Now I’m married with a kid, but in the spirit of keeping this a space for every type of cheapskate, I’ll do a quick column on cheap singlehood. Certainly the cheapest way to be a single is to stay in the parental nest until marraige. That way you can pay for your food and keep, but save tons of money that the other singles have to spend.
The next cheapest way to be single is to have a roommate or roommates. When I was single, I had rentede the whole top floor of a house. It had three bedrooms, and I took the largest for my room and art studio and got roommates to fill the others. While this was in the early nineteen eighties, we all paid less than one hundred dollars a month to keep a nice apartment in the *good* side of town instead of each maintaining our prior lousy apartments in the rotten side of town. While I met my first "roomies" through mutual friends in the art community, I got others from discrete adds and interviews place in local college student newspapers. No "Roommates from Hell" -- thank goodness!!
With arrangements like this, you can combine resources in furniture, appliances, cooking skills to add to your life situation rather than have to do all this on one income. Just make sure any potential rommies have jobs to start with. We were all hardworking types, so the situation comedy freeloaders never happened to me. But start out without THAT sort of problem.
If you can combine meals, laundry, and other joint needs like soap and the like, you further reduce expenses. This does not however, work out so easily. I never had a roommate (or my husband for that matter) as profoundly cheap as me. So figure that your savings will be in keeping a roof over your head, and any other mutually shared joint expenses are gravy.
Figure out what expenses you would have spent living single –alone, and then save that amount having roommates reduces from your budget. This can be the beginning of the nest egg for you to buy your first home –preferably from a foreclosure sale!! As one single male friend remarked –" To heck with a fancy car, home ownership is an incredible "babe magnet."
While their are not many single and frugal sites –this can be the time for unencumbered cheapness. Once you marry and then when you have kids you will fudge on your budget to please and reward the others in your life. Single you have free run on your expenses over basic needs. You can save a lot of money in this time. You have lots of free time to make do on less, which also is harder to come by later in life. At an entry level to adulthood, you often have no one you need to impress. Your furniture, clothes and mode of transport can be very simple.
While I still try to maintain this aspect for ethical reasons, when you are young thrift tends to be rewarded while once you get older people start to make jokes about how when you die you’ll have a million bucks saved to leave to your kid and pets.
The biggest pitfall to single thrift is often meals. Make a regular dinner up and then freeze portions for later meals. While this takes time and planning when you are single you have more time to do these things. Then you can give patronizing looks to your friends with spouses and kids to distract them and throw any schedule into total disorder.
Here are some single sites for frugal living. I also recommend Amy’s comments on frugal singles in ther Tightwad Gazette Books.
Have fun. Save a lot. You’ll need it later!
Mindful Living/singles
http://www.igc.org/frugal/
Better times Org
http://www.bettertimes.org
Frugal Finnesse
http://www.frugalfinesse.com/
Single and Frugal
http://frugalliving.about.com/library/weekly/aa022001a.htm
Single Moms
http://www.singlemominspiration.com/relatedsinglemominspiration.html
Continue to check out the informative and inspirational free sample pages at these excellent frugal books.
Complete Tightwad Gazzette
The Complete Tightwad Gazzette
Declare Your Finanacial Independence
Declare Your Financial Independence
Complete Cheapskate
Mary Hunt's Complete Cheapskate
Miserly Moms
Miserly Moms
You Can Afford to Stay Home With your Kids
You can Afford to stay Home WIth your Kids
