Learning to live without

Retirement isn't what Glenn Mans imagined. He spends a lot of his time worrying about rising utility rates, health insurance premiums and even the price of milk.

Unlike many Americans, the 55-year-old and his wife, Judy, don't have a mortgage payment, credit card balances or student loan debt.

But the Manses, who live without cable TV and cell phones, still feel the financial pinch. He has a fixed income and his wife, a school system employee, has had her hours reduced.

Their household income isn't keeping pace with the increased cost of living expenses. So the Gainesville couple, like many other people these days, decided to make some life adjustments.

The Sun asked Glenn Mans how he and his wife are cutting back. Here's an edited transcript of his responses:

When I retired from the Florida Department of Transportation in January I paid $967.60 a month for health insurance. Then, after June 1, it went up to 1,015.98.

I was recently notified that the premium would increase to $1,127.74 (a month) starting June 1, 2009. Now that's a healthy increase.

Health insurance is basically our mortgage payment, no doubt about it. And it is really skyrocketing. In fact, our income next year will decrease slightly because of the cutback of hours at my wife's job, and the retirement cost of living is not nearly enough to keep up with just the premium increase for health insurance.

We're looking at shrinking incomes basically and very large increases, particular in health insurance.

Two years ago, our grocery bill was $60 to $80 a week. It's now $80 to $100. I would say we're shopping extremely hard right now. We've always cut coupons, but we comparison shop between stores and look at the ads very carefully now.

I'd say 50 to 60 percent of the items we buy are definitely on sale. Vegetable prices are out of sight now. My wife buys more frozen vegetables. In fact, I'm going to start a garden this coming spring.

I don't buy milk anymore. I just stopped buying it. It's a protest on my part.

In the spring, I think we were paying about $3.20 a gallon and I was getting a bit aggravated with that and then it just went up through the roof and I said that's it, no more.

It used to be $2.20 to $3 a gallon. I won't buy milk now until it goes below $3 a gallon. I'll drink water or juice. I think the best price you can get is $3.50 ... It's a lot to pay.

Since I don't have to carpool to Lake City I barely drive my truck anymore.

My wife just uses her car for work, which is about two miles away, and for driving around town.

When the gas prices started to skyrocket, it really teed me off. Every two to three weeks or so, I get $10 worth of fuel no matter what the price is. It gets us about, depending on the prices, between 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 gallons of gas and that's enough to keep us going.

We've cut down on eating out about 75 percent. We were going out probably once a week and now it's maybe once a month.

With utilities, I really looked around to see how I can cut it down. I would say our utilities, including telephone, which has gone up also, probably range between $180 and $250 a month.

What's frustrating for us is that we continue to conserve both with water and electricity - by raising our thermostat and minimizing the water use for the year and adhering to all these water restrictions and such - then (the utility companies increase) the base rates.

We love to go over to St. Augustine, and we probably have cut down on the number of trips that we would have normally made there. We just went there to celebrate our 32nd anniversary.

But there's several other times this summer and this fall we would have gone, but we just haven't done it because of price of fuel.

We live a very simple life, yet at the same time we know there are other folks who are in much, much tougher shape than we are.

But at the same time, the rate of increase in all of these prices has got us concerned for sure, so we're being extremely vigilant about what we spend on and what we're doing for the future.

It's really all about the decrease in salaries versus the increase in the cost of living, and we know we're going to experience a cost of living that's much, much higher than the minimal increase in our take home pay.