Here’s the thing, dear reader: for me, spending no money is easy (so is spending all the money in the world). The stickier wicket is spending a predetermined and deliberately small amount of money like, say, $50 a week and still having a New York life. It’s not that I have a spending problem—having written this column for Classical Singer over the last two years, I try to practice it like I preach it. But I am a freelancer living in one of the most expensive cities in the country, which indicates an inherent level of financial irresponsibility. True, my credit card balance is under $500, I make regular payments on my student loans, and I have never bounced a check to my landlord, AT&T, Time Warner, or ConEd. And I even generally have a bit in savings (at least when it’s not that time of year when I have to pay taxes).
There’s a level of fiscal stability that goes beyond surviving—and that’s the level you reach when you can do things like take $50 and make it last a week, especially in a high-cost city like New York. So with this special issue of CS, I thought I would set myself up with the challenge: one Ulysses S. Grant flash card, seven days. I’d factor out my weekly charges for rent and utilities, which equal about $221 and would, therefore, make my comparatively measly $50 seem moot. Everything else, however—from public transportation to my private therapy sessions—is free game.
Monday
I have been traveling over the weekend and I get back to New York Sunday evening and feel pretty wiped out financially speaking, as one often does when you’re forced to pay $7 for a bottle of water in the airport. It’s not the worst way to start a week of monetary purging, so I feel pretty confident about this whole experiment—until I realize my MetroCard has expired. Normally I advocate unlimited cards if you’re making at least one round trip each day. However, with the recent MTA fare hikes in New York, a monthly MetroCard now costs a staggering $104, and a weekly pass is not much better at $29. Because I’m traveling within the next two weeks and also have a cold that I assume will keep me home at least one day this week, I sink $20 into a regular pay-per-ride MetroCard. At $2.50 a pop, I have eight rides to last me seven days—and I make a mental note to hold onto an extra $5, just in case.
One of the other biggest expenditures that New Yorkers have to contend with each week is lunch. We all try to be virtuous and bring something from home, but when most New York kitchens are used for storage rather than cooking, taking the money we’d put in for kitchen tools and weekly groceries seems better off spent at Starbucks and Pret a Manger. My husband is a fan of the all-veg $5 foot-longs at Subway, parsing one out over two days. But I take advantage of his kitchen prowess and bring in some leftovers from the Sunday dinner he cooked up and have that for lunch at my office.
I leave work early enough to walk from SoHo to Chelsea to save myself a MetroCard swipe. After telling my therapist about this article, she agrees to give me a free session in exchange for editing one of her papers, thereby saving me another $35. (Side note: I found my shrink on therapists.psychologytoday.com, where you can sort local analysts by price.)
Getting home at around 8:30 p.m. after a full day of work leaves me totally drained (even in perfect health) and in no mood to cook. Instead of opening up SeamlessWeb.com for easy takeout, I scour my cupboards and realize I have a pretty solid stash of Amy’s Soups. I heat up some No Chicken Noodle in less time than it would take me to order takeout. Best part? I have enough left over for lunch the next day.
Tuesday
As I anticipated, I need a day off. When I’m feeling sick, my inclination is to go to Duane Reade or CVS and buy every cold and sinus product I can think of. The attempt to throw money at the problem usually backfires as I end up using only half of what I get, and even then it’s half-hearted. “It’s tempting to try the latest remedy,” writes MayoClinic.com of colds. “But the best thing you can do is take care of yourself. Rest, drink fluids, and keep the air around you moist.” Mayo Clinic’s survey of cold remedies, both effective and noneffective, argues that taking Vitamin C and echinacea are not the most effective remedies. It concedes that Vitamin C can help shorten symptoms, but that’s not enough to make me spend $12 on Emergen-C.
Instead, I keep refilling a large glass of water from my Brita filter and also make use of my neti pot. I run out of saline packets after two rounds, but find out that mixing ¼ teaspoon of salt with ¼ teaspoon of baking soda and 8 ounces of water is all you need for clearing nasal cavities. Knowing that I can get over a minor illness without spending a dime makes me feel instantly better.
