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"The doctor" (1919) Photo by James Wallace Pondelicek. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Now that I have my Mother’s Day remembrances in the mail, it is time to get back to regular business. (I won’t share with you my Mother’s Day solutions just yet as my mom reads my blog. Hi Mom!)

We are almost halfway through 2011! It is the start of a new month and a new monthly organizing theme topic. Last month, we tackled the sometimes stressful subject of money, specifically with regard to retirement planning. This month’s theme is similarly important and challenging . . . health.

Just as with last month’s topic, we are going to take an honest look at what it takes to maintain your health, identify the top priorities to improve our personal health, and techniques to keep all this information organized and accessible.

Unless you are feeling terrible, chances are most of the time you don’t pay a lot of attention to your health. If your body gets you through your busy day and all that you have to accomplish, most people consider that healthy enough. Sometimes people will hyperfocus on a particular aspect of health, such as diet or exercise, but rarely do any of us take the time to think about the whole picture and where our energies would be best spent.

Health is a very subjective topic and it means different things to different people. There are certain aspects of health that we control (like how much we exercise) mixed in with completely random occurrences, like accidents, disease and genetics, that can limit how healthy we can be.

To kick off the month, I thought it would be helpful to start with the baseline priorities for health and issue some Ruly Challenges.

Medical Visits

It has been my experience that the average man with no major medical issues needs to seek medical attention a minimum of 4 times per year and the average woman 5 times per year. In our family, we consider the following medical care to be the bare minimum necessary:

• Annual physical with primary care physician
• Cleaning appointments with dentist twice per year
• Annual eye checkup with optometrist/ophthalmologist
• For women: Annual gynecological appointment

While 4-5 medical appointments per year does not sound too bad, it gets a bit more complicated if you are also responsible for supervising medical care for children/family. Numerous studies show that, on average, women care far more about health than men and that married women tend to take on a huge responsibility for the health of their families. See, for example:

• “Marriage and men’s health,” Harvard Men’s Health Watch, July 2010.

In my household, I oversee a minimum of 17 medical appointments annually for 4 people. The actual number of appointments is probably far higher since we always have at least one minor emergency or illness each year, accidents, or someone with a condition that requires numerous follow-up visits. It seems that I am going to a medical office on someone’s behalf at least every few weeks and when I am not doing that I am helping everyone schedule appointments, take their daily vitamins or refill prescriptions. It is a lot to be responsible for.

The medical profession does help us out in this regard with reminder phone calls, auto-refilling prescriptions and other conveniences but it still takes a good calendar and recordkeeping system to stay on top of all of it. We will talk about some organizing options in this area in future posts.

Ruly Challenge: If you are overdue for any of the above basic medical appointments, make an appointment today!

Personal Health

Having good health involves a whole lot more than going to the doctor regularly and taking prescribed medicines. There are actions we all need to take on a continuous basis, like:

• Don’t smoke
• Limit alcohol consumption
• Buckle your seat belt
• Wear sunscreen
• Floss
• Exercise regularly
• Get enough sleep
• Eat a good diet including whole grains and large amounts of fruits and vegetables
• Limit sugar consumption
• Maintain a healthy weight
• Cope with stress effectively

Not an easy list to be sure! Accomplishing all of these things requires an incredible amount of organization. Most of us have to make our peace that we may never accomplish every single item on the list all the time and certain items on the list may be more important than others at various times in our lives. Habits and routines help tremendously here. If you can just remember to do something every single day, over time, you forget that there ever was a time when you did not do it.

In our family, the hardest challenges on the list are diet and exercise. We know we need to do better but particularly with regard to exercise it can be hard to fit it in. My husband and I have different challenges in this regard. For him, he is working or commuting so many hours during the work week, it is nearly impossible to carve out an hour for exercise. For me, the challenge is fitting in a workout while minding small children and accomplishing a mixed workload of household and business tasks.

Starting small can be a good help here. For the next month, I will aim to do at least 15 minutes of designated exercise daily (running after my children or cleaning will not count for this purpose). I will probably focus on stretching or strength exercises. I will chat with my husband to see if he can aim to do the same. 15 minutes is not going to satisfy either of our fitness goals but it might sow the seeds for better exercise habits in the future.

Ruly Challenge: Of the personal health criteria, identify 1 area that you would like to focus on this month and come up with a specific routine or habit to accomplish your goal. Identify the way that you will track your progress, such as writing down your accomplishments in a journal or log.

Please join me in the quest to improve health this month! Please share in the comments anything you would add to my list of guidelines for good health or your own resolutions for the month.

In our discussion of retirement saving this month, Ruth has posted a few comments relating to the need to cut back on basic expenses so that you have money to save for retirement. Suze Orman couldn’t agree more. Below is her tough love advice about where to cut expenses when you have a tight budget.

Suze’s advice tells us to keep paying contributions to things like health insurance and retirement saving and cut out things like hair, manicures and vacations. Essentially her advice is that we keep paying for important but invisible expenses and cut out the visible signs of wealth. When I first listened to this, I thought, “Well, of course. Doesn’t everyone do this?”

Then, I came across this article:

• “We’d rather go broke before going gray survey finds,” Today Show, March 23, 2011

The survey showed that over 47% of female survey respondents refused to stop their haircut/hair coloring appointments even under economic distress. 57.5% refused to give up discount shopping for apparel and over 61% refused to give up their cable television subscription! Men weren’t much better although had slightly lower percentages in each category.

It made me remember a conversation in my yoga class where a mom indicated that she went gray in college and has been coloring her hair ever since. She had to stop coloring her hair for a brief time when her family was young and they didn’t have the money. “I will never do that again!” she vowed.

