Save money by making popcorn from scratch at home!

     When I was a kid, my family was given a hot air popcorn machine, and I was fascinated by it. It was loud, and hot, and hot pocorn shot out of the side into your waiting bowl. After we had played with it a few dozen times, I finally figured out that the machine was basically a hair dryer shooting hot air over the kernels until they popped. Cool engineering, but not very energy efficient. Heck, nowadays I don't own a hair dryer and I don't own a popcorn machine. 

     Later they invented microwaved bagged popcorn, and I have to admit that I used to love to eat this. As an adult, I never eat this! They are loaded with polyunsaturated fat and salt, which none of us should be eating. So I went on a quest to make the perfect home popcorn with no additives.

     I tried to cook popcorn on the stove. Several messes later I decided maybe microwaving would be better. I set no less than two hand towels on fire in the microwave until I discovered this technique.

     Find your favorite covered glass dish, whether new from the store or used from the thrift store. Cover the bottom of the dish with one layer of kernels. Add a dash of your favorite oil and spices if desired. Cover dish with its lid (not a towel) and put in the microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes. Each dish and microwave varies, so you will want to work with your setup until you find the exact sweet time to pop about ninety percent of the kernels without burning the rest. In my 1.5 quart dish from Walmart it is exactly 5 minutes. Use towels to protect hands when removing from microwaving, take off lid and let cool, and then done! My kids like salt added, spices, honey, and other things. I like plain.

These prices are from the Walmart website.

PopSecret family pack 12 packages for $6.18, cost per serving $0.52.

Popcorn from scratch, cost of additives negligible, Great Value Yellow Popping Corn 32 ounces, serving per container approximately 13 of the 4 tablespoon size, $2.28, cost per serving $0.18.

     After mathing this up, it is clearly better to make popcorn from scratch and have no added chemicals. As a bonus, the kernels last for years whereas the popcorn bags go bad in less than one. The first time I tried to cook up old gross popsecret was probably the last time I cooked up bags of popcorn.

     I bought this dish many years ago from Walmart. Im surprised I haven't broken it, considering how often it I used and how my house is the place glassware goes to die. Thy have a similarly sized glass dishes with lids for about $30. Or better yet shop your thrift stores.

     By the way, you can't pop dent corn sold as animal feed. It's unpopable. Read all about that here.

Roth IRA Conversion Ladders

      I definitely need to learn more about this idea. I really like the concept that you can withdraw at any time to help pay for health insurance costs.

https://www.investopedia.com/how-roth-conversion-ladder-works-5214808

     Over the years, I have been religiously placing the maximum amount of after tax money into Roth IRAs, which I had thought was the smartest thing to do. As long as it sits in an account somewhere for I believe 5 years, you may withdraw the bulk of it to use as you please. In the past I have only ever withdrawn the money once, and that was to pay down on my mortgage. Some would say that was a bad move, but ultimately it set me up a lot closer to my financial goals than you would think. And if you figure out what your future costs of living are going to be, then you can set yourself up to withdraw that amount every year. Or most of the amount.

     Recently I learned about the Roth IRA conversion, which is a way to move money out of a 401k (pretax money) and into a Roth IRA (post tax money). Why would you want to do this, as you are going to be taxed on the distribution as if it were income? The truth is that you wouldn't want to do this move if you were working and earning income, as it would raise your taxes. You would want to do this if you are retiring early and have no income, but you want to use your 401k money to live off of. You would withdraw just the money you need to live from for each year, then it must be held in the Roth IRA account for 5 years to avoid penalties. During the first 5 years you would have to live off some of your other invested money before your 401k turned Roth IRA money becomes available. And each year you would rollover another future year of living expenses to be held for 5 years and then used. Doing this conversion does incur income tax burden, meaning, you will have to pay income tax on it as if it is income.

     Sometimes it can help to see some numbers associated with something like this. Here is a graphic I found on the web, this assumes your annual expenses are about $50k. I have already worked out my potential future annual expenses assuming I don't move and don't have a car Mr. Moneymoustasche style, is about $10k, with the bulk of that being the cost of health insurance and food.

     I find this trick to be ingenious, as you are not normally allowed to take any distributions from your 401k until age 55, as long as that is your current job you are retiring from, or 59 1/2 otherwise. 

     I tried calling my 401k company and rolling out some of my money into a self directed IRA or conversion, but they wouldn't let me! They said I was too young. But they also said if I was a former employee I could do whatever with the money. Way to go, hospital organization, why don't we just encourage healthcare workers to leave by holding their 401k money hostage and not allowing them diversified investments? Whoops was that out loud?

Do Ducks Eat Shrimp Tails?

 

     They absolutely do love to eat raw shrimp tails and shrimp peels.

Utilizing Food Waste on the Homestead

      The kids have been driving me crazy lately with what they will eat and what they won't eat. Literally worsened by the idea that their other family just gives them whatever they want, even going so far as to leave the house to drive to get takeout for them. Obviously I am not a fan of this kind of thing, nor am I a fan of encouraging picky eating. So I decided in my frustration to just start cooking whatever I want for myself, and if they don't like it then they can make themselves sandwiches. Mmm... sandwiches.

     The high prices of foods have also changed my life. I used to shop at the good grocery store that had everything, now I shop at two stores to save money, Walmart and Sav a Lot. I particularly enjoy how Sav a Lot has a huge Latin section with dried peppers, tortillas, and many other staples being really inexpensive. One day at Sav a Lot the freezer section had a big bag of frozen whole tilapia, very cheap. Of course, I knew that I wasn't going to get much usable meat from those little fishes, but it was kind of an experiment too, as I wanted to see if the cats would dig in. 

     I got the fish home and defrosted them, the my oldest saw them in the fridge. She, of course, hates me and everything about my life as she is a teeny ager right now. She looked at me like I was absolutely crazy when she found the fish. But then she offered to do the gutting and skinning which she wasn't too bad at. It turns out you have to have a really good knife for skinning, which I have since picked up from Walmart for a few dollars. 

     So the skin and heads and tails and fins all went into a bowl for the cats. Another thing I learned from this experiment is that my male cat who loves ham, sliced turkey, and cat treats will not eat fresh fish; my female cat who loves ham and bits of chicken, will eat fresh fish. She will only eat three small bites before she is full though. I should retry this picky eating with two hungry cats who have had an empty food dish for a few hours.  🤔

     I put the rest of the fish pieces outside for the ducks to eat, which they quite enjoyed. And I learned that the ducks love fish but they prefer it to be cut into bite sized pieces. The heads, which I had not cut up, stayed in the dish for a while before they disappeared into the compost. I don't think they ever did get eaten. But the fins and tail and spine all got eaten.

      So now I deliberately buy foods that have waste so I can feed it to the ducks or rabbits. For example, did you know ducks like to eat shrimp peels and tails? Who knew. And the rabbits absolutely love banana peels, orange rinds, and apple cores. These guys turn waste foods into compost.