Get Rich Slowly has a story about “Gillian,” a woman who came asking for advice on setting up a budget so she could save money and stop charging emergency expenses on her credit card, but was unwilling to actually cut her expenses. We found the story hilarious because it seemed so familiar…
“Okay, let’s see what we have,” I said. “You’re paying a housekeeper $50 a week. If you were to clean the house yourself, you’d save $200 a month.”
“But…” she began.
“I think you’d be surprised at how much difference $200 a month can make,” I said. “I know from experience that even a $50 positive cash flow can make the difference between feeling broke and feeling flush. A $200 difference is huge.”
“Yeah,” said Gillian, “but I don’t want to clean the house. It’s too much work.” I was puzzled. To me, this was a quick and obvious way to free up money. If I were in her shoes, the housekeeper would be the first thing to go — it would be worth some extra work on my part.
Now, we’ve never had a housekeeper or anything, but we have had to go without some things that we couldn’t afford, but wanted, like cable tv. Gillian, seriously, it wasn’t so bad. After awhile, we didn’t even miss it.
When we got bored, we decided to check out a lot of old sci-fi movies from the library, then wrote a silly book about those old sci-fi movies that was published by Simon and Schuster. We had more free time and our parents were proud of us. Getting rid of cable was no big deal.
Some people think they just can’t live without cable or an expensive new car, and when you try to help them cut these extra expenses so they’re not overspending, they get all “but but but” with you. Well, guess what: You can live without a housekeeper, a new SUV, and cable tv. Nobody wants to clean their house and watch NBC. Nobody. But honestly, it’s not that bad. It’s better than being in debt.
You’d actually be surprised by how easy it is to live without the things you only think you need.
You Are Your Own Worst Enemy [Get Rich Slowly]
(Photo: Pam Beesley)
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@MercuryPDX: The trick is to get ingredients which store well in bulk, then in smaller quantities get the other ingredients. For instance, I’ll get 4lb. of hamburger, use some and make a meat sauce, then freeze the rest for another batch at a later date. I’ll only buy the other ingredients (other than pasta) in quantities to make what I’ll be doing in one batch.
Have this setup for multiple dishes and you can rotate through them during the week, and freeze leftovers when you can to increase the variety even further.
@MercuryPDX: mmm…turkey dinner. i’ll bring the cranberry sauce!
@MercuryPDX: mmm…turkey dinner. i’ll bring the cranberry sauce!
beyond day two, my leftovers end up in the section of the fridge untouched by human hands. it’s qutie possible that there’s a cure for cancer in there somewhere…
I have to agree with the criticism of The Simple Dollar. Recently, for example, he posted a laundry list of suggestions for ways to “trim the fat” in a budget. He had stuff like cancel or reduce cable, cancel your gym membership, install CFLs–and among these suggestions was “find another home for your pets.” Well, a lot of commenters were aghast at this suggestion and let him know in the comments. Instead of addressing this in the same post, he made a new post about the pet issue and significantly tightened up his position about pets–only get rid of them if you’re starving, basically, which was not what he said in the original post at all. But he moved the comments from the original post to the new post, so that it looked like the commenters were having unreasonably strong reactions to a reasonable post.
Because of tricks like that, and just his enormous ego generally (he actually was going to try to write a 600-page personal finance book), I no longer read his blog.
@MercuryPDX: “Sometimes I will invite friends over if ONLY to have an excuse to really cook something like a Turkey Dinner”
Get a smallish turkey breast and you can do turkey dinner the first night, turkey sandwiches the next, a half-recipe of turkey apple casserole the next, and then turkey soup (like chicken soup, but with turkey bits). When you do the turkey dinner, you can even get fresh veggies that you can put in the soup later in the week. Use cran sauce leftover on the sandwiches. Etc.
With ham, you do a baked ham the first night, then ham sandwiches, a ham stir fry (I like one called “Vietnamese ham & peas” in my cook book), and then ham soup. Have mashed potatoes the first night and make extra and use that as the soup thickener.
Prioritize. My cable expense is my entertainment budget, and I didn’t get cable until other priorities were covered. If you can afford to save, and to have a housekeeper, good for you. But if you think you can’t afford to save, and you have a housekeeper, then saving is a lower priority.
@mac-phisto:
If you keep on like this, you may have to change your screen name to mac-phatso
I would have trouble singlehandedly finishing a pound of lunchmeat before it goes bad.
