Friday Series # 1: My Humble Beginning

After I got my apartment and accepted that I needed to be more frugal, I went to the library and got every frugal and simple living book I could find.

Which, frankly, was not much.

I was hugely disappointed in most of the books I found. There seemed to be two types- ones aimed at Stay at Home Moms, and ones aimed at bank executives who needed to slow down.
So the advice would be "use cloth diapers" in the SAHM books and "sell your boat and rent out your vacation home" in the other books. I would flip through them, be annoyed that these books had nothing to do with my current life situation, and later return them. (I never got the Tightwad Gazette- I was on hold for it at the library for the whole year. If I could go back in time, I would have bought it on E-bay, Amazon, or half.com , or even full price if I had to. I had been buying my textbooks from these sources for years. That saved me a small fortune, but that's an article for another day.)

I also got annoyed at the few good books because they would advocate things like bulk buying. Bulk buying is a HUGE money saver. Stocking up on sale items and cooking from the pantry currently saves me tons of money. But, I had no storage space. I had no linen closet to turn into a pantry. I had no guest room closet to store cheap toilet paper. I could not even use my cabinets more efficiently, because I literally did not have any. So I got frustrated and would not carefully read the books.

What I did do at that time was find items to cut out of my budget.

Small changes added up:

I did not have a phone installed, but used a Cricket phone. It had just come out and was very cheap (at the time), and I only needed local coverage, so that worked fine.

I did not get internet access and took advantage of the 24 hour computer labs at the University.

I drove as little as possible, and since I was close to the school, this was easy. To avert driving temptation, I did not buy the 150 dollar parking pass that would allow me to park on campus. Students also got a free bus pass, and I used it as much as possible. For the most part, I only drove when I had the midnight shift at the library, because I did not want to walk home alone that late at night. (You did not need a parking permit after 5 PM.)

I did not have cable, and would not have even had a TV if a free one had not found me.

I started paying attention to the dumpsters when people were moving. Frequently people throw out cleaning supplies and nearly full containers of laundry detergent. I think I only had to buy these things once the whole time I lived there.

I tried as much as possible to think in "big picture" terms. I could have had internet access for as low as 10 bucks a month. A phone for 30 a month. Cable for 20 a month. By not having these three things, I saved $480 in the year I lived there. Twenty dollars here and there did not sound like much, but when I put it that way...it made it easier.

So I was on my way! The first step is to have a goal. Then look at things you can cut. Be creative! Find other alternatives.

After a few months of not checking out frugality books, I rechecked out some of the ones I had been annoyed with before. I was not a stay at home mother, but I knew there were more to cutting expenses than cloth diapers. So I got the books again and read them more carefully, gleaning ideas that I could use, and being creative with the things I had.

I had dismissed the idea of freezing bulk dinners, because I had a cruddy freezer. But one of the women in the books showed how she froze food for her family without an extra freezer by putting food in ziplock bags and freezing them flat. If one person could do that with a regular freezer for a family, then a single person could do that in a small tin freezer in a fridge. I did not reuse the bags like I do now, but even with throwing away bags, this saved me quite a bit. I had spent a lot of time at the Wendy's 99 cent menu before, thinking that it would be cheaper than letting food rot.

I turned one of my dresser drawers into a panty, storing canned goods and dried beans in it. I used my crockpot all the time to make soups and other dishes. I also bought some of those plastic drawers and underbed drawers and would put assorted things in them. I looked crowded and cluttered, but I could not think of another way. Even in retrospect I don't know how much I could have done differently, storage wise.

I shopped at Wal-Mart, Sav-a-Lot, and Big Lots, instead of the generally more expensive but very close by King Soopers.

I started to use coupons for things like shampoo and toilet paper, but generally ignored food coupons because I assumed that generic brands were always cheaper.

I made curtains from cheap-o fabric rather than buy any. It was not just for decoration-I needed curtains. The blinds were very thin, and broken in places. (If I had to describe that apartment in one word, it would be "craphole.")

When my husband and I married, we had about 3000 dollars between us. 500 of that was money I saved while living alone and cutting expenses. 500 dollars does not sound like a spectacular figure for a year, but since I could only set a little aside here and there, it really showed me that every little bit counts.

Next Week: I thought I had cut every expense possible! There was no way to squeeze another cent out of our budget. No way at all. Nope. None. Then I found The Tightwad Gazette.