Everyone always talks about how much money
you can save by giving up your daily latte
and becoming your own barista.
But what if you are the barista?
Some of us turn to jobs in the service industry
because it's easy to balance those jobs with freelance work
or going to school.
But for many of us, the job is our career and what
we use to pay all our bills.
However, tipping isn't always consistent.
So there is no way to count on them
as a reliable source of income.
There is a lot of advice out there
about how you can earn more money by switching
careers or taking on more work, but that doesn't
help for the here and now.
I am no longer grinding beans and slinging drinks,
but these are the lessons I learned
to give my barista paycheck its greatest potential that I still
use today.
Number one, save that change.
Getting tipped out in cash at the end of every night
left me with a lot of loose change.
It's tempting to throw it all to the bottom of a bag,
only to eventually lose it.
But I started to make it a point to save every penny.
After each shift, I would add whatever
loose change I was doled out to a jar on my dresser.
When the jar was full, I would take it to a bank
where I could cash it out for free.
Each full jar usually ended up being around $40 or so.
Which doesn't seem groundbreaking,
but it was money I could have been literally throwing away.
And with a little effort, it added up over time.
Number two, remove temptation.
A barista paycheck is easy to spend almost all of it
as soon as the money is deposited.
What I learn to do is as soon as I
got paid is immediately remove how much I would need for bills
and send it to a separate checking account.
I did this by adding up how much money my consistent bills would
cost every month-- phone, rent, utilities, health insurance,
all the usual suspects.
I would overestimate how much those
would be, round up, divide that number by 2,
and transfer that amount into a separate account.
So I wouldn't be tempted to spend it.
So for example, if all my bills added up to be $849 a month,
I would round that amount up to $900.
Then each payday, I would move $450 to my separate account.
Eventually, because I had rounded up,
savings would slowly start to build.
When I banked enough savings, I would transfer the balance
into a high-yield savings account,
slowly building my emergency fund.
Not having the money available in my regular checking account
tricked me into thinking I had less money to spend than I did,
which forced me to be more conscientious
about my daily spending.
Number three, see if your shop can be a CSA pickup site.
CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture,
is usually a subscription service
that delivers fresh, seasonal food to members.
Farms that offer a CSA are always
in search of individuals or businesses
that can serve as a location for people to pick up their boxes.
Farms often offer benefits to host sites,
like a free box of produce.
Even split among the staff, a full box of produce
can really help you save on groceries.
Not everyone lives in an area where
CSA deliveries are available.
But if you do, they can be incredible.
I never paid for produce during CSA
season and got to bring home higher quality fruits
and vegetables than I would have been able to afford otherwise.
I would even freeze or pickle extra,
so I would have something on hand for winter.
Fresh produce, let alone local, organic produce
can be inaccessible on a low budget.
So being able to get it for free can be life changing.
Number four, open a retirement account.
Other than the low paycheck, service industry jobs
also generally don't offer any benefits.
For a lot of us, this means trying
to pay for all your health benefits and retirement savings
out of your already tight pockets.
I took too long to do it, but I eventually
opened a Roth IRA for myself.
Even if I only contributed $10 a week,
it was better than nothing.
It's so hard to try to plan for your future
when you're struggling financially in the present.
But even contributing a bit at a time
made me more aware of my future and my need
to start planning for it.
Number five, budget your night out from your tips.
I am not someone who can work all day without ever having
a night out to enjoy myself.
That being said, I try to be conscious about my spending
when I do.
What worked for me is to plan a night out around how much I
earned in tips for the day.
If we had a really busy Friday and Saturday,
and I made $60 in tips, I would go out
to an affordable restaurant or bar
and limit myself to only spending what
I had in my wallet.
If it was slow and I only earned $20,
I would have a movie night with a friend
and we would split a frozen pizza.
I wanted to have fun, but not if it
meant not being able to pay my bills or going into debt.
Working in the service industry doesn't always
seem like a financially sustainable option.
And it often isn't.
Until we work to ensure everyone earns a living wage,
we have to work with what we have
and see how far we can stretch our paychecks.