows he can comfortably pull $32,800 a year from his investments, so he retires to a simple life of playing with his pups, taking long walks on the beach, chasing a good stick and sniffing the bushes

Twenty years on - Cindy is stuck and looking for the light at the end of the tunnel

It's been a long road for Cindy. She's spent the last ten years reinventing herself, and now she's pretty happy with her life. She's tossed aside brunches and hair appointments for play dates with the pups and couch parties with her friends. She's learned to cook at home so she can spend more on the things that matter to her like travelling. Cindy feels richer then before - even though she still spends $30,000 a year because she spends less on the little things and saves for the things that matter to her. 

After twenty years at SomeWellKnownCompany Cindy wants to move on. She checks her investments to find she has $438,000. She's disappointed because she really wanted to move away from the corporate world, but she knows the money won't last forever. She works out that she needs to spend another 5 years working and investing before she can step away from her desk forever.

And the winner is? Lifestyle inflation! And puppies!

John is a very good boy. After twenty years of continuously improving his life and relaxing the financials reins he finds himself flush with cash and ready to retire. Cindy on the other hand set herself some very solid spending rules and refused to deviate from them, even when she wasn't happy with her life, yet she has only half of the retirement nest egg that John has.

The oft quoted rule of early retirement is to not let your expenses grow as your income does. We argue endlessly that you can be happy without spending much, and that's true. To an extent.

As young health teenagers John and I ate nothing but junk food, slept on the floor without a mattress and worked 16 hour days without any ill effects. As we got older (I say, at the queenly age of 26) we can't do those things anymore. We like things a little nicer, like a well cooked steak, we get hangry if we skip meals, and we hate spending more than 9 hours at the office.

John and I don't need a yacht to be happy, but we want some slightly nicer things as we age.

By following in John's paw prints, you can let your lifestyle grow with your income and still save a giant nest egg. By starting small you can retire early, retire rich, and retire really really happy.

The earlier you start, the easier it is.

Pay less tax in Australia - the legal way

Happy financial new year everyone! It's time to do your tax return - which for most of us means getting some money back in our pockets.

The average person pays almost $17,000 a year in tax - how great would it be to pay less? Here's some simple, legal tricks to pay less tax.

A quick google search tells me that Australians pay 125 different taxes, and while some of them are wonderful things that keep our healthcare and education systems running, we are also paying some ridiculous things like the "Wine Equalisation Tax" and the highly contentious Carbon Tax.

For most of us 20% of what we earn disappears into paying taxes. I don't mind the taxes that let me get free healthcare, or the ones that make sure I have law enforcement and children can read. However when I leave work on Monday and realise I've worked that whole day and I don't see a cent of it, I get a little grouchy.

Here are the absolute basics of reducing your tax bill. Some of these you can implement for the year just gone, some you'll need to keep records to claim next year.

Pay less tax by Doing your laundry and wearing good pants

Do you wear clothes to work? Good start. Do those clothes have your employers logo on them? You can claim for washing that. You can also claim for washing 'Occupation specific clothing' like nurses scrubs, or checked chef pants, and you can claim for buying protective clothing like safety vests, hard hats, non-slip shoes and sun protection.

The best part is, if you're claiming for laundry then you don't need receipts if you claim less than $150 and if your total work-wear claim is less than $300.

You will need to front receipts for any work-specific clothes you've bought.

Pay less tax by driving a car

Unfortunately you can't claim for driving to work in the morning, but you can claim a tax deduction for driving for work. If you're employer has two different work sites and you travel between them you can claim for that trip. If you drive somewhere for work, say to the bank, or to a supplier, then you can claim that trip. If you drive to an "alternative workplace" you can claim that expense, so long as it's not a regular trip, because then it becomes a regular workplace. The definitions around this are a little hazy, but if you only need to head out to the alternative place a couple of times a year you should be okay.