Wednesday
I have an in-person interview near Lincoln Center, which continues to become a culinary wasteland, especially for cheap eats. When someone says, “Where should we meet?” I’m often seized by a panic: Le Pain Quotidien and the Rubenstein Atrium are both too crowded for an audible conversation (especially on playback with my digital recorder), and camps like Fiorello’s are often so expensive they negate the fee I would get for the resulting article. Our meeting is fortunately after the lunch rush, however, so we head toward 9th Avenue for bottomless coffee at the Olympic Flame Diner. Two cups cost just over $3. Since our waiter was so cool with us occupying a table for nearly half an hour and cheaping out on ordering, I round the tip up to $5.
When it comes to actual food, I remember an article I read in the New York Times about two years ago called “Cooking without Shopping.” Started by the eGullet website, the premise as they lay it out is that “most middle-class Americans have enough crap in their cupboards and freezers to survive for ages without taking on any new ingredients.” I decide to test this theory out for myself, looking beyond my low-sodium soup cans for sustenance. There’s a bag of Trader Joe’s vegetable pot stickers in my freezer, so I whip up five of those in the microwave along with some brown rice for lunch. For dinner I mix the rest of the rice with some yams and onions from my vegetable drawer.
Thursday
I pry myself out of bed at a ridiculously early hour to take advantage of the donation-based class at my local yoga studio, Yoga Agora in Astoria. Normally their classes are already a steal at $5, but with every Washington counting this week, I opt to shell out $1 for an hour-long 7 a.m. class (they also offer pay-what-you-can classes daily from the much more reasonable hour of 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.).
My husband IMs me at work with a tempting proposition: he knows I’m on a regulated budget but is willing to pay for my share of dinner if I meet him at the East Village diner Veselka. Feeling a resurgence of appetite after eating pretty light over the last few days thanks to my sinus cold, I agree before realizing this would add another trip onto my MetroCard between going to work and going home. I figure, however, if I can walk from SoHo to Chelsea, walking from SoHo to St. Mark’s is nothing. I make it there in less time than Google Maps says it would have taken to travel by train and realize I have literally measured the distance I will go for free pierogi (it’s a paltry 1.3 miles).
Friday
Another crazy (yet rewarding) day at work leaves me with an insatiable sugar craving toward late afternoon. As if by some miracle, it’s our VP’s birthday and there is not only chocolate cake, but homemade chocolate cake. I take this as a sign that I can guiltlessly pick up a quick bite to eat in between racing from the office to a show I’m reviewing at Carnegie Hall. Argo Tea is a pretty reliable standby on par with Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, and while I usually get a tea and a pretty fantastic blueberry muffin from them, I decide to go savory with a spinach quiche. Big mistake. It tastes like melted plastic and costs $6. I eat a few bites of it out of spite and because the taste of my wasted dinner is still better than the taste of throwing out almost $10. There’s only so much I can take, though. Fortunately, Riccardo Muti conducting Verdi is a reasonable alternative to eating, especially when the ticket is a free press seat. It’s even worth the extra subway ride home—and the additional $10 I put on my MetroCard.
Saturday
We’ve been in the middle of a massive spring clean at our apartment, and part of that has been weeding out the unwanted books from our collection. My husband and I set out early in the day to beat the rain and unload a generous portion of our library off at the Strand. The prospect of rolling two suitcases of hardcovers and paperbacks to our above-ground subway station in Queens with rain clouds looming overhead makes taking a cab to Union Square tempting. We persevere, however, in order to maximize the profit we get on our buyback.
The Strand doesn’t accept everything, but we still make a cool $70 and decide to go down to Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn. All seats there are $7 for the first show of the day up until 2 p.m. on weekends (and all shows up until 5 p.m. on weekdays) and we get our indie fix with Win Win. En route, I grab a $1 pack of Twizzlers from a nearby candy stand. That evening, we visit our friends in the neighborhood and convince them to spend a rainy Saturday evening making chili from ingredients found in their pantry and playing gin rummy. They even loan us an extra umbrella so that we get home reasonably dry without springing for a cab.
Sunday
With my $50 completely exhausted and with technically one day still left, I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t stretch my dollars further. It is, however, a nice day out. And while I live in Queens and have to cover the Opera News awards at the Plaza Hotel this evening, it’s sunny enough that I could walk across the 59th Street Bridge over to 5th Avenue and save myself from adding more money to my MetroCard. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.
