Frugality

JLP at All Financial Matters posted how he could “find” an extra $13,000 per year if he had to and Flexo at Consumerism Commentary followed up with how he could find $10,000 per year if necessary. This led me to analyze how their “money-finding” techniques would work for me.

Since I only made slightly under $13,000 last year I obviously don’t have nearly the discretionary expenses they do. I’m always a little surprised at how much some personal finance bloggers spend on these kind of thing when they’re usually reminding people to control their spending. Of course, what seems an extravagant expense to someone making $13,000 can be a quite reasonable expense for someone several times as much. Let’s go ahead and compare expenses anyway.

Cable and Movies

I don’t have cable so I can’t save any money there. The only money I spend on this category is in going to the movies. By taking advantage of different promotions I can often go for free or for a low price. If I completely cut out going to the movies and limited my movie viewing to free rentals from Redbox I could save maybe $200 a year.

Meals and Dining Out

I only spend about $100 a month on food making it hard to cut much here but there are some changes that could be made. I could take home more free food from work, reduce or eliminate my soda consumption, eat even cheaper food than now, and eat less of it. I could save another $200 a year here.

Communication

I use a cell phone as my only phone. There is no land line to get rid of to save money. My monthly bill comes to about $36 with taxes. I could discontinue this and go back to my $7.08 a month phone plan but since I’m making more calls now it would probably cost me about $20 a month now if I limited my call time. This would be another $200 saved.

Live Entertainment

This is something I currently spend $0 on because I don’t particularly enjoy it. No money to be saved here.

Vacation

I spent a lot on vacation this year but don’t usually take a real vacation.  Still, I could probably save $200 on vacation or other entertainment expenses.

Cds,DVDs, and Books

This is another category I spend little or no money on.  When it comes to music I’m content to listen to whatever is on the radio.  I can get DVDs and books for free from the library or elsewhere.  In the vast majority of cases once I’ve watched a DVD or read a book I don’t feel a need to own it. If I want to read it or watch it again I’ll just borrow it again.

That makes a total of $800 for these categories.  Maybe I could save another $200 somewhere to get the total up to $1,000 but I’m not sure where.  There just isn’t much excess in my budget.  Making these cuts would be difficult.  I’m quite happy with my current expenditure level but if I were to reduce it much I think my life would be much less enjoyable.

Last month I read a post at Living Almost Large titled “Still Hungry with Food Stamps”. It was in response to this CNN article about a woman who found it difficult to feed her and her baby on $280 a month in food stamps. LivingAlmostLarge thought that it shouldn’t be a problem to eat on that amount a month but some of the commenters disagreed with her. Since I’ve been on food stamps myself I wanted to do my own post on the subject and I’ve finally gotten around to it.

I was on food stamps in Texas for three months in 2003. I was employed at the time but not getting many hours and therefore not making much money. I was making just enough money to pay my bills but certainly wasn’t going hungry. Since I worked at a pizza restaurant I had access to free food several times a week. I debated whether to apply for food stamps but decided I should go ahead and take advantage of the program.

It was pretty easy to apply for the food stamps. I just filled out an application and dropped it off at the office. I was called about a week later and after a short interview I was declared eligible for $160 a month in food stamps. I don’t remember the exact details of documentation but I remember being surprised at how easy the process was. I was also surprised at the amount, $160 seemed like a lot to me for one person.

The food stamps were actually in the form of an EBT card which worked like a debit card. The first month I used my entire allotted amount. Some of this was due to buying food for a friend that visited and building up a supply of basic staples. The second month I didn’t come close to using all of my allotted amount. This amount rolled over to the next month resulting in me having much more than $160 to spend on groceries for the month. The third month I got a new job and canceled my food stamps. However, I was still able to use the amount remaining on my EBT card and used it to buy my groceries for the next couple months.

Overall, I would say my experience with food stamps was a positive one. I found a $160 a month to be plenty of money for groceries and I actually bought more expensive foods than I normally would have. I did occasionally get dirty looks when using the card but for the most part no one seemed to care that I was using them.

If I were in the same position again though I wouldn’t apply for food stamps. I was eligible for them so it was legal for me to do so but since I could have easily got by without them I don’t think it was ethical to do so. So far this year I’ve been averaging $100-$150 on food including restaurant food so I’d have to be pretty poor to not be able to afford food without food stamps.

David from David Makes Cents and Sean from Financial Ramblings recently had a gas saving challenge.  The goal was to see who could get the larger percentage improvement over the EPA MPG estimates.  David managed to get 32.257 MPG which compared to the EPA MPG estimate of 29 amounted to 12.16% improvement.  Sean got 32.088 MPG which compared to the EPA MPG estimate of 26 amounted to a 23.4% improvement.  Both of these are much better than the EPA’s fuel economy estimate which shows that you can significantly increase your MPG by altering your driving habits.

I didn’t participate in the gas saving challenge but I keep track of my mileage anyway so I can do a comparison.  My last four tanks I have gotten 30.2,32.29,33.22 and 34.42 MPG.  All of them except for the 30.2 amount reflect a large amount of highway driving.  Using the 30.2 figure I am doing just a little better than the EPA figure of 29 MPG for combined driving.  This isn’t too bad considering I was using my a/c the whole time and it also includes two shifts of pizza delivery driving.  If I compare my 30.2 MPG to the new EPA estimate for combined driving of 26 MPG than I’m doing really well.  The new EPA MPG figures are 26 MPG for combined driving, 23for city driving, and 31 for highway driving.  The old EPA MPG figures were 29 combined, 27 city, and 34 highway.  The EPA changed the way it calculates MPG because people complained that the old figures were unrealistically high.  I find thought that the old figures more accurately reflect my style of driving.  You can find EPA estimated MPG for your vehicle at fueleconomy.gov.