Tag Archives: frugal

Paying Cash for Cars isn’t as Hard as it Seems

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My grandfather gave me my first car, which had been his, when his deteriorating vision made it unsafe for him to drive any longer. It was a seven-year-old Oldsmobile that had begun its life as a rental car. It lasted four more years in the negligent possession of my teenage self, before literally going out in a blaze of glory (due to a previously undetected fuel line leak) on a California highway.

I bought my first– and only— brand-new car when I was 22, because I didn’t have the credit to finance a used car (there’s some great logic). The cheapest thing on the lot was a 3-cylinder Geo Metro convertible, which I drove for six years, until it was totalled in an accident that left me unharmed, but also left me with an insurance check that wasn’t nearly enough to replace the car. I worked out a deal with a friend’s brother who was joining the military, and no longer had use for a car. He gave me a great deal on his 10-year-old Honda, and let me pay him in two installments.

When that car was about to die, at the end of my twenties, my terrible credit and I managed to get a decent deal on a five-year-old Miata, but I had to list TEN references to qualify for a loan. I finally began to learn the value of regular car maintenance and started keeping to a budget that allowed my poor credit to recover. When that loan was paid off, I drove debt-free for three more years, but I didn’t set anything aside for the day when I would need another car.

My final auto loan was as well-researched as the car purchase, and I was so proud to walk into the dealership with a check from the finance company, gotten at a great interest rate. I paid the car off early, and went all Scarlett O’Hara: “With God as my witness, I’ll never make car payments again!”

Mr. Vega and I began dating as he was just coming out of a prolonged period of unemployment, and he was driving a 1987 Wag-o-Van that he had gotten through a friend-of-a-friend for $400, and that wasn’t very safe (or even street legal). I only rode in it once, and it was so frightening, I still have flashbacks! He was hired as an outside sales representative, and found himself in the heartbreaking position of having to use his first month’s pay to buy a reliable car for work instead of traveling to attend the wedding of his only brother at a resort in Mexico. He paid all the money he had in the world–$3500– for a well-maintained twenty-year-old Honda CR-X with 200,000 miles on it, and spent the rest of the summer helping me come up with creative recipes from my Project Angel Food box (remember those?), and the fresh produce I got from my friend’s backyard garden. His co-workers ribbed him for driving such an old car, but the jokes quieted down when one of their luxury cars was repossessed from the office parking lot one day, in full view of everyone.

We commuted to our jobs in our paid-for cars as we saved up to pay cash for our own modest wedding. We parked them out in front of the cheap 486-square foot apartment we rented in an edgy neighborhood, while we paid off the last of our debt and began to aggressively fund our Emergency Fund. We looked for Groupons for oil changes, and Mr. Vega did most minor repairs and maintenance himself. We drove those cars to the library to borrow DVDs for our weekend entertainment, and occasionally for a splurge at the $3 movie theater.

By the time my car began to develop problems that a series of mechanics could not resolve, our new frugal lifestyle had left us with enough cash in our Emergency Fund to replace it, or even upgrade (in Los Angeles, car trouble definitely qualifies as an “emergency”). We test-drove a bigger, nicer truck. We tried out a newer model year of the same SUV I’d been driving. Ultimately, we chose a late-model subcompact that used about $40 less in gas each month than my SUV had. Even with the mystery mechanical difficulties, we were offered enough in trade to offset about half the cost of our new-to-us car. We wrote a check for the rest, and our ultra-thrifty habits helped us replenish the Emergency Fund over the next several months, and even begin saving to buy a house someday.

After three more years of  a daily 40-mile round-trip commute, the CR-X was beginning to need more frequent, and more costly repairs, but still had enough life in it to bring it to Texas from California when we moved here earlier this year. We also wanted to make our next car purchase in Texas, where we knew we’d save about $1000 on registration and taxes alone, all else being equal. In addition to saving for a house, we started a little Car Fund and began making small weekly deposits.

