While I’m far from broke, I’ve been there, and I still look for easy ways to save $$.
I second Lissla on the chest freezer. You can get a small one (about the size of a stove or dishwasher) for between $200 and $250. If you can afford the initial investment, it’ll pay for itself. You can buy meats and frozen foods on sale, toss them in the freezer, and eat them whenever; you can cook for 20 and freeze the leftovers; in general, it’ll cut down on how often you need to shop and cook, as well as saving you some food dollars. And they’re pretty cheap to run - when you open the lid, the cold air mostly stays inside. (When you open the freezer in your fridge, the cold air falls out onto the floor, and the cooling mechanisms have to start up all over again.)
Other tips: if you must go to a restaurant, drink water, rather than pay $1-$2 on a soda. Fast-food places especially make their money on beverages, and just break even on the burgers. Let somebody else provide their profit margin. Or if you must have soda, bring a cold can of soda from home or the office. Sodas at $3 per 12-pack are only 25¢ per 12-ounce can, and you’re paying $1.29 at Wendy’s or MickeyD’s.
If you drink coffee at work, bring in a coffeepot (or join a coffee club if there’s one in your work area). You can brew your own a lot cheaper than you can buy a cup. Or like j.c. said, bring it with you in a thermos.
If there’s no fridge or microwave at work, see if there are others who will share the cost of one with you. Especially if you drink sodas - you can keep a 12-pack of sodas under your desk, and have one or two cooling in the fridge. And a fridge and nuker expand the range of what you can bring in for lunch and snacks. (My lunch is usually last night’s dinner leftovers - another good way to save a buck or two.) This is also a plus if you’re trying to eat more healthily.
I’ll also second j.c. regarding the library, especially if it’s moved into the electronic age. My library is part of a multi-county consortium of libraries. I can search the catalogue of the entire consortium from my computers at home and work, and can reserve books online. This has meant that I almost never need to buy books anymore. Check out your library system, and use their resources.
My biggest problem is the heat. The past week it’s been about 100 degrees. I don’t have central air, but I have an air conditioner. In order to cool the room down, I have to run it basically all day.
My electric bill reflects this fact, and can get up to as much as $200. sigh
Notihng else can get this place cool.
Yesterday I got so fed up from the heat that I turned it on and ran it all day. Which means that I can’t turn it on today. Or, I could so I dont get sick again and just deal with the bill when it comes, but somehow, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.
But in this heat, it’s extremely tempting. Extremely.
plg - do you also have a big fan of some sort (ceiling fan, 20" or bigger box fan, etc.)? If you’ve already got a fan blowing, and your electric bills are still killing you like that, that’s rough. But if you don’t, run out and buy one. You can usually get a 20" box fan for about $15 at the marts, and it should make a difference of a few degrees in how much you have to cool things down, which will pay for the fan right away.
Well, Papa Tiger and I are in that sandwich generation – we’ve had expenses coming at us from our parents as well as our kids for a while now. We’re at that obnoxious point in our lives where on paper we have a lot, but we’re scraping for every penny most of the time. We pay half the mortgage on a house we own that his mom lives in, so right out the gate our living expenses are 1-1/2 times what it actually costs us. (She’s the world’s best tenant, however, I am NOT complaining!)
But in spite of how tight things are right now, I remember when I was a single mom with two young kids. We ate almost no meat, and nobody has been willing to look at a tuna casserole again for the last ten years. :eek: We usually didn’t have cable TV because I simply couldn’t afford to keep it turned on. Going out to eat, if it happened at all, was MacDonald’s or a pizza. Looking back, I probably should have applied for food stamps, I think we qualified for them, but it never occurred to me that we were THAT poor. We had a decent place to live in an at least respectable neighborhood, clothing, a healthy if not fancy diet, and a small, cheap car. A movie was a huge treat, and popcorn at the movie was almost unheard-of.
All of you guys who are there right now, I hope that like me, one day you’ll look back and realize that you learned some really important stuff from that time in your life, the primary part being what is REALLY important. Because we were quite happy! It was a constant struggle to pay the bills, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that I finally got my credit back into excellent shape after all those years of near-poverty, but life was still good. We found a lot of very cheap or free entertainment, and never went without anything absolutely critical; somehow, we always found a way.
If I ever have to do that again, I know I’ll be just fine again. And I’m sure you guys all will be, too. Hang in there!
I actually have 4 fans going. 1 ceiling fan in the “dining” area, one in front of the front door, one in front of the patio door, and one in our bedroom. Doesn’t make a big difference though. Not at the hight point of the day at any rate.
PLG – could you perhaps ‘escape’ to somewhere else during the hottest hours? The local library, perhaps? (Stores, though cool, are dangerous to your budget.)
Also (knowing nothing at all about your situations) but if you have access to a basement, they are much, much cooler. I go downstairs and read in my laundry room when really hot days hit on weekends.
This officially sucks now. I have a chance to finally get a schipperke cross that looks like a little black fox for FREE but I can’t yet afford the shots or getting it fixed so I’ll have to pass. Dammit, I’ve wanted one of those for decades.
Well, SbS, I can now. My bestest friend in the whole world just sent me some AMC certificates so I can go the movie theater during the worst of it. And even afford a small popcorn…er…then again, maybe not.
Thanks Una!
