Andy Hough

Taking Cold Showers to Save $45 a Month

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I previously posted about having my gas turned off because I felt that the monthly bill of roughly $45 was too high. My plan then was to take my showers at my school’s fitness center with the occasional cold shower at home. That plan didn’t work because my school requires you to pay to use the fitness center during the summer unless you’re enrolled in summer classes. Since I’m not yet enrolled for the fall semester I would have had to pay $40 a month to use the fitness center which would have basically wiped out the savings from not having a gas bill.

So now I am taking cold showers at home. They actually are not as bad as I thought they would be. You get acclimated to them after a while but I certainly don’t luxuriate in them. This has a green side effect in that I use less water in addition to using less energy. I also bought a solar camp shower from Wal-Mart for $6. This actually works pretty well on sunny days. The problem with it is that it is already starting to fall apart.

When I tell people that I’m doing without hot water they think I’m crazy but I think it is well worth it for the $45 monthly savings. What would you do to save $45 a month?

June’s Electric Bill- $19.75

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My electric bill for June was only $19.75 even with the use of AC. My electric bill normally runs about $11-$12 so the AC added roughly $7 to my bill. I know this is pretty cheap but everywhere I’ve lived I have usually had low electric bills.

Some reasons my ac costs are so low. I have a small one bedroom apartment so there isn’t a lot of area to cool. I don’t have central air and use a small window unit. I only run the air conditioning when I’m home. There really isn’t much point in running it when I’m not there. I also turn off the ac when I go to bed. It stays cool long enough for me to fall asleep and I keep a fan on which keeps me feeling cool enough while sleeping. Also I turned off my natural gas for the summer. My kitchen is noticably cooler without the pilot lights burning. My lease expires in October so I don’t plan on turning my gas back on.

Some other ways I keep my electric costs down are: Turning off lights when I’m not using them. I have a CFL in the lamp I use the most and my bedside lamp is a fluorescent also. Since my bill is already so low I don’t think there would be much benefit to replacing the rest of my lights with CFLs. I also don’t turn on lights when natural light is sufficient for what I need to do. Since I don’t have cable and my favorite shows are in reruns I am watching very little TV right now. I keep my microwave unplugged when I’m not using it. I don’t keep the TV or stereo on just for noise. Since I don’t have internet at home I usually walk to the library and use the internet there which means I’m not using my electricity to use my laptop. Those are just a few ways I keep my electricity bill low. I can’t get it much lower because they have a basic customer charge you have to pay regardless of how much electricity you use.

Every Month Is An Unusual Month

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Now that I’ve been budgeting for a few months I’ve noticed that every month has unusual expenses. In May I had my oral surgery which was expensive and limited how much I could pay down my debt and contribute to my emergency fund. I figured that in June I’d be able to put a lot more money towards these since I wouldn’t have the oral surgery bill. However, things didn’t turn out that way. I had an unexpected car repair which took quite a bit of money. Also I had to pay for three months of health insurance when I thought I could pay one month at a time. I also had to pay my personal property tax, renew my license and registration on my car, and pay for the next six months of auto insurance. While those expenses were expected when combined with the unexpected expenses I didn’t have nearly the surplus I expected.

This month is starting off the same. I knew I would have some dental expenses but they are already higher than I thought they would be. I think I need to budget $100-$200 a month for unexpected expenses. If it turns out I don’t actually have any unexpected expenses in a month than I can go ahead and contribute that amount  towards my debt or savings. I’m not sure if this is the best solution but it is what I came up with. I’d be happy to hear any suggestions any readers would like to contribute.

Rip Off Medical Plans

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Many companies are now offering what they call limited benefit medical plans. These are basically plans that have a very low annual cap on the benefits they pay off. My employer recently sent me a brochure for one of these plans. They had plans with costs as low as $6.95 a week. With this plan you would only have to pay a $20 co-pay to see a doctor. I thought this seemed like a decent deal until I read that the annual cap on benefits is $500. The cost of this plan is $361.40 a year, that means the maximum amount you could actually benefit from this plan is $138.60 in a year. It seems to me that my employer is trying to make a profit off of me rather than offer a benefit. To make this deal worse many of the employees are young and/or have limited education and may not realize how limited their medical coverage is.  Employees would probably be better off having no medical coverage at all than with one of these limited benefit plans. For more information about these plans read this article at USA Today.

Alternative Income Update

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My alternative income total for June was $543.68. This is my best total ever but it is not sustainble right now. There were several sources of income that will not be repeated or at least won’t all be repeated in the same month. I estimate I could live on about $1000 a month without job related expenses,dental bills, and debt repayment. It will be a while before all those are eliminated so a more realistic total for monthly living expenses would be $1500. That means I’m about a third of the way there. Right now I plan to keep working even if I do get my alternative income to the level where it pays my monthly expenses. It would still be nice to know that I could pay my bills even if I were to quit my job or for some reason be unable to work.