I have not had to face this dilemma just yet. About 10 years ago, I was in a stylist’s chair in a nice salon in Washington and was shocked when the stylist ran a comb through my hair and said, “Well, you’re lucky not to have any gray.” All I remember thinking was, “Is this woman crazy? I’m young! Why is she looking for gray hair?” But it turns out that gray hair is relatively common among younger people and likely the stress of Washington living doesn’t help in this regard. People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” this year is Jennifer Lopez, who shockingly admitted that she went gray at 23 and colors her hair every two weeks ever since!

It made me wonder, “If my hair was turning gray and the only way to decently color my hair was at a salon, would I be willing to give that up?” It is a really tough choice. There is such a premium on looking young in female beauty and gray hair before the age of 50 or so is hard on the ego. I guess I would look at what other vanity expenses could go first.

These little ego decisions are a big part of our spending problems and they happen all the time. This weekend, for example, we faced a similar dilemma with our sunroom furnishings. Our sunroom doubles as our children’s playroom/art room and takes a huge amount of abuse. There was paint and glue ground into the carpet and upholstery. We took one look at the mess and thought, “It is time to get new furniture and an area rug.” Our brain calculus looked somewhat like this:

There were a lot more positives than negatives in this option and we were just about ready to load up in the car to go shopping.

But then, we thought about the alternative solution. We could try to clean up the mess and see how things looked at that point. The brain calculus for this decision looked like this:

Cleaning up the furniture required only sweat equity. We would also be burning calories as we cleaned and would be saving the earth by not adding more to the landfills and re-using what we already had. Still, it was going to be a LOT of work and not much fun.

What tipped the balance in the end? It wasn’t so much the thought of spending money that deterred us but rather the prospect that the money would not be well spent. Reality made us factor in the following calculation:

It was the net negative of realizing that with small children mess is inevitable and that new furniture would buy us only a short reprieve from the current mess we were facing that forced the decision to pick up the brushes and start scrubbing. It took hours but in the end the result is really quite nice. Not as nice as new furnishings, of course, but perfectly acceptable for company and very clean.

Saving money has a huge amount to do with our psychology. Ramit Sethi of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” recently did an interesting piece on spending psychology and tax refunds.

Watch the full episode. See more Nightly Business Report.

Ramit argues that while “experts” tell us not to have a tax refund because we are losing out on interest, the reality is that getting a tax refund is a good way for a lot of people to force themselves to save any money at all.

Many financial experts have come to similar conclusions about helping people save money. While the pure financial analysis on credit card interest rates, for example, may dictate that you pay off your highest interest cards first, many financial advisers find that people will not stick with a savings plan if they don’t see results. So, they advise paying off your lowest balance first, regardless of interest rate, so that you see progress and stay motivated. Getting out of debt imperfectly, they argue, is better than being so overwhelmed by the “perfect” way that you fail to make any progress at all.

Ruly Challenge

I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on the above and think about where you could cut expenses if you had to. What is your biggest extravagance? What do you spend money on that is primarily about preserving outward appearances? Do you need to adopt some psychological techniques to help you improve your financial situation?

Would you be willing to cancel the family vacation, give up cable or go gray to save money? What would be the last expense to go for you? Please share in the comments.

"Paying United States pensioners at the Pension Office in the New York Custom-House" (1866). Alfred Rudolph Waud, artist. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

If you want any hope of retiring comfortably, you need to have at least a basic understanding of advanced math.

Most of the soundbites today on retirement planning speak to people with limited knowledge of math. The basic message is “Put some aside today and in 30 years you will have riches!” So, you put some money into the black box known as your 401(k)/IRA/403(b) plan and assume that through some sort of magic it will generate lots of interest and dividends without you doing anything further. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t work, people scratch their heads and wonder why. See, for example, the following article:

• “Retirement savers’ confidence plummets,” MarketWatch, March 15, 2011.

It doesn’t seem to be just regular people who have difficulty with the math of long-term investing. Recently we have seen numerous professional investing plans fail due to miscalculations in this area. For example, Social Security, pensions, long-term care insurance, annuities, and prepaid college savings plans all rely on the same type of math—i.e. pay a little today in exchange for a big return tomorrow.  And many of these plans have run into financial difficulty of late. See, for example the following news articles:

• “College Plans You Thought Were Safe,” Ron Lieber, The New York Times, April 1, 2011.
• Press release, “MetLife Will Discontinue the Sale of New Long-Term Care Insurance Coverage,” November 10, 2010.
• “Donors Find Gift Annuities Can Stop Giving,” The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2009.
• “Falling Short: A Special Report on Pensions,” The Economist, April 7, 2011

The reasons for these professional failures is somewhat unclear but it seems to stem from underestimating the amount of contributions needed, underestimating future expenses and overestimating investment returns.

The same mistakes occur in our personal retirement planning calculations. This post will give you a quick, simplified overview of what these financial assumptions and calculations are and how they might impact your own retirement planning. It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity and just give up on understanding any of it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a few simple ideas in mind, you are going to do a lot to steer yourself in the right direction.

The Most Conservative Strategy

If we strip out all the complicating factors of retirement planning (interest, inflation, taxes, salary appreciation over time, cost of living increases, etc.) and just go back to a simple example, we get a clear picture of how saving for your own retirement might work.

For example: A worker earns $60,000 per year and works 30 years, earning a consistent $60,000 salary per year. (Never mind, that in reality, you would probably earn less at the beginning of your career and more at the end.) Then the worker retires for 30 years and needs constant income. (Again, we are ignoring interest, inflation, Social Security and tax rates.) If the worker saves nothing during the working years, the worker earns $60,000 during the employed years and nothing in retirement.

