On that note, I’m also a fan of setting up savings accounts within savings accounts. If you divide your savings by the name of your goal for them, the hope is that you are more likely to achieve that goal – whether it is your children’s Harvard education or the bridezilla wedding of your dreams. It’s much more likely than if all the money goes into one pot. “It’s hard to find big banks who will do this for you, although the Meriwest Credit Union, headquartered in San Jose, California, offers something similar called the “You Name It Savings Account.”

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they call this “one-day at a time.” Financial guru Dave Ramsey calls it “baby steps.” Whatever. If it gets people on the road to savings, I’m all for it.

Helaine Olen tackles saving for retirement (or saving for anything, really) in her Guardian column today, and one of our very own editors makes an appearance.

Photo: grotos

My grandmother was generous to her grandchildren when she was living, and generous to her children upon her death. My dad has always been generous—I’ve seen him win $200 and turn around to donate it to charity—and he was extremely generous after my grandmother died. He chose to give part of his inheritance to my sister and me—$10,000 each.

Like many women of her time, my grandmother was a homemaker, and my grandfather had responsibility over all the money. She only found out how their finances worked once my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and what she found made her frustrated.

She discovered that there had always been enough money to do certain things like renovate the kitchen, get working appliances, and really help out her children and grandchildren when they needed it—and she wished it had been used earlier.

The kitchen part really sticks in my mind, because my whole childhood, they only had an under-the-counter fridge. As I child I thought it wasn’t a real fridge, and as a teen, I wondered how much time was spent grocery shopping with eight people to feed.

Once Gran was in charge of the money, she really used it to help the family (and to buy a full-sized fridge).

She helped a family member with health issues buy a house; she renovated the ground floor of the house so that she and my grandfather could stay there as long as possible (he was there until two weeks before his death and she died at home in bed); and she was very generous with us grandchildren. My sister and I got $100 to $250 during Christmas and birthdays, and whenever we visited, she would sneak money into our coat pockets.

When my parents sat my sister and I down at the kitchen table and told us about the money they wanted to give us, they were very clear that the money should not be spent on trivial things. They told us both to start a Tax-Free Savings Account with the money and save it for something worthwhile. We both did, and happily.
 
It’s a large percentage of the savings I have, but I know it’s not a lot of money in the long-term. But it already feels like it has a purpose. Having that $10,000 has made me feel really secure. 

Last summer I was working really unstable part-time hours. It was really tempting to dip into that money, but I knew that I was eventually going to have a full-time job and that I would be mad if I had spent that money eating at restaurants or going out for drinks all the time.

My mom always refers to it as Gran’s money, as in: “If you don’t get a job for a while after your current contract, there’s always Gran’s money.” Having that safety net has made me feel really secure—but I want to put the money towards something Gran would appreciate. Being reminded of her makes me want to save for something real and long-lasting, like her kitchen; I want to put the money towards something Gran would appreciate. So I add to her $10,000 every month, and in the meantime, am generous with my own money as well. Small things like tea with my mother and sister, dinner for my boyfriend’s birthday, drinks for my unemployed friends. Gran would approve.

Anna Mason lives in Canada.

Since Friday Reddit has accumulated a massive thread full of advice from users in a wide variety of different jobs, which ranges from the banal to the absurdly specific. While you may have heard many of these tips before, it’s fascinating to see what people in a huge variety of jobs think the general public doesn’t know about their work–or wish they did know.

What are some useful secrets from your job, Redditors?

They range from the obvious:
- Always ask for hotel room upgrades.
- Don’t teach your children to swim in a water park.
- Never go to Geek Squad.

To the helpful, though possibly dubious:
- Use incognito mode to buy your plane tickets.
- Don’t buy fancy butter, it’s all the same.
- …and so is frozen food.
- Schedule your surgery for early in the morning.

To this doozy:

I work at a gas station. If you are getting something that you’re going to microwave, buy it before you nuke it. If you microwave it first, we ring it up as taxable; purchase it first, it’s rung up as non-tax. I just saved you a quarter. Those add up

I also learned that there is a specific subreddit for night auditors, which is somehow not at all surprising.

Read them all here.

h/t to Chris Blattman, whose money secret is that social science master’s programs exist only as cash cows for the university. 

1. You can dress nice for that big dance by buying swanky clothes and then just returning them when the dance is over. Ditto patio furniture and a cookout.

2. Why spend money on lunch? Costco has copious free samples. So does Whole Foods, and they don’t even have anyone manning them. Make a couple rounds of the store for a nutritionally balanced meal.

