Friday Series #2- The Start of Real Progress

Week Two of my Friday Series- my journey to frugality!

As I said in my earlier posts, our frugality journey started with a goal. Our goal at this point in our life was to stay out of consumer debt, and start saving more towards our emergency fund. We wanted to have at least one year's worth of savings put aside in five years or less. We also wanted to pay off my husband's school loans, but decided to put that aside until he was no longer a student.

We married in June of 2003, and enjoyed a 7 day cruise in Alaska for our honeymoon. We paid for this cruise entirely on our own in cash. My husband and I had known each other for quite awhile, and since long before we had dated we had been saving for a trip to Italy that we were hoping to take with friends after we graduated. That did not work out, but we had a nice trip fund, which we used on our honeymoon. We got the cheapest room, and did not do any of the packaged "excursions" and still had a fabulous time without spending more than we had saved for the trip. The only debt we had was the student debt my husband came into our marriage with.

However, 2003 was a horrible time to need a job. The country was in recession, and there was not much out there. My husband was still finishing his undergrad work and only had a part time low paying work study job. Though he had been sending out resumes, he had not heard anything from anybody. I had no job outside the home, and it took me three months of looking daily to find one. The low point was when Taco Bell would not even give me an application, because they had so many applicants. I finally got a job at a maid service, earning 5.15 an hour. We had few funds and only about 3000 in savings. We had no health insurance. The slightest bump could ruin us, and we felt that acutely.

We rented an inexpensive apartment and started our married life. While I was at home, I did everything I thought of to save money. It dawned on me to make a menu, so I sat down and came up with one. I then would go buy ingredients for those meals, and thought I was saving a fabulous amount of money. It was better than my old method of wandering around in the store, thinking of what to buy, but as I evolved, I knew I could do better. I experienced a breakthrough when it occurred to me to not only make a menu, but to base that menu on the things that were on sale at my local store. A Safeway had also recently opened by our house, and they had "store opening" bargains that were amazing. We ate a ton of cheap potatoes and pork chops during our first few months of marriage.

We also decided that we would attempt to help others in any way we could, even though we did not have money. One month after we married, we took in a friend who was between apartments for three months, rent-free. That decision later saved us over 3000 dollars, and confirmed my belief that no kindness goes unpaid, however small. (More on how taking in our friend saved us money next week!) Having a roommate, even one who did not pay rent, helped us in other ways. We were really hurting for grocery money, and often ate pretty bland meals. James often would buy treats for us that we could not afford, and extras like really nice cheese. We had a pet rabbit, and James would rabbit-sit for us when we were out of town, which was often, as my husband's father was terminally ill. Having James around made things a lot nicer.

After getting our first gas bill (gas was pretty high then too!) of 130 dollars to heat a small two bedroom apartment, we turned the heat down to 55-60, and wore our coats in the house. And used blankets. The heat did not work in our bedroom and they were never able to fix it, so we used an electric blanket. We would only turn up the heat when we had friends or family over, because we did not want them to be cold or to worry about our finances. (James the Roommate left before it started to get really cold, so he did not suffer!)

I finally got on E-bay and bought myself a copy of the Tightwad Gazette I and II. The library in my new town had a long wait list as well, and no used bookstore had a copy, so I figured that it must be pretty good to be so popular. I paid .99 cents for each copy, plus shipping, and have saved much more than that. This book changed my life in ways that few other books have.

The Tightwad Gazette is filled with great ideas that many people can use. My biggest frustration with frugality books was (and continues to be) that they are often aimed at the Stay at Home Mom set, with much of the advice aimed at kids and kid related expenses. The books also often advised things that I was already doing- ie clip coupons, shop sales, etc. This is great, but most of it did not help me. Using cloth diapers are an incredible savings- if you have a baby to put in them! The Tightwad Gazette had a ton of advice that could work for people in most life situations, with or without children.

I was inspired by Amy's story. She saved 49,000 dollars in seven years (even with children!) on one modest income in an expensive area of the country. She did all kinds of things to achieve her goal, from the more socially acceptable things such as using cloth napkins and baking bread, to more extreme things like trash picking, washing out ziplock baggies, and making soup from leftovers. It was an encouragement- there were other people out there who wanted to live a frugal life, even when they were not in dire financial straits. Plus there was tons of advice that I could actually use!

So I became a user of cloth napkins. I started washing out ziplock baggies. I had been a sort of trashpicker before, but I made a point to start really looking. As a result, I got some pretty nice furniture, our coffee maker, my husband's lunchbox, a baby gate (to keep our house rabbits out of our room) and really started to save on groceries. I stopped making a menu and going to get the stuff and started looking at the loss leader sales, then planning the menu. I shopped at Wal-Mart for "needs" that did not go on sale often. This is when I started to try to keep a pantry, and cook out of that. We had thought that we were pretty frugal before, and compared to our friends, we were. The Tightwad Gazette just helped us take it to a whole new level. I think the biggest gift that it gave me was the idea that it really was okay to be a tightwad, and permission to be creative. A lot of people say that the Tightwad Gazette goes "too far" but one person's too far is another person's salvation. She gave me permission to go 'too far' and to find unique and creative ways to save money!

Eventually I got a better job, but we stuck with most of the frugal behaviors that we had cultivated. We decided it was important to live frugally even when we had more money. We did not want to associate frugality with our impoverished times. Plus, we were saving a decent sum of money when we had very little to work with. If we kept up with the cost saving strategies when we had more money, what amazing things could we accomplish?

A brief sidenote: If you are a frugal mined single, pay attention to the spending habits and money attitudes of those you date. It is much easier to be frugal when you have a like minded spouse. We decided long before we married that debt was not an option for us, unless there was literally no other way. We figured that we would do what we could, be kind to others, and everything else would work out.

Next Week: "Give, and it will be given to you... For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Luke 6:38) or how giving saved us 3000 dollars.