Finally, the day came when Mr. Vega had had enough of playing the “Will My Car Start Today?” game, so we sat down to look at our budget and consider our options. We found that over the previous twelve months, we had spent a bit more in repairs than the vehicle was actually worth. He advertised his little Honda (with full disclosures) on Craigslist, for the same $3500 he paid for it, and the offers started pouring in. No one expects a car that old to be trouble-free, and that model is still widely sought-after. The young man who bought it was thrilled to get a “classic” car so cheaply, and will happily spend his weekends working on it in the driveway. The money we got from the sale of that car and what we’ve set aside in our Car Fund paid for about 1/2 of the newer car, and the rest came from our House Fund (we both agreed that this time, our car purchase did not qualify as an “emergency,” and have decided that we are willing to delay a home purchase for a few months in order to purchase the car).

My husband had been wanting a pickup truck for quite some time, and now that we live in Texas, it seemed an obvious choice. He test-drove half a dozen of them, but found the ones in our price range to be about ten years old, and with more than 100,000 miles on them. As reliability was the most important factor to us, we set our sights on something smaller. Since we were replacing a two-seater, we reasoned, we might as well consider another. We narrowed our search to Smart Cars and Miatas, and eventually, the Miata won. We came across a 1997 model with only 27,000 miles on it, but that one was snapped up before we could even drive it (someone got a great deal!). Finally, we found a 2009 MX-5 that was in mint condition. Mr. Vega staged a battle on the showroom floor when they nearly sold it out from under us after he had negotiated a price and announced his intention to buy it, but he emerged victorious, wrote a check, and left his own car in the dealership parking lot to come get me from work in our new roadster. As all happily married men know, “Mama Gets the Good Car,” so I’ll be cruising with the top down while my husband takes the subcompact to work.

Meet our new-to-us car, which I have named "Benedict Cumberbatch"

Meet our new-to-us car, which I have named “Benedict Cumberbatch”

Later that night, he examined the paperwork he found in the glove box: The original owner financed the car when it was brand-new, paid on it for five years, had it serviced like clockwork at the dealership, and the moment the loan was paid off, he got 1/3 of what he paid for it (not counting interest) to use as a down payment on another new car.

What WE got was a five-year-old, meticulously cared-for car with lots of upgrades, for below blue book value. Unless our needs change, and if nothing terrible happens to the car, we’re likely to keep it for a decade or more.

It will take us a few months of hard work and careful spending to get our House Fund back to where it was before this purchase, but we’re fortunate that living far below our means has become a way of life for us. We eat a lot of home-cooked meals, seek out free entertainment, and we only buy clothes and shoes when what’s in our closet begins to wear out. Those things are mostly fun for us, though, and even when they aren’t we do them happily, because when bigger things (like cars and computers) need repair or replacing, we’re able to handle it without going into debt. And most importantly of all, we’re flying back to Los Angeles in a couple of months to meet our brother and sister-in-law’s first daughter… We’re hoping our new way of living means we never have to choose between showing up for family and being self-supporting again!

Have you ever paid cash for a car? Would you even want to? Why or why not?

Battening Down the Hatches, Y’all

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We received a letter this week from Mr. Vega’s employer, regarding medical benefit options in light of their upcoming corporate merger. There is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding how coverage will be handled, and they’ve made it clear that there will be employment redundancies. The bottom of the letter contained this lovely tidbit:

* If you are terminated, you may have rights to continue your FSA through “COBRA” (which we’ll explain more about if that becomes necessary), but you’ll do that on an after-tax basis, which is not advantageous for most.

This is the point in our program where we prepare for the worst, while continuing to hope for the best. All expenses must be questioned, and all unnecessary spending gets put on “pause” until our financial skies are clear again. Waiting to make changes until after a job loss could be devastating for us, both financially and emotionally: we could weather a transition much more gracefully if we were already prepared for it, rather than trying to make drastic lifestyle changes while also dealing with the psychological trauma that can accompany the loss of a job.