3. McDonald’s has an essentially infinite supply of free salt, pepper and ketchup.

4. Most movie theaters give a discount to people over 60, and most movie theaters don’t check your ID to confirm your age. You look like you could be 60, anyway.

5. HomeTown Buffet switches from breakfast to lunch at 11. Get there at about 10:45. Let your food digest until you’re hungry for lunch. That’s two meals for the price of one!

6. Need new reading glasses? Go to a CVS, grab a pair from off the rack to read an ibuprofen label and then just slide them up your head. Continue shopping. If you “forgot” you were wearing them by the time you walk out, it doesn’t count as stealing.

7. Waiters and waitresses are a renewable pen resource.

8. Instead of giving out candy at Halloween, why not just things you have around the house? An old box of raisins, or maybe some peppermints. Heck, you haven’t even eaten some of those Cadbury Cream eggs—perfect!

9. Complain, complain, complain. Is there something wrong with your hotel room? Was the concierge rude to you? Can anyone prove he wasn’t? With enough persistence, anything can be dissatisfactory enough to warrant a refund.

Matt Crowley is a comic, writer and director living in Brooklyn. His mother taught him everything he knows. You can follow him on Twitter here. Photo: goodiesfirst

Mike: After reading some of the conversations we’ve had with high-earners, you got in touch with us and said you wanted to talk about what it’s like to not earn a lot of money. Can you introduce yourself?

Broke Person: So, I’m 25, I live in the Midwest, I work and live at a camp/environmental learning center, and I earn just shy of $15,000 a year. It’s pretty seasonal work, so I earn most of that between late April and early November. The winter can be pretty lean in terms of what we do for work, so most of us supplement it with a second job. Last year, I was a nanny for some family members, and this year I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth from where I live to where my mom lives (about six hours driving) and scrounging for extra jobs here and there.

M: The federal poverty guideline for a single person is $11,490, and you are above that, but not by a lot.

BP: Well, that is the amount I filed for last year. I think I’ll earn a few thousand more this year because I have signed up to be a substitute teacher as well. I also have an extra six weeks of work at camp because I’ve been doing some maintenance work while somebody was out for surgery recovery. Because I live here, I’m paid a daily rate, which is $80 a day. That also means that I am currently living rent-free, which makes a big difference. I made about the same before I started this job, but also was paying rent from my salary, which was rough.

M: Can you talk a little about that? When you don’t earn a lot of money, I’m sure every dollar counts. Does it help to live in the Midwest instead of say, New York, D.C. or San Francisco?

BP: Absolutely. I did live in a city during this time, but definitely not a super-expensive coastal city. I was working retail, and my typical paycheck was about $450, I think. I paid $400 in rent, about $300 in student loans each month, which doesn’t leave much behind. For the most part, I was really enjoying myself at this point in my life: It was my first time living in a city, I had been living with my mom for about a year before that working for the same company and being pretty miserable. So in general, my lifestyle was on the up-and-up. I didn’t have a car, so I was biking around and taking public transportation, which when you’re first starting to use just feels so great, until about the 8th time a stranger tries to ask if he can be your man at the bus stop at 5:15 a.m.

M: What weren’t you able to do on what you were earning?

BP: The things that really sucked about having so little cash were not being able to go out with friends without asking them to buy you food or drinks, which is pretty humbling and embarrassing at times, and something you avoid by not being social sometimes. After rent and loans, my next biggest concern was food, and for the most part, I was fine. But when you’re broke at that level, you start to get pretty single-minded about food. When my roommate (who was at a similar income level as me, but had student loans deferred due to her job) would invite me to her parents’ house for dinner, it was always a relief in addition to all the normal reactions you have to a dinner invitation. When there was free food in the break room (this would happen about once a month), you sort of plot how much of it you can get away with eating so that you don’t have to spend money on food that day, or can save your packed lunch for the next day. For example, on pb&j day in the break room, you immediately eat a sandwich, with more than reasonable amounts of peanut butter on it at the beginning of your break, so that when you make one again ten minutes later, most of the people who saw you eat the first sandwich have filtered out of the room and you don’t feel judged for taking more than your share. I also would run out of money and have no cash and no money in my bank account occasionally for two to four days before a paycheck. If we were low on groceries, I would make toast from the butt ends of bread and fry an onion to eat with it, or buy Ramen for lunch at work with change from our change jar (17 cents!).

