Oh, and it took me 20 minutes to figure out where you hid the PUBLISH button. Thanks for putting it in a drop down menu option where I had to click mark that yes, I wanted two columns and that was where the publish button was hidden.

Otherwise, visual and HTML versions look the same when you switch back and forth.

It still throws in tags when I’m looking at the Visual. And if I switch back and forth the buttons on top of the post for those tags in Visual disappear.

So, I know you all do a lot of hard work, and thanks for the blog, but those are my wishes for the next upgrade. (Which is usually every two weeks, right?)

I appreciate the work, but, holy crap, it’s blinding me.

According to the US Census, the average income in America is $52,000 (about) a year.

This fact may be somewhat confusing, because nearly 60% of Americans work at minimum wage level.

That means 1 in every 2 people you meet will make an average of $1000 a month.

Average income from the first statistic may make people think that everyone else is making much more than minimum wage, yet the truth is that most US workers are making $7.25 an hour. (1.5 million people make less)

If you work at full time at minimum wage, that’s $1160 a month, not including money taken out for taxes.

To sum up, $1000 is much more common than most people think.

Unfortunately, many people making minimum wage are also living in cities. Sometimes, you can either pick high rent, or a very terrible place to live, because living expenses are very, very high in certain states, like California and New York.

Misleading Government Map - $1000 a Month

To figure out how to live on $1000 a month may be a challenge for most people.

Here’s a summary of what’s essential:

Shelter

Rent is the biggest factor when it comes to living on your income. Rent and rent assistance programs can be worked out, but I usually aim for areas where a decent 1-bedroom apartment can be achieved for $400 average.

Most major cities won’t have rent this low, but minimum income may be different for those areas as well. Rent control may also be in place for cities like Los Angeles and New York. There’s a lot of people who simply can’t move for one reason or another for lower rent. Do try. If it’s more than $500 a month for your part of the rent, find out how to find a low rent apartment. (You can always pick up another job closer to your home, or work from home.)

Food

Food can be bought at discounts with coupons and sales. Good wholesome food can also be purchased on low income.

Some are living on $1 a day (per person) for food.

Utilities

This is where going green is a good thing, in the long run. Lights and water are the bills to be paid, so pay those first. If you pay them on time, fees won’t accumulate. I have a sister who would let the bill go until the very last “We’ll turn your water off” moment and then pay a sizable late fee.

If your utilities are more than $150 a month (per one person income), start turning off lights, unplug your TV and check your usage. Make sure the bill is accurate.

Other Essentials

Clothes can be purchased from Goodwill, Walmart and thrift shops. (I’ll buy from Walmart. Form over function.) With appropriate savings,

Cars bought used are much, much cheaper than buying a new car. You pay much less on car insurance when you own your car completely, and paying less for a car in the long run by buying used makes for more monthly income in your pocket.

Medications and medical care are the real tricky. This includes dental insurance and life insurance. Use an agent to determine what you need. You may have to put more money into savings to cover the deductibles.

However, even with all of these factors in place, it can be hard and stressful to figure out a budget and live off of low income. It is very, very important to work on a budget, use utilities like Mint.com (free) to keep track of your expenses. If you don’t know how to do it, take a class, read a book, learn how.

Because that’s where you are when you’re procrastinating. Cleaning your kitchen floor. Or emptying the litter box. Or walking the dog. I bet there’s a blog post or novel to be written while you’re reading this right now.

I know I’ve got a novel to finish up while I’m writing this, but I’ll write it anyway just to save you.

Here’s one secret way Mr. Procrastination likes to interrupt you in disguise. You think you are working, but really you’re just avoiding the work. That is: reading about how to or why to or what to do at your job, when you already know how to do it.

Here’s how it works. You’ve got three papers to write. You go online and read up on how to write a paper, then read some forums on how other people have finished their papers. Then you read horror stories about how one person wrote a paper, and the teacher hated it, and told him to do it a different way. Soon, you’re an expert on writing a paper, without having started your own.

It’s natural to want to study something you aren’t successful yet at, only because of uncertainty. Are you really doing this right? Is this how I find success? Without a guide, as most don’t have one, we crumble under the weight of our own doubts, and then seek out answers. Unfortunately we don’t get answers, not the ones we want. What we want is confidence and a clear path. No one can provide it for you. They can only provide ideas. Unless you’re willing to fork over money for an expert to walk you through a process (most can’t afford this) then you’ll have to do this yourself.

