“We’ll be fine.”
I show him, again, the spreadsheets, the calculations. We spend just a bit more than we earn every month, but I’m going to quit my job and “we’ll be fine?”
Eventually we agree. We have two months to try to save my pay and cut back our expenses. After that, we’ll use my saved pay and the tax return to get us through the months we go over. If it’s chronic, and a return to debt looks imminent, I’ll go back to work.
$Money$
Why should this first column be about money? Money just might be the most important, most immediate problem facing families today. Financial problems are a leading cause of divorce; debt is on the rise and savings are at a low equaled only during the Great Depression; the Boomers are entering retirement and Social Security looks like it’s going to tank long before our generation will benefit from it; and college costs increase an average of 6% a year—so, it seems like getting a grip on money is as good a place to start as any. Oh, and it’s indispensable to being a one-earner family these days.
Not Spending is Easy
Not feeling deprived and constantly wishing you had more money to spend is the hard part. I’ve always wanted to want less, and now I was going to have to learn how, quickly. I had to figure out not just how to save money on our regular expenses but how to keep from wanting the extras that send the bottom line all out of whack. Figuring out how not to want led me far afield of the usual budgeting and frugality literature, into areas of advertising, marketing, production, and labor. But first, here’s where we started.
There are big ways to save money and small ways. Housing and transportation usually make up the two biggest chunks of the family budget. I’ll start with those two and follow with ways we saved on utilities and other monthly expenses. Lastly I’ll talk about the few big (or moderate) investments we’ve made that will save us money eventually.
There are tons of ways to save money. The ideas listed below work for us. Of course there will be some obvious ones I omit and some that make you think we are crazy. I am slowly coming to realize there’s no way to make us look normal.
The House
A safe neighborhood with a good school, that’s all we want. But when that’s what everybody wants, watch out. This staple of the American Dream is the main reason so many families need two incomes to keep afloat. It’s also most likely to be the culprit when families spiral into bankruptcy.
Schools in our small town (population < 40,000) are pretty much equivalent, and crime is light, although not absent. So, we didn’t have to worry about these major factors when looking for our “starter” home, which could be the one we finish in. We were farsighted enough to buy a house with payments we could make with just one (his) salary. Sure, it’s something of a fixer upper, in an older part of town. But buying where and when we did will hopefully keep us out of debt and in our house.
However, having done that right the first time around, housing was not one of the areas we were able to look when we needed to save money.
The Family Wagon
We don’t really have a wagon. We have two sedans: my husband loves his ’89 Taurus SHO and I appreciate my ’98 Buick. It’s not, as the marketing world would say, me. But we got it used for a song. It’s in great shape and gets decent mileage for its size and age.
We were able to cut back on our insurance payments, going to liability with no extras. And I found that I could improve my gas mileage with regular oil changes, new air filters when needed, making sure the tires were at the right PSI, and driving gently. Really, I think driving gently made the biggest dent in the mileage. I also look for ways to combine trips or, sometimes, walk when “running” errands. I also highly recommend marrying a skilled mechanic.
Getting rid of a second car, or cars in general, is a great way to save money. It’s also great for the air we breathe; the crops we eat; easing our dependence on foreign oil; building community; and getting exercise. So, why haven’t I done it? I am a chicken.
Utilities & Other Monthly Expenses
Natural Gas
To use less gas we keep the thermostat in the 60s and wear layers or snuggle. We rarely use the gas fireplace and keep the opening covered to prevent heat from escaping. (The flue is welded open to vent gas.) Installing energy efficient windows has helped enormously, as has hanging clothes on the line to dry. We’ve replaced the gas water heater with an electric as part of the grand plan to go solar.
Electricity
Our electric company is a co-op, so rates are far more reasonable than those of a privately owned company. Still, there are several things we can do to save not just on the bill but on the amount of coal that’s burnt on our account.
Every appliance we’ve bought has been an energy star model. Any additional cost will pay for itself several times over throughout the lifetime of the appliance. Ditto with burned out bulbs. Replacing them with compact fluorescents saves on the electric bill and, since they produce the same amount of light at much lower wattage, they’ll pay for the additional initial cost of the bulb several times over.
Then there are the old standbys. Turn lights, the TV, and appliances off when you aren’t using them. Anything with a box at the plug is taking as much energy sitting unused but plugged in as it does when it’s used. Unplug it. Bake things all at once to use the oven less. Use the microwave rather than the oven or stove when you can. Find a flattering hairstyle that doesn’t require a blow drier or curling iron. Try to find clothes that don’t need to be ironed.
