Paamonim:The long, shorter way to get out of debt

Paamonim is an organization, operating mainly in the national religious community, that helps middle class families manage their budgets and pay off debts. In Friday's alon Matzav Haruach, Rachel Klein wrote about Paamonim and spoke with its director, Uriel Lederberg.

"Dina," a single mother of three, covered her overdraft by taking out new loans. She contacted Paamonim when her debt reached NIS 45,000. Moti, a financial counselor trained by the organization, came to the house and helped her plan the family's budget.

Dina reports, "In the first stage, we fired the ozeret (housecleaner, at NIS 800/month). The children cooperated and took on the various chores. We also restricted chugim (afterschool activities) to one per child. We stopped ordering prepared foods and pizza. We gave up on entertainment and restaurants. There were no more weekeends in hotels. Instead of the pool, we went to the beach. We discovered parks. . . I learned that NIS 70 face cream works as well as cream costing NIS 300. . . ."

(Our dermatologist friend recommends buying the cheapest face cream because glycerin, the most effective ingredient, costs the least.)

Dina began to have her clothes and shoes repaired instead of buying new ones, took a second job in the evening, blow-dried her own wig (saving NIS 70), and her daughter began babysitting to pay for her clothes. After two years she has paid off most of her loan and the bank account is balanced. She says, "Yes, I have a masters degree, and I work in a senior position. But I earned my true doctorate for life with Paamonim."

Director Lederberg explains how Paamonim is different from most other charity organizations. The others look for an immediate solution for a needy family, providing a basket of food, a financial grant, or a school backpack. In another week or two, or a month, the family needs more help. One child needs dental work, the bank is calling about the overdraft, and the school trip is coming up.

Judging by recent phone requests, those kinds of organizations are popping up like snails after the rain. I just heard from one that provides hot lunches to schoolchildren. Charity organizations will always be necessary to help the truly needy, while Paamonim focuses on families that should be able to stand on its feet but aren't. But everyone can benefit from Paamonim's techniques.

Lederberg got the idea after helping to raise funds for a family whose utilities were being cut off, only to find the family in the same situation a few months later. When he spoke to the bank manager about lowering the interest rate on the family's account and allowing an easier payment schedule, the manager asked Lederberg if he could refer other families to him.

Lederberg and his friends developed two parallel paths to financial solvency. First, they check all possible sources of income like national insurance, disability grants, and discounts. They negotiate with the banks for better terms, but never ask for debts to be cancelled. In the second, more intensive level of assistance, Paamonim examines the family's budget, helping them track their income and expenses and become wise and frugal consumers. Paamonim has experts who advise the counselors on getting low rates for various goods and services.

Lederberg, like most of the thousand-strong staff, is a volunteer himself.

When a financial counselor is available to help, he or she asks the family to prepare its financial documents. At this point many families get cold feet, so Paamonim waits until the family reinitiates contact. The process is painful and requires full cooperation. The volunteer doesn't instruct the family on which items to cut, but helps it prepare a balanced budget leaving NIS500-1000 per month to repay debts.

On Paamonim's website, you can download budget spreadsheets, read articles about saving money, and learn how to train as a volunteer. (A friend who inquired said you need to attend a five-session course.) Unfortunately the English part of the site is not as rich (so to speak).

Just don't go to the wrong site--paamonim.co.il advertises a fancy vacation getaway.

Private vs. Public Transportation Costs

Commenter Tamiri from Elkana wrote about her school-bus situation in the Israel section of the forum Imamother.com. She gave me permission to post an edited version.

We have a son going into 8th grade. With no boys' school here, boys must attend school outside the yishuv (settlement) beginning in 7th grade. The moetza (local council) covers busing for boys who go to school in Nechalim or Petach Tikva. Otherwise, parents are on their own. Our son's school is in Ramat Gan. 
Bussing costs NIS 720/month, or about NIS 35/day. Last year we paid NIS 625. This sum is over and above the tuition we pay, ~NIS 700/month plus books etc. [MiI: NIS 700 is a bargain for boys these days. 900-1500 is common.]

Last year we paid for this luxury busing. This year, we are reluctant.  This seems to be an inordinate amount of money to be spending on one child. 

Tamiri goes on to explain that she can find a slightly less convenient arrangement where he can take the public bus for NIS 6/day. In the end, she found a teacher from the school willing to drive the boys in exchange for sharing the cost of gas. (The driver could not charge more without having liability insurance.)