Now there are exceptions. For example, I’m taking Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course. Now, this is an example of paying for guidance. Maybe you don’t know how to ride a horse, so you pay an instructor. You don’t know how to play piano, so you pay for lessons, buy a book or some videos to help you along.

There’s nothing wrong with looking for answers, as long as you are finding answers and it requires your active participation, not sitting on the sidelines.

I often hate reading magazines. No offence, magazine writers, and you may be the exception, but magazines carry a lot of fluff. Next time you are in a check out lane at the grocery store, look at the cover of Women’s World Magazine, as an example. If you look every month, there’s always a column about how to lose weight, usually about 20 to 30 pounds, doing something that sounds so simple, like drinking water, walking, etc. (Notice off to the right or left there may be a picture of cupcakes. It’s too pull at different emotions so you’re more likely to buy the magazine.) If you read those articles, it tells you everything you probably already know about how to lose weight. If you walk every day, eat right, and drink water, you’ll lose the pounds. It’s no secret formula. They just talk to a different doctor who put it in a different concept, but the theory is still the same.

I call it fluff. It’s stuff you already know wrapped up in a different package.

But it’s so easy to pick up a magazine that promises to solve a problem for you. It’s the same thing with looking for answers online, while procrastinating about your career or problems. You’ll look for answers, often, but end up looking at concepts and ideas, and while great in theory, the only real solution is to test, and try.

Off to do my novel revision. What were you procrastinating while reading this?

Us: Smaller than a grain?

Client: What if we made it nano size?

Us: We already get it in micro size. That’s smaller than we need for the project.

Client: But what if we made it smaller?

Us: Why would you want to?

Client: Nano is hot right now.

Us: …

Client: And can you get it done by Tuesday? We know no one has invented it yet and it may be impossible to find a manufacturer, but it’ll really impress our bosses if we can show him some nano glow-y dust at the next board meeting.

Us: Do you want it gift wrapped?

Client: If you can do it under budget, it’d be super sweet.

So yesterday I spent part of the day swimming and picked up a keyboard from the Cajun’s parents who were kind enough to let me borrow one from them. I start piano lessons at school when the semester starts. Nothing like piano to bang on when you’re feeling frustrated.

This morning, I’ve got a better sense of money and issues. The dentist office, assuming I was going to get the credit card they wanted me to get, racked up a $10k bill. I didn’t, and am looking for insurance options. There’s no way I’ll go into $10k+ debt with high interest payments now because a dentist office says I should.

I may be looking for a different dentist that doesn’t try to tell me right off the highest number they think they can get for me from a credit line.

There’s a local insurance office that has a prepaid plan that seems reasonable. With $5 exams, no charge for x-rays, and crowns at $400, that seems much more reasonable. As a freelancer, I may not have $10k lying around in an account, but I certainly can come up with $400.

With my freelance work, I can dig up $400 by working a few more hours in one week. Maybe a handful of articles and viola, extra money for the dentist.

And maybe I’ll find a dentist that doesn’t poke the bejesus out of my gums until they hurt? Maybe.

I didn’t get the credit card. I told them I was looking into some insurance options for dental and left.

For the first time in 10 years, I felt inefficent. My income wasn’t good enough to pay for my teeth to be repaired. I went home and wondered what it was like to have a salary. Dental insurance. A 401K. All the things “normal people” get but I’ve never had the luxury of. I cried that night because I felt I couldn’t support myself as well as I would like. I felt like I didn’t make enough money, working part time. for $15 an hour.

I am going to school in the fall to learn physics. I’m 29, have been working from home for 10 years as a writer and doing other part time work. I’ve lived on very low income for many years just for the beauty of simplicity and only needing to work part time hours to live the life I want. Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe I’ve been burned by a few well paying clients and now I don’t want the burn and hassle of dealing with clients that will pay me more, so I stick with content mills and other low paying hourly jobs. (OK, $15 an hour isn’t low pay I guess, but when you freelance, and you don’t have health insurance, it’s low.)

I feel the same this morning, but now looking for answers from career coaches online and from other people willing to share their advice and ideas. I’m a problem solver, not a moper. However, today I can’t seem to figure out a solution.

I’m already applying to dental insurance to help pay for some dental work. The problem for that is OK, however, I think my bigger problem is, my bravado for working as a freelancer is squashing when I realize I’m ineffecient right now. My skills are par, my drive to seek better paying clients are lingering.