Fortuitously, I spent some time the other day creating a menu plan for November. I took my inspiration from The Prudent Homemaker, a full-time wife and homeschooling mother of seven children, who used their food storage as the basis for keeping her family cared-for during her husband’s eight-month period of unemployment. Using her seasonal menu as a template, and making adjustments for our smaller household, dietary preferences, and busy schedules, I put together a month-long plan for eating delicious and healthy meals that are also lower-cost. An unexpected benefit of meal planning is that it gets us out of our ruts, and reminds us to eat a greater variety of food. Left to my own devices, I’d eat Trader Joe’s whole wheat cinnamon rolls and a latte every. single. morning. But there’s a whole world of breakfast food out there, and writing it all down helps me remember how much I also love fresh fruit and Greek yogurt, oatmeal pancakes, and eggs scrambled ever so slowly.

As timing would have it, Mr. Vega’s 1991 Honda CR-X has reached the point where the annual repair costs are more than the value of the car itself. After running the numbers and weighing the pros and cons, we’ve decided to purchase a newer used vehicle. Counterintuitive as it may seem, we have enough in savings, and we’d rather buy a reliable car now than continue to pay for unforeseen repairs during a potential period of unemployment. And let’s face it, job interviews are stressful enough without worrying about whether your car will start to get you there, or having your air conditioning give up the ghost when it’s 90 degrees out!

Ironically, we do most of our shopping in anticipation of lean times, as that’s when we feel the need to stock up, in case we won’t be able to later. I dislike shopping so much that I generally don’t replace my clothes until they are threadbare, but I may look to upgrade my wardrobe a bit in the light of this merger uncertainty. I currently have just one pair of shoes that I wear for work, and I’d prefer to shop the sales now, rather than scrambling to get something cheap-but-appropriate if these give out during a time of hardship. This is also as good a time as any to start planning our spring garden so that we’ll be ready to plant our balcony container garden when the time comes. Fresh, homegrown food is lovely whatever one’s circumstances, but it’s especially wonderful to be able to get food from your garden instead of the market when money’s tight.

Because the merger threatens to leave us with reduced benefits even if we do keep the job, we’ll be sure to attend to our medical needs before the end of the year. We want to have healthy bodies, strong teeth, and brand-new pairs of eyeglasses that have been covered by insurance. One of us could use a new set of orthotics, as well. These are the sorts of things we should be doing anyway, but this new sense of urgency will make sure that we do.

Mr. Vega will indeed be updating his resume and LinkedIn profile and seeing what his options are, sooner rather than later. If his company’s merger results in widespread layoffs, the market will be flooded with folks looking for work, and we want to get the jump on the rest of the talent pool.  And because our household functions as a cooperative whole, it’s job-search time for everybody around here. So, while I do enjoy my part-time and freelance work, I also have two interviews scheduled this month for full-time positions that come with the all-important Benefits Package. Landing one of those would allow my husband to widen his job search to include less traditional opportunities, without worrying that we’d be left without medical coverage.

We’ll also be making a greater effort to keep up with our still-forming social and professional networks. We view “networking” as a way to cultivate and deepen authentic relationships, rather than as strictly transactional contact, and so it’s important to us that we spend some time with folks now, and not wait until we’re in need. Whether those connections result in professional opportunities or not, a robust social life will go a long way toward easing the stress of unemployment, if it happens.

We are very lucky to have moved to a city with so much free and inexpensive fun. There’s almost never a cover charge for live music (and when there is, it is oh-so-worth-it), there are plenty of festivals and activities happening all the time everywhere around here, so it will be easy to keep our spirits up and hang out with our new friends at bargain basement prices. We’ve got a couple of social buying vouchers hanging around for inexpensive dinners and movie nights, and we’re looking forward to hosting some game nights at home, as well. It’s good to have a little fun once in a while, especially during periods of increased stress or uncertainty.

We were already planning on keeping things low-key this year, but we’re still going to need to rethink the holidays. We generally do home-made, consumable gifts for everyone in our fairly large family and closest circle of friends, but this year’s gift idea is a bit pricier than usual. Not crazy expensive, but when you’re giving to a couple dozen people, it adds up quickly! We’re going to have to reconsider our gifting, and perhaps just send cards to everyone but family. We do feel blessed to have people around us who aren’t likely to feel slighted, though… material things mean much less to our loved ones– and to us!– than the actual relationships. A card means as much to all of us as a gift… especially if the giver is on a budget!

