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Cheapskates & penny pinchers
Bankrate.com staff
Does your financial future look bleak? Check out resources
that will help you save.
How does an unemployed single parent pay the rent,
keep the electricity on, and feed a 15-year-old son whose appetite
resembles Godzilla's?
"I squeezed my nickels 'til they screamed," says Hazel,
a San Diego native who found herself jobless when the tour boat
company she managed was swallowed by a larger firm. "For me, it
wasn't just about cutting corners. It was about surviving."
When her $40,000 annual income was supplanted by unemployment
benefits that yielded just $30 a week for groceries, Hazel quickly
learned the true meaning of the word "necessities." Now a public
relations assistant for a major nonprofit agency, she says she survived
that nine-month strait by tightening the belt in ways she'd never
imagined she might have to -- such as eliminating cable, forsaking
long-distance phone calls and cutting back on meat for reasons other
than health.
According to Liz Linehan, who published a newsletter
dedicated to helping families live more frugally, Hazel's pre-crisis
concept of cost-cutting is common to many single-income Americans.
"Most of what we think of as 'tightening the belt'
really isn't," says Linehan, a mother of three who lives in Clarkston,
Wash. "If you need to, you can squeeze more out of the dollars you
already have. There are tons of dollar-stretching ideas floating
around -- you just need to find them and use them."
Linehan's no stranger to dollar-stretching herself.
She survived her own financial crisis after her husband's job loss
shrank the family's income to just $900 a month. "Now that we're
watching our savings grow instead of wondering where our next groceries
are coming from, I want to share good, practical ideas for saving
money that anyone can use," says Linehan.
Linehan urges consumers on a single income to scour
women's magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Family Circle and Women's
Day. If you can't afford to subscribe, read them online or at your
local library, she says. And save interesting tidbits for future
use; you never know when you might need an economical meal or gift
idea.
Another hot spot for thrifty tips is The Cheapskate
Monthly, a Web site and newsletter published by Mary Hunt, the Paramount,
Calif.-based author of nine books on living within your means. Along
with husband Harold, Hunt took 13 years to dig her way out of a
whopping $100,000 in unsecured debt -- without declaring bankruptcy.
She now makes a career of educating others on responsible financial
management and debt-free living.
The Cheapskate Monthly features scores of data-packed
pages with advice on everything from slicing the fat from grocery
bills to erasing red ink from your family's balance sheet. The site
also includes debt repayment and savings calculators, a database
of more than 500 reader-submitted scrimp-and-save hints, and an
online bookstore. About 50 percent of the site is free to surfers,
while the other half is accessible to newsletter subscribers.
"Many people think they have no place they can reduce
expenses," says Hunt. "But statistics show that if you make more
than $10,000 a year, you probably do have some discretionary income.
If you say you have no options, you may be fooling yourself."
For example, transportation bills, a seemingly fixed
expense, can be trimmed by shopping for cheaper auto insurance,
ride-sharing or taking the bus, says Hunt. Housing costs, another
"fixed" budget area, can be pared down by taking in a boarder or
roommate, or by moving in with family.
Tips such as these abound in books that teach from
the experience of others, Hunt says. She encourages those struggling
to make it on one income to read books on personal finance, such
as The Overspent American by Juliet Schor (Basic Books 1998)
and Miserly Moms by Jonni McCoy (CB Publishing Group 1996).
"Books like these are tremendous resources," says
Hunt. "Read as much as you can about managing money. Explore your
options. And don't let emotions that say 'I'm failing' or 'I'm moving
backwards' keep you from making smart choices that will help you
live within your income."
-- Posted: Oct. 9, 1998
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