So here’s some empathy for people who sometimes feel inefficent when they are living a low income life. Sometimes, it sucks because you feel you can’t pay for things you need that other people get when they have a career with benefits. It’s not being part of the ‘normalcy’ that everyone else takes forgranted.

But I still get to sleep in most weekdays.

Rich people are not happy people. Let me rephrase that, rich people aren’t happy because they have money. In fact, if a person is a miserable miser, just because he’s a rich miserable miser doesn’t make him happier. The more you have, the more you have to worry about.

What’s the secret to being happy if money can’t get it for you? And why are we so obsessed with having more money if it isn’t worth having the majority of it?

Even as many people talk about it, most still strive to work toward savings and building wealth. Me too! I still work (part time), but I hope to go beyond simple need for money and use my free time to improve the lives of others and to be a benefit of some sort.

Passion, excitement, drive, creativity. Those make me happy, and I don’t have to buy them. Is money all that much fun? What would you rather be doing?

And why aren’t we chasing fun and fulfillment more when we find a stabability of home and income?

Maybe you can share your favorite activities. Mine? I love spending time with the Cajun, the kids. I love my experimental cooking, inventing, reading, working on my novels, watching incredible fantasy stories and so much more to list. Very few of the things I love cost much more than a few spare dollars a month. Most involve me being creative, more than anything else.

What’s does your happiness look like? Is it experiences or materalistic?

When you are trying to live on part time income, or perhaps you just want to live on less income than what you earn and put the rest into savings, living in a low rent apartment or home will often be an ideal situation. Imagine having a decent apartment for only $400, or even less. Here’s how.

1. Use Craig’s List and local classified newspapers to get an idea of rental properties available. My favorite source is Craig’s List, but you may have a local classified section (we in Lafayette, LA have Quik Quarter classifieds, yours may be different) and you should be picking those classifieds up. It’ll give you a price range to work with.

2. Be ready to move. Hopefully, you’re moving closer to work. However, if that’s not possible because rent is high, look for an easy commute and cheap apartments. Maybe consider a work at home job where you don’t have to commute, and then you can live wherever you want.

3. Unless you really love apartment complexes, avoid them. I try to avoid the high priced cardboard boxes, myself.

4. Look for individuals, not companies, renting FROGs (finished rooms over garage), duplexes, even homes. The home the Cajun and I rent now costs $900 a month, about the same as we were paying when we were living separately ($450 each). Our old apartments and this new house are within a mile of each other.

5. College towns tend to have safe neighborhoods and cheap rent.

6. When you can’t live in town, consider outside of town. I once rented a very nice three bedroom home with a half acre of yard for $400 a month. Some in the area were being rented for much, much cheaper.

7. Get creative. Try Caretaker.org or other organizations where you may find a house sitting, care taking position of some sort. I’ve lived in Arizona, New Mexico and other locations as a care taker. I received free rent in exchange for about 10 – 20 hours worth of chores a week. Rent included all utilities, and a great experience!

8. Avoid living arrangements with family and friends when possible. It may seem like a nice opportunity to utilize Aunt Betty’s spare rooms, but money agreements between family and friends usually do more harm than good. Trust me.

9. Ask for long term leases in exchange for lower rent. When we moved into the house we live in now, we signed a year lease instead of the offered six month lease. In exchange, we got $100 a month taken off of rent. Just ask, “If we signed a longer lease, would you be willing to lower the monthly rent fee?”

10. Get ready to drive. Some of the best deals aren’t published in newspapers. People will place “For Rent” signs outside of places they want to rent. In college towns, scouring neighborhoods like this is the best way to find an apartment. Also, talk with people, at the college, at bars, etc. You can get great recommendations simply by talking to people. I talked to a hotel manager once when I moved to Folly Beach, SC, and she not only told me where to find a cheaper apartment, she also offered me a job!

However there’s a reason, I think, why people love ideas and hate them at the same time.

When I look for advice online, I often search for something specific, such as time management, and come across articles of ideas, tips and theories. However, application is often something that is missing. As writers/bloggers/idealists, we aren’t able to help you with individual reality needs. The reason, simply, is because every individual is different, and writers try to write in terms of ‘broadest audience possible‘.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’d like to change things up a little bit. I can’t change the world with thoughts or ideas, but I thought I’d try something different. I’d like to help out individuals, where possible. I’d like to give as specific of information, as much as possible.