Closer to home, our own first holiday season in Austin will be spent exploring the city’s decorations, giving some of our time to help people who are currently less fortunate than we are, enjoying homemade seasonal goodies and free holiday movies, and video chatting with our faraway loved ones.

Once the merger has come and gone, we’ll be able to breathe our sighs of relief, and return to business as usual around here. If the layoffs don’t come, we might find ourselves on the other side of this with more stable, higher-paying jobs, closer relationships within our community, in better health, and with some more money in the bank. Sacrificing just a little comfort and convenience now, when we can afford to, seems like a small price to pay in exchange for the security of knowing that we could take care of ourselves in the event of a job loss.

How have you “battened down the hatches” when faced with uncertainty in the workplace or periods of unemployment? 

How to Start Living Below Your Means

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I’m sick today. If I didn’t speak for a living, I could probably still go to work, but I’ve got laryngitis, so I am out of commission. Trouble is, as an hourly employee and freelancer, “no work” means “no pay.” The good news is, Mr. Vega and I have the great good fortune of a fully funded (3-6 months of living expenses) emergency fund, and have gotten the hang of living below our means, so we probably won’t need to dip into savings to cover a few days of lost work.

But it wasn’t always like this. Most of my work has come without paid sick time or vacation days, and before I learned to live modestly, even one sick day could create a financial crisis. Never mind “paycheck-to-paycheck,” I lived “credit card bill-to-credit card bill” for a decade, and viewed due dates as mere suggestions, racking up late fees and ruining my credit, while still getting $100 spa treatments on a regular basis. If I heard the suggestion during those years to live within or below my means, it didn’t register, because I wouldn’t have even known where to start.

It’s been eight years since I found myself living in a small, sad apartment, staring at thousands of dollars in credit card and tax debt, alongside statements for hefty paychecks, wondering how I could have earned such a high hourly rate for so long and have nothing to show for it. Less than nothing, actually, because I had a negative net worth!

Something happened in that lonely apartment, and before I knew it, I was canceling credit cards, filing amended tax returns in search of deductions that had been overlooked in my sloppy record-keeping, and trying out slow-cooker recipes to lower my food costs. I ignored my health and my relationships in order to work as much as I possibly could to get the debt paid. My intense focus got me debt-free within a year, but two years after that, I found myself with a $6,000 credit card bill, and a $20,000 car loan. I had learned how to pay off debt, but not how to avoid it in the first place. I hadn’t learned to budget, and I not learned to live below my means.

My first attempts at budgeting failed miserably, because I based them on templates that had little to do with my actual spending habits. As a single woman living in Los Angeles, I spent more than the national average on rent and transportation, but nothing on child care. Grocery expenses were low, restaurant spending was high, and visits to the hair salon were (and still are) non-negotiable. I came to understand that each of us is unique, and our earning, spending and savings will reflect that. What’s more, even one’s own budget will not remain a perfect fit year in and year out, or from one month to the next. Life changes quickly, and we have to change with it. I learned that if you’re ever going to get a handle on this money thing, you have to write down everything you spend. This is a requirement for success, but I struggled with it terribly until I discovered Mint (with whom I am not affiliated, and from whom I have received no compensation), which made it easy for me to see where the money was coming from and where it was going, so that I could begin to make changes based on what was actually happening.

With the whole ugly truth laid out in front of me, the first thing I did was to stop the most obvious money leaks. These are the areas where economizing is relatively painless: I started buying six-packs of soda at the grocery store and taking drinks to work instead of dropping $1.50 a day into the vending machine. I’d drive around the block looking for street parking instead of mindlessly pulling into the pay lot. My lifestyle didn’t change much, and I was still spending too much money, but I was beginning to wake up to the possibility of doing things differently. Things got much more refined later, but at this early stage, every time I didn’t super-size my order was a win for me.

