Blog Number 333

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well I wish I could say that I did something useful with my extra hour due to Daylight Saving Time ending but that is not the case.  For, you see, Tiger (my cat) has a belly that does not change time automatically like my cell phone clock does.  Nor does it offer the option of setting it forward before going to bed the night before.  As such, my extra hour was definitely not spent sleeping.  Notice the "I don't care what your clock says" look in his eyes (note also the empty food bowl in the background).

For the last 2 months, the wife and I have been keeping a very strict budget.  A few days before the end of the month, we have a meeting and plan out our expenses for the next month.  We have the normal things you budget for (rent, van payment, electric bill, etc) and some other reoccurring things (eating out, gymnastics, books, etc).  We run a $0 sum budget meaning that every penny is allocated (even if it means allocating it to savings).  As the month progresses, we can see if we are running ahead and perhaps can throw a little extra on the van payment.  I have blogged before what happens if there is extra money left in the Eating Out budget.  Anyway, the son has watched us with interest.  He asked me last month if we could do a budget for him.  I explained that since he really had no expenses (oh to be a kid again) that we really could not do his budget.  Since he has been baking (and selling) cookies lately, I offered to figure out the profit margin was for a batch of cookies.  He makes a few different types of cookies so we settled on chocolate chip as our initial type.  Here is the ingredients list...

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 egg
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 (12) oz. bag of chocolate chips

We got down each ingredient and decided what it cost for a certain measurement (cup, ounce, etc.) so we could figure our per batch cost.  We had to do some converting (the 4lb bag of sugar said that there were 454 tsp. in the bag) but eventually we ended up with our cost as follows...

• $0.17 sugar
• $0.40 brown sugar
• $1.50 butter
• $0.25 vanilla
• $0.16 egg
• $0.34 flour
• $0.02 baking soda
• $0.00 salt (rounding)
• $1.75 chocolate chips

We even calculated the cost of the use of the oven ($0.40) and the dishwasher ($0.15).  These were based on a 2002 report I found so it might be a little off.  The total cost of the batch of cookies totals $5.14.

Since the batch makes 30 good sized cookies and since he sells them for $0.50 each, his revenue is $15.00 and his profit would be $9.86 per batch.  He then figured he put 3 hours into the cooking making / cookie selling process and was quite pleased to see that he makes over $3.00 / hour for his work.

I was ready to quit this exercise about half way through but his enthusiasm spurred me on.  He wants to do the rest of his recipes soon so I will have to keep you posted.

P.S. I still have not got my sweater back (see previous blog).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon