Recent comments

I happened to have been reworking our budget this morning. Even if we ditched cable, cell phones and the central air unit it would not compare to the huge dent in our income from healthcare, gas and food.

These three things take a far larger chunk out of our budget than the nice optional things do.
Gas in mandatory most places. We did look at where we could potentially move to allow us to use one car. We really could not find one. Even neighborhoods that were near shopping areas. The homes would be maybe walking distance to a grocery but not walking distance to much of anything else. The current urban planning here has bumped housing further and further from needed services. We also have horribly inept public transit. It would take hours to make a ten minute drive.
Food costs, there is only so much you can do to cut back, scrimp, make it yourself before you just can't cut food costs anymore.
Don't even get me started on healthcare. Our insurance alone is taking the second largest cut out of our monthly budget, just behind our mortgage. That's before you start paying copays, coinsurance and other out of pocket costs.
The reality is that wages don't meet up to even those basic expenses people would have had in the 50's.

@ Nan Abrams

In the 1950s no one would have imagined that a single person would rent an apartment. (Maybe a confirmed bachelor with a good income....) A single person would live at home (if at all possible), rent a room in a rooming house, or share an apartment with several other people.

Admittedly, that does put us back at the point of needing several incomes to provide an adequate standard of living, but having roommates is not quite the same thing has having a second working spouse.

One of the really positive changes between now and the 1950s (and even 1960s) is the reduction (not, sadly, elimination) of social pressures and legal strictures against women in the workforce. There are many positive reasons to work--helping people, producing something of value, being part of a community of people in a common endeavor--totally aside from the income that's brought in.

I would never discourage people from doing work that they thought was worth doing.

Are you serious?? Go read a book and learn something instead of watching movies all the time if your too dumb to understand whats going on.

I am the one who earns the second income (no health insurance, also the smaller income) in our household. I definitely would rather do what I do, and spend a little more on eating out, have someone come in every other week to clean, etc., than to do those things myself. But I also think that I'm in that rare 5-10% of people who enjoys what they do, and I'm self-employed.

It's definitely the health insurance issue, though, that drives me to work and save. I cannot find work I like that would provide health insurance, and so if anything happens to my husband's job, we'll be paying for his health insurance out of unemployment and my smaller income until he finds a new job.

But haven't you ever heard the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper? 

A little frugality goes a long way.

Too true! Overwhelmingly, it seems to be that credit enables so many to live so far beyond their means. Many (most?) of our friends are buried so far in debt that they can't see the light of day.

MLW & I live in a nice home, but it's tiny & quite modest by most of our friends' standards. We have two cars but both were bought with cash and are over 4 years old - and the combined cost of the two cars is less than many people spend on a single car today.

The standard of living that we've adopted since the day we were married 11 years ago is one that most of our friends would NEVER consider stooping to, yet we're comfortable, well-clothed, and carry no outstanding credit debt. We're darned proud of our frugality and certainly don't feel downtrodden because we choose to live affordably.

Credit is the devil.

What do you mean *legitimate* reasons? I consider survival to be just as legitimate a reason to discuss this topic than any reason bankers, lawyers, and the rest of them may have. Just because you choose not to surrender your life and wealth to the (by the way) criminal US government does not make money laundering immoral in any way.

You mention briefly about declaring your income and taxes, etc.. if you're itching for an article, why not write about the biggest 'tax' scam carried out by the US Government?

http://www.w3f.com/patriots/c-or-f.html

...while you're at it, you may want to write about another scam, remember the gold confiscation of 1933 ? as if 'stealing' part of your wages wasn't enough , now they made it law for you to 'give up' your personal stash of gold.

http://www.blanchardonline.com/beru/confiscation_1933.php

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/willis112804.html

Talk about 'real' issues, make your readers aware.

- not alone -

I think your problem, Nora, is that you look too young to be retired.  =) 

Next, no one here should need a financial planner. People that are reading these personal finance blogs are already ahead of the game.

On behalf of our readers, I'd like to thank you for thinking so highly of us!  Of course many of our readers are financially savvy enough to handle their own investments.  But a lot of our readers are also beginners who may be well served by going to a financial planner.

I was going to add that I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take a butcher's word for it.  Then I remembered Chris Farley is dead, and that made me kind of sad. 

A little frugality goes a long way.

This was indeed true for my husband and I. At the end of March, I quit my full-time job in order to become a full-time student. My husband and I worked out a budget, relocated to a smaller apartment to save $300 a month, and kept an eye on where the money went. Since I quit my job, we haven't noticed much difference in the way we live and in fact, have managed to place even more money into savings than we ever did while we both worked full time. We don't eat like poor students and we usually have enough left over to pick up extras like a nice wine or an occasional dinner out.

The above comments made a good point about health care though. Without insurance through my husband, I would not have quit my job.

COLD PACK-I do the same thing as Lorna, except what I've done is take an unopened bag of rice & put it in another ziplock bag and then in the freezer. I can't sew & the plastic bag ensures the rice won't spill out. I've also used a bag of dried beans & that worked as well.

It holds the cold amazingly well.