After I got the hang of easier things, I began to get creative with the less-obvious opportunities for savings. I scoured my auto insurance policy for coverage I didn’t need, checked that my cell phone plan wasn’t more than I needed, and scheduled coffee dates with friends instead of dinners out. It became a game for me, and no savings was too small: the double-loader washing laundromat machine that cost a quarter less than two separate loads, the ten-cent savings at the coffee shop for bringing your own cup (later, of course, I switched to brewing my own coffee), the grocery store that offered a nickel credit for bringing your own bag…. I began to enjoy finding some sort of savings everywhere I went. After all, pennies add up to dollars, eventually.

Another major step in my financial awakening was beginning to declutter. I thought selling some of my no-longer-used things might be a good way to create more space in my home and in my budget. It was quite a shock to learn that I couldn’t expect to receive even half of what I had paid for most things, even if they had never been used! The exercise of decluttering and downsizing my possessions made me keenly aware of the purchases I made going forward. I have since cultivated a practice of buying less, buying for life when I can, and doing my level best to avoid retail prices everywhere else.

When I had just about reached the limits of minimizing my expenses within the life I was living, it became time for me to make a big move. For me, this first meant cutting cable and killing my TV, and later, moving in with a roommate to reduce my rent by $400 a month. And while it seems counterintuitive to not have begun with these things, baby-stepping my way up the ladder of frugality allowed me to garner small wins and develop an experiential conviction that larger sacrifices would be worth the effort. And they definitely were.

With my expenses cut as deeply as I could manage, my next task was to learn to earn more, which was by far the riskiest thing I did, as it involved working less, and taking a few chances with my schedule of part-time jobs and freelance work. But because I had finally paid off all my debt (again!), and brought my expenses more in line with my earnings, I could afford the gamble. The graphs and trends on Mint helped me realize that the job I deemed most stable, but that also caused me the most stress, accounted for only 10% of my annual income. With some trepidation, I left that job and increased my availability with the employer who was less stable, but paid much more. As last-minute freelance assignments come with a 20% premium, I held off on booking lower-paying work in advance, in the hopes that the higher-paying, same-day assignments would be plentiful enough to meet my needs. And I spoke up: when a new manager came on board at the freelance agency, I told him honestly that although the agency was one of my favorite employers, I frequently declined work there in favor of higher-paying jobs. Within the month, I was offered a rate commensurate with what I earned elsewhere. By choosing my assignments carefully, and giving highest priority to the highest-paying jobs, I was able to increase my income and reduce my workload.

Rinse and Repeat. By the time I had found so many ways to reduce my daily expenses, had brought down a few of the big ones, and learned to make more money in less time, life had changed enough that going back to the beginning seemed like a good idea. I had met and married my husband, and we began budgeting together early on in our dating relationship. “My goals” had been modified and expanded to become “Our goals,” which included saving for a house, and while the household income had doubled, regular expenses had not (two may not live quite as cheaply as one, but happily, the cost of running a household doesn’t double when its occupancy does). Eating a nearly meat- and alcohol-free diet didn’t work so well for my husband, so grocery expenses were higher, but cooking and eating at home was more fun with a companion, and so the restaurant budget shrank. And since we moved from California to Texas, we’re spending less on gasoline, but more on mosquito repellant!

Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned on the path to living below our means is that you’ve got to have fun doing it. Brown-bagging my lunch means I get to eat healthier, more interesting meals every day, and still have enough money to get my hair done every other month, without having a minor panic attack when it comes time to pay. Losing my loyalty to name-brand products made by companies who aren’t concerned with my well-being means that I can fill our fridge without draining our bank accounts. Finding free fun on weekends lets us enjoy life while saving for a house. And taking a few calculated risks in order to earn more money allows me to stay home and write when I’m sick without fear that the lights will get turned off next month because of it.

Is living within or below your means important to you? What changes have you made, or would you consider making, to do it?

New Month, New Budget

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The September Budget Meeting in the Vega household was not an easy one.

