8 tips on how to manage on a low income
You look around you and it seems everyone is doing better than you. They have bigger houses, better jobs, more expensive clothes and cars, and bigger boats. All you have is a small income, and bills you struggle to keep up with. How can you manage on a low income?
First, don't keep up with the people around you. Not everyone who has a 4 bedroom house can afford it, as the country has seen with the house bust. A better job can always be lost when the branch office is closed down. These things can just be someone trying to look successful when they really aren't. Wouldn't you rather be successful than just look it? Here are 8 tips on how you can manage with what you have.
#1 - Live at a place you can afford
Experts say that if you are spending more than 30% of your income on rent or a house, that's too much. This is because you have other bills, and if you spend too much on the place you life, you won't have enough left over to eat, pay bills, and put a little savings away. If you have a low income, it can limit your choices of where you live. But you still have options - government subsidized housing, renting a little ways out of town is always cheaper, sharing a place with roommates, or renting a room in a house are all options on how to lower your rent costs. If you spend too much on rent, you will fall farther behind each month.
#2 - Own a car only if you need to
Cars are money pits. Never let someone tell you that a car is an investment. An investment is something you buy that goes up in value. A car will always go down, unless it's old enough to be a classic car which is a different matter. What do you need a car for? That is the most important question and is closely followed by asking how much you can afford to spend on a car. After you are done with payments, insurance, gas, and repairs it can burn up a lot of money that you didn't expect. Compare that to taking the bus all the time - a monthly bus pass is likely less than you would spend on gas for a month, let alone all those other expenses. If you already own a car, and it's too expensive - it's never too late to get rid of it and start taking the bus. If you don't like taking the bus, just keep in mind the 100s of dollars you are saving each month that is your ticket to the better things in life that you want.
#3 - Don't eat out more than once a week
One of the easiest ways to spend your money is one going out for food all the time. By the time you have some wine, appetizers, soup, salad, main course, desert, and another drink you can easily have spent $50 and up depending on the restaurant. Did you know that only $21 a week is all you need for groceries? So that one meal out would more than feed two people for a whole week. But everyone has to enjoy life some of the time, so it's a good idea to go out to eat once a week. You can make it a special occasion. But you don't have to order the 7 course meal to enjoy the food. If you go to a steak house, order a good steak and drink water with it. That way you can have more of what you enjoy. Or if you enjoy fast food, you can still keep it to once a week but save that much more.
#4 - Learn to sew and darn
Just because you sew doesn't mean you have to make your own clothes. Sewing is the way to fix holes in the clothes you buy, or how you let out seams when you put on a few pounds, or lengthen your pants when you grow an inch or two. All of these situations would need new clothes if you couldn't sew. But since you can, you can save your favorite clothes, and keep that money in your pocket. And socks can be saved just as easy with darning. That is a kind of weaving wool with a big needle to patch a hole in your socks. It might not seem like much but it only take a couple minutes, and if you think about how many holes you get in your socks you can start to get an idea of how much you can save over time. If you want to try making your own clothes nobody will stop you... at least until they see what your creations look like.
#5 - Trade services with other people
If you are a hairdresser, you can give people you know free haircuts in exchange for things. A baker might give you bread for the week. A butcher might pay with a chicken. A farmer could pay with a basket of vegetables. Before you know it instead of having a couple dollars you have all the food you need for the week, and good healthy food to boot. This is the barter system, and when nobody has any money it's a great way to get things done. The best trades of all are time based instead of products based. How much someone is paid for their time can be very flexible. For example if the farmer gave you a live chicken, you could get the butcher to kill it and cut it up for you in exchange for that haircut. That way the butcher is only giving you time where it might be harder for him to give you products like meat that cost him money to stock. No matter how you decide to do it, trading services with other people can end up saving everyone a lot of money when there isn't much to go around.
#6 - Grow your own food
No matter if you have a tiny apartment or a large house in the country - everyone can grow some of their own food. If you just have a little window box in an apartment there is no way you will grow all your food, but you might in that country house if you try. Small places are good for climbing plants like tomatoes or cucumbers that don't take much floor space. Herbs are also good for small places and can save a lot of money as dried herbs can get quite expensive. And growing veggies is very easy, and cheap. All you need is a pot, some good soil, some seeds, and a little time each day to check up and water them if needed. Before you know it your green thumb will reveal itself, and you will be eating the freshest food you have ever tasted.
#7 - Saving something every month, no matter how small
If you don't save money, you will never get out of the situation you are currently in. You don't have to put 100s of dollars into savings each month if you don't have it. But you do need to put something away for a rainy day, and do it on a regular basis. The habit of saving will let you almost forget you are even doing it which makes it painless. And when that rainy day comes, you will have something set aside to help you. And then you can start saving it up again. Best of all if the dreaded day comes where you loose that low income job, you will have some emergency money saved up to help you until you find another job.
#8 - Get married
That seems like strange advice in an article about how to manage on a low income. But when you get married you share everything - not just your lives, but all the bills too! That means that your cost of living just got cut in half for each of you. Well, not quite because you each will eat the same amount of food. But cooking for two can be cheaper due to less waste and better deals on bulk foods. But think long and hard before you decide to bring children into this world. You need to be able to provide for them - that means set a good example, give them lots of love, and have the money to meet their basic needs.
These 8 tips can really help you make ends meet each month, and help you learn to live on a low income. Some might be things you had never thought of before. Others might be things you don't want to do. But you have to face the facts, each of these ideas will help you stretch your low income farther than you could before and make your life that much better.