We have a similar situation regarding hasa'ah (private bussing) for my 7th-grader costing NIS 370/month, or double what the local bus costs. (We live much closer to school than Tamiri.) When my oldest son attended there had been several recent bus bombings, and we sent him on the private hasa'ah (transportation). If he missed the hasa'ah, he had to pay for the local bus anyway (we don't drive them). So he took the public bus beginning in 8th grade. This meant that he needed to walk 10-15 minutes from the bus stop to school, with the option of catching a second bus to school in a downpour (I doubt he ever did). When the school had a program late at night (popular in Israel) when we would not want him taking the bus, the hasa'ah made a special trip. So we would have to drive him or arrange a carpool.

Fortunately my 7th-grader loves public busses and readily agreed to use the public bus; he already found an eighth-grade neighbor to travel with.

Navigating an Israeli Supermarket

I once read a blog post by an American on an extended visit to Israel, raving about how much easier it is to keep kosher in Israel than in the US. True, a variety of kosher food is available just about everywhere in Israel. But keeping kosher in Israel is far from simple.

Lately we have been shopping at Aleph, one of the haredi chains. They tend to focus more on basic items and family-sized packages. The disadvantage is that meat and dairy products with a mehadrin/haredi supervision are much more expensive. But a few years ago Aleph added a selection of meat and dairy products under the supervision of the Israeli rabbinate.

Another issue with products under haredi supervision is that they often contain more fillers and sugars than those with the standard supervision, in order to make the price attractive to haredi families with less disposable income. Examples include "Danuba" mehadrin yogurt, which contains added starch, and Telma Shefa Cornflakes, which contain more sugar than Telma Cornflakes. It pays to read labels.

The brakes on our car began acting up during Pesach, and we are awaiting a replacement part by airmail. My husband takes the bus to work and I avoid carpool arrangements on principle, but shopping is a hassle. Last week I took the bus to one store only to discover, at the checkout, that they don't deliver. Fortunately I ran into a neighbor who gave me a ride home. The other day I put out an SOS to some friends and E. replied that she was planning to go shopping and would be happy to take me along.

Since E. once referred to me as someone who "writes a blog for new olim (immigrants)," I guess it's appropriate to use our trip to share some examples of unusual things a kosher consumer might find in an Israeli supermarket.

E. took me to a large chain store that I used to visit regularly. Because some items were much cheaper than at Aleph, I used to alternate between the stores every few weeks to stock up on cheaper items. But at one point I stopped because the price on those items came down in Aleph. I see now that that was a mistake; canned goods, for example, are significantly cheaper at the store we visited this week.

Since I was last there, the store, along with most of the city's supermarkets, lost its rabbinic supervision. The local rabbinate, known for its zealousness (it refuses to certify restaurants for Passover if they serve legumes), withdrew supervision for any store selling a popular brand of meat. The rabbinate claimed to have found serious irregularities in the factory. This has since been resolved, but the rabbinate also refuses to certify stores that rely on the heter mechirah during this sabbatical year. Some of the fresh food counters did have a kashrut certificate, and most products come in packages sealed by the manufacturer. But there are still issues.

Take this package of chicken wings. It looks like the frozen pieces were taken out of a box, placed on a tray, and wrapped in plastic. The Tnuva sticker was almost certainly slapped on by a store worker. And without supervision on the store itself, I have no assurance that the chicken came from where the label says it does.
Here's another concern for the kosher shopper. Note this sign on the freezer display:

The animal from which this cut of meat was taken has been slaughtered properly according to Jewish law, but not "kashered." Kashering meat involves soaking, salting and rinsing the meat in order to remove the blood. Hardly anyone soaks and salts meat at home; I've never done it, because the kosher butchers and meat-packers take care of it. Presumably the people buying it here prefer it because it's cheaper than kashered meat, and they don't keep kosher anyway.

This pitfall has nothing to do with kashrut:

The label reads "GROUND CHICKEN: From superior ground chicken meat." The smaller letters read, "With the addition of vegetable protein." If you want to know what percentage is meat, forget it. The label won't help you here. Instead, a notice warns consumers to eat the product only when fully cooked; I saw this on other products as well. I'm guessing this is a new well-meaning law on the books, like the one requiring every product containing gluten to be labelled as such. That law backfired, because companies afraid of lawsuits by the gluten-sensitive public began putting the labels on everything.

Then I went to look at the frozen vegetables. My husband still doesn't like me to buy "heter mechirah" produce (sigh) so I had to read the fine print here too:


The one on the left says it is kosher "according to heter mechirah" and the one on the left says that it's "yevul shishit," meaning that it comes from the produce of the sixth year. (It also has an extra "Badatz" kashrut symbol.) I once noticed a similar sign on a can of tomato paste several years after shmittah. it must have been the second or third year of the sabbatical cyle, so I thought the product was a few years old. Later realized that I wasn't meant to take the mention of the sixth year literally; it simply indicated that the produce was not from the problematical seventh year of the sabbatical cycle.

