RE: Tired of just Surviving?
September 16, 2014 at 2:09 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2014 at 2:11 pm by Jackalope.)
(September 16, 2014 at 10:53 am)bladevalant546 Wrote: It is just me or why is life in the US just getting harder and harder. I feel as if life is just on struggle to the next, with the advent of medical help being expensive to everything else being expensive, is there anyone else here just tired of surviving?
One ongoing project I have been working on is simplifying my life and reducing my living expenses. I make good money, and by any reasonable measure, I shouldn't run out of disposable income before I get to the next payday. Yet, I always seemed to.
I do know that my real income hasn't kept up with the cost of living, more and more of it is eaten up by health care premiums and the like.
Little things add up. I stopped paying for parking downtown ($12-14/day), and started taking the bus (free), and parking either at my girlfriend's place (free), or at a lot a mile from work ($3/day) and taking the bus (free, I get a transit pass from work). This has saved me at least a $200/month.
I used to get a lot of take out food for lunch at work and dinner at home. Bringing my own lunch an average of 2.5 days a week saves about $100/month. I don't have a good handle on what preparing dinner at home has saved, but it's substantial, hundreds per month. There's some non-intuitive savings from doing this as well - I waste substantially less food, and I actually make fewer trips to the grocery store (it didn't pay to buy for more than a day when you don't know if you're going to be home to actually use the food - so every time I wanted to cook, I'd have to buy perishables - some of which would get wasted, and there's the cost of fuel).
Cutting back on drinking at the pub from 3-4 nights a week to 1 night a week saves about $150/month. I still drink - at home.
When I moved, I reduced my cable TV package - saved almost $100/month by doing so.
I don't feel that my standard of living has been reduced in any meaningful way by doing any of these things.
None of this is to say that the cost of living hasn't risen. It has, and it seems like around every corner is one huckster or another wanting to suck more money out of our wallets.
