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New Yorkers finding ways to save

By Matthew Sweeney | msweeney@am-ny.com

6:09 PM EDT, May 19, 2008

Amanda Green, 24, has had to cut back on her lifestyle in order to make ends meet. Photo taken on May 8, 2008 in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. (Dennis W. Ho / May 19, 2008)

Ask most New Yorkers how they're coping with the sagging economy and escalating prices and listen to a litany of small ways to save.

"Now I skip breakfast," said Barbara Smith, 47, a home health aide from the Bronx.

Smith, who makes about $380 a week, has two sons, one of whom just finished college.

"We have less chicken and more vegetables," she said of their meals.

Other New Yorkers say they are increasingly switching to public transportation to dodge the high gas prices, unplugging electronics to decrease utility bills, and bringing lunch to work instead of ordering out to save pennies. Throughout the five boroughs, New Yorkers are finding creative ways to cut back spending on even the basics.

"I have to go to the fast food places that have a 99 cent menu," said Bronx resident, Juan Martinez, 29.

Carmen Henry said she recently bought energy saving lights bulbs for the apartment on West 143rd Street she shares with her mother and two grown sons.

She said she is always reminding her two grown children to keep the lights turned off longer and unplug the DVD player and their cell phone chargers.

"Even last night, I had to go and turn off my son's television because he was fast asleep with it on," Henry said.

The worst of it is that there seems to be no immediate relief in sight from the soaring costs of living in New York City.

Records prices for commodities like oil, wheat, corn, and soybeans have pushed up food prices at a dizzying pace.

"It has to be a perfect storm to see prices for corn, soybeans, and wheat all go up to this extent," Ephraim Leibtag, an economist with U.S.Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

Gasoline is one of the factors driving the dramatic increases in food prices. Nationally, in the last month, as gasoline topped $4 a gallon, food prices rose 0.9 percent, the greatest single increase in almost 20 years, according to the Consumer Price Index.

"I don't think at the retail level it's all been passed on," Leibtag said.

It's possible, he said, that Americans will simply have to adjust to the $4 gallon of gas and the higher food prices that come with it.

Sean Gonzalez, 22, who makes about $40,000 at his retail management job, drives less often into the city from Queens.

"Now it's just Friday or Saturday," he said. "That's a big change."

Robert Williams, 54, a salesman from South Jamaica, meanwhile, is cutting back on food costs.

"On a good day I'll make my own lunch and breakfast," he said.

Actor and choreographer Dean Badolato, who is in his 50s, said he was baffled when a dozen eggs at a Hells Kitchen farmers market jumped from $1.29 a dozen to $2.49, then suddenly fell to $1.79.

"What can you do?" Badolato said. "You just don't buy as many eggs. It's like the stock market. It's no different."