We’ve done this before (or I hope this is like riding a bike)

Several years ago, I wrote a series of three posts about how we’d managed on a single income in a very high cost of living area. You can read them here, here, and here.

I've been rereading them because we are back to one income again since Kent was laid off on Friday effective immediately.

In looking back over my blog posts from then, I don’t think I ever posted how that went down.

He got the news mid-morning at work. I was at home (we were living in a temporary apartment while reconstruction was—well it wasn’t happening yet but the insurance company mulling things over) because I still hadn’t found a job. He waited until he got home and we were sitting together so that he could be with me when he shared the news. He knew I would be completely undone and didn’t want me to be alone. That right there is what love looks like in our house. I was blown away that he held that news to himself and waited to share.

That night, we were both pretty anxious. I’d say freaked out but that’s not exactly right. Suffice it to say that we drank a bottle of wine pretty quickly as we watched a movie (I don’t even remember what we saw) and then a second bottle as we watched a second movie (again I have no idea what it was) and then I turned into a complete chatter box and thought we should open a third bottle of wine and maybe watch a third movie. By that point, Kent was nearly asleep on the couch. He managed to tell me that it was already midnight and that a third bottle of wine and a third movie didn’t sound like great ideas and could we please go to bed. If you know me, you know I rarely see midnight by choice so that tells you a lot about my state of mind.

The next day, I told my mother I’d earned every bit of that hangover, and I had.

So fast forward to the last couple of years. The company Kent worked for got spun off from another company two and a half years ago and has just never gained much traction. I told Kent two years ago that I was pretty surprised they hadn’t let remote employees go already. Having people work remotely in other states is expensive because the company has to pay state unemployment insurance and account for all the state, regional, city and local taxes. That all comes at a high price tag so for a company to pay for one employee in Arizona, one in Kansas, a couple in Ohio etc., well you’re not talking small change.

I guess they finally figured it out, since from the sounds of things all remote employees were laid off on Friday.

I will admit that my first reaction on Friday was gut churning fear. We came so close to losing everything we owned six years ago; even though we are in better shape today, that fear lingers. I’m still pretty anxious to be honest. Yes, I have a job with benefits (and I’m very thankful), and we should be OK (tight, but OK). But I’ve been here before and now I’m sort of waiting to see what else (bad) might happen.

Edited to add a soothing photo of Eddie from this morning. That way, when I reread these posts later on, I'll have something calming to look at.

Money saving me

So someone else in my inner circle of family/friends is losing a job. This loss cuts their income to the lower of the two incomes and is something they haven't gone through before.

Well Kent and I have--for 31 months. And while neither of us are advice-giving people, we did a brain dump this weekend about what's worked and not worked for us regarding managing a restricted budget and also how we've handled the emotional/relational issues that are part of the unemployed territory.

Much to my shock, I ended up with a six page document, and it's not even double-spaced. I guess we have learned more than I realized.

Here's an excerpt:

Coupons. We tried this probably four or five times but realized that (a) we buy very few processed foods and (b) even being on email lists for getting coupons, it takes a lot of work to track down the one or two that might apply to us. If you buy more processed foods, you can save a ton with coupons so consider doing the work if that’s the situation. For us, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

How do you handle reduced finances?

Score!

And the budget stuff continues on with some successes.

We finally got our own store loyalty card for Stop & Shop—I got tired of hoping to get the card discount but not knowing if the cashier would do it or not. So we got our own card probably two months ago. This week I looked at the bottom of my receipt, and to my shock we’d already saved over $50 just by shopping wisely and using that card.

Yesterday I saved even more with it. You accrue points every time you buy stuff there, and those points (which expire in 30 days) reduce the price of gas per gallon. If you have 100 points, you pay 10 cents less per gallon, and so on. I (finally) needed to put gas in the car—first time since Thanksgiving, can you believe it?—so I used my card. You already get a discount for using the card, usually about five cents. I had enough points that instead of paying $2.18/gallon, I paid $1.93/gallon. How cool is that?

But the real score came at Target. Try as I have (and I have tried, believe me), Kent is not interested in giving up soda. He has at least switched from the pricier cans to the 2-liter bottles but he still drinks a fair amount of it. So when I find a good deal on diet Coke products, I stock up. Target had 2-liter Coke products on sale 5/$5.55 which is a good price. But wait, it gets even better. Caffeine-free diet Coke was on sale at our Target for $1/2-liter bottle. So I got five bottles which are sitting in the smelly (and cool) closet just waiting for their turn in the fridge.

Of budgets, eggs, and general penny pinching

Kent and I have pulled together a spreadsheet we keep on Google Docs. We’ll use this spreadsheet to track our spending, list future purchases so we can save for them, and continue saving for retirement. If you’re interested in budget resources, I bet you can find something that suits you here.

Speaking of eggs, I paid $3.49 for a dozen eggs two weeks ago. I ended up short for a recipe I was making, so I headed out to Whole Foods and paid dearly for not realizing I didn’t have enough. To make things worse, I dropped one egg in the sink. At 29 cents an egg, that hurt. The best price for eggs that I’ve found here in Boston is about $1.99, but that’s on sale and only rarely. Butter is worse, I’m lucky to find it under $3 a pound. I bet you feel better about the cost of your groceries now, huh.


In the general penny-pinching category we have these lovely napkins. We’d already greatly reduced how many paper towels we use—not really out of any great initiative to save the environment, I’m sorry to say, but because we keep the paper towels in the cabinet under the sink. And that cabinet is almost always secured with our Velcro ties to keep them safe from Wally. We use the tea towels Kent’s grandmother made for him (mentioned in this blog entry), and they work really well.

This week I thought hey let’s do the same thing with cloth napkins. So I bought the four new napkins you see in the picture to go with the solid red napkins we already have. I sprang for ones from Crate & Barrel because I think they are really cool-looking and we’ll use them for a long time. The green glasses are our patio drink ware, and they are also from Crate & Barrel.

Tightening up the budget

I know I'm not the only person to be actively looking for ways to tighten up our family budget in all categories. One of the ways we've been working on saving money lately is (of course) for food and household goods. I asked a friend of mine how she defined the grocery budget because I struggle a bit with that question myself. For example, how do you classify things like light bulbs, toilet paper or laundry detergent? For me, all of that gets lumped into the grocery budget.

That's not to say I get all those items at the actual grocery store--far from it. I prefer to do some price checking and then get those things where they are cheapest. The location varies so I have to stay on top of ads, coupons and circulars, but I think the pay off is worth it.

So with that big preamble, I've added a couple of new links to my Interesting Links section in the left hand navigation panel. You'll find a link for a blog called Cheap Healthy Good--my introduction to this very well-written blog was an article called 1 Chicken, 17 Healthy Meals, $26 Bucks, No Mayo, as well as another blog called Casual Kitchen (check out that article for starting a casual and inexpensive wine tasting club). If you have other blogs that fit in this general theme of saving money while living well, feel free to suggest them in the comments section.

In keeping with our tightened budget, today we saved about $2000. We'd gotten a bid for putting in under-cabinet lighting in our very small (8'x8') kitchen. That's serious money and while we desperately need the light, we can't justify spending that kind of cash right now. But the need for light is real, so today we picked up four GE Slimline fluorescent linkable plug-in fixtures for $76. Kent's installing them even as I type. I cannot wait to have a better-lit kitchen. While I would most definitely prefer them to be hard-wired to a switch, for the amount of savings I can live with this solution.