We had given ourselves a lot of financial leeway as we gave up everything we knew last May to move halfway across the country to a city we had only visited briefly, separately, and years ago. During our transition, we focused more on comfort than on frugality, which means that if we felt we needed something, we bought it… That included the purchase of a King-sized bed to replace the 10-year-old Queen mattress we’d been using. For some reason it surprised me that when we got a bigger bed, we also needed bigger sheets and blankets! The comforter set naturally came with King-sized pillowcases, which meant we also bought bigger pillows. We also had two cars to register the first week we lived here. Because we moved to a more affluent neighborhood than our old place in Los Angeles, our food bill grew considerably higher. The air-conditioning in Mr. Vega’s 23-year-old car gave out just in time for the local temperatures to hit triple digits, and when he took the car to the mechanic, it turned out that he also needed a new exhaust system and ignition switch (old cars sometimes wear out, what can you do?). Additionally, our attempts to meet people, make friends, and experience some of the awesomeness that is Austin had us spending a great deal more money in restaurants and bars than we’re accustomed to.

After four months here, our finances have begun to settle into a more familiar rhythm: we’ve found less-expensive options for groceries, our apartment feels fully furnished, and we’ve gotten our professional wardrobes better adapted to the local culture (and climate!). But one spending category still looms large: FOOD.

To be honest, this has been an area of concern for me throughout our marriage. Every month, I am horrified to see how much we’ve spent on groceries, restaurants, fast food coffee shops and alcohol. But every month, we find ourselves rushed, or tired, or invited out with friends and there goes the budget. Mr Vega believes that if we’ve tried our best, and haven’t been able to make a change, then perhaps it’s an unreasonable expectation to continue trying to wrestle the number into submission. We certainly earn enough, even at our newly reduced income, to accommodate what we’ve been spending on food. I, on the other hand, think that a lot of the expenses result from exhaustion/impulsivity/not having found a system that works well for us. During the Budget Meeting, we found ourselves at loggerheads, until, in exasperation, I said “How are we ever going to buy a house if we keep spending like this on food? We are eating our house!”

That broke the stalemate, and we took a closer look at the budget, and made some decisions about the coming month. Fortunately, we haven’t got much planned for September, so if there was ever a good month to rededicate ourselves to this mission, this is it. We’re going to put our attention to planning ahead so that fatigue doesn’t get the better of us at the end of our longer workdays, and to make it extra delicious, to fortify us against the siren song of takeaway, or lunches grabbed on the fly. I’m also going to focus on avoiding food waste, because I have a sneaking suspicion that, since our move, ours has increased by much more than we realize… it’s easy to tell ourselves that “It’s not that bad,” when it really is, or that “This week was an anomaly,” when it really wasn’t. Finally, I’m going to do something I haven’t done in years: I’m breaking out the envelopes! Every dollar we spend on food in September is going to be cash money, honey, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. If we can actually do this, we’re going to reach our goal of homeownership so much faster, and I bet our waistlines will thank us, too.

What are you saving for and spending on in September?

How I’m Approaching Freelancing in a New City

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First Things First: Update That Resume!

As soon as we knew we’d be moving, I updated my resume, something I hadn’t done– not really— in years. I needed to know my exact dates of hire and separation, as well as exact rates of pay, which took several phone calls and a visit to an HR department across town. I had worked there so long ago, my employment history was on microfilm, but as the work was still relevant to my career, it was important information to track down.

Once I had my resume in order, I made sure to send it to all the potential employers in my new city, with a short note introducing myself. Also, I included it as an attachment with follow-up emails, so that they wouldn’t have to look it up, if they wanted to refer to it.

 

Attend to Social Media

Because I’d worked at the same jobs and with the same agencies for many years, I’d never bothered to join LinkedIn. Nearly the moment I did, a client of mine from years ago wrote me a glowing recommendation, for which I was very grateful. I spent some time creating a professional profile that was as complete as possible, working from my aforementioned resume and also poring over the pages of colleagues, scouting for language and ideas that might be useful for mine. I endorsed every connection that I legitimately could, and took a look at their connections for names that I knew (or wanted to know).

