About a year ago, my employer and I parted ways. The General Manager aptly described the root cause as a "Poor match." It appeared to me to be financially motivated too, but basically there wasn't a place in the company for a hard-working, professional and ethical engineer. Though my employer tried to add injury to insult by denying me not only the promised severance package, but even the small consolation of unemployment benefits. Thankfully, the Texas Workforce Commission's arbitrator heard me out and decided they had no cause for terminating me and allowed the benefits that forestalled homelessnes and allowed the simple dignity of regular meals and functioning utilities.
Suddenly cut off from income and with very little savings, I had to deal with the harsh fact that the bills, especially rent, were still coming in as fast as ever. Stanching the flow required some immediate lifestyle changes, not all of which were pleasant.
Rent was the main drain on the budget. Thankfully I have an understanding landlord and live in a rather old rent house that needs regular maintenance. I worked out an arrangement where I would make necessary repairs to the property and deduct that from the rent. It was good for both of us because I charge less than the customary rate for contractors and have a vested interest in doing the work well.
Then there were the utilities. Weather is fairly mild here in East Texas, so we were able to cut about 25% off the electric bill by turning off the A/C-heat when away or at night when sleeping, and turning down the thermostat the rest of the time. We could have done more if the building were better insulated, or installing a wood stove or a ground coupled heat exchanger, but the landlord wasn't that accommodating. I also stopped using our electric dryer and set up a clothes line (details to be posted).
I mulched the garden to minimize watering and took showers to cut back on the water used by baths. That only dropped about $7 of the monthly water bill, but everything helped.
We had the option to use or not use garbage pickup at about $33 per month. I opted to recycle and found we could recycle all of our waste locally except glass. However, in the past year, that amounted to less than 3 cubic feet, and I was able to take that to Austin on a recent trip and recycle it too. I set up several trash cans in the back and separated metal and plastic. The metal I took periodically to the local scrap yard, and with the additions from friends and neighbors, covered the fuel for transport and gained about $20/week as well. The nearby city of Longview, TX recycles plastic, so that left the burnable and compostable trash. We live in west Harrison County, so burning was an option, and I even saved the ashes for future soap making and garden fertilizer. The remaining organic matter either became feed for the dogs and poultry (see next post), or was dug into the half-acre garden behind our home (also another future post).
That left three major expenses to be dealt with: food, insurance and fuel (for the cars).
Insurance was relatively, easy; I just dropped one of our two cars from the policy and reduced the coverage to liability only. They were ten-year-old cars anyway, so collision insurance was more a convenience than a necessity. I thought about dropping our renters insurance, $38 per month at the time and desperately needed cash flow, but thought that unwise and was later proven right (the tornado story to be added soon). Finally, I took an online defensive driving class, $30 up front, but it dropped $20 off the monthly rate so a very good annual ROI. The total savings were about $270 per month.
Food was a major budget item, but with plenty of fat in it (pun intended). First to go was eating out, mostly. Anyway, it was demoted from convenience to rare treat. Processed food, junk food and the like were also pretty much removed from the shopping list. Meat, milk, and other staples were all that remained. I have since learned to raise veggies, grain, eggs and such and make my own bread and cheese, etc. I will write more about that later. We even make our own laundry soap from scratch! Comfort food like chocolate and wine remain at reduced levels for morale's sake, but I'm learning to vint and brew. Can chocolate be grown in agricultural zone 7B?
Fuel was both difficult and easy to deal with. The easy part was when I cut back on the miles driven by both planning my travels better and walking more, as well as cutting out unnecessary trips. Combining trips, taking shorter or more efficient routes was helpful. Carpooling when feasible also helped. None of this is new of course - but just practiced much more rigorously. Meanwhile, I have been taking the more challenging tack of studying up on biofuels and gathering materials for making it. This looks quite interesting and should provide material for a post later.
All told, I was able to cut household expenses in half. The downside of this was that my input of personal time about quadrupled and I had to work much harder physically. The up side is that I have lost weight, improved my fitness and been learning many new and useful skills and reviving others. The timing is good too, since both unemployment benefits and the wages I have been able to get at temporary labor have been about half my professional salary - before the benefits are considered!
In future installments, I will go into more detail and practical explanations about all of these efforts and some of the intangible benefits that resulted.
I thought that was a very interesting post!
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