The Complete Tightwad Gazette RULES!!!

I highly recommend The CompleteTightwad Gazette. I've read it over and over again to give me some sort of hope. I'm not as tight as I could be, but I'm doing what I can to conserve. Take water for instance. I have a garden every year, and I use my bathwater to water the garden. Yes, it takes a few minutes, and some muscles, but I find I water every plant individually, and no water goes in between plants. I also collect rainwater. During the drought of 2012, I was able to keep my garden watered and my water bill manageable. Once a week, I give the garden a good watering with the hose. I don't keep track of how much I save, but I know it makes a difference. My water bill is rarely more than $60, unless I skip paying it for some reason.

I also rinse out baggies and reuse them.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette has success stories from people, which are inspiring. America is a wasteful country (if you work retail, you see it firsthand) and it's enough to make me want to go dumpster diving. I think I would, if I had a pickup truck. I saw a five foot long vanity being thrown out because of a dark knot in the wood on the door of the cabinet. It could have been painted over, or just sanded and stained, but no. A perfectly good vanity was thrown out. It could have been donated, but the powers that be didn't want to bother.  

Playing the Wait Until Payday Game

In my last post, I said I was becoming a bit of a miser. Since I will only have one class next semester, and my hours will probably be cut at my other job, and I may have yet another part time job starting in March, I'm thinking things will be awfully lean in the next few months.

I'm out of bar soap, so I am putting off getting soap until payday. The reason for that is it seems like whenever I go to the store with the intent of getting just one thing, I end up being out $30 or so. I usually get the one thing, but then I see stuff while I'm there and think, "well, I'm running out of that so I'll get some." Or, "that's a great price. I'll stock up." So in order to keep from spending money, I will play the waiting game.

Right now, I'm using shampoo to bathe with. And I have a bunch of tissue from the tissue boxes I used as entry boxes for an event a month ago. So there are actually TWO things I need to get, but I'm putting it off. I've got soap, I've got tissues. So I'm fine.

Now to see how long I can live with this plumbing situation...

I'm Becoming a Low-Rent Hetty Green

It's getting so every time I get paid, I don't want to spend any money. I'm saving an emergency fund, which means I'm trying to skimp on everything else. I still don't have a credit card, and I'm not even sure that I want one. My plumbing is screwed up, and last night, I forgot to check the toilet for the water level. I did too many dishes in the kitchen sink, and the toilet overflowed. I didn't realize this until I encountered the sticky, smelly brown goodness coating the floor a couple of hours later. I busted out the mop bucket, and poured a generous amount of Pine Sol (Sparkling Fresh!) and some bleach and got busy. It's a small bathroom, but the mop got disgusting rather quickly, so I had to dump the water into the bathtub, and reload it with fresh water, Pine Sol (Sparkling Fresh!) and bleach.

It's not like I'm completely broke. It's almost like a game--how long can I stand to wash my dishes in the tub (I've already broken one glass) and deal with a toilet from hell before I say "fuck it all, I'm sick of this shit!" (literally) and call someone to clean out the sewer line. It's bad enough I have to run a hose from the washing machine out the back door, but dish washing in the tub? Oh, if my one neighbor only knew, she'd had a coronary. She asked me the other day if I was "planning to clean my yard this year." Leaves on my lawn is the least of my worries right now.

Hetty Green was a miser, but she was a RICH miser. I will probably never attain her level of wealth, but no doubt she would approve of me putting off cleaning my sewer line, and putting off going to the dentist, getting a mammogram and gluing my glasses frames over and over again, just to keep from spending money. I think she took it to extremes, however. If I could just save about $5,000, I could breathe a little bit easier at night. But I get so far, and something happens, and the emergency fund goes poof! It sucks. So that's what recovering from bankruptcy does to you. You become guilt-ridden at the slightest expenditure. I don't really WANT to buy food, but I must eat. I haven't quite lowered myself to living off food banks and giving up the grocery store. I would feel guilty if I did that, because I AM working. And there are people who need the food banks worse than I do. It's just that I've become rather cheap. When you are broke AND you don't have credit cards, you hope, pray and wish that NOTHING happens, so you can build even a tiny emergency fund, so you don't have to depend on your ex-boyfriend to pay for your car repair bill. (And yes, I still owe him $688 bucks.)

