RECENT PROJECT
This week’s project was Fudgy Chocolate Brownies from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book. First off, I only got this cookbook recently as a late birthday present (thanks, Mom and Dad!). Flipping through it, I love that it has not only the what to do to bake something, but pointers like why the recipe works well and how to perform different techniques. So fun stuff, and I don’t even get paid to say that since I have no connection to Cook’s Illustrated whatsoever.
OK, back to the project–technically, it’s the Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownies (under the “Fudgy Chocolate Brownies” heading) that I made. Why? Well, I hadn’t had or made brownies for a while and they just sounded good. I mean, who doesn’t like brownies? So in went the bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder (plus some other non-chocolate ingredients) and out came a batch of brownies, as you can see from this top view.
Those three holes at the top are from the cake tester, and not some weird chocolate-burrowing insect. I couldn’t quite determine the fine line between “nice and fudgy” and “overdone”, so I tested a couple times and added on a few minutes of baking. The brownies came out, well, fudgy and chocolaty just like the recipe’s name implies. The use of bittersweet chocolate provides that bit of bite that is both different and enjoyable. Here’s the head-on view after coming out of the oven:
One thing that annoyed me was that my brownie, after cooling, had all these lines and crinkles along the top, rather than being perfectly smooth. The cookbook’s picture certainly hadn’t been that way when I glanced at it, and then I checked again: Between how they cut the brownie and where they focused the camera, their brownie didn’t LOOK like it had the same top features that mine did, but closer inspection revealed that, sure enough, they were there in the picture too. Ego not as deflated as before? Check.
TOPIC FOR TODAY
This post is a little more personal than my previous post about why the wife and I budget, as it’s strictly my viewpoint. As I described in that earlier post, when it comes to Mary and I’s perspectives, I’m definitely more of the “saver” in the marriage while she’s typically the “spender”. That leads some people to ask, “Have you always been that way?”, and “Is it always a good thing?” Well, here come the answers.
BACKGROUND
I’ll answer the first question directly and immediately: No, I haven’t always been a saver. Particularly when I was little, there were plenty of things that I wanted to buy. You hardly get through boyhood without wanting more comic books or more toys, and of course there’s that awesome video game system that you just have to have (“I have to get an NES!” ran through my head more than once).
Here’s the thing, though: Even though I wasn’t a saver, I knew that you can’t get things unless you have the money to pay for them. One of the best examples I got of this was in first grade, where we had to memorize Shel Silverstein poems to earn points/good grades. If you memorized some of the poems, you got a little bit of money, but if you memorized all of the poems, you got the maximum amount of money, which was $1. Once we had reached the end of our memorization weeks, we all got to walk over to the Ben Franklin five and dime store (yes, because where I grew up was small enough to be called a “village” and we still had a Ben Franklin store). I had memorized all my poems, and so had $1. I walked through that store and saw many, many things I wanted, but the cashiers only dealt in cold, hard cash–no smile, politeness, or hopes were accepted in its place. You have $1? You can get one dollar’s worth of stuff. You want more? You don’t have any more money, so no. I may have walked out with $1 worth of toys, but now I know I also walked out of there with an even more valuable lesson learned.
TURNING INTO A SAVER
That example at Ben Franklin was just one of many instances that helped me to understand that if you want more, you have to save more. So I did save, and save, and save, because there was a lot of stuff I wanted. Cash in the birthday cards? Into savings! Christmas gifts of money from my family? Into savings! I got to watch my savings build up to an amount that seemed incredible to me at the time (oh my gosh, I have forty dollars! I’m beyond wealthy!), and in turn I began planning on what I was going to buy with all the money. The thing is, though, that as I saved, I started looking at the things I was saving for and realized that, in a lot of cases, I wasn’t going to get as good a feeling in having those things as I did in having money available in the bank. And that, dear readers, is when I actually became a saver. I stopped saving just to be able to buy things, and instead turned to saving money to have money in the bank and to be able to buy the few things I really would enjoy. I mean, sure, I could get several more comic books, but I didn’t really want the latest flavor of X-Men comics or Batman or whatever else was on the shelf at the local store, as I would only read them once and then never look at them again. A Nintendo Entertainment System, however, with Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the light zapper gun!)–now that I would use multiple times, and could get other games to play on it, so it was worth it. And just so you don’t think I saved on the small stuff and then blew it on something big like an NES, the NES was probably the biggest “big ticket” item I bought when I was young; most other things were books, which cost significantly less, and thus allowed me to keep those savings building up.
EXCELLENT IN (ALMOST) EVERY WAY
As I advanced through being a little kid and a young adult and into the realm of college, being a saver really served me well. It meant that, along with some scholarships and loans, I could use my small savings to help pay for my room and books, or going out to eat with friends. I was also able to use that long-ago lesson from Ben Franklin when I saw the cool-looking credit cards that Visa and MasterCard were so generously letting me sign up for. Even though I signed up for the card, it was with the full knowledge that I had to pay it back at the end of every month. It actually makes my jaw drop now to hear of students who think it works more like a gift card, and are surprised when they get a bill for all the things they bought.
Looking even longer term, being a saver has helped me get past a lot of situations that put other students in college and (later) peers in the work environment in tight spots. Being a saver allowed me to fix my car when it needed fixed, pay rent on time and in full, and even have fun when I wanted to. I’ve had conversations with close friends and acquaintances when they were in jobs where they should have had every possibility of saving money each month, and yet they were worried about paying the mortgage. The peace of mind I’ve gotten from being a saver, and having extra cash on hand for the tough times, is priceless.
THE NOT-SO-EXCELLENT PART
One thing I’ve discovered particularly with dating and certainly with marriage is that savings can be taken too far. Saving money short-term to reach a goal such as building up your emergency fund is a great thing, but keeping your fist wrapped so tightly around your wallet that you can’t enjoy life is not great. The wife and I have had talks about this several times and, to be completely upfront, I’m not that good at the enjoying things part. That’s where her attitude towards money and life has helped me to loosen up a bit and create a healthier balance.
CONCLUSION
I’m really happy to be a saver; it’s led to the patience to plan purchases better, avoid spending on things I don’t care about, and build up savings that are there for the truly important or emergency moments in life. I know that no amount of money can guarantee a secure future, let alone a healthy one, but I feel a lot better having some savings in place to give me the best chance at that security. Of course, now the wife is going to read this and think that it’s her duty to have us spend money–oh, no…