You could make it work if you wanted to – buy cheaper lunchmeat (roast beef is $7.50/lb…balogna is $2…not saying you have to subsist on balogna, but there _are_ cheaper options), put less than 1/4 lb. of meat on a single sandwich, switch to bread instead of rolls, ditch the lettuce and tomato.
It fits right in with the subject matter. You can make your lunch cheaper than the deli – but you have to be willing to sacrifice.
@enm4r: I agree with you on the avoiding the coffee shop BS. If you’re in it to save money, why blow it on gas?
@pestie: People rag on cars as an expense they may not need. Often true, but not always. I for one *Cannot Bus to Work*. The busses do not run early enough in the area I work for me to make it on time (not that I’m all that punctual with a car…) and so I needed my new car. I also needed it to BE a NEW car since I can’t fix a thing on them. The difference between NOT having this car (and thus not having my current job) and having it is roughly $500 a paycheque (comparing with my previous car-less job). So with $380/mo payments and $170/mo insurance, I’m still up $450 a month for HAVING the car.
@kaikhor: Best of luck with your upcoming nightmare. Y’can make things easier by keeping a small snack-stash in the glove box. Simple but filling things like applesauce fruit bars, granola bars (ones that wont melt), or if you’re more like me, WINE GUMS!
@alicetheowl: Oh COME ON! You gotta feel sorry for Dick. Look what Jane did to her face! Lolz. Tho ya gotta love the voice modulator scene :p
@krunk4ever: I don’t wanna watch NBC…
Oh. Couple other things. You don’t save money buying bulk when single, at least, not on food. The crap usually expires before you get to use a quarter of it. Never underestimate the power of Ketchup. Reheated food improves drastically with the stuff…
And you want a real cash-saver. Dig up the corpse of John (think his name was john) Atkins, shoot him twice in the head, and abandon the notion of Carbs are teh Bad. You NEED carbohydrates in your diet or your BRAIN will ROT. And most carb foods are so dirt cheap its scary.
-Plain pasta with butter(margerine) and parmesean cheese. What, 12 servings of spaghetti or penne in a $2 box? Maybe $1 worth of margerine over those 12 meals, and a large Kraft (better be Kraft) parm shaker for $12, which will LAST for all 12 meals. So we have $15 for 12 servings.
-Or break open a box of Kraft Dinner, save the noodles for later, and use the cheese sauce to make cheese spaghetti. It actually tastes real good when ya mix it right.
@alpha: I’ll happily eat the same thing until it’s gone, however long that takes. Sometimes I’ll have it for lunch and dinner…it doesn’t bother me one bit.
I tried that, with a 6lb. turkey breast (@Eyebrows McGee) and was so sick of turkey and all the permutations of it (sandwiches, pot pie, salad) that after it was all gone by day four, I didn’t eat turkey again until Thanksgiving rolled around five months later.
I wish it didn’t bother me.
It sounds easy to make fun of someone for spending $50 a week for a housecleaner, but I actually found that I had more money at the end of the month after I got a cleaner.
For me, a cleaner house meant I was more productive, and I was always too busy to clean my house. With someone else doing it, I had more time, got more work done, and ended up making far more than just $200 a month.
On the other hand, I also saved money by getting rid of things that wasted my time, like cable TV, and even my Netflix account, since I was only watching one or two movies a month.
@MercuryPDX:
Man that’s weird. I just don’t know what that is like. But hey, you tried it, you know it doesn’t work for you, so fair enough. I’m all for doing what makes you happy (within reason, obviously).
@not_seth_brundle:
Ha, I missed that one…must’ve been after I stopped reading. The last straw for me was his flawed logic about comparing regular 401k to roth 401k. It was like comparing apples to tractors. That and he deleted one of my comments (a day later no less) and didn’t post the other one where I laid out clear math for why his logic was (once again) flawed.
Good riddance to that site.
@Troy F.: mac-phatso. that’s awesome. lollerz to you.
@Thrust: “You don’t save money buying bulk when single, at least, not on food. “
“bulk” doesn’t have to mean super costco sizes — it could mean the 2-lb box of spaghetti instead of the 1/4 lb. box, or getting a 10-lb sack of dry brown rice (even I can make it through that before it goes bad) instead of small packages of it. Or a couple pounds of ground beef at a time and freezing the extra.
@Eyebrows McGee: However, one must be careful to pay attention to price per unit. Bizarrely, at my local supermarket, white rice costs 5¢ more per ounce if you buy the largest size. The middle size is less per ounce.
If I don’t have anyone with me who can do math in his (or her) head, I take a calculator when I go food shopping nowadays.