My co-workers and I noticed when the store we worked at raised the price of a single banana to 24 cents. A good friend of mine and I quit this retail spot for new jobs at the same time, and we would text each other things about our new jobs that seemed astounding to us. One of the things she noticed at her new job was that if you came in to work on a Saturday, the boss just ordered pizza for everyone. That was a revelation. At my current job, I eat for free a lot, because we have some programs where kids stay overnight and are fed, and I gained 20 pounds in the first six months, probably from overeating, which I’m pretty sure I do because I spent that time hoarding opportunities to eat for free. I mean, the price of bananas rising didn’t make a huge difference, but it was remarkable—a thing we talked about. I don’t think I would notice that now, with all of my access to free lunches.

M: Do you and your friends talk about money? You talked about having to ask your friends to help pay for you when you go out and how humbling that is, so I’m guessing that these friends can afford to do so and that they’re living at a higher income level than you. How do you navigate these relationships?

BP: I’ve been lucky to always have a few friends that I could depend on to talk candidly about money, and that I have mostly felt comfortable doing so. I think a lot of my comfort negotiating unbalanced financial relationships stems from a childhood friendship with someone whose family was much more financially stable than mine. She was always willing to finance entertainment for us when I couldn’t, and lent me money for tickets to concerts a couple of times so we could actually buy them ahead of time. Mostly, this was money her parents gave her, and I would pay her back from the jobs I worked in high school. But the important thing was that we talked about it, and that it generally was my decision to pay her back. We just wanted to do these things together, and figured out a way to make that happen.

As an adult, my close friends know that I don’t have money, and many of them are in similar situations. I think the thing that varies the most are people’s levels of debt. I do have friends who make significantly more than me though, and sometimes they buy stuff for me. Mostly this is in the form of meals or drinks out, although it has also happened when I’ve traveled to see people. I’ve told friends “I can buy my plane ticket, but you’ll have to feed me while I’m there.” I don’t usually agree to go out if I don’t have the ability to pay for myself, definitely not without saying “Hey I’m broke, I can’t really go out this week.” Sometimes, friends offer to pay so that I can come anyway, and sometimes, when I’ve gone out anticipating paying for myself, they’ll offer to pick up my tab when the check comes around. I have a few friends in particular that have been pretty generous. A couple of them know they earn significantly more than me, but have also spent time making terrible money or using all their income to pay off debt.

The thing that has been tricky to navigate is keeping these relationships honest, and not expecting my friends to pay for stuff for me. There have been times when I’ve ended up putting things on my credit card that I didn’t intend to because I anticipated somebody else offering to pick up the check and they didn’t, all because I didn’t want to say that I was too broke to go at the outset. Those nights are not my most fiscally responsible decisions. Also, some people with money are way more generous than others with their broke friends, and it can be hard to let yourself be okay with that. There are times I have to remind myself that it isn’t the responsibility of everyone around me to make things come out more egalitarian. I definitely believe that people’s money is theirs to do what they want to with–I’m grateful when that includes helping me out, but I do occasionally have to coach myself to not feel like friends SHOULD be paying for me. It can also be hard to feel and show gratitude without overdoing it and letting yourself feel inferior. My friendships shouldn’t make me feel bad about myself, even if I can’t really get them back next time. Sometimes I’ll buy when we’re at a cheap place, or just getting one round of drinks, or getting ice cream instead of food. Being gracious can be challenging, and it’s unfair (and not good for my friendships) if I say “Oh, I’m broke” with the expectation that somebody will pay for me just because I said it.

M: Can you talk about your student loan debt, what kind of school you went to and if you feel like you got what you wanted out of your education?

BP: I went to a private liberal arts school (which I doubt people will be surprised by), and I did really, really enjoy my time there. I graduated with about $28,000 in debt at a time when it was abruptly much more difficult to find a job in my field specifically, and in general. I don’t think I would make the same school choice again from the perspective I have now, but I don’t exactly regret my degree or the school I went to either. There are some things I DIDN’T get from school that I probably needed but didn’t realize at the time, though. I think more honesty about the likelihood and rates of tuition increases from the admissions staff may have changed my choices.

