No-Kill Finance

I was going to sign on and write the first in a [long] series of posts about my weaknesses when it comes to saving and spending…but instead, I decided I’d found a trick for efficient use of money and resources.

See, the weakness that cost me $8 cash today is the same one that costs me $8 cash at least once every other week (though usually more often than that).  That weakness is Thai carry-out.  I’m absolutely insane about Thai food…favorite ethnic cuisine, hands down.  And I’m a loyalist to one restaurant, too…have been for five years now:  Thai Avenue in Uptown Chicago.

Now, I share a common suspicion about independently owned foreign cuisine restaurants:  that we open-minded, curious, yuppie and/or hipster and/or college-aged urban professionals aren’t trusted with the total experience of cuisine.  The lamb brains at the Indian place aren’t offered on the menu written in English; waitresses make sure you understand what you’re getting when you order lengua at a Mexican place; and, slightly more relevant to the post, Thai restaurants take it very easy on you when you order an already-hot dish “extra spicy.”

Having dined at and ordered from Thai Avenue regularly enough over a long enough period of time, the woman running the place (who I assume is the owner, though I’ve never clarified) has come to known me by name and to know my tastes in food.  Perhaps I’m imagining that there’s a steady pattern, but it seems that, over the last six months or so, my “Extra Spicy” pad kee mao has been getting progressively hotter and hotter, to the point where I might actually be getting the same thing a Thai transplant might get if he were to order the same thing.

Anyway, that’s a circuitous route to share a basic discovery I’ve made about myself:  spicy food is difficult to eat in large quantities.  I’m a bit of an over-eater.  I’ve been known to eat until I absolutely can’t fit another bite into my stomach, wait fifteen minutes, and have dessert.  This is particularly an issue with delicious and amazing food, such as that from Thai Avenue.  So, when I get my usual carry-out order of pad kee mao that could easily feed three people, I devour it in entirety over a small portion of my half-hour lunch break.

But it’s so easy to stretch one $8 meal into three or four when said meal is rapidly melting your tongue out of your intensely painful mouth.  One’s stomach fills quite quickly in such a situation, which extends the value of the food and limits the calorie intake.  (Note that I do not harbor any delusions that even a small amount of Thai food fits within the parameters of my diet.)

So, my advice for the next time you’re blowing ten bucks on Mexican instead of making a one-dollar sandwich at home:  order it spicy.  And the real spicy, not the sympathy-for-the-naive-white-guy kind of spicy.  You might get several [uncomfortable, painful, or even exruciating] meals for the price of one!

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my friend Danielle regarding my blog.  (She neglected to take me up on the free beer offered in the last post.  Big relief, since I can’t afford it.)  Since I neglected to save the message she left, I’ll paraphrase:

Justin.  I’ve been reading your blog.  How the @%&# do you save that much money when you make so little?  My fixed expenses are too high to save at all, and I make more than you.  What does your budget look like?

Well, Danielle, if I may respond in a public forum (though I didn’t ask before posting this), my main trick is that I just don’t spend much money at all outside of my fixed expenses.

I budget a monthly income of $1100, though I usually make a little more than that.  My fixed expenses are:

• $450 Rent
• $70 Transportation (approximate:  bus and train)
• $80 Utilities (approximate:  gas, electric, internet)

I’m fortunate enough not to have to pay for my cell phone, as it’s a recurring Christmas gift from my mother.  I also don’t currently have any monthly credit card payments apart from the not-quite-weekly $20 charges from the Chicago Transit Authority, which I pay as they appear on my statement (see “$70 Transportation”).  I don’t have any student loans (yet), because I was able to make it through my undergraduate schooling debt-free as a result of the responsible financial planning of my parents and grandparents.  (Side note:  this is one of the main things that makes me want to be financially responsible:  I want to provide for my children and grandchildren as well as my parents and grandparents did for me.)

But anyway, after those fixed expenses, I’m left with $500 a month to spend on food, pets, clothes, household expenses, and (if I’m very, very lucky) a bit left over for entertainment.  It’s a sparse existence, but I make it work.