@PERMISSIONMAG
Absolutely. You’re more likely to cook at home (and save $$) if your kitchen is clean.
Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. Spending $$ on a new, efficient lawnmower will pay for itself in a few months, as opposed to having someone else mow your lawn (or get a Robomow).
A HUGE part of the problem is the 12-14 hour days I see listed above. Do your employers really hate you that much?!? In a traditional family setting, with BOTH adults working those kind of hours, OF COURSE no one has time to do anything.
I work an eight-hour day, five days a week, and make six figures. I do not have a graduate degree, and I’m a corporate employee not an entrepreneur. My spouse is a homemaker (and cares for our two preschool kids). Don’t settle for 12-14 days unless you only work 3 days a week–come up for air!
Cable–taken in moderation–isn’t seen so much as a luxury. We drive two beat-up cars. We do our own landscaping, which gives us exercise and gets us outside for hours at a time. I take my daughter for bike rides instead of to the mall. But we do have a housekeeper come in twice a month, which has done wonders for our sanity.
Some Costa Ricans I know really miss the ability to choose which cable channels to pay for and receive. Now there would be something I’d like, but which keeps getting batted down in this country. Fee per channel instead of fee per 75 or 300 channels. 98% of which you don’t ever watch.
@jurijuri:
I second your opinion of ALDI’s, by far the bulk of our food is bought there – maybe 3 bags a week. Compared to one bag at CostCo and one at a regular supermarket. But we actually spend only about 35% of our food shopping budget at ALDI’s because the savings are so substantial (I only wish they’d carry organic and lactose free milk).
I do have a question about your buying generic baby formula. If you have to use formula at all, it is imperative that you get formula with DHA and ARA fatty acids added to them as these are the building blocks for your child’s eyes and brain. [www.thedietchannel.com] They have been mandatory in Canada and most EU countries for over a decade, but here in the US are only available in premium versions (I guess poor kids don’t need brains – better to continue the perpetual complacent underclass).
I know the CostCo store brand has them, but I would be doubly cautious to ensure any formula I bought whether generic or name-brand had them.
@RebekahSue: I really can’t afford a new book, even when it’s 40% off.
I actually could go on for days about the cheapest ways to read, since I’ve worked at a bookstore for five years now.
I just discovered Paperback Swap (http://www.paperbackswap.com) and it’s FANTASTIC. You spend a little bit of money, but overall you save much more. Basically you list books that you’re done reading and then when someone wants one of your books you pay to ship it to them, it’s usually around $2. When you find a book you want, they pay to ship it to you, so you’ve recouped your $2.
It doesn’t just help you get books cheap, it helps you clean off your bookshelves because the idea of getting a new book is the perfect way to get me to part with an old one.
As for all the advice about cooking for one, I’ve had a lot of luck finding recipes that refrigerate and reheat well. Basically I sat at the bookstore with a notebook and copied the good stuff out of recipe books that are far too expensive to buy, and see which ones worked out best. I have a spinach-stuffed-shells recipe that I absolutely adore and it feeds me for five or six meals. It takes some trial and error to find the good stuff, and you usually have to plan your weekly menu (rather than just buying ingredients willy nilly) but it can be worth it for the health benefits, not to mention your budget.
Plus, it’s just nice to have some home cooked food sometimes.
To overcome the leftover-hangover, Mrs. Lee and I purchase just enough ingredients to make four servings that’ll last for two dinners. So, we can plan on cooking every other day. The days in between are meant for cleaning the house, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. The one thing that helps is keeping the kitchen clean – definitely encourages cooking and eating in.
We also like to make large batches of tomato sauce, lasagna, and chili and freeze them in appropriate serving sizes. Makes it easy when we are in a pinch and/or lazy.
@alpha: texture – a lot of leftovers get unpleasant textures when stored & then reheated. burnout – not rotating the leftovers.
these are often why leftovers get loathed.
@alicetheowl: “However, one must be careful to pay attention to price per unit. Bizarrely, at my local supermarket, white rice costs 5¢ more per ounce if you buy the largest size. The middle size is less per ounce.”
Oh, for sure. (Most annoying grocery store trick ever: showing cost per unit on one size in pounds and on the other in ounces. Jerks.)
I get my rice (brown rice! much better for you!) at the ethnic food mart. “Ethnic” staples are generally cheaper at that ethnic food stores, and a 10-lb sack lasts me for ages so I don’t have to haul ass down there all that frequently.