If the worker wants to maintain the same standard of living in retirement, the worker would essentially need to live on half of his/her income during the 30 working years to have the same amount in retirement, as shown in the graph below.

Pretty simple to understand but pretty hard to implement in practice! Live on half your income? Really? Does anyone do this? If you have ever spent any time reading the comments on The Wall Street Journal website, you would know that there are quite a few people that practice this exact strategy. There is certainly nothing wrong with adopting this strategy and if you can do it, you are probably going to get through retirement just fine, assuming you are investing your savings wisely over time. For most people, however, this is too restrictive and conservative. To get better leverage of our money today, we rely on the benefits of compound interest.

The Least Conservative Strategy

The most positive factor working in our favor when it comes to saving a large amount of money is counting on compound interest. This means that not only is our money earning interest over time but the interest that we earn also earns more interest and the effect snowballs to make us a large sum in the end. Sometimes you see retirement planners get very aggressive with their assumptions on compound interest. The higher the interest rate and the more frequently it compounds (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.) the faster your money grows. The New York Times recently published an interesting article on the topic of compounding, highlighting the fact that the last 10 years before your retirement are absolutely critical to reaching your retirement goals, because your money is supposed to approximately double in value over that time.

• “With Retirement Savings, It’s a Sprint to the Finish,” Tara Siegel Bernard, The New York Times, January 21, 2011.

So, now let’s assume that we want to receive approximately $30,000 per year in retirement and we are saving our money in something (stocks, bonds, CDs, etc.) that will earn us a minimum return of 4% per year. (Again, for simplicity, we are ignoring inflation, taxes, etc.) First, we need to know how much we need at retirement age to generate $30,000 per year at a 4% return. If we use this calculator putting in 30 years to retirement, 30 years in retirement, our desired annual income in retirement ($30,000), a return of 4%, compounded annually and 0% inflation, we see that we need almost $540,000 in retirement. ($539,511.44). You can play around with different interest rates and see what happens. If you could earn 8% interest compounded annually, you only need to save $364,752.18 but if your return is closer to 2% annually, you need a whopping $685,331.54.

So, then we need to find out how much we have to save each month in order to reach our savings goal. If you use this calculator and plug in starting with $0, 30 years to invest, 4% annual return and a future value (i.e. the amount you need at the end of your 30-year savings period) of $539,511.44 (the amount we calculated from the retirement calculator above), then click the “Contribution” button, you see that you need to be saving $784.73 per month! You can then click “View Schedule” to print out a guide that you can compare over time to make sure you are saving and earning interest on schedule. Note again, that if you change the interest rate to 8% you only need to save $380.58 per month and if you earn only 2% interest, you need to save $1096.40 per month.

$784.73 is still a lot to save each month, but it is far better than our “live on half your income” scenario. Under the 4% interest approach, you only need to save $9,416.76 per year rather than $30,000. So, if you are earning $60,000 per year, you get to live on over $50,000 per year rather than $30,000.

Cool! So now our income chart looks like this:

The Impact of Inflation

But, this again is not the complete story. This time we are too optimistic. Let’s factor in inflation. We will assume that your employer pays you $60,000 per year with no raises for 30 years. You stash $30,000 in a mattress each year for retirement. On retirement, you pull out $30,000 from the mattress each year to live on. What does inflation do to the buying power of your money over time? Using historical inflation rates from 1951 – 2010 from inflationdata.com, we see the following sad story.

So, what started out as $30,000, ends up being worth around $3,000 60 years later.  Annual average inflation rates over the past 60 years range from -0.34% to 13.58%. The higher inflation goes, the less your money is worth.

You often hear people talk about “beating inflation” and what they mean is that you need to generate earning power each year that is at least equal to or better than inflation in order to keep the value of your money stable. In 2010, the average inflation rate was 1.64%, so if you didn’t earn a raise, your salary is now worth about 98% of what it once was. Similarly, if you had all of your money in savings accounts earning 1% interest, you also didn’t beat inflation and your money is now worth about 99% of what it was. NPR did a story recently about the impact of inflation and rising costs of living on employee incomes that is worth a listen.

• “Paychecks Can’t Keep Up With Rising Prices,” Marilyn Geewax, National Public Radio, April 10, 2011.

Yes, inflation is a confusing concept. Essentially, you could be losing money over time even though you don’t see actual losses on your bank statements. To prevent these losses, you need to have your money earn at least the rate of inflation each year. Averaged out, inflation has historically been around 3-4% so if you really want your money to grow, you need to generate investment returns more than that amount each year.

To see the impact of inflation, go back to our retirement calculator and instead of plugging in 0% inflation, leave the default inflation rate of 3.5%. Remember, before we needed to save $539,511.44 at 0% inflation. With 3.5% inflation, we need $2,357,666.76 ! Ouch! This corresponds to a monthly savings requirement of approximately $3,429.26 over 30 years. This is even more than the “live on half your income” strategy.

Now, before you completely panic at this point that saving for retirement is impossible, remember that 4% is a relatively low rate of return and 3.5% inflation is probably closer to the higher end. In recent years, inflation has been closer to 2%. If you earned an 8% return with 2% inflation that monthly payment goes down to about $565.78.

The Impact of Taxes

To add to the fun, you can calculate in tax rates. It is really your after-tax earnings that you live on, after all. Now you need to earn enough in retirement to compensate for whatever tax rates are. Nobody knows for sure what tax rates will be in the future. They probably would not be lower than 10% based on historical patterns and could be very, very high (hopefully not higher than 45% unless you are a very high income individual).