For my non-fixed expenses, I eat a lot of cheap meals (made at home from cheap groceries…I price compare like crazy:  if something is 26 cents an ounce at Trader Joe’s and 27 cents an ounce at Jewel, I buy it at Trader Joe’s).  I keep and am sure to consume leftovers rather than letting them go bad in my refrigerator like I used to, and I scarf down any freebies offered to the staff at work (one of the perks of working for an animal organization:  lots of people want to thank us for our efforts by feeding us…even if it is mostly junk food).

I dine out very rarely, and try to do so cheaply whenever I do.  Again, I save leftovers and try to stretch them over a few meals.  (A trick:  I offer to brave the cold weather and pick up food for co-workers in exchange for getting to keep their change.  If I get six people to order Thai food along with me and they all round up to the nearest dollar – as a delivery tip – I end up getting an order of pad thai that lasts me two or three meals for just a couple of bucks.)

For entertainment, I rely on my “cheapest-plan-possible” Netflix subscription (complete with online viewing) and Hulu, plus the plethora of CDs, DVDs, books and magazines that I purchased and never fully enjoyed back in my days of unrepentant spending.  Mostly, though, I don’t leave myself time for entertainment.  Between school, work, and mindless internet browsing (I mean…constructive blogging), I don’t find much time to yearn for concerts or movies.

Household expenses are easy because we buy most household goods at thrift stores.  We clean with cheap cleaner (or sometimes just diluted white vinegar).  I re-wear shirts and pants until they’re simply too dirty to pass as clean in good company.  I buy clothes at thrift stores, too, and rarely at that since my job doesn’t really require any sort of dress code.  (All of my stained, too-small, white t-shirts are my “work shirts”…which I wear six days a week to match my work schedule.)

Mostly, I just cut back on the things that used to be my weaknesses: if I want a drink, I have $3 Trader Joe’s wine rather than $25 Jameson whiskey; if I want to see a movie, I stay in and see what’s new on Netflix rather than buying a ticket to see a new release; if I want a sandwich, I make one rather than running to the Quizno’s across the street; if I want to buy a book or CD or DVD or video game, I just…well, I just don’t.  And the best thing about it is that my extreme thrift hasn’t really detracted from my quality of life whatsoever.  I’m just as happy being cheap as I was being reckless.  And this way, I have $250 bucks or so every month to squirrel away for a rainy day, which just makes me more secure, therefore happier.

A few days ago, Katie had a day off while I had to work. She’s been spending most of her days off setting up the new apartment, so she was excited to have plans with a friend for a change.  When that friend suggested brunch, Katie said her initial reaction was to immediately regret not being able to afford a meal out.  But, of course, she can afford it…I’m the one who can’t.  So after she realized that I wasn’t coming along, she gladly accepted the invitation.

This lead me to wonder…at what point does my budgeting become a burden on, rather than a benefit to, my personal life?

Choosing Battles

I mentioned in a previous post that Katie and I recently had a minor disagreement over the cost of dining out.  After the disagreement had been resolved (i.e. we made sandwiches and ate them angrily), she pointed out that we probably could have compromised by splitting a meal from the restaurant and eating something small (like, say, sandwiches) beforehand.  It was a good point.

I need to be careful of falling into a damagingly severe mindset of scrimping and saving at every turn.  It could not only have a negative effect on my ability to enjoy life (because, like anyone, I need to treat myself to a nice thing or two every once in a while, budget be damned), but also on my ability to function in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have the same need for extreme thrift as I do.

And, besides my relationship, what about my own peace of mind?  My own well-being?

Thrift vs. Deprivation

Last week, I wrote about saving money by walking to work rather than taking the bus.  I feel like I made a pretty reasonable argument.  This week, though, I had a pretty serious cold along with a sinus infection (and, I suspect based on details I won’t share here, a touch of pneumonia?), and still insisted on walking to work one day.  Stupid.

Sometimes, spending $2 just makes more sense than saving it.  I was lucky in that particular circumstance, in the sense that I seem to be recovering at a decent rate and won’t need to go see a doctor as a result of my trek through the great [frozen] outdoors while ill.  Sometimes, whether to save time (that could otherwise be spent earning more money…or sleeping) or simply to save whatever small amount of sanity I might still be clinging to, spending a few bucks here and there on amenities is an okay thing.