I had the opportunity to go to a state school in my hometown with no debt for about $1,500 a semester, if I recall correctly, but the programs, faculty, distance from home and all of the brochure-ready things from the private school were so much more appealing! I ended up paying the same cost up-front due to a hefty academic scholarship, plus the maximum amount of federal aid, but I took on a debt load that got larger every year. My first year in school, the tuition price tag was something like $27,000 a year, but by my senior year, it was $36,000. I think that even at 18, I would have known the amount of debt I had to take on to do that was unreasonable. I was aware that because it was a private school, tuition wasn’t frozen, but I had no concept of how quickly it would rise. The other thing that I think I missed out on was intentional career counseling. That was something that was available, but I didn’t take advantage of. That school costs even more now, over $40,000.

M: What kinds of careers were you considering before you graduated?

BP: Teaching, in a really crowded subject area, which I didn’t even think about or hear mentioned until about my 7th semester. I applied for jobs after I graduated—probably not as aggressively as I should have—but nonetheless, I was seriously looking, and despite graduating with honors from a regionally-recognized school, didn’t get a single interview. I know people who applied for hundreds of teaching positions at this time and were interviewed at just two or three schools. I didn’t do that, but I did consistently apply for teaching and other relevant jobs, including lots of part-time stuff and things I was clearly over-qualified for over the course of about two years before I found something part-time with the organization I work for now.

M: And since you wanted to get into education, you knew you probably weren’t going to be earning a lot of money right after graduation? Did you think a lot about what you wanted or needed to earn?

BP: Honestly, no. I had a general concept of what teachers made, especially to start, which at the time (and probably still) was about $25,000 a year. I also knew that if I worked in rural or poor urban areas, I would most likely be able to have a good chunk of my student debt forgiven. I didn’t think about it a lot though.

M: When you found the job market to be particularly challenging, and found jobs that didn’t pay too much, did you consider moving back home with your parents to save money? Was that an option?

BP: During my student teaching, I was living with my mom, and I spent another 10 months after that there as well. I moved out to go to a city, be closer to friends and have more job opportunities. I wasn’t happy in my hometown, not really because of living with my mom, but because I felt stuck in general. I worked with kids who had been my students, which did not feel great. My mom also was not in a great financial state, so I was paying her some rent (less than I did after moving) and taking care of my own expenses.

M: Do you not have health insurance now?

BP: I do until I turn 26, through my mom’s workplace, which I pay her for. Then there’s some mumble mumble Obamacare something happening at my job, which may or may not apply to me, based on some complicated stuff with hourly requirements vs. a daily salary that none of our supervisors are talking about yet, probably because they don’t have any more clue than I do whether we’ll qualify for insurance. I’m pretty sure I will have a gap before whatever that is kicks in (if it does).

So I will be figuring that out this summer. I have had a gap in insurance before, which didn’t really mean anything because I was lucky enough to not get sick, and I got insurance at my retail job before I was desperate for new eyeglasses, then some legal thing changed and I could get back on my mom’s insurance by the time I left that job.

M: Since you’re not earning a lot of money, are things like savings and retirement far from your mind at the moment?

BP: I do have some savings right now, about $1,000. I debate whether this is a good financial idea, because I also have $2,500 on a credit card. I used it to pay for incidentals on a trip to west Africa I went on a couple years ago (the trip was mostly paid for by other people, but not entirely), and to visit friends, once on each coast. I also occasionally use it irresponsibly to buy dinner or booze out when I’m out of money, but want to hang out with people anyway. I have been much better in the last year at paying it off aggressively and only using it when I know I’ll pay the amount I put on off before the end of the month. I like having savings though, because then when my car stops working, I can take it to the shop.

I feel like being poor often means all of your stuff is half broken, and I would prefer to be able to fix the big important stuff without using my credit card. I also will lose my lovely free housing if I leave this job, so I like knowing that I could actually afford a deposit and first month’s rent if I suddenly got a job that paid better, but didn’t pay better until four weeks after I started. I really don’t like carrying debt, and most of the time I have money left from a paycheck, or money that’s comes in outside of my budget (like tax returns!), I use it to pay down my credit card. It should be paid off by the end of the year, according to my Excel chart.

M: Good ol’ Excel.

BP: Yes, because I am a nerd. I don’t track all of my expenses because that is A Lot of Work, but I do auto-deposit into several savings accounts for specific things, and I made a chart to show me how much money I will have in those accounts for the next six paychecks or something. This is mostly a tool to keep me from constantly borrowing money from my savings account when I want to buy stuff. If I do, I will have to make some red numbers in my chart sometime, and watch my financial dreams of being able to replace my computer when it inevitably stops working, or taking a trip with my sister or whatever else tick back down and take another two months. I also use this handy thing I got off of the Consumerist forever ago to track my student loan payments and see the date many years in the future when I will be debt free, unless I had to buy a car or something before then. I will, probably—my car is twenty years old.