At that point E. reminded me that we needed to check that the store had sold its chametz. One may not eat leavened foods that were in the possession of a Jew over the Passover holiday. There are some products I generally buy in the shuk (open-air market), such as burgul (bulgur) wheat, but not immediately after Pesach; I only buy burgul, flour, pasta, and oats in a store that has sold its chametz. So while E. finished up her shopping I located the following sign:

This assures the customers that the chametz was properly sold. However, the mashgiach (kashrut supervisor) emphasizes that he cannot vouch for the kashrut of the store or any of its products, either on Pesach or year-round.

I half-expected a store worker to ask me why I was taking pictures. After all, this store used to have a sign at the entrance warning customers against writing down prices. But no one seemed to care.

I've only touched superficially on some of the kashrut issues and I hope that my less knowledgeable readers were able to follow.

Many thanks to E. for shlepping me and my groceries, and for vicariously contributing to this post. And join me in wishing her mazal tov on marrying off her oldest son.

Food shortages

Apparently matzah isn't the only food in low supply. On the radio this morning they interviewed an American about the grocery chain Costco, which is limiting the amount of rice people can purchase. She couldn't remember anything similar since the second world war. They then interviewed an Israeli food expert. He was reassuring, saying that Israel produces 1.5 times the amount of food that it needs. Of the excess, half goes to the Palestinian territories and half to the US and Europe. And even though we don't grow much wheat, we have more than enough potatoes to meet the country's needs. (Pesach all year round?) That is, he continued, assuming the price of water doesn't get too high. Israel's water situation is at a crisis level and as usual our leaders aren't paying much attention.

The thought of having excess food, while our neighbors (like Egypt) are having food riots because of rising costs, does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

In which all is revealed. . .

Well, not really. But check out Frugal Journey's interview with yours truly.

Interview: A Mother in Israel

What's there to eat? Saving time in the kitchen

I recently gave a talk to young mothers entitled, "Is there anything to eat in this house?" We all want to open our refrigerators and find delicious healthy food, but it won't get there by itself. I spoke generally, trying to break down the different cooking tasks -- those things that experienced homemakers hardly think about. Through awareness of what exactly makes cooking time-consuming and difficult, struggling cooks can develop useful strategies for kitchen management.

Most people figure out how to manage in the kitchen eventually. But I also meet some who are floundering under meal preparations, and rely on prepared foods or take-out more than they would like. Even many experienced homemakers never learned how to store food properly, operate appliances efficiently, or use up leftovers. It's just one more example of how the art of homemaking has been lost.

During the talk I touched on a few ways to save time in each of five categories (with a lot of overlap).

1. Planning. Making menus (often the most difficult part), preparing shopping lists, locating recipes, and checking that ingredients and utensils are available. More time planning means less time working. Menus take into consideration what we already have on hand, our personal preferences and food philosophy, time of year, quantities (use a cookbook for estimates), budget, needs and abilities of children, time, and storage space. Don't forget to plan what you will do with leftovers.
   
2. Physical preparations. Peeling, washing, chopping, checking for bugs (because they're not kosher), soaking beans, marinating, defrosting. With planning we can make these steps painless. Chicken can be prepared in advance and frozen or refrigerated, ready to pop into the oven or pan. Onions can be peeled, sliced, and frozen. Wash fruits and vegetables in quantity so they are ready to go. Most foods and food combinations can be cooked in quantities and frozen in small portions. When I make tuna casserole, I double (or triple) everything but the noodles, and store the extra for a quick meal next time. It takes less space than an entire casserole, but that also works.
   
3. Cooking. Combining ingredients, boiling, mixing, frying, stirring, checking doneness, making individual portions (like hamburgers), cooling (when necessary for the next step), heating. Avoid time-consuming chores like forming meatballs; make meatloaf unless you have older children available. Use a crock-pot or microwave instead of the stove-top--the food won't scorch. Any sauce that needs stirring works well in the microwave, and it won't matter if you get interrupted. Plan the tasks in a logical order--put up water to boil before making salads.
   
4. Distractions and mistakes. This includes miscalculations (of quantities, time, utensils, and ingredients), interruptions, spills, and burns (of both people and food). An ER pediatrician said that "100% of accidents are preventable." Causes include rushing, using too small utensils, doing kid-unfriendly tasks when they are "helping," transporting open ingredients across the floor, and using cluttered workspaces.
   
5. Clean-up. We won't enjoy our food if the kitchen is a mess. Wear an apron and spread old newspaper on your workspace before starting. Fill a big bowl or sink with soapy water for dirty utensils. Have a sprayer and rag handy for spills and to wipe the stove, appliances and counters when you are done.
   

Shabbat shalom and happy cooking.