Been looking at my budget books for 2007, trying to find places to save.  Apologize that this isn't better written.

1. Laundry. I have no laundry facilities where I rent. I have laundry down to a science. I have to load/bungee cord my laundry into a little wheelie cart every week and take it down 46 indoor and three outdoor stairs and three blocks down the street to the laundromat, then reverse the process coming home. I have two canvas laundry sacks, one for lights/whites and one for darks and dishrags and such, each of which holds what Walgreens says is two standard loads of laundry. I don’t know how they measure standard, but each bag holds what Mom would cram into her washer at home, and it was a standard-size, non-industrial Kenmore. I have two little Rubbermaid containers that hold 2/3 a cup each. Each gets filled with whatever cheap-ass powdered detergent is on sale at Family Dollar, and one goes in each bag.

The laundromat I go to charges $1.75 a load for their standard-sized washers. That’s $3.50 a week. It is the cheapest in a ten-block radius. I don’t use the dryers, because they’re expensive and either run too hot or too cold and I have better things to do than hang around a sweltering laundromat for an hour listening to the drag queens who run the place bitch and catfight while my clothes are getting ruined. I have a shower curtain rod hanging in the alcove by the window and three folding drying racks (though I usually only need two): two cheapie $10 Walmart ones and a bigger, better-made Linens-n-Things $30 one that I got for $12 when they went out of business. Weekly laundry consists of a week’s worth of clothes, two bath towels, a couple pair of pajamas if it’s winter and too cold to just sleep in my underwear, a bathrobe, seven to ten washcloths, a set of sheets, a couple of dishtowels, a couple of dishrags, a few other assorted things, and a bunch of cloth napkins. I cannot reduce the amount of laundry I do. Those bags are FULL at the end of the week and the washers are FULL when I use them. I live in south Louisiana and walk most places, including a mile to and from work. Re-wearing clothes is simply not an option 11.5 months out of the year.

I spent $20 last year on dry-cleaning some items that really, really needed it.

2. Pets. I have four birds--Jane and Enoch the parakeets and Jerry and Elvis the cockatiels. Anyone who says someone anorexic “eats like a bird” has not actually spent much time around birds. They eat 1.5 to 2 times their body weight a day in birdseed. I go through a couple pounds of birdseed in a month, and buy them a new toy or something every few months. (Parakeets and especially cockatiels will chew on EVERYTHING.) Their cage gets lined with the freebie local newspaper. All in all, they’re fairly cheap pets to obtain and maintain, and I wouldn’t trade them in for anything. How many pets cuss fluently at their owners? Mine do.

3. Transportation. I haven’t owned a car since 2001. I walk most everywhere and rely on public transit to get me where I can’t walk. Last year, my transportation costs added up to a little over $20 a month.

4. Food. I probably eat out once every two weeks or so, and then it’s a meal in the $10-15 range. While at work, I get things from the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s down the street more than is healthy, but even with that factored in, last year I spent an average of $5/day on feeding myself. I know all about store brands, coupons, Angel Food Ministries, and the crockpot.

5. Clothing. I spent a couple hundred dollars last year clothing myself. I work in sales, so dressing well is a job prerequisite. The most I spent on single items of clothing were a pair of very well-made black leather Capezio low-heeled character shoes ($60 plus $20 to the cobbler to put hard soles on them for street wear), $55 dollars for a pair of very-well made low-heeled black leather boots, and $55 for the same boots in dark brown. All three pairs of shoes will give me years of wear…and did I mention that I walk a mile to and from work and have to dress up every day? The Payless shoes fall apart and give me blisters.

6. Toiletries. I wear Maybelline Superstay lipstick in #735-Cherry. A tube of that costs $9.99 and lasts for about two months. I use Certain Dry deodorant--$6 a bottle, lasts two months. I use Neutrogena oil-free sunscreen daily on my face and ears--$10.99 a bottle, lasts two months. I use the Whole Foods brand shampoo daily--$4.99 a bottle, lasts four months. The most expensive toiletry I use is Pantene Restoratives conditioner--the kind most people use once a week. It’s $5.88 a tube and because I use it daily, I go through two tubes a month. I have very oily skin and scalp, necessitating daily hair washing, but also very thick, coarse, and curly hair. If I didn’t use this stuff, I wouldn’t be able to get a comb through the bottom foot of my hair.

I go to the beauty college in the suburbs or to Supercuts every six months or so and have them hack off the dead ends for $15.

