by Lily S

Created on: December 21, 2008   Last Updated: July 31, 2009

First of all, don't be tempted to borrow to make up the shortfall. If it's hard meeting credit payments on a normal income, it's even harder on minimal wages - you'll end up having to pay virtually all your wages in interest or declare bankrupt. So put all your credit cards away and refuse to pay any attention to all those adverts for payday loans - that way lies ruin.

The only way to cope with minimal wages is to reduce expenditure. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to get goods and services at little or no cost. Join your Local Exchange Trading Scheme (LETS). This is a community scheme, fre to join, where people barter services. Say you are good at gardening - you register with the scheme and do gardening as and when other members require it, and earn LETS points. Then if you have a plumbing emergency, you look up your local LETS network and "spend" your points on a plumber. The scheme is great if you have very little money to spare, but encounter real life emergencies. LETS operates throughout the world. Here's the link for LETS UK, and here's the link for International LETS. A similar British scheme to LETS is called TeamUpHere.

You can also join a scheme called Freecycle. In this scheme, people give away unwanted stuff for free. The only cost is for the person who wants the goods to collect it. Freecycle exists all over the world, and it is a boon for those who need things (say a new sofa) but simply can't afford to buy the item.

Another strategy when living on minimal wages is to grow your own vegetables. Packets of seeds cost very little, and you can make your own compost by carefully placing potato peelings and the like in a hole that you have dug in the garden (you don't even need to buy a compost bin, indeed compost made naturally in the earth utilises worms and other ground creatures who break down the material). Build your compost heap in the winter, and by spring it should be ready. Plant all vegetables that you eat regularly, and try to grow as much as possible (you can always freeze the excess to be used in winter).

Instead of buying ready meals, start cooking from scratch. You can make cheap nutritious meals involving rice, lentils and vegetables. Cut back on the meat, which is expensive. There are now literally thousands of websites with recipes on how to make healthy but frugal meals. Browse these sites for ideas. As with most habits, it's hard to change from simply stopping off at a supermarket and buying a ready meal after work, to taking the time to cook from scratch. However, you can make cooking a once a week thing, when you cook several meals and then freeze them, so that you can simply microwave meals when you get home during the week.

Learn not to use the car and start walking everywhere (if your city is laid out with sufficient pavements) or use public transport. Running a car is expensive, not just the petrol, but the servicing, maintenance and tax. If there is no reliable public transport near you, one possible solution is to see if you can get a bike from the Freecycle scheme and cycle everywhere. It's quick, and you'll also get pretty fit.

Stop buying newspapers and magazines. You can read all the news you need free online. Some people shop as a form of therapy or entertainment, but it's expensive. Try to fill the time doing something else instead. Take up needlework, start a blog or find some other hobby that both gives you pleasure and relieves your stress, but doesn't cost much money to do.

It's perfectly possible to live on minimal wages - indeed the meeting and winning the challenge of doing so should stand you in good stead for when your fortunes take an upswing and you are able to earn more.

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