For example, if you assume you might be taxed at 33% (including federal and state taxes) on your $30,000 income in retirement, then you need to earn at least $30,000 * 1.33 = $39,900 each year. So, if we go back to our retirement planning calculator above and plug in 30 years to retirement, 30 years in retirement, 4% annual interest, 3.5% annual inflation (the default), and $39,900 (pre-tax income needed), we see that we now need to save $3,135,696.79 or about $4,560.92 per month. This ridiculous amount makes our “live on half your income” strategist look risky. This amount of savings would require you to live on about 10% of your income, which, I would like to see anyone but the most wealthy attempt.

Again, don’t assume that retirement is simply impossible. You can adjust the factors like rate of return, years to retirement, tax rates, income desired and inflation to get a lower monthly payment that is achievable for your situation.

The Reality

We all have to get comfortable with the large numbers of retirement planning and have at least a basic understanding of the factors like inflation and tax rates that have an enormous impact on our savings requirements.

While you can use the simple calculators profiled above to get a rough idea, you can also use more sophisticated calculators as well. Most every major financial advisor offers retirement planning calculator on its website. If you already have a 401(k)/IRA plan, you might check to see what your provider offers. These calculators have relatively simple inputs and allow you to play around with some of the variables. For example, here is one from Schwab and here is one from CNN Money.

Just be aware that all of these calculators are going to have some limitations. They are perhaps a bit optimistic when it comes to returns on your money (one I looked at had a minimum return of 8% and a maximum return of something like 20% annually) and they don’t seem to account for the fact that your income might vary dramatically over time and that you might be able to make more contributions at later points in your life when you have more income and fewer expenses than earlier on when you might be paying down debt or raising a family. If you have variable income or expect to make variable payments to your savings plan over time, you likely need to spend some time either crunching your own numbers or sitting down with a financial professional to work the numbers for you.

The Ruly Challenge

Armed with this easy-to-digest knowledge of retirement planning, I challenge all of you to run some quick calculations on your own retirement planning.

If you are currently in the process of saving for retirement:

1. Sit down and think about how much you really need in retirement. You might look at your budget today and determine which expenses you will still have in retirement and which might be lower. Given your health and genetics, how long could you possibly work a full-time job?  Could you afford to stay in your current home? How much do you think medical care will be? Do you think you will receive Social Security or a pension? If yes, about how much? Based on this planning, come up with a number in today’s dollars that is your desired annual income in retirement and figure out how much you are counting on from the government and/or pensions and the amount you will need to save yourself.
2. Get an estimate of the total amount you need to save by retirement based on your income requirements in #1. You can use this simple calculator (remembering to factor in your estimated tax rates) or one from your own 401(k) or other financial provider.
3. Determine how much you need to be saving each month using a calculator such as this one or this one for 401(k) participants. If you already have some money saved, you will put the current value of that savings in the “Present Value” column. The number you calculated in #2 above goes in the “Future Value” column. Print out the schedule for reference and plan to check in on your progress at least once a year to make sure you are staying on track. If you are truly unable to save anything at this point in time, figure out an estimate of how much you will need to be saving once you reach a point of financial stability.

If you are already in retirement:

1. If you are depending on a pension or Social Security, do a quick Google search to find out the current financial status of the pension or consider setting up a free Google news alert for the name of your pension plan to stay on top of developments in this area.
2. Try a calculator like this one to make sure withdrawals from your own savings are on track.
3. Develop a contingency plan in case your income is decreased.

What have you learned about retirement math? Are you overwhelmed or empowered knowing the above information? Please share in the comments.

"The World of Water." Photo by Snap® Third Eye a.k.a. D. Basu. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

While we still have a few brain cells left that are not dedicated to (pleasant and non-stressful) holiday thoughts, I thought it would be a good idea to focus in on some of the emergency preparation aspects of our theme.

My own emergency planning could use a little tweaking. I have a lot of projects started in my preparation but need to get them to a completed state. My goals for myself and for you by the end of the year are to get all Ruly readers to have a 30-day food and water store ready as well as essential tools for whatever emergency is likely to befall you given your particular geographic location. Bonus points to anyone who goes above and beyond!

From my post last year, we know that food storage is not necessarily the first and most vital part of our emergency preparation but it is the one psychologically that we associate with safety and security. Since psychological soundness is a good thing (whether in an emergency or otherwise!) we will add that as a priority on our list.

Priority one, however, is water! Ready.gov gives a rough guideline of “one gallon of water per person per day” and recommends a bare minimum 3-day water supply per person in your emergency kit. For our family of four, that is roughly 4 gallons per day, 28 gallons per week and 112 gallons per month. Wow! That is a LOT of water!

When we were first discussing our water storage, I informed my husband that we needed to find a way to store 112 gallons of water. I envisioned lots and lots of plastic bottles of water. “No way!” he said, saying the idea was ridiculous. He then walked me through how he saw the situation.

One gallon of water per day per the ready.gov guidelines includes “drinking and sanitation.” So the one gallon per person is both for drinking as well as an allotment for things like bathing, washing dishes, flushing toilets, etc. He then pointed to the 74 gallon hot water tank in our basement. In an emergency, we would save our bottled water for drinking and drain the hot water tank for bathing, washing and all those other “sanitation” tasks.

So what is the bare minimum level of water you need for drinking purposes? My survival guru, John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman in his book the SAS Survival Handbook suggests a bare minimum of 2 liters (~0.5 gallon) of water per person per day for drinking purposes. So, for our family of 4 that is roughly 2 gallons per day, 14 gallons per week and 56 gallons per month. If we are aiming for a 30-day supply, we need to find a way to store 56 gallons!

Clear Glass Cold Drink Dispenser Jug with Pouring Spigot by Home Essentials. At amazon.com.