M: Can you lay out how much you typically spend on things like groceries, utilities or dining out in a month?

BP: Groceries are a total crap-shoot, because when I’m working a lot, I’m also eating for free a lot. Last month, I paid $200 for groceries, but really busy months when I’m working 12 days in a row regularly with 2-3 meals for free, it’s probably more like $50. Last month I spent $100 eating/drinking out, which is fairly typical. We don’t pay utilities because we have a fraught arrangement where we perform extra duties in lieu of rent and utilities, which are mostly reasonable but sometimes sort of crazy. I pay $35 a month for my phone, and don’t drive much because I live at my workplace, so I buy gas for about $50 a tank every two to three weeks. My health insurance costs $85 per month, and my roommates and I rotate our Internet bill around, so theoretically every four months I pay $45 for Internet, although we only decided to get it a couple months ago. I almost never shop for clothing, or anything else like electronics or whatever people at higher incomes spend their cash on, I guess I don’t really even know what people buy.

M: Do you think you’re finding a way to make it work, or have ideas of what you’d like to do next to start earning more money?

BP: I think so? The work I’m doing now is really great, even though the pay is terrible, and after spending my first season here just figuring out what is happening, I’ve started to get some experience managing programs and designing new stuff. I never got into teaching to make tons of money, because there is a lot of intrinsic awesomeness about hanging around kids, and providing them with cool experiences.

After not applying for jobs because I was so relieved to be here, I’ve started looking again, but in a much more direct way. I think what has been changing is not so much my odds of getting hired somewhere that does a better job of paying the bills, but that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to develop the skills I have into more marketable things. And with some of the perks of my current position, I don’t feel like I’m drowning very often, the way I did when I worked in retail. And I do hope that I find something soon that is full-time, with health insurance, that is a job I feel good about doing. While poverty (or near-poverty) sucks a lot, I’m lucky to have some specific resources that make my aspirations to be not-poor feel attainable, if not now, then soon.

Interested in having a conversation about what you do, how much you earn, and how you make it work? Get in touch.

The last time I wrote, I was attempting to conjure March into the best month yet, hoping that Adam and I would be “a loving, positive, optimistic, hard-working two-monk team,” which was basically the opposite of what March turned into. We fought and argued frequently. Both of us felt a little panicked and stressed about our current situation and the future. We wound up spending more than we planned to and were in no way monk-like. But we didn’t lose control. We worked on things even though it was hard. We argued and made up, calmed each other’s fears, talked through our worries, and spent money on things that were good for our health—mentally and physically. March was rough in places, but we wrangled ourselves back together and fought for good things.

In March we spent more but we also got out and did more and it felt good. Our grocery expenses were $686.74, which was significantly over budget. Other big expenses included a month’s worth of yoga classes for me ($70), a membership to a weekend kickball league ($60), a used bicycle and new tires for Adam ($150), concert tickets for April ($70), and a few drinks and dinners out ($150). Our schedules usually conflict (he works retail hours, I work 9-to-5) but on one deliciously warm and sunshiny day in the middle of March, we both miraculously had the day off. Freezing temperatures snapped back within 48 hours, but in the interim Adam and I were able to spend the day together like we do in the middle of the summer: We woke up late, cooked up some brunch (~$5 worth of groceries for toast with jam, ham and onion omelettes, coffee), drove with the windows down, breezes flowing, chow chow panting away happily to the park for an hour or two (~$3 gas?), on to Videodrome to rent a few flicks ($12), a quick stop by the King of Pops cart for some popsicles ($5), then back home again to watch movies, catch up with each other, relax and unwind (priceless).

These extra expenses took us over budget but we still managed to put aside $500 for savings. Additionally I received a card in the mail from my uncle with a belated graduation gift inside: a check for $500. It was unexpected and much appreciated and I deposited it straight into our savings account the very next day. That brings our total savings to $4,500 now. That money could sustain us for about four months if we stretched it, if we really had to. We could also spend it on a summer traveling if we wanted. That security-freedom choice combo is a really great feeling. This is why I wish I was richer, because having money frees up options you wouldn’t have otherwise.

I’ve also decided to start paying attention to my retirement plan. Right now I have a 401(k) with around $1,000 in it and a Roth IRA with $1,600. I will keep squirreling away money into these accounts as I get older. I’ve been thinking about automatic payments or deductions from each paycheck so I don’t have to think about it.