Monthly Odds and Ends
Other ways we cut back on monthly expenses included giving up bottled water and opting for filtered pitchers. We stopped having a company spray our house for bugs and plan to manage it for ourselves come summer. We got rid of unnecessary services on our phone and cell phone. If we didn’t drive twenty minutes through BFE to the kid’s play group/babysitters, I’d get rid of the cell phone altogether. And to pay these bills, we take advantage of online bill paying whenever it’s free.
Small Ways
Every little bit helps. I am not a born tightwad but I am convinced that, more often than not, the less we spend the less negative impact we have on the environment. One of the worst environmental crimes for which individual households are responsible, entering the list after automobiles, dry cleaning, and pesticides/herbicides, is detergents. You can usually use about half of the manufacturer’s recommended amount and get the same result. This is true for detergents used in the laundry, the dishwasher, cleaning sinks and tubs and floors, whatever. It also goes for shampoo, conditioner, and the like.
It takes more time, but we’ve switched from expensive gifts to thoughtful ones. We spend time with the dog rather than giving it toys and treats. We’re in the habit of buying second hand, whether it’s clothes, books, movies, furniture, or flatware. We started going to the library regularly. Haircuts at the beauty school are $4! (This one gave me pause, but it turned out well.)
A great piece of advice I picked up was to do all my shopping on one day of the week. Other than that day, just don’t go. Make do. When you are shopping, stick to your list. If you’re about to make an impulse buy, put it back. If you remember it and want it enough to put it on the list next week, get it. The grocery store is a great place to save money, but I’ll save the food topic for another time.
Bigger Ways
We installed a recirculation pump that brings hot water to the bathroom on demand, without letting the water run down the drain. We’ve also invested in rechargeable batteries and, as mentioned, energy efficient windows. We’re gearing up to install a solar water preheat system. And we plan to go entirely solar in the future, getting rid of the gas appliances entirely. For each of these the payoff is in terms of years rather than seen immediately. But the payoff will indeed be substantial, especially as energy prices continue to rise.
Growing our own herbs and vegetables takes time and dedication, but it does save money when you consider the price of store-bought organic produce.
What We Haven’t Done
I don’t clip coupons or keep a price book, darn socks or bake my own bread. I don’t buy bulk until my cupboard won’t close. We still have two cars and cable TV and a cell phone and a high speed internet connection. We haven’t stopped eating in restaurants or getting take out, although now when we do it’s a special occasion.
These are the things that would make us feel deprived. I’ll wear second hand clothes until they are riddled with holes and stains, but I cannot stand to wait three minutes for a webpage to load. Such is life in the twenty-first century.
If it happens that the worst comes to visit us, we can easily find another couple hundred dollars a month from this section. We can makes these cuts quickly without risking the house, which is the one thing I would most hate to do without.
The Really Big Things
I keep a spending spreadsheet but not a budget. If you tell me I have X dollars to spend, I will. If you ask me to try not to spend so much, I’ll do that too. The spreadsheet has categories down the left side and the months across the top. We can see at a glace where we are making progress and where we are spending more than we’d like. Astonishingly, the changes we made at the beginning have become routine. They’ve saved us several hundred dollars a month.
Unfortunately, as everyone knows, the knowns are usually not the problem. It’s the unknowns and the unexpected that make staying within your means so difficult. Besides trying to replace appliances before they breakdown, causing untold amounts of inconvenience and/or structural damage, and other such somewhat predictable yet somehow often still unexpected expenses, the best you can do is stem the tide of functionless spending. But how do you stop wanting a new car that is so much more you, or the latest gadgets, matching furniture, more shoes, or whatever your particular peccadillo?
When I was much younger, very serious about my career, and not at all intending to marry, much less grow a family, someone asked me, “Well, what do you do when you’re attracted to a guy?”
“I talk to him until it goes away,” was my spontaneous reply.
I still think that’s good advice. Only now I use it when considering purchases. Thinking through a decision for me includes asking where it came from, who made it, how much is it really worth, will it take my time or free it up, do I have something else that will suffice, what environmental impact will this purchase have, and why do I want it in the first place? Why do I care about what my car looks like, or my clothes, or my furniture? Who says I need to wear makeup to be feminine or use Toll House morsels to be a good mom?
I will leave it for a future entry to discuss the wild and wooly world of marketing, a worrisome land of guerilla tactics, cult recruitment, and conscious culture creators. Marketers blatantly speak of themselves as meaning makers, and perhaps they are not too far off the mark. If the economy is the metanarrative, then advertisements move the plot along. Learn to fear and hate marketers (or simply to protect yourself from them) and you will save oodles of cash.
Resources
Brower, Michael and Warren Leon. The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999.
Dacyczyn, Amy. The Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle. New York; Villard Books, 1993.
Warren, Elizabeth and Amelia Warren Tyagi. The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. New York; Basic Books, 2003.
Amy Vaughn
Copyright © 2006 Amy Vaughn.