So, as of this moment, how much water storage capacity do we have? I purchased three of these 5-gallon (~19 liters) glass storage containers from amazon.com. I am not yet recommending them as I am still testing them out. I like that they are glass since plastic storage containers always seem to impart a strange taste to the water. But, we have had a few problems with leaks which is a big downer. Once we have them all full and are using them regularly, I will provide an update. So, we have 15 gallons right there.

41 gallons (~155 liters) to go. We have a couple of large 3L Deer Park bottles so we can add 9 liters (~2.5 gallons) to the total. A grand total of 17.5 gallons (or close to 9 days survival).

While 9 days is pretty good, it isn’t anywhere close to 30 days. How will we make up the difference?

We can stock up on plastic water bottles. I am not a big fan of plastic water bottles generally due to the taste of the water but have to admit that they are probably the most convenient way to store and transport water in an emergency. They are small, portable, individually contained (which helps keep the supply fresh and prevent contamination) and durable. While you could also invest in a huge water storage tank in your backyard, in an evacuation scenario you would lose access to that water supply. Plastic water bottles could also be used as a form of currency if you need to trade supplies with a neighbor.

Each water bottle is 0.5 L so our family would need a minimum of 16 of those bottles every day in an emergency! Generally, those bottles are sold in packs of about 24 at our local stores. So for a week’s worth of water in plastic water bottle form, we would need to buy at least 5 packs of bottles (120 bottles!). This would give us an additional 16 gallons (60 L).

That leaves 22.5 gallons (85 L) to go. That’s a little over 28 of the 3L Deer Park bottles. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to keep a store of those in the garage.

Our tentative drinking water storage plan:

• 15 gallons (~57 liters) in large glass jars
• ~25.5 gallons (96 liters) in 3L plastic water jugs
• ~16 gallons (60 liters) in 0.5L plastic water bottles

Total drinking water storage: 56.5 gallons (~214 liters)

Our sanitation water storage plan:

• 74 gallon (~280 liters) hot water heater

Total water storage: 130.5 gallons (~494 liters). We will slightly exceed the 1 gallon per day ready.gov guideline.

Shopping List: (Check expiration dates when buying. Yes, water expires!)

• 5 24-packs of bottled water
• 28 3L bottled water containers (or ~22 gallon water containers)

Estimated cost: ~$100

So this is baby step one in your water storage preparation. And I issue you a Ruly Challenge:

The Challenge: Figure out how much water (drinking and otherwise) your family needs for 30 days (or a shorter or longer period of time depending on your situation). Take into account the 1 gallon/person/day ready.gov guideline and the 0.5 gallon/person/day minimum survival drinking water standard and what is likely to happen to you in an emergency. 30 days seems plenty (if not excessive) for us since we are close to a large city and several water sources. If you live in a desert area or a remote area, you might need significantly more.

If water supplies were cut off for you today would you be ready? Are you intimidated by the thought of storing so much water? Please share in the comments.

Friday’s post: Where to store all that water and how to rotate it to monitor expiration dates!

"Mrs. W.E. Kuhn looking through her closet." (1938). Photo from the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

Unless you live in a nudist colony, clothes are an essential part of your everyday life. Most people have a closet jam packed with clothes, shoes and accessories and find themselves wishing for more closet space. Most people are also drowning in a sea of laundry and dreading the task of washing, folding and hanging all those worn clothes yet again. The act of getting dressed can feel like a monumental chore some days and if we are honest with ourselves, it is! Aside from going au naturale, what can you do about it?

Some people have been experimenting with minimalist closets–limiting their clothing choices to just a few pieces or even a single standard uniform. There is less anxiety over what to wear and less to wash. Clothing minimalists also claim to experience a freeing of mental energy. Taking away the burden of worrying what you look like each day allows you to invest that energy into other projects.

We have all heard the story about Albert Einstein’s closet consisting of multiple copies of the same outfit. (According to this site, it turns out that might not be exactly true.) In college, however, I encountered several professors in the sciences who seemed to adopt this approach to clothing. One professor wore khaki pants and a white shirt every single day. Another wore the same brightly patterned sweater every single class. They were brilliant men and we never knew if the clothing choices were due to the fact that they were so immersed in their work they didn’t notice what they were wearing or whether the university was not paying them sufficiently to allow them to go shopping!

You also see clothing minimalism in the art world. Alex Martin is one example. For one whole year (July 7, 2005 through July 7, 2006), she wore the same little brown dress and documented her experience in an online journal. She called the project “a one-woman show against fashion.” Below is a video from the Seattle Channel describing her experience.

After the little brown dress project, Alex Martin went on the following year to wear only clothing from her closet, sewing and refashioning the pieces as she went along.  She called it a “fashion detox” or a “slow fashion movement.”

I hear you thinking, “Well, this is all very interesting but these people do not live in the “real” world I live in where I have to wear different clothes every day or I will be shunned by my social circle.” Would clothing minimalism work for “real” people?

The New York Times reported that recently a group of people from around the world decided to try exactly that experiment. The project was called “Six Items or Less: A Global Experiment Examining the Power of What We Don’t Wear” and the participants agreed to choose only six items to wear for one month. Below is a video from the New York Times showing the results for one participant and here you can read reflections upon completing the project from one of the Six Items or Less founders.

As a mental exercise for getting ready to purge my own closet I am currently performing my own experiment on clothing minimalism that I will report to you on later. However, I throw down to you another Ruly Challenge.

The Challenge: Adopt some form of clothing minimalism this month. Decide for yourself what form it will take and how long it will last. You could go on a “shopping diet” and not purchase any new clothes, wear one “uniform” outfit for a period of time, restrict yourself to a few items of clothing or find new ways to wear clothes you have owned for a long period of time.

What do you think of clothing minimalism? Will you accept the Ruly Challenge? Please share in the comments.

"Valerie was busy, exceedingly busy, arranging matters, in view of the great change impending." Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson (c. 1911). From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

We are at the mid-point of 2010, which is still hard for me to believe! The school year is almost over and summer vacations are upon us. Given the whirlwind of activity, June seemed like the right month to step back for a moment, reflect on what we have already covered so far and catch up on any lingering projects. I know I have plenty.

While we are reflecting, we are going to address motivation generally, how to stay motivated and more importantly what to do when you have relapsed back into comfortable patterns and you need a boost to get you back on track. We will look at this issue from a variety of perspectives at the business and personal level.

So first, to keep the month on track . . . your Ruly Challenge.

The Challenge: Complete the Ruly Motivation Worksheet, which you can download here. Identify how much “free time” you have this month to accomplish your lingering tasks. Identify from your budget how much “free money” you have. Then, make a list of the items you want to accomplish along with the time or money required for these tasks and your personal level of interest in those tasks. You may wish to revisit your 2010 goals. Rank the final list and come up with an action plan for the month.

The point of the Ruly Challenge this month is not to be superhuman but to give yourself a slight push to use your time more effectively. Don’t overschedule yourself and don’t feel bad if you can’t get to everything. You may discover from this exercise that there are things on your to do list that are realistically never likely to get done. If that is the case, you might need to just let it go, drop it off the list and know for the future that you are unlikely to be successful committing to that type of project. If it is a project that has to get done, come up with an alternative way to accomplish it, perhaps through outsourcing or simplifying and accepting a less perfect solution.

I am going to keep things brief today so you can focus your energies on the worksheet. Please share in the comments the tasks that are bugging you the most or your strategies for getting through a massive to do list.

Victory Gardens--for family and country. Sunday morning in many U.S. communities finds all the neighbors getting together for a good workout at the community Victory Garden. Through cooperation of local organizations, thousands of vacant lots in thousands of cities are being transformed into fruitful gardens, where everyone from grandpa to the youngster down the block puts in hours of patriotic labor (1943). Photo by Ann Rosener. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

It’s the end of another month and time to summarize this month’s posts and highlight some of my favorite comments. This month at Ruly we have been discussing strategies to bring more order to your yard and garden. We started off with 5 reasons to love your landscaping.

We covered gardening basics, beginning with knowing how much “free” water (i.e. rain) you receive and selecting native plants that are easier to maintain.

Watering My Garden commented:

i live in rome, italy where the local mains supply is extremely hard alkaline water…collecting and reusing rainwater is essential if i’m to enjoy acid loving plants like gardenias on my terrace!

Isn’t it delightful to know that someone is out there watering gardenias on the terrace in Rome? It makes me smile to think about it.

We also discussed weed prevention strategies including mulching and discussed when there can be too much mulch.

Diadia commented:

The best time to de-weed the garden and yard is right after the rain.
With garden gloves and a dandelion digger and a weed bag, it is fast work.

My four year old now points out all the mulch to me when we are in parking lots at various stores. While driving down one of the main roads in town, I saw this unique mulching technique in the median strip that I thought was rather pretty. The edges of the mulch bed are lined with rocks. It had never occurred to me to use two different types of mulching materials. The designer of this bed cleverly used mulch as a design element.

Median strip using rock edging and organic mulch.

Foraging into landscape design, we discussed evergreen plantings and noted that at least 25% of your plantings should be evergreens but that too many evergreens make a space gloomy and depressing.

We had a fun post on topiary plantings, showing the artistry than can be created by shaping plants.

We gave a quick pruning lesson to spruce up your bushes, shrubs and trees.

We discussed 5 signs of the perfectionist gardener.

Mary commented:

I personally know several garden perfectionists, and I agree, it becomes more stressful than enjoyable. I even have a family member who stays glued to the weather reports so he can fertilize the lawn EVERY time before it rains!!!! And then he grumbles about constantly having to mow it and pay an outrageous water bill so it doesn’t burn up. No fun.

We shared strategies for controlling garden predators like deer, rabbits and birds.

Lou commented:

Best line, ” …if you really want to screen these animals out, you essentially need to fence yourself in!” How true. We once tried crushed garlic to get rid of rabbits and squirrels as we were told they were repelled by the smell. Problem was, so were we!

Danny Stewart-Smith provided a soothing and reflective Ruly Mix to help you relax in your favorite outdoor space.

Ruly Ruth discussed the challenges of adjusting to life in the desert both from a landscaping and quality of life point of view. We also discussed 10 reasons people insist on using grass in the desert. After thinking on this list for a bit I would add two more to the list.

11)  Homeowners Associations. Sometimes planting grass is not a choice and is required by the covenants of those who live in planned communities. In those cases, getting rid of grass requires a concerted effort by the entire community. The political challenges of effecting such a change can be tough.

12) The Man Factor. Historically, men have been in charge of maintaining the yard and garden. There is nothing feminine about grass. It does not flower. It is not a pretty plant that is cut and used in arrangements. It largely requires gasoline-powered tools to cut it. If you had to pick the most manly plant, it would be hard to beat grass. Would men be willing to use the same effort to plant groundcovers or flowering shrubs? Hard to say.

We reviewed James Wong’s clever book, “Grow Your Own Drugs,” providing medicinal uses for common garden plants.

Guest blogger Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener magazine provided 9 landscaping design suggestions to use instead of turfgrass in your yard.

Finally, I leave you with a Ruly Challenge for the month.  This month’s challenge is an ongoing effort that you don’t need to do right away but can be chipped away at continually:

The Challenge: Locate a list of native plants for your area. Look up pictures of each plant and learn to identify them in the wild spaces near your home. Determine which, if any, of these plants you might like to grow in your own garden.