Before writing this, I read back through all my monthly check-ins so far, which proved to be interesting. I feel like so much has changed! When I first began writing this column I was completely lost at sea. I thought I knew what I was doing but we spent all our money every month and I changed my mind three times a day about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life (cue drama) and I insisted that Adam and my friends take each half-baked idea seriously (“no, but what if…?!“) which was exhausting and pointless for both of us. I still occasionally get back on that crazy train but now I recognize it for the damaging mental state that it is and can put a stop to it in relatively short order.

Some things are still the same. I still feel a strong driving urge to do, go, see, etc. I know it’s good to put that fire-in-my-guts relentless struggle on the back burner once in a while for the sake of my (and Adam’s) health and well-being but giving it up completely and embracing inner peace and serenity would probably feel like death (she opines dramatically). When I get somewhere in my life that I feel good about—a challenging and interesting job, a cozy little home, the ability to travel and adventure often, doing something that matters—I will happily burrow in with great relish and contentment. I possess zero of those things right now. I unapologetically kill any occasional urges to give up and burrow in where I’m at. That said, I do realize that allowing myself to chill out and have fun and enjoy things here in Atlanta is good and healthy and makes me more successful and productive anyway.

In some of my check-ins I talked about attempting to start a business to bring in extra cash, and I guess I can file that under half-baked/incomplete ideas with the rest of them. I’m not going forward with it so I’m free to share the idea in case anyone wants to take it: It was to start a calligraphy business on the side! I even made a website, named the business Sweetgum Calligraphy, and worked up a few not-that-great samples of scripts. My enthusiasm for the project dropped off quickly as usual and I probably won’t pick it up again. I still think it’s a good idea, because established calligraphers seem to be able to charge good rates for work that’s quick to do. It requires a lot of skill (more than I have) to be good, but calligraphy is a skill you can acquire at a low cost. The job can be done from anywhere so long as you have a mailbox. Business might take a while to pick up, but as a side job it seems ideal, so someone should please use this idea, and may your profits multiply!

I mentioned in January that I wanted to cut out buying clothes for a month. It’s been two months now and neither of us has bought any new clothes, so we more than met this goal. This wasn’t a huge struggle for us, because I don’t like shopping that much and neither does Adam. I think working at the mall for a few years in college cured me of any affection for spending time in the place. I get pangs of desire when I open the daily emails from my favorite stores but I’m usually too lazy to get in the car and schlep through traffic just so I can spend money. Though, I do want to/need to go shopping soon.

My efforts to cut down on my former grocery expenses by meal planning and cooking a lot more at home have been my most successful to date. I went from spending $1,000 per month (insanity) down to ~$600 per month, which is still high for two people and a dog but I feel it’s reasonable for our needs and budget. If anyone wants to keep abreast of that process for whatever reason, I write weekly reviews and meal plans in this meal planning google group that a Billfold commenter started a few months ago, which I enjoy thoroughly even though I sort of doubt anyone else does.

These days Adam and I are still sending out applications and are waiting to hear back. I will be sending out a steady deluge of applications for English teaching jobs in other countries, as well as jobs I might be interested in here at home. I’m aiming for NYC or D.C. in regards to jobs in the U.S., but would only move to those cities with a job lined up ahead of time. My slowly forming plan at this point is to teach abroad for a year while Adam applies to master’s programs here and abroad. We will then move to wherever he’s been accepted, and life will continue from there. During his program or after he graduates I’ll start on my master’s. Adam is thinking about an MFA English/creative writing program, or writing workshop and I’m thinking about economics, international affairs, political science, or something along those lines. I support Adam’s dreams and he supports mine. I want us both to succeed.

Previously: See Amanda’s “Betting on Love” series here.

Amanda Tomas isn’t going to see her sister in Europe after all because of financial responsibility and contingency planning (cry cry cry).

Take 10 minutes at the end of each day and record what you spent. Use a notebook or your favorite app and track it. Over time, you start to see patterns. You learn things you didn’t know about yourself in terms of what your spending says about your priorities. That will naturally lead to change.

One of the reasons I focus on spending is that people think tracking doesn’t help. A great (or not so great) example is the time I taught a financial literacy class to people who were working their way out of the local homeless shelter. The first week, 20 people would show up. I gave them a pocket-size spiral notebook and asked them to record everything they spent for one week and to come back so we could move onto the next step. No one ever came back. After a few weeks, we canceled the class.