Turning Into a Miser

I got paid yesterday, and it seems like whenever I get paid, I'm loathe to spend any money. But I forgot to pay my water bill, and when I checked my post office box, I saw a final notice bill. So I paid the minimum due.

I found some other bills too, and I'm pleased to report my electric bill was less than $30. I'm telling you, unplug everything you aren't using, including the washer and dryer. Only plug stuff in when you need it.

I'm still loathe to spend money though. I wish you could opt to not pay utilities for a month or two without penalties, so you could save that extra money. Of course, if I had a decent-paying full-time job, I might not be such a cheapskate.

But maybe I would.

Tired of my Piecemeal Way of Making a Living

I've had my bankruptcy discharge paper for about a month now, but I'm still feeling a bit down. I work three jobs, and I may pick up a fourth one. It's getting depressing to work all these jobs and not feel like I'm getting anywhere.

I'm forced to wash my dishes in my bathtub, because my plumbing is fucked up. My kitchen sink backs up into the toilet, so it ends up overflowing. I should just call a plumber and get the sewer line cleaned out, because that's what's going on. And to make things super-awesome, I have to attach a plastic hose to my washer outflow pipe and run it out the backdoor, because the drainpipe for the washer tends to overflow as well. I've had this problem before. But I'm also trying to build my emergency fund. I'll admit I'm really, really tempted to apply for a credit card with a low limit, so I don't have to owe my ex-boyfriend almost $700 for a car repair done in summer.

And I'm way overdue for a mammogram, a dentist appointment, an eye exam, and my cat Summit's regular check-up. I'm not sure what to pay for first. Summit should have gone when I took Daphne, but I couldn't get her into the carrier, and yes, I'm afraid of her. She will not let me pick her up or pet her. I tried to do the best I could when I first found her--bottle fed her (she was maybe four weeks old when I found her, eyes crusted shut in a driveway) and fed her Iams when I could afford it. If I ever find another kitten, I'll take it to a no-kill shelter, or give her to someone who wants a kitten. I'm not good with cats. Summit could be worse--she's very quiet and doesn't drape herself across my computer keyboard, but she's hardly affectionate.

So I'm wondering how long I can put off getting a credit card. The sink/toilet/washer problem is getting annoying. I don't think I can get a better job unless I go back to school, and I will have to take out loans for school, thereby putting me right back into debt. I know Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and things could be worse, but I'm not too terribly happy with the scraping-by lifestyle I'm living.

Sigh...

It looks like I'll have to email my bankruptcy attorney. I keep getting bills from accounts I KNOW I included in with the chapter seven conversion. Maybe I should make a copy of the discharge paper and send it to these people. Or maybe someone screwed up the paperwork. All I know is I have a headache right now (probably from throwing up through my nose) and I'm tired of being hounded for $51,000+ that I don't have. I'm fucking tired of being poor, and a hunt for a full time job may have to start in EARNEST.

Dealing With It

I have so many things I need to take care of right now: mammogram, dentist, eye doctor, taking my cat to the vet and now my plumbing is screwing up. Not my internal plumbing, but my house plumbing. It sucks, because I can't wash dishes without the water from the kitchen sink backing up into the toilet. So I can only wash dishes for maybe five minutes at the most. Then, I have to run to the bathroom to make sure the toilet is not overflowing.

It also means I can't flush the toilet more than twice in a 24-hour period. I am disgusted by my house, but what can I do? I'm broke. I'm trying to build my emergency fund, because I'm worried that I will only get one class to teach this semester. If I do, I will be in T-R-O-U-B-L-E. It sucked last spring; it's going to suck this spring unless another job comes along. And working three jobs gets old. Adding a fourth one is going to help, but at the same time, it's going to be tedious.