Here’s how it works, I’m working on a “Living on Low Income” work-book, something that will allow people to evaluate their individual income and needs and desires and then simplify it. They should be able to put a focus on goals and come out with a plan that will work for them.

I’ll use specific information and examples from my own life, posting information here and I’d like to invite others, either posting here with me or on your own blog, to share your specific answers to specific problems.

For example, when I needed to save some time throughout my day, because unfortunately they won’t let me have 36 hour days, I did away with small things, like watching the news and YouTube videos on a regular basis. I gave up looking for new clients for my writing business and now focus on a couple of content mills and other part-time income.

These are specific ideas that worked for me. I hope others may share more direct answers, rather than broad strokes of ideas.

For this reason, I hope people will call me out on generalities from now on. For every idea I give, I’d like to give a few specifics where practical application has been performed on my part that proves my idea has validity. Ask questions, tell me your story and then share with me where you’d like additional help.

I’d like to be able to work with others on what they need. Is there anything that perhaps I should address in a “Living on Low Income” work book that anyone would like to see or tools they would like to utilize?

To begin, someone wanted to learn how to write well. We’ll name him Bob. Bob does other kinds of work, and he’s interested in learning to write well and taking up some part time writing work. He explained that he’s interested in developing a skill and to look better to other employers, not because he really wants to be published. He wants to learn to write well enough, to understand where his grammar malfunctions are, etc. He wants some part time gigs writing to help him to learn in a real world interface, and with the Internet and the need for writers for it, there’s plenty of room for one more who is interested.

So Bob asked for some suggestions for books on writing in order to improve his writing skills.

Someone else, we’ll call him Toodles, states that Bob should really think hard about learning how to write. Toodles explains that, “Writers work hard to do their job, and it bristles our feathers when we hear someone else thinks he can do our job.” Toodles has an issue with someone who currently writes poorly to reconsider becoming professionally published. “Editors don’t have time to deal with poor quality writers.”

Woah, breux! Back up a little bit.

1. Don’t tell people what they can’t do. If Bob wants to send a crappy article to the New York Times, let him if that’s what he really wants to do.

2. He didn’t ask to be published, he asked for help on learning to write well.

3. Since when did learning how to write well have anything to do with wanting to be a professionally published writer?

Writing is not a talent people are born with. Some love it, others don’t. If Bob wants to learn a little bit of grammar and spelling I am not about to snub my nose and tell him to consider another line of work because he’s just not a gifted writer.

I didn’t know when I was younger how to write well, and I still make mistakes, but I’ve been published, multiple times, along with desires for more in the world of fiction.

It totally reminds me of one nitwit who wrote in to Miss Snark. I wanted to share the post with you. Forgive me, Miss Snark, for copying the whole thing, but I hope it’s justified enough.

Nitwit of the Day

First of all, whoever keeps saying I heart Miss Snark, please stop it.

Secondly, Miss Snark sees fit to conclude her brief encyclical with the following, somewhat over-sentimentalized bit of advice: “If it’s never published, so be it. YOU will have loved, understood, empathized, prayed, rejoiced and enjoyed. In the end, that’s all that matters.” Rubbish! Every serious writer worth his or her salt desires publication – craves understanding readers – dreams about affecting perhaps even influencing others with their original view of the world — in short, it certainly does matter. A lot. What’s the point of suffering through the act of creation if you truly believe that publication doesn’t matter? Far better, then, to just give up now chuck your manuscripts under the bed or into the fire.

First of all, anyone who wants to heart Miss Snark is welcome to do so.

Second, if you don’t like encouragement when things aren’t going well, take your little icicle ass off to someone else’s blog. This blog is not about telling writers to give up. This blog is about learning about how I, as an agent, look at work; how the publishing industry works; and the fact that writing is something I value. I would no more tell someone to give up writing cause it wouldn’t sell than I would tell my five foot ten nephew to stop playing basketball cause he’ll never make the NBA. The things he learns playing on the team will stand him in good stead for the rest of his life. Learning to write; and regular writing, can have a lot of value outside the marketplace. Just for starters it makes you a better reader, and a consumer of books..all things I think are just fine and dandy.

If the only reason you want to write is to impress and influence other people, I suggest you apply to work in the sign-making department of the MTA. Eight million people will read your words daily, and they’ll talk about it a lot. Oh, and here’s an extra metro card for your ego. I don’t think it will all fit through just one rotation of the turnstile.

Sentimental indeed. F off and die.