If you drive less than 5,000 kilometres in a year, then the easiest claim method is Cents per Kilometre. You'll need to record how many kilometres you drove for business (either with a work diary, or a logbook) and you can claim 66cents per kilometre, up to 5,000 kilometres. That's $3,300 worth of deductions, just for keeping a diary.

If you drive more than 5,000 kilometres (or want to do the paperwork) you can claim a percentage of use. You'll need to track to odometer readings for all business and personal trips, plus keep receipts for every expense (petrol, maintenance, etc.). You can then claim a percentage of your car costs and depreciation. This method can be more lucrative, but also requires a lot more effort on your part.

 Pay less tax by getting smarter

Studying? Taking a short course? You can claim for schooling expenses like notepads, textbooks, accommodation if you travelled for the course, course fees and even your home office and internet costs - as long as your course is related to your current employment. If you work in a bank and are studying to be a vet, you won't be able to make a claim, but an accountant taking an advanced tax course can claim the expenses.

Unfortunately you can't claim HECS / HELP fees, or lunch - unless you had to spend the night away from home.

Pay less tax by giving to charity

Okay, here's a big one. We pay taxes to keep our country running. Our taxes keep hospitals open, keep police on the streets, teachers in classrooms and libraries open. Our taxes also pay for things we might disagree with like international troop deployment, building jet fighters and politicians pensions.

If you think there is a cause that your tax money isn't doing enough to support, make a donation and you can claim it as a tax deduction (assuming that charity has the right tax status - they'll tell you.)

Of course you'll need a receipt, then rather than your taxes going to a politicians bank account, you can make a donation to the Hutt St. Centre to support homeless South Australians and you can pay less tax at the same time.

Also, you can claim $10 of unexplained donations. This covers the coins you drop in charity jars.

Pay less tax by getting married!

You don't need a white dress and a wedding ring for this one, a De Facto marriage will do. If a single person earns more than $90,000 they are required to pay an extra 1% towards the Medicare Levy Surcharge. However as a family you can earn up to $180,000 before this surcharge comes into play.

I'm definitely not saying shack up with a stranger to avoid this tax - there are a lot of strings attached to being declared a De Facto couple. But if you're sharing a house and a bed with your partner for more than six months then a good lawyer will be able to argue you had a De Facto relationship and take half your stuff in a messy breakup.

That 1% surcharge will cost you at least $900 on your tax bill, so maybe it's time to drop to a knee and ask your dearly beloved to tax marry you.

Pay less tax with your phone and internet

Are you on call for work? Do you answer work emails out of hours and have long boring chats with your boss well after you leave work? Congratulations, you can claim that back on tax.

Simply work out what percentage of your phone and internet usage is work related, and how much is personal, then times your bill by that amount. If 50% of your phone usage is for work, and you pay $60 a month, then you can claim a $360 deduction at the end of the year. ($60 p/month times 50% equals $30. Over 12 months that equals $360)

Pay less tax by getting someone else to do your tax

Paying a tax agent is a double whammy of deductions. A good tax agent will get you more in deductions than you paid to see them in the first place, and you can claim their fee as a deduction next year!

A tax agent is also a great idea because they stay on top of all the shifting rules of our tax system. Each year the rules about what can be claimed, how much you can claim and what receipts you need to hold on to change. Paying a tax agent to be aware of these things is a great idea.

Is it worth the extra drama?

Absolutely yes! Studies show that Australians are missing out on $426 worth of unclaimed tax deductions each year. If you are earning $50,000 and claim $1,000 in deductions, that puts $325 back in your pocket. That's a 32% return and better than any investment I know of.

You've done all the hard work to earn this money, with a few tiny extra steps you can make sure you keep it.

Keep in mind, I'm not a qualified tax agent. I've got years of experience with my own tax returns and I have Google. Don't take this as gospel - all the things I've mentioned can be claimed, but do your own research and make sure it applies to your situation. No one wants the ATO knocking on their door because they claimed too much for laundry.