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In this week’s Ten Money Questions, we speak with Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen and Weekend Herb Blogging sponsor. I love food bloggers because I love food! Food and money intersect in many areas. Read on to catch this yummy interview and hear her get up close and personal about all things money. Enjoy!
1. I read that you bought the book, How to Eat Better for Less Money by James Beard, when you were in college. Can you give three tips for people trying to eat well on budget?
First, avoid buying processed food. It’s a waste of money, less nutritious, and doesn’t taste as good as food you cook yourself. Second, learn to make chicken stock and beef stock, then religiously save all your meat and vegetable scraps and make your own stock. Homemade stock is virtually free, and it transforms even the most simple dish into something that tastes wonderful. Third, learn to cook and master some easy dishes that you can cook in thirty minutes on a week night, and then make sure you always have the ingredients on hand for those dishes to avoid impulse ordering of pizza and other week night money wasters.
You can even watch for your select ingredients and buy them on sale to save even more money. (If I was cooking for a family I’d develop a rotation of 20 inexpensive meals the kids would eat, then cycle through that list every month. With a few impulse meals thrown in, of course, when I see something I couldn't resist on my favorite food blog.)
2. What is your most significant memory about money?
Tough question! I guess it might be when I was in college and I got hurt in a car accident and got $1,000 for pain and suffering. In those days that was a fair amount of cash for a 20-something student. I took everyone in my family to see a Barbra Streisand movie, all the popcorn they could eat, bought my sister and I some very expensive boots, and generally lived it up buying things. I’m quite sure I didn’t save a penny of it, but I also spent more than half the money on other people. It was the first time I experienced that one of the most fun things about having money was the ability to be generous with it.
3. When I first started as a contributing writer at BlogHer, you left a comment stating that money was a topic you should be paying more attention to. What is your worst habit around finances?
I’m very much into the design of things and getting just the perfect whatever-it-is for every little spot in the house, as well as buying more clothes than anyone person really needs. I’ve never really made a budget and stuck to it, and although I'm probably not extravagant compared to some people, I tend to consistently spend just a bit more than I really should on things. I guess you could summarize it by saying, I have a hard time resisisting buying something once I get the idea in my mind that it would be good to have. I need to develop the ability to delay gratification when I want to buy something.
4. If you could buy one thing right now what would it be?
Another tough question. I pretty much have every cooking gadget known to man already! (See #3!) I have an old antique stove from the forties, and sometimes I have fantasies of replacing it with a new, super-expensive stove, but truly, there’s nothing I really need for the kitchen. I do want a really nice cutting board to use for food photos.
5. You are a teacher in addition to cooking and blogging at Kalyn’s Kitchen. Financial experts love to cite stories about teachers who retire as millionaires. What’s the big secret about being in education?
For sure I won’t be retiring as a millionaire! I guess the big “secret†about education is that it’s so wonderful having the summer off every year that it (almost) makes up for making less money! At one point in my career I was a full time president of my local teacher’s union. I had to work all summer, but got paid 25% more. For a while it was great to have more money, I traveled to some very interesting places. But when the four years was over I was so happy to
