Middle Class Poor

Well, I didn’t mean to start up the blog and then go so long without a post, but life has a way of running you down like that. Since the last post, I have gotten a part time job, and had the washing machine die so now my routine includes trips to the laundromat up the street.

Instead of the promised post on coupons vs. store brands, I’d like to share a little about myself. Like so many people today, I lost my job. A twenty+ year career went down the toilet because of an illness. Even though the quality of my work was fine, my medical problems made me work slower and slower until I was told I just wasn’t doing enough. The organization I worked for constantly repeats the mantra that its employees are ‘like family’. I discovered that some definitions of family include, “Onto the ice floe, Grandma!”

Now, strange to say, this did not upset me as much as you would think. Most of the reason my medical problems were so hard to deal with was stress. My old job and workplace had become extremely toxic. It certainly wasn’t the place I started working at all those years ago. So even now, nearly six months later, I can say that being unemployed is less stressful than working there.

But even though leaving that awful place had a massive positive effect on my health and general outlook on life, there was of course the lack of a paycheck. It was especially hard since I am the bill-payer in the family. For years my husband has homeschooled our children, and had an evening job to pay for extras and to give him his own spending money. Now his job was all we had, that and our far too small savings. We’ve managed, through help from family and being extremely careful with our money. We have some creditors rather angry with us at the moment, but at least we have kept the utilities on and the cars in our driveway.

So hopefully I’ll be able to pass along some of the ways my family has made it on the thinnest of shoestrings these last months. Luckily I have always been of a fairly frugal nature, and had kept us from being in too bad a shape financially. I hope that whatever information I put here can help someone through their own crisis.

Let’s start with a biggie. If you’re like me and have read a lot of frugal living books, you normally come across two distinct schools of thought.

School 1: Coupons are useless. You’ll never remember to use them or have them with you. They’ll make you spend money on products you wouldn’t normally buy, products which tend to be expensive and highly processed. They’re just a waste of time.

School 2: Using coupons is a necessity. Get every coupon you can find, from newspapers or the internet or store displays. Never buy anything unless you use a coupon for it. Take advantage of every sale plus coupon opportunity you can, and if you can’t use it or have too much of it, give your extra purchases to charity.

So which is right? Both of them. And both of them are wrong.

If you are too disorganized to keep your coupons clipped and sorted, and to remember to take them with you shopping, then any time you spend on them is a waste. Coupons won’t save you a dime if they are at home or if you can’t find the coupon you need in the crumpled wad in your purse or wallet.

But the idea that the only coupons around are ones for processed foods is dead wrong. We’ve all heard the mantra, haven’t we? “I’m not feeding my family that. You’d get more nutrition from the box.” That mindset ignores the dozens of coupons I have in my organizer for cleaners, household necessities like toilet paper, medicines, and toiletries. It also ignores the food items like condiments, rice and pasta mixes, cooking staples like sugar, flour, eggs, milk and spices, and sandwich meats. Coupons can be used for far more than the latest pricey frozen entree.

Coupons really can save you a lot of money, but only if used the right way. A lot of the advice you find for using coupons treats them as a hobby, especially when combined with sending in for refunds and rebates. Most of those tips are just far too time-consuming for most people.

So how do I use coupons? I collect and organize every coupon that I think I have a reasonable chance of using. Most couponers will tell you to grab everything because you never know when you might run across a great sale. But what are the odds I’ll want to use my limited dollars on some oddball product I’ve never used before, even at a great price? A sale is nice, if you have the extra money to indulge. But when my budget is on a razor’s edge, I’d rather spend my energy trying to save money on what I truly need to buy.

Next up, coupons versus store brands.

A new penny pinching blog. Just like a million others, right? Well, not exactly. I intend to examine some of the traditional advice found in frugal living books and websites and see how they apply to the average household. But first, let me start by saying who this site is not for.

If your idea of financial hardship is settling for Applebee’s instead of Outback, you’re in the wrong place.

If you think that a site like this isn’t complete unless it includes homilies on being a stay-at-home mom, tithing, and the joys of having large families, you will be disappointed. While I have a great deal of respect for the writers of that kind of site, that’s just not me, and it’s not most people.

You will not be happy if you are expecting one of the extremes of family money sites. “Cheap and Easy Recipes! Ingredient #1 – something from a specialty store, Ingredient #2 – a quarter teaspoon of something you will never use again…” and its opposite number, “How to mill your own flour. Keeping chickens in your garage, a beginner’s guide.”

So who is it for?

It’s for the average family who has found themselves in a rotten place in their lives. It can happen to anyone. A job loss or demotion, an illness, any unexpected crisis can shatter the security we thought we had and leave us reeling. It’s for people who have to tighten their financial belts all the way down to the first notch.

So let’s explore together. Besides writing about my own experiences and ideas, I hope that readers will feel free to trade their money-saving secrets so that we can all survive these tough times.