I haven’t bought disposable feminine hygiene products in a year. I have a collection of washable cloth pads (some bought commerically, some made on my sewing machine, total cost around $40), which serve as a back-up for the Diva Cup ($21.99 online, including shipping). I do not foresee having to buy any in the coming year even as an emergency stash, as I still have some disposables left over. (BTW, hydrogen peroxide + covered opaque bucket of cold water in your bathroom + opaque lingerie bag = being able to wash hippie-girly stuff in a public laundromat with no embarrassment.)

Add another $10 or so a month to miscellaneous toiletries, and there you have it.

7. Household goods, furniture, and cleaning supplies. Bought on sale at Family Dollar or Walmart. I’m not Martha Stewart, either, so these don‘t get as much use as they should.

 My furniture came from garage sales, Goodwill, the sidewalk, friends who were moving, or Family Dollar. 

Don’t use many paper towels or napkins. Have a rag bag of old freebie t-shirts. Have about eight dozen cloth napkins, made out of bedsheets that were 20 years old when they were cut into napkins five years ago. Been using them since.

8. Rent and utilities. I pay $775 for a large, two-room efficiency in the French Quarter. I also work in the French Quarter. I have looked and continue to look for something cheaper, but it would need to be at least $100-$150 cheaper and in a safe area of town, with accessibility to frequent and convenient public transit to downtown, AND allow pets in order for moving to be fiscally worth my while. So far this hasn’t panned out. Oh, and the boyfriend lived with and paid half the rent all last year. The landlord pays water and sewer, I pay the other utilities. The A/C only gets turned on only when absolutely necessary--I have window screens and fans, but I live on the top floor of an old whorehouse in New Orleans. It gets ridiculously hot in the summer.   (Years ago when I was living in the Midwest, a male friend of mine asked, apropos of nothing, if I ever did housework naked.  I told him that no, and it was none of his damn business, pervert.  I'd like to change my answer, and it ain't because my life suddenly turned into a bad porno.)

9. Debt. I have no credit card debt, mortgage, car loans, or other assorted consumer debt. I finished an undergrad degree in 2002 debt-free, and finished a master’s two years ago with $17,000 in subsidized loans. I have whittled that number down to a little over $5,000 and continue to pay a minimum of $350 a month on that. I’ve got more in the bank than I owe.

10. Health care. I have a $2,000 deductible policy and pay $82.50 a month for that. My health insurance sucks ass. NOTHING routine is covered. It’s there in case I get cancer or get hit by a bus, and I’m praying it will cover that and won’t try to weasel out of it if/when the shit hit’s the fan. I have not been to the dentist in seven years. I went to the Wal-Mart $49.99 eye doctor two years ago and in the past year have ordered two pairs of much-needed prescription eyeglasses from www.19dollareyeglasses.com at a price of a little under $30 each, including frames, lenses, shipping, cleaning cloth, and case. I’m not on any prescriptions, save for a $12 anti-nausea one I got for food poisoning last July. (I’d thrown up 18 times in 12 hours and couldn’t even keep any water down. It was 98 degrees in the shade that day. That’s why I went to the doctor.) My OTC medicine consists of Midol and the Neti pot for colds.

11. Savings. I have three months living expenses saved up and I put 10 percent of my meager income into my IRA (which somehow actually MADE $57.13 last year). The next goal is starting a house fund, but I’m going to need to make more money for that.

12. Charity. I give to charity. I’m not going to tell you how much, but I mean to give more.

13. Entertainment. I don’t have cable. I don’t have internet (except at work). I used to get Netflix for $4.99 a month, but cancelled after they kept sending me scratched-up movies. I go to the library, but I also buy books. Last year I went to see Indiana Jones, The X-Files, and Batman on the big screen. Two of those movies I went to see at half-price matinees. My entertainment costs last year were about $30 a month.

14. Vices. I don’t smoke. I spent probably $50 on alcohol last year.

15. Death and taxes and childbirth. No children and not pregnant. Don’t owe taxes; am expecting a refund. Have no life insurance, but my family is under strict orders to donate my body to science because I’m not using it anymore and coffins and burial plots are ridiculously expensive.

By the standards of most of the world, I am fabulously wealthy. I am eternally grateful for all I DO have. But while I have no interest in keeping up with the Joneses, I’m also a 21^st Century American who is not Amish. I have no real fat from my budget left to cut. Short of my marrying a wealthy man, my wages rising (and I work where I do because it pays better than teaching, which is what I’d be qualified to do), and/or the cost of living declining, I’m not going to get ahead.

And that pisses me off.