Frugality

Last year I was able to successfully turn off my gas and save some money during the summer. I tried to do that again this year but my landlord was uncooperative. He didn’t want to go through the hassle of turning off the gas so I am forced to pay for gas through the summer even though I won’t be using it. I did manage to save a little through my attempt at turning off the gas. For the short period the gas bill reverted to the management company rather than me there was a smaller customer charge so I’ll save that little bit. I’m unhappy that I’m unable to do this and will be moving out at the end of my lease. Wherever I live next won’t have gas heat-at least not natural gas heat. More on my future living plans tomorrow.

When I logged into my latest bank account today I expected to see a bonus of $50 credited to my account.  Instead there was a credit of $150.  I don’t have the terms of the bank bonus with me but I believe they made an error and credited me for a larger bonus than I qualified for.  I briefly thought about just waiting to see if they would catch the error or not.  I really don’t think they would though.  The bonus was entered by the person who opened my account and they probably just rely on that when determining what amount to credit.  I decided to go ahead and let them know of the error though.  I’m hoping that maybe I’m wrong and I did qualify for the larger bonus amount or maybe they’ll just let me keep it.  If not and they take the money back that is okay because it wasn’t mine anyway.  I’m frugal but I don’t compromise my ethics for financial gain.

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.