In the Bucks blog, Carl Richards says we can learn a lot about ourselves and make improvements when we track our spending (although he argues that people don’t track their spending because they think it doesn’t help, whereas I think people don’t track their spending because it’s tedious and they just don’t want to do it).

For people who don’t like to track their spending, Richards says the best thing they can do is to track one number every week (i.e. how much they’re saving every week), which means you’re already ahead of the game if you do our weekend and monthly check-ins. Our own Amanda Tomas has learned via her own monthly column to cut down on how much she spends at the grocery store to help her get her savings goal on track. It’s also a lot more fun to track what we spend, save, and pay off when there’s an amazing community around to offer encouragement (thanks everyone).

Adam and I hit the ground running in January, meeting the promise of the New Year with renewed grit and determination. We are back on track.

This month we managed to stow away $700 for a total savings of $2,600. Transferring that money into our savings account and finally making some progress felt euphoric. We’re still far away from our goal amount of $10,000, and it looks like we probably won’t get there by May when our lease ends. Whatever amount we do manage to save will affect where we can move and what amount of risk we can take, but many people move places with less than $10,000, so no matter what, we are definitely moving.

I can’t ignore the feeling coursing through my body that this is the year everything will change, that this is the year that we will leap into the void and see where life takes us, and I cannot accept complacency or give up at this point. I need to know that if I try hard enough, I can change my life. I need to know that even though I don’t come from wealth or advantage I can still choose my path through life and do things I love and am passionate about. I need to know that I can move to a new city, travel, and pursue higher education just because I want to, that I don’t have to accept the petty, drone-like, adventure-less, spirit-crushing existence common to the salary-earnings range I was born into.

One thing that I have changed and that I am proud of is that I have learned to meal plan and how to control my food spending while still eating good, healthy, high-quality meals. This month we spent $569.84 on groceries, well within our original budget of $600/month. We did not eat out all month. Instead, I am learning to prepare meals that I would be happy to pay for in a restaurant, and I use ingredients that are probably better quality than the ingredients most restaurants in our area use. Overspending on food was a major problem for me when I first started this series, so I dedicated a large portion of my last two updates to recipes and food budgeting, but now that I’m getting a handle on my spending, I feel like it’s time to tackle the next roadblock instead of remaining focused on how I eat. I am still writing about my weekly menus and food over here and if anyone is still interested in hearing about that aspect of my journey or if you want to learn to menu plan or talk about food, you are welcome to post there as well.

So what is the next obstacle in my path to saving up as much as possible? Adam and I do not spend lavishly on anything else in our lives. We rarely go to bars or restaurants, don’t have extraneous subscriptions or memberships, and our next biggest expense is spending around $100-200/month on clothing, which I feel is reasonable. Our wardrobes are small and our clothing is fairly old and worn-out, so slowly updating and upgrading our clothing over time is a necessity. Of course, we could cut this spending out for a few months and put that money saved away.

What I would love to work on are ways to make a little extra money, especially if it leads to the possibility of one day being able to work for ourselves or have a source of income we could bring with us to any location around the globe. I have mentioned a business idea that I had, and in January I did some work on it, creating a business name, small web page, and working up some samples, although it’s all still under development. In February I’d like to ramp this up, start marketing myself to my target customers, and hopefully bring in my first clients. I am also considering some small freelance writing gigs online and it should be interesting to see if I can make any money that way.

The other looming question is: What are we planning to do when our lease ends, which turns out to be on April 29? At this point, we think we will extend the lease for one month so I can get my yearly bonus at work in mid-May, then move at the end of that month. From there we have a few options:

Option A: Move to another city in the U.S. sight unseen with no jobs lined up. This is the most risky option, and we will need several months of rent, utilities, and food money saved up to tide us over until we eventually get jobs. This was our original plan but we may not be able to save up enough in time to follow through.

Option B: Receive a job offer in a U.S. city, then move there. We are working on this now, sending out resumes and hopefully getting some interviews lined up before the lease ends. This is the least risky option if we do line something up before the move date, but the likelihood of this happening is not definite.

Option C: Put our bachelor’s degrees and my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate to use by traveling to another country and teaching English. We could potentially build on this by going to school in that country, building a freelance translating business, or using the reality of living in a country with a cheaper standard of living to our advantage by doing freelance work online and getting paid in U.S. dollars. Since both Adam and I speak Spanish fluently, we are considering countries in South America as first choices.