Are you guys budget Nazis, too?  Where do you make allowances in your budgets for spoiling yourselves?

Katie and I had a lesson in bargain-hunting last week.  We had talked about how to furnish the new apartment, and decided we were going to get a couch.  Well, loveseat, actually, on account of space restrictions, but the shopping destinations were the same:  no thrift stores (sadly) on account of the worsening bedbug problem in Chicago.  We were stuck getting a new couch, in spite of our green sensibilities begging us not to.  And, as we have both noticed and many of our friends have agreed in recent conversations, Ikea just isn’t the bargain it used to be, given the shoddy and uncomfortable nature of their products.

Anyway, shopping day arrived, and I was busy with frantically packing boxes at the time (hadn’t completed my move yet…still haven’t, in fact), so Katie went out for the initial round of shopping solo.  She came back with a few couches in mind, but they were all from the sort of discount warehouse store that I’ve always assumed were for the direly impoverished (of course, I guess I’m not much better than direly impoverished myself at the moment)…better than buying furniture from Wal-Mart, but only by a little.

A friend, hearing where we had found our couch, suggested that we check out some of the nicer furniture stores in Chicago to see if they had any floor models for sale.  It was, after all, just days after the New Year…furniture-discount-shopping season.  (Apparently this is when new models have just shipped and old ones are being heavily discounted.)  Taking her advice, we checked out a couple of nicer stores, and got a lesson in…well, several things.

The first place we went, neither of us had ever heard of.  Pretty much the moment we walked in, we knew it was out of our price range, but we looked around for a few minutes anyway, and eventually one of the saleswomen (who I’d been trying to avoid) approached us.

“Hello, how can we help you?,” she asked in a thick Eastern European accent.

I’d practiced:  ”Hi.  We’re in the market for a new couch, and we were sort of doing some budget shopping, wondering if you had any floor model discounts or anything.”

She looked mildly disappointed.  ”Great,” she probably thought, “I got stuck with cheapskates.”  She showed us to her most steeply discounted floor model available, a gorgeous sofa (read:  future cat scratching post) marked down from $1600 to $1200.

“Okay,” I said, uncertain of how to phrase it, “Twelve hundred is a bit out of our price range.  We have another couch in mind, and we were just looking to see if we could find something better for the same price.”

“And how much is the other couch?”

I paused, took a quick look around at the quality of furniture around me, and said, probably not without a trace of shame, “A little under five hundred.”

She proceeded to lecture us about the shoddy production methods that go into furniture so cheap and showed us to a $1000 couch that was absolutely beautiful.  We let her give us her spiel about how $1000 doesn’t need to be put down immediately:  ”This is actually the last month that you can enroll in our six-month, no-money-down financing program, because the government is taking it away.”

I thought to myself, “Perhaps that’s because it’s a total rip-off to consumers who don’t know any better and the government is trying to protect them from you,” but I of course said nothing.  Instead, I let her take down some of my information and give us a business card, as though we were actually considering spending twice what we’d budgeted on a couch that would, as mentioned previously, be a glorified cat toy.

Walking into the next furniture store, I promised Katie that it wouldn’t take so long this time.  I told the first saleswoman we saw what we were looking for and she showed me her cheapest floor model.  It was too much; I told her so.

“How much were you looking to spend?” she asked.

“We have a couch in mind for five hundred.  We’d maybe be able to go slightly over that, but not by much.  Just bargain hunting.”

She gave us a similar (if less extensive/scolding) lecture to that of the woman in the previous store, and told us she could show us her custom models starting at $800.  ”But,” she assured us, “our couches come with lifetime warranties, which you probably won’t find on a $500 couch.”

She had us there.  But it was beside the point:  we didn’t have an extra $300 to blow on furniture, and I wasn’t about to put $800 on a credit card that I’d finally gotten down to a zero balance.  So I told her we didn’t want to waste her time, that we couldn’t swing the extra money, and thanked her for her time.  She thanked me, too…I think she appreciated the honesty.  Even though I think we may have been the only customers there, I think she was more excited by the prospect of looking around for another customer who might actually earn her a decent commission.  (Katie thanked me, too, as it was terribly uncomfortable and unnecessarily humbling to repeatedly be shown luxurious items that we couldn’t afford.)