I am still working through a list of Virginia native plants but it has been a lot of fun to learn to identify some of these plants. I discovered that I really like the Loblolly pine! In addition to having a wonderful name it is also a very interesting pine tree that looks a bit like a cross between a weeping willow and a pine tree. It’s needles are long and a bit shaggy looking. The sensitive plant is also a fun one that closes up its leaves when touched.

I hope that you have enjoyed this month at Ruly and perhaps learned a few tips to organize your yard and garden and keep it looking great. Please check back on Wednesday when we start a new month and a new topic!

I will close noting that today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day to remember those who have lost their lives in military conflicts. Thinking today of all those who were not able to see victory but who made the freedoms we enjoy today possible.

Garden party for wounded soldiers (May 21, 1925) President Coolidge speaking with a wounded soldier in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse in white, as Mrs. Coolidge looks on. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

We are having one of the snowiest winters in memory this year in Virginia.  Another 3-ish inches fell last night and more is on the way this weekend.  Having grown up in a wintry state, I am really enjoying all this snow.  It makes the landscape so beautiful and quiet.  For some, the snow causes panic and uncertainty.  Yesterday, having been busy on a project for days and not paying attention to the news, I got up and drove my daughter to preschool only to find the parking lot completely empty. School was closed for the day because of the threat of snow later in the evening.

People from wintry states find Virginia’s response to snow somewhat amusing.  Even the President has remarked that the area could use some “flinty Chicago toughness.”

It is a perfect, still morning to issue the Ruly Challenge for this month.

The Challenge:  Document your perfectionism this month in writing.  Pay attention to the decisions or actions that you have unduly agonized over, the projects you can’t seem to start because you are worried the finished product will not be good enough, and the small details you are fussing over.  For an objective perspective, ask someone close to you to note the projects you seem to have spent too much time on or the ones you can’t seem to start (or finish) to share with you at the end of the month.

At the end of the month, you should have a fairly large list of things.  Some of your items will be things that you perhaps should be a little perfectionist about. Some you might want to think twice about.  The purpose of the challenge is to heighten our awareness of our own perfectionist tendencies.  By the end of the month, you should have learned a bit about how your perfectionism is impacting your relationships with others and how to cope with perfectionist tendencies in yourself and others.

If you would like a Ruly worksheet to guide you in your diary efforts, you can find one here.

With regard to the friend/spouse observation, having just showed the worksheet to my spouse who commented that the worksheet was a “recipe for an argument,” you might want to tell your friend/spouse to keep the observations very specific and limit them to the facts only.  For example, instead of “You spend too much time on your hair.” (a judgment) the observer might write about a specific instance,  “Spent 45 minutes on hairstyle before we could leave for dinner on 2/7.”  (a fact).  As the research subject, develop a little of a thick skin about this.  Pick someone you know has only your best interests at heart and who is allowed to tease you sometimes for your imperfections (and perfections).

Remember to laugh about the items that end up in your diary.  They are not things that should make us feel bad about ourselves but insights into the lovable neuroses that we have.  It’s OK to say, “I am completely neurotic about _____ and I always will be.”  It is helpful for you to recognize this and be able to laugh about it.  It is helpful for others to know it too so they can adjust their response appropriately.

Game for the challenge?  Who will you select as your observer?  Please share in the comments.

Is it just me or is it unbelievable that it is already the end of January!   This month at Ruly we focused on goals and goal-setting strategies.  We learned from a variety of voices about how to set and achieve goals, summarized below:

• Kevin Roberts: “Don’t do stuff you know you don’t like.”
• Robert F. Mager: Goals should be people-based and stated in the positive.
• Regina Bogomolova: an inspiring example of a small business owner working hard to achieve her goals
• Martin Luther King Jr.: reminds us that no worthwhile goal is ever “impossible”
• Ruly Ruth: shared 2010 anti-goals for social interactions
• Jamie Smith: jazzed us up to achieve our goals
• Corporations: how strategies use by professional earnings forecasters can help us set goals in uncertain times
• Brain research: how relying on willpower alone is a recipe for failure in achieving your goals and knowing our weaknesses and structuring our thinking for success is critical.

Ruly also provided some helpful tips and advice:

• Calendar 2010 Review: thinking broadly about the timing of holidays, paydays and other milestones
• Difficult Goals Worksheet and recycled thank you note project
• Refrigerator organization secrets from my own fridge makeover

We also discussed the Haiti earthquake and reviewed emergency preparedness and disaster survival strategies.  The situation in Haiti continues to bring both positive and negative updates.  Heartbreaking stories of amputations, food and water shortages and orphaned children abound.  But there are positive stories of survival as well.  I could not believe the CNN video below of a young boy pulled from the rubble after 8 days.

As proof that miracles do happen, The Washington Post reported just yesterday that a teenage girl was pulled from the rubble alive after 15 days without food or water!

The Ruly Challenge

Since we are closing out one month and preparing for another, the one thing we have not yet discussed is The Ruly Challenge.  This month, it seemed most appropriate to set The Ruly Challenge at the end of the month.  Armed with knowledge of goal setting techniques, this month’s challenge should hardly be a surprise.

The Challenge: Identify your goals for 2010.  Write them down and post them somewhere you will see them frequently.

Perhaps you will reaffirm a New Year’s Resolution, or perhaps now that the rosy shine of the new year has dimmed a bit, you might revisit what is achievable given the reality of your everyday life. Your goals might be a small rather than grand–something you have a decent chance of actually achieving come December 31.