Which of these options we will pursue depends on how much money we can save before our lease ends, whether we receive any job offers, and what we feel we’d be happiest doing. I feel so much joy and ambition nipping at my heels and my heart these days and I cannot wait for the anticipated and sudden end of our time here in Atlanta.

In February I want to keep cutting down grocery spending, find ways to bring in a little extra money on the side, and cut back in other ways where we can. I want to work hard every day to expand the range of options and opportunities we have available to us. I want to be strong, push forward, and spend every day productively. May is coming so soon I can taste it. For some strange reason I feel like I am finally about to start my real life, instead of passively existing in the one I have now. I can’t wait to take the leap.

Previously: See Amanda’s “Betting on Love” series here.

Amanda Tomas might also take a trip to Europe soon to see her sister and will put it on credit, no regrets.

A year or two ago, I tried to start my own water-conserving, planet-saving initiative—something akin to Meatless Monday. I called it “Dirty Thursday,” and urged my friends to forgo bathing one day a week. The plan was met with an enthusiastic chorus of disgust and disapproval, including a particular request that I not engage in it myself. However, my zeal for introducing calendar-based initiatives to the world has not waned, and so I present to you: Frugal February, which I have now started for the seventh year.

Why frugality?

I tend to think of myself as a relatively frugal person, though some might disagree. My boss is shocked that I haven’t bought a new coat or purse in the six and a half years I’ve been at my job. My husband is shocked that I will happily spend $170 to attend the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. (Totally worth it—I got my picture taken with Will Shortz one year!). However, the months leading up to February featured unavoidably spendy circumstances:

October: Halloween. The regular rules are suspended on Halloween anyway—once you’ve committed to dressing like a corpse and draping the apartment in cobwebs, buying skull-shaped cupcake molds is really no big deal.

November: Thanksgiving travel. And if you’re not traveling, you might be cooking, which can be just as expensive.

December: X-Mas shopping (which includes shopping of the “one for you, one for me” variety).

January: My husband’s birthday. (This bit is only unavoidably spendy for me; he’d really prefer that you not get him anything.)

An instant-gratification spending pattern is very easy to fall into, especially as the short days stretch gray from dawn till dusk, and lunch at Chipotle begins to feel like something you’ve earned just for making it until one o’clock, instead of an indulgence that could have easily been obviated with a little planning. So I pick February to be extra-aware of my habits and my budget, with a few guidelines:

• Make lunch every day.
• Netflix, not movie theaters.
• No new books, no new music, no new clothes (and really, why bother with another sweater when dress season is right around the corner?)
• Avoid dinner out, within reason—if a friend is swinging through town and a dinner out is the only way I’ll get to see her, then dinner out it must be.

Why February?

1. Alliteration.
2. Who would ever pick May or June to deny themselves anything? February is universally acknowledged to be the worst month. Bears invented hibernation just to avoid February. Its big event? Valentine’s Day, designed to make everyone, single and coupled, feel completely inadequate. Even the candy is either cliché or semi-disgusting.
3. Shortest month, with shortest wait between bi-monthly paychecks.

My goal is always to make it out of Frugal February having spent under $1,500, including rent and groceries. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t (depending on how many deposits I have to put down for upcoming out-of-town weddings or, um, crossword puzzle tournaments), but February is always a little reset for me: the holidays are over, and it’s time to get serious.

And then March comes, and I celebrate with an early birthday present or two. I call it: Magical March. No, Makeover March. Marabou March? I try to keep it Mindful March, sometimes it slides into Megalomaniacal March, or Monkeyshines March, but it’s never Monastic March. I’m still working on a nickname.

Elise Nussbaum lives in Jersey City with a husband and a cat.

In 2013, I’m feeling confident about my financial future. Last year, I proved to myself that I can live on $40/week worth of groceries, which is pretty cool. And it’s not all Easy Mac and soda—I buy lots of fresh veggies! — Jacqueline Drayer

My husband and I are on our way to being first time homebuyers in Brooklyn. I’ve stopped buying coffee on the go to save the $2, but when placing the offer on our house, we calmly talked spending thousands of dollars more over eggs. I’m eating Trader Joe’s noodle bowls, yet when our mortgage broker told us he needed $370 for a potential second appraisal I didn’t flinch when I handed him my Amex. We feel broke, but are playing at rich and, if it goes well this month, we can be all of that in our very own garden. — Kate Tellers

What about you? Are you feeling good about your financial outlook in 2013?