We decided that there seemed to be a gap between the two types of furniture:  there was the nice type that came with lifetime warranties because it was meant to last forever; and there was the cheap kind that fell apart after a few years, the sort you might buy if, say, you were planning on attending vet school out of state, moving repeatedly in the next decade, and not settling down with nice or permanent things until your mid-thirties.  We qualified pretty perfectly for the second sort of furniture, so:

Thor believes we bought the couch for him.

$544, all told:  loveseat, tax, delivery, and stain-resistance treatment.  The last fee seemed like it was both a ripoff and a great idea at the same time…has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing?  Is the treatment worth the $60 (or however much) for a microfiber couch?  Does it really matter if one of my cats is going to tear the arms of the thing to shreds within a short amount of time?  Too late now, I suppose.  But, regardless of how the couch holds up over the course of the next few years (months?  I hope not…), trying to find the best deal was an important lesson in humility, in sacrificing our good taste, and in settling for less when necessary.  And even after visiting the furniture stores for the wealthy and sitting on the spring-cushioned lap of luxury, we’re happy with the fruits of our limited budget.

Yesterday I took Thor, my oldest cat, in to work to see the doctor.  It was bad news all around.

Thor has a condition known as hyperthyroidism, which requires medication twice daily.  The doctor thinks, on account of some suspicious bloodwork and the fact that his appetite has not been as insatiable as usual, that his thyroid may be acting up, in which case he would require more medication.  Or, she thinks, he may have troubles with his pancreas, which would require still more medication.  In the long view, I’m having to come to terms with the fact that Thor is in his declining years (hopefully years, rather than months).  This utterly breaks my heart, as he is (sorry, other three cats) my favorite animal in the universe.  In the short term, though, I’m feeling guilty for being so shallow as to dread the cost of his new health issues.

I haven’t yet done the research on exactly how much money this will all cost me…working in the industry, I get all prescribed medicine at cost value, but it still adds up.  Based on estimations (I don’t have a price book handy), my approximate monthly Thor medicine cost is presently:

The Thor In Question

• Thyroid medication:  $12.00
• Appetite stimulant:  $8.00
• Anti-emetic (anti-vomit) injections:  $25.00

…for a total of roughly $45.00 per month.  And now, we may be adding:

• 25% more thyroid medication:  $3.00
• Antacid:  $3.00
• Laxative:  $5.00
• Fluids for subcutaneous hydration:  $10.00

…for a total of roughly $66.00 per month.  And if it is his thyroid acting up, once it regulates he may start showing signs of kidney function issues (not uncommon in hyperthyroid cats…plus, he’s been drinking more water than usual lately), which would require special (read:  300% price increase) food.

Way down here in my tax bracket, it’s difficult to remember the purpose of owning pets when they’re costing so very much money.  But Thor?  Thor is amazing.  Absolutely worth it.  He has more personality than a fair number of people I’ve known, and shows more affection than literally any cat I’ve ever encountered in my four years of working with the little beasts.  Not to mention, as you can plainly see, he’s one of the more gorgeous creatures ever.

His ear is crumpled as the result of the removal of an abscess as a younger, more spry man.  His upper canines have been removed on account of periodontal disease, so his lower canines sometimes catch on his upper lip, giving him a snarled look.  His vision is poor so his pupils are always almost fully dilated, and he’s deaf so he always looks alertly around himself (usually to see if there’s a human in his vicinity that he could pester for food and/or petting).

He grew up on the streets of Chicago, and was cared for as a stray by an old man with a big dog (I think it was a Rottweiler, but I may be wrong about that).  The old man would leave food out for the stray cat (then unnamed), who gradually became friendlier and soon slept on the porch when the man was sitting outside.  Eventually, Thor became comfortable enough that he would sleep next to or on the dog, and soon became so attached that he would follow them on their walks.  Eventually, the dog passed away, and not long after, so did the man.  A friendly neighbor who was unable to care for the cat but unwilling to leave him on the streets without the comfortable support of the man, admitted him to our shelter (where he was named “Thor” by an employee wanting to give him a strong name…we found out a few days after selecting this moniker that the old man’s last name had been Thorsten…weird).