I recently posed for a professional headshot, as well, to add to my LinkedIn, as well as to a few other sites specific to my profession.

Mine is a tight-knit profession, based almost entirely on reputation. Personal and professional relationships are quite fluid and often overlap, and so in my case, it was appropriate to reach out to my Facebook contacts, and to add my new colleagues as friends right away. Because of that, I took a closer look at my privacy settings and personal timeline, in order to ensure that my social persona was represented as being in alignment with my professional image, so that potential colleagues and employers in my new city would be able to see whether I am someone they’d like to work and play with.

The idea here was not to change how people might see me, but rather to ensure that what they were seeing was congruent with how I actually live and work. Funny enough, the links I posted to the Community Supported Agriculture garden we have a share in sparked many a workplace conversation about healthy, local eating with colleagues who vary widely in their other interests. Being honest about my home life in social media has strengthened several good professional connections!

 

Reach Out to Tenuous Contacts

Several colleagues of mine from Southern California had moved to Austin in the few years prior to our move. Although I wasn’t particularly close to them back then, I asked a mutual friend to help me get in touch, and that proved quite helpful. One man in particular sent me a detailed email, outlining every agency and employer he could think of in the area. He was also, I suspect, instrumental in helping me get the part-time gig I like the most, and you can better believe I won’t forget that soon!

 

Manage Finances to Avoid Desperation!

Even though Mr. Vega would have liked a new car, and we both would have liked an infinite number of new gadgets and furnishings for our new apartment, we kept a tight rein on our spending until we had secured reliable income. We sought out free fun and inexpensive sustenance. We diligently turned up our thermostat each day until we got our first electric bill, and waited for those occasional free Redbox codes to show up in our email.

Moving with a fully funded Emergency Fund, and staying frugal during our transition allowed us to accept assignments based on more than money, and to gracefully weather those first few weeks before the checks started coming in. We’ve been able to avoid overworking ourselves just to make the rent, and to keep our options somewhat open while we learn the nuances of our new home town.

 

Accept That Not Everything Will Pan Out

Before we moved, I applied for a few job openings online, and, for the first time in my career, wasn’t even asked to interview for any of them (remember, our field is based on reputation, and no one knows me here, yet). Well, as it happens, my freelance assignments and part-time gig turn out to pay much more than the regular positions would have. And since Mr. Vega has a job with benefits, it’s better for us financially if I take the higher-paying work over the stable, lower-paying jobs that come with health insurance and the like.

I also had a few coffee dates with potential new friends in my field that weren’t quite a match. We tried our best, but just like romantic dating, there’s an indescribable something that must be present for a friendship to work. And like romantic dating, the magic usually happens when you least expect it.

But it’s a numbers game: the more you try, the better your chances of making a connection.

 

Listen More Than You Speak

Rather than trying to impress everyone with my vast knowledge and spectacular word usements, I chose to keep my opinions to myself for a while and listen to what others had to say. “Tell me more,” became my favorite response. In this way, I got to hear how folks navigate the professional culture here, and what works best for them. And although I do my best to avoid gossip, when three people I met in three different environments each expressed misgivings about a particular employer, I paid attention! Because the only thing better than leaving your difficult boss is never working for her in the first place!

Waiting to express strong opinions also gave people the opportunity to get to know me by my presence and work ethic, rather than by what labels I give myself elsewhere. Letting people think of me as “the one who always shows up early,” or “the one who is attentive and hardworking” is probably better right now than being remembered as “the one who votes Democrat,” or “the one who avoids GMOs.”

 

Attend Orientations, Meetings, Workshops

As much as I’d prefer to avoid any event where I get to wear my name on a sticker, I’ve gotten to as many networking events as I can since our move. The Saturday morning staff meeting at my new part-time job that my boss said I could skip because I was so new? I was there bright and early. The annual end-of-summer gathering of hourly employees at my other tiny gig? Present and accounted for, with my name tag on. Spend an entire Saturday in a skill-building workshop with other members of my profession? You’d better believe I’m going. Right now, I’m the person who will attend the opening of an envelope, if it will help build my name recognition, and familiarity with my peers and clients. Suiting up and showing up is half the battle, GI Joe!

