OCR Text |
Show By Thomas Collins LIFE ON $200 A MONTH HOW TO MANAGE IT WHAT follows here will be of some satisfaction to people who like to scold me. Always they're asking how a couple can live In retirement on $200 a month. And they scotT at the notion that it can be done. This is intended to spell the matter out. Couples who retire on $200 a month will spend, in the main, about $2.50 a day for food or $75 a month. They will spend about $50 for housing, and about $8 for utilities. The remaining $67 they will spend by ear a little this month for clothes, hairpins, and razor blades; a little next month for doctors and pills, and maybe a movie. These figures are for people with no property or Investments, and who live in rented city quarters. quar-ters. Most economic studies show that living costs will vary between different parts of the country, and between big cities and small cities. These studies usually deal with families; Retired couples on a small income as best I can determine de-termine it live about as cheaply In one place as another. Except that in some rural areas in the southern states they can live on $200 a month and have a bank account. It's a low standard, but it's living. A budget for a retired couple doesn't make much sense. The reason it doesn't is that there is such a wide range in the tastes, customs and circumstances of every couple. Her is a rundown of the range: FOOD. This Is the biggest item in the budget And the best way to reduce it is to produce some of your food with your own hands. You can do this by hunting, by fishing, and by planting a garden. Any of these can reduce the $2.50 a day spent for food, and give extra money for housing or hairpins. A couple that drinks $1.50 worth of coffee a week, and goes for steaks Instead of vegetables will not get by on $2.50 a day and thus will have to find housing for maybe $40 a month, or put patches on clothes. A couple that chooses to buy packaged convenience foods, instead of stringing the beans themselves, probably will have to do the same. On the dther hand, the couple that can remain healthy on two meals a day instead of three can pay $60 or $70 a month for housing. HOUSING. The couple must balance bal-ance its desires in housing and type of neighborhood against its desires in food, always keeping about $50 flexible' to apply where other needs arise. CLOTHING. The concern of a couple over the appearance they make to other people is the major factor here and each person must assess his own vanity. Other factors are the wife's talents tal-ents in keeping clothes in repair, and the couple's habits in taking ' care of clothes. LOCATION. Strictly on the basis of economics a couple can get by about as well on $200 a month in a big city in the North as it can in a small city in the South because of the wider choice in bousing. |