And eventually my ex-girlfriend and I adopted him.  I got custody in the break-up, and he has since followed me to three different homes.  He’s cost me enough money to teach me that pet ownership is nothing to take lightly, in terms of money.  If all four of our cats (three mine, one Katie’s…introductions forthcoming) were as sickly as Thor, I’d be in some serious trouble, and that’s something I hadn’t considered in adopting so many.  This is a good example of the poor foresight I have utilized in my life prior to my quest to fix my money situation…I focused too much on the short term, too little on the long term; too much on the emotional benefits and not enough on the financial burdens.

And it’s too late now; Thor is here to stay.  As I indicated in my first post, I’m somewhat crazy about my cats, and would not give any of them up for any financial hardship short of homelessness.  So, bring it on, little malfunctioning kitty thyroid; I can take your worst.  Because damn it, I’m in control of my money, not you.

So, I’m sort of a beginner at frugality. I’d imagine I’ll go into more depth on that issue at some point in the near future; for now, I’ll just say that I haven’t paid a lot of attention to my spending habits until recently. And it’s not been an easy transition. Some things are just difficult to wean myself off of. Buying a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee every day before work? That habit was so easy to drop that it seems ridiculous I ever had it to begin with. But there are a few adjustments I’ve made to my daily life that I can’t quite get the hang of. And one of them is particularly trying in the winter months.

Chicago, if you’re unaware, gets viciously cold. The wind slices down between buildings into concentrated, sub-freezing tunnels, requiring some heavy-duty winter protection for even brief exposures. It’s not atypical for wind-chills to dip below zero degrees several days a week this time of year. This is torture for me, because I live just within convenient walking distance (by my definition of “convenient walking distance,” anyway…about a mile and a half) from work. Now, if I lived three miles from work, I’d have no qualms paying the $2.00 to take the bus (I can’t afford to have a car yet); but with only a 25-minute walk, it pains me to spend the money even in dangerously low temperatures.

Since the trip to work is one of the first things I do in a typical day, it tends to set a mood for the rest of the day. Therefore, given my new and still-occasionally-flimsy sense of frugality, it’s important for me to start off on a thrifty note and skip the bus ride. Otherwise I may find myself losing focus of my goals and ordering $9 Thai food for my lunch break, or buying one of the $1 candy bars they keep in the kitchen at work. But damn it, it’s been difficult to talk myself into the long, cold walk at 6:30 am, and I needed a strategy to keep myself motivated. I thought of something I read in a GetRichSlowly post somewhat recently, advice for fulfilling financial goals–specifically goals unrelated to my own, but regardless, it seemed to fit my situation pretty perfectly:

“Develop a plan that is so amazing, so glowing, that you are willing to walk blurry-eyed to work every day to make the money necessary to reach the light.”

So, rather than a “plan,” I developed an idealistic and blown-up version of the old adage “a penny saved is a penny earned.” What I’ve been doing is, quite simply, thinking as grandly as possible about the money I’m saving by walking. A $2.00 bus fare, pocketed rather than spent, can’t do much, admittedly, but $2.00 saved twice a day (walking to and from work rather than busing it) for a week is $20.00. That’s about $1000 a year. And $1000, invested at 12% gain for six years, becomes about $2000. Another four years and it’s $3000, not to mention all the money I’d have saved by walking rather than busing to work in the mean time. Plus, bus fares have been increasing with such regularity that the amount of savings will likely increase on a yearly basis, while the amount of walking I do will stay exactly the same.

So, though this is a blindly optimistic analysis of saving $2 every morning, it’s worked out for me so far. If anyone has any suggestions for back-up motivational plans in case this one starts to fail me at some point (like, for instance, if I start to think too hard about the flawed logic of it), I’d appreciate suggestions. ‘Til then, I’m spending my walks to and from work daydreaming, making plans for what I’ll do with my $3000 bus fund in the winter of 2020.

—–

Note:  with school starting up again today, I’m afraid public transit will again become an unavoidable burden in my life.  I can still save money by making the walk from home to work, but school is nowhere near walking distance, and costs me $22 a week to travel to and from.  Perhaps a used car would be worth the investment?  I’ll investigate this, and maybe blog about it soon.