 

Avoid The Temptation to Overbook (Accept Sub Assignments)

It’s been important to leave a little blank space in my schedule, so that I can accept the occasional last-minute gig. This allows me not only to be helpful when there is a need, but also gives me the opportunity to work in jobs I haven’t been hired on for permanently. And again, any time I’m able to meet a new client or colleague, it’s an opportunity to build reputation and create connections. As an added bonus, every time I accept work in a new part of town, I get to learn the city a little better.

And if the work doesn’t show up for the days I’ve left open? I still have plenty of post-move organizing to do, and it seems like I always am in need of a car wash, a manicure, or a trip to the grocery store.

 

Do Something Else! It’s Not All About Work!

We’re very fortunate to have moved to a place that offers abundant opportunities to get outdoors and have fun. Austinites are serious about their fun, and there is live music and good food just about everywhere you go. It’s been lovely to get out of the house a couple of times each week to disconnect and recharge. It took years to create the rich, supportive professional network I enjoyed in my hometown, and my new life won’t be built in a day. After doing all the work outlined above, it’s important to give it all some time to develop organically. Because as much as I love my work, it’s really only something I do so that I can enjoy the rest of what life has to offer!

Our Grocery Budget

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I was halfway through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University personal finance course when Mr. Vega and I started dating, and he was nearing the end of a period of unemployment he had navigated more deftly than most. Because neither of us had any money when we found each other, we enjoyed mainly home-cooked meals on our early dates. And because neither of us had any money, that became a topic of conversation very early in our courtship. We began doing our individual budgets side-by-side while we were still dating, and have continued to create a budget every month since we’ve been married.

While we do enjoy cooking together at home, I confess that our food and grocery budget remains the biggest area in which we still have plenty of room for improvement. We generally pack and bring our lunches to work, do our best to minimize food waste, and have dinner at home most weeknights, but we are not immune to the siren song of takeout on the days we find ourselves exhausted, and I am very guilty of impulse buys at the grocery store. Menu planning is also challenging, because sometimes we just don’t want what we had planned to make, and we haven’t got ingredients in the house to make what we do want.

We’re still working on finding ways of planning, spending and eating that blend our desire to eat a frugal, organic, real-food diet that is also delicious and interesting. So we overspend. On a regular basis.

But we haven’t given up: we set up a balcony garden almost as soon as we got settled in Austin, and are hoping to have a quick learning curve about container gardening in this hot-humid climate. We signed up for a weekly CSA box from Johnson’s Backyard Garden, and are enjoying learning to cook new-to-us veggies like sweet potato greens and okra.

What are some of the challenges you face in keeping your food costs low? Where have you succeeded?

Frugal Fatigue

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Being tired probably cost us a couple thousand dollars on this move. For the two weeks leading up to Moving Day, and a week afterward, we were the Takeout Kings. Too tired and overwhelmed to shop, chop and cook, we just rolled our cars up to some clown-house speaker box or called over to the local Asian food takeaway… We don’t eat out much, and our old neighborhood was bordering on being a food desert, so our choices felt limited and inferior.

And after a while, so did we.

The more junk we ate, the more sluggish we felt, but we were doing this move ourselves, and so we had to keep going no matter what. I, for one, have never felt so sleepy in my life: it was like driving a U-Haul through the enchanted poppy field on the way to Oz.

All that fatigue led to many rousing choruses of “Just throw it out! We’ll get a new one when we get there!” But what we didn’t consider was that, when we got here, exhaustion changed our tune to “That one seems good enough. If it’s not right, we’ll return it,” and you can guess the third stanza of that tune… For a couple of people that literally count every nickel (and who won’t be seeing any real income for several weeks yet), we went a little crazy.

We’re dealing with the last bit of unpacking and one heck of a spending hangover, here. But we’re back on the frugal, healthy bandwagon, and looking forward to finding our Austin groove.