349 Days Left

Well, January is half over, which means only 11.5 more months of this project. 16 days may not seem like a long time, but when we're changing our lifestyle as much as we are, it feels like a very long time. A co-worker asked me at lunch yesterday how it was going. I told her to be honest, it hasn't been so difficult to adjust to the smaller budget. The most difficult part of this experience so far has been adjusting the mindset of not being able to just go out and do whatever we want, shop wherever we want, buy the groceries we want, etc.

We did discover, when paying our car payment, that we had calculated our monthly expenses based on the poverty line for a family of four, not two. So, Alicia looked up what the SNAP (food stamp) benefits for two people would be and the estimate was about $200/month. We have to eat, so we are using that "assistance" for our grocery budget. Even so, we haven't really done much other than pay our bills and spend a lot more time at home than we used to.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is, "is that in your poverty line budget?" When the question is asked about clothing, appliances, etc, my response is that we aren't "selling everything we have and giving the money to the poor" (cf. Matt. 19:21) in order to experience poverty. We are adjusting our budget and lifestyle according to that income level. The other response is that, yes, people in poverty sometimes do spend their money on cell phones, clothes, etc. One of the symptoms of our consumer driven economy is that people feel inclined to buy things that may not be a "necessity." Often, people of all classes purchase things they don't need because they need to "keep up with the neighbors" or even out-do them. For the middle class, purchasing a new tablet even though the old model works fine just means they might not have as much money for new clothes. For the wealthy, purchasing a new car just means they might not be able to fit a vacation into the budget. For people in poverty, purchasing anything beyond the essentials means cutting essentials. Some are willing to make that trade in order to maintain an appearance of not being poor. Others may not choose to sacrifice essentials for "stuff."

We've found ourselves weighing the pros and cons of what are seemingly minute decisions. For example, Las Vegas has experienced an extreme cold snap over the past week. With temperatures below freezing overnight, we need to keep the heat on. But how warm do we set the thermostat? How does using the heat impact our electric bill for next month? Which in turn impacts cuts from other areas. We'll face the same issue in the summer when temperatures are above 100 for the better part of May through September. I suppose the dilemmas we face are part of the learning process.

Coincidentally, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has designated January as "Poverty Awareness Month." We are looking forward to learning more about living in poverty, not just this month, but throughout the year. I feel like we've barely scraped the surface of the lessons the next 11.5 months have in store for us.

My thoughts thus far!

Disclaimer: OK before I get into my thoughts about living at the poverty line for 2013 I just want to let everyone know that my blogs are not going to be as eloquent as Tim's. Tim has a way with words that I don't---I have a tendency to ramble and often times you'll find that my blog may not follow grammatical rules--I'm just going to write what I'm feeling at the time and hopefully I won't ramble too much! Now that I have stated that let's get to it.....

Let's start at the beginning  When Tim first brought up the idea of living at the poverty line for a whole year I can't say I was on board right away. Don't get me wrong it's not that I don't care about the poor--in fact I have a huge heart for them--I just couldn't see how it would work with all the expenses we have to pay. I basically told him well if you can show me how it's going to work and we can still pay everything that needs to be paid then I'll be more than willing to do it! So basically he looked up the info. and showed me how it would all work. So here we are 12 days into it. 

To be honest I have had mixed emotions thus far. As the first days started I was like this is not going to work because I'm going to have to tell all of my friends I can't do anything and I'm going to live as a hermit this year! I then later found myself thinking I chose to do this how many people and families who have not chose to live this way feel the same way and my heart and feelings changed dramatically! I felt more compassion towards the situation and found my selfishness slowly going away and my desire to make those around us aware of the issues that those living in poverty face on a daily basis. 

The main thing I have learned thus far is how stressful life can be at the poverty line. Right now I am constantly adding and subtracting numbers in my head. It's like the calculator won't turn off!! If you spend money on something that wasn't budgeted then you have to figure out where in the budget  you can cut from.  For example, if we decided to go out with friends for lunch and spent $20--that' $20 that wasn't in the budget so where do you cut from--groceries, gas, etc. It's very hard to do that so in the long run it's just better to buy groceries and invite those friends over for lunch instead! I can't imagine the stress if we had children. The calculations that would be going on in your head would NEVER stop! 

OK I am totally rambling now so I'm going to get to the bottom line! I know it's pretty early right now, but the main thing I have learned thus far is it can be pretty stressful living at the poverty line and it's important to find creative ways to spend your time when living at the poverty line. 

Please feel free to share my blogs with you friends if you would like or post a response! I look forward to reading your thoughts and posting more in the future! 

Peace be with you,

 Alicia 

In The Interest of Full Disclosure

We're three days into our new year, and this post is a couple of days overdue. In the last post, we shared the inspiration and reasons for living at the poverty line. In this post, we want to make the methodology clear. 

The poverty line for two people is $15,130 a year. That divides out to $1,260.84 per month. That money must cover all of our living expenses: rent, food, utilities, auto expenses (including fuel), household goods, etc. We both have student loan debt that will not factor into the poverty level budget because that burden would be extremely difficult to take on, and because poverty tends to be cyclical, a lot impoverished people do not have access to higher education- thus they aren't saddled with those obligations either. [The monthly payments on our student loans totals $323.00- which is $3866.00/year] We have outstanding credit card debt (on a no interest card) that will be paid off by April that we will not count toward our budget. [The total amount owed is approximately $750] The other contractual obligation we have that we aren't factoring in is our gym membership, since we entered into that agreement long before this undertaking was conceived, and because its term runs through the entire year. [The monthly cost is $53.00- or $636.00/yearly]

Because the goal is to learn to live within a different set of means and not damage our credit ratings and be able to save money for a down payment on a home, we feel this is a fair compromise. Our basic method is to live on a "salary cap" of $15,130 for 2013.

My sister is getting married at the end of this month and we have already made all travel arrangements. Two more items of note: 1) I maintain an account with SmugMug.com [http://timpressions.smugmug.com/] which is set to auto renew in January. This is a business related expense that I can't eliminate, and we aren't counting this toward the "cap." 2) My cell phone died the day after Christmas and I attempted to get it replaced with a different model before the year ended. Unfortunately, Best Buy took over a week to process the replacement, and it wasn't until yesterday (1/2/13) that I was able to get a new phone. I had inquired about paying the difference between the model that died and a different phone (Samsung Galaxy Note II), and was told I could once the junk out order was processed. That cost was $120, which I was hoping to have taken care of prior to the New Year. 

At the end of each month, we will post our budget results so you can monitor our progress! Obviously we'll also post observations, insights, and maybe even some tips as we go through this year. We are definitely looking forward to learning a lot about poverty this year and hope you are too!!