For myself, I plan to set goals in the following categories:

• Fun
• Health
• Finance
• Relationships
• Organization

I hope that you do set organizational goals for yourself.  Rather than a broad, general goal like “Be more organized,” break it down into something small, specific and objective, like “Clean out the linen closet.” My goal for Ruly in 2010 is to help you implement organization, timesaving and stress reduction strategies in at least 3 areas of your life.  Of course, I hope that you will find much more than 3 but 3 is my target.  If there are specific areas that you are looking for help in, please share in the comments and I will see what I can do.

On Monday, we start a new month with a new theme.  Please check back then to see.  Today is the last day to receive a Ruly thank you note for your comments by e-mailing your address to info@beruly.com.  I will be practicing a resolution this weekend by sending out my thank you notes.  I continue to be impressed by the comments.  I read them all and thank you for adding life to Ruly and teaching me as well.

Have a great weekend!

This month’s Ruly Challenge will give you back precious space, put money in your wallet, save the planet and perhaps allow you to shed a few pounds too! Intrigued?  Read on!

When I opened my own pantry last week, I found it was so jammed that I could hardly fit in the new groceries.  Taking a hard look at what was in the pantry, I decided it was time to reduce and become more streamlined.

The Challenge: To the best of your ability, aim to subsist on nothing but the current food stores in your pantry and refrigerator/freezer.  Eat as many meals as you can from the ingredients you already have, purchasing as little as possible.  Clean out your refrigerator and freezer and unclutter your fridge doors.

Food waste is a serious problem in the United States.  The issue has been researched and documented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Due to the perishable nature of food, there are losses throughout the food production and distribution cycle but the largest percentage of losses occur at the consumer level.

“In 1994, the food supply provided an estimated 3,800 calories per person per day, enough to supply every American with more than one and a half times their average daily energy needs. Given this abundance, few of the Nation’s resources have traditionally been devoted to measuring or reducing food waste. . . . From foods forgotten and spoiled in the refrigerator to the uneaten vegetables tossed in the garbage, consumer and foodservice food waste is the single largest source of food loss in the marketing chain. Estimated at 91 billion pounds, this food loss accounted for 26 percent of the edible food available for human consumption in 1995.”

“Estimating and Addressing America’s Food Losses,” Food Review, January – April 1997

Tim Jones, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, has spent decades going through people’s garbage to determine the truth about our consumption and waste patterns. Professor Jones estimates that each household wastes 14% of their food purchases, throwing away at least $590 per year.

“[F]ruits and vegetables are the single biggest category of wasted food. . . ‘[T]hat’s what healthy people do, right? They eat lots of fruits and vegetables. So they buy those, usually on a Sunday, let’s say. And then all week long they get home from work, tired, they have prepared foods that they do have. And finally the next weekend when they get around to finally having some time, let’s say on Saturday, and they go in there and open it up and most of it’s already mush.’”

“Anthropologist Suggests Ways to Stop Wasting Food,” National Public Radio, November 27, 2006

“Cutting food waste would also go a long way toward reducing serious environmental problems. Jones estimates that reducing food waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25 percent through reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.”

“Study: Nation Wastes Nearly Half Its Food,’ The University of Arizona, UA News, November 18, 2004

Growing up, I watched my Depression-era grandmothers save or freeze every morsel of food they prepared or were served.  They took leftovers home from restaurants before it was popular to do so and cringed if you didn’t eat everything on your plate.  Nothing was wasted.  As someone who has never known hunger, I found this behavior odd.

We are now so far away from this parsimonious food strategy.  It is so easy to buy food in huge quantities cheaply and just throw away what we don’t want or need. The Ruly Challenge this month asks us to step back for a moment and think about what we really do eat in a month.

If you only purchased what you truly would eat (and a little more for emergency storage), how much money might you save?  Would your waistline also benefit? Would you make better shopping choices in the future?  Will you learn something about yourself and evaluate the goals you have for yourself with regard to eating versus the reality of what you actually consume?

As for me, all of the excess staples and impulse food buys over the past months are now waiting for my family’s consumption.  So far, I have eaten breakfast from the pantry (oatmeal) and have made several lunches and dinners from the fridge and freezer.  Accomplishing this challenge requires some creativity.  We all get into standard patterns of eating (cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, etc.).  To use up your food supply, you will need to change your eating patterns and perhaps invent new recipes. (I had a yummy smoothie yesterday blending together orange juice concentrate, frozen blackberries, a tube of Go-Gurt, water and ice.)

At the end of the month, if there is something you still have not touched, it is time to decide whether it gets thrown out, donated to a food charity, friends or family or gets to stay.

Of course, I expect you to deviate from the plan for Thanksgiving meal preparations but in this regard, be thoughtful about how much you are preparing and have a plan to use all the leftovers.  Use Thanksgiving as a feast to reward yourself for your discipline and reflect on those who may not have such luxuries.

Finally, at the end of the month when your food supply is down to a minimal level, clear out your refrigerator and freezer, wash the inside and outside of your fridge and, if your fridge is covered in magnets, photos and other “stuff” decide which objects get to stay on the fridge and which can be tossed or preserved elsewhere.

In the business context, you could adapt these strategies to the office kitchen.  How much food and snacks that you are paying to provide are your employees actually consuming?  Have you built up a stockpile of coffee to last you the next year?  Would it be worthwhile to do a quick survey to see what people are eating/drinking and what is just going to waste?

The challenge this time is a bit tougher than last time.  I suppose the shortcut version is just to toss out a bunch of food at the end of the month but that isn’t really the point if you do that all the time anyway.  I encourage you to make at least a small effort.  Please feel free to post comments on your progress and creative recipes along the way!

Bon Appetit!