I get a lot of inquiries from people wanting a cheap hg, or complaining that they can't afford a good one. This has made me wonder about people's finances. I was thinking that a discussion of budgets isn't appropriate in a hg tribe, but maybe it is, since money seems to be such a big barrier between people and the hgs they want. Money is usually a taboo subject, but I'm starting this thread anyway to see what happens.

When I bought my hg, I was making $8.16/hour. A local bank calculated that the "living wage" for that city was more like $9.83/hour. Whatever the bank said, I was certainly staying alive on $8.16, and even able to save up money for my hg, which I'm sure was not an expense included in that bank's living wage calculation.

First I paid off my student loan, and then I saved up money and bought my hg. Now, I wasn't supporting a family, and had no serious health problems, which I can see would have made it much harder to save up the money for my hg. But if you don't have major expenses like that, I'm really wondering what is stopping people from affording the hg of their dreams.

I recently got yet another inquiry, this time from someone on tribe, saying she needed to find a really cheap hg since she couldn't afford a good one. I looked at her blog, and she said that she'd just bought a great new dress, which sounded expensive. So this got me thinking about budgets.

In some self-help book I flipped through, it suggested writing down every single thing you spend money on, over some amount of time like a week or a month. Every tiny thing, every can of soda, every pack of gum, every cable bill, everything. Then add up each category (a spreadsheet would help) and ask yourself, "Do I really want to be spending $50/month on coffee?" or whatever. Then, say, if you have your heart set on a hg that costs $2000, you can easily calculate, "If I stop buying coffee like this, and instead put that money into my hg fund, there will be $2000 in that fund in 40 months, or 3 years and 4 months." For example.

I didn't actually do this exactly to get my hg, writing things down formally in a spreadsheet, but I did a little mental calculation whenever I considered buying some optional luxury. So, for example, if I considered buying some luxury for $5, I would do a little mental calculation, "If I bought something like this every day, in a year, that would eat up almost the entire cost of a nice hg. So, this particular luxury, if I make a habit of it, would push my hg almost a year further into the future." That was really good motivation for doing without that particular luxury that day, and the next day, and the next.

Luxuries I did without included, almost all the time: movies, restaurant meals, cable, air conditioning, a high thermostat in winter, internet access at home, new clothes (I occasionally bought some used), furniture (I slept on the floor), meat, fancy processed foods like breakfast cereals, and the more expensive fruits and vegetables. (At potlucks, I got a lot of complements on my "spinach" which was an assortment of freshly-collected edible weeds.) Luxuries I decided to continue paying for included: live shows, festivals, CDs, and chili pickle. Each person can make their own choices about which luxuries they choose to continue paying for, and which aren't as important as a hg.

It would be really cool if people posted on this thread, "I just calculated that if I pack a lunch instead of eating at restaurants, I'll have my hg in a year," or whatever.