What to do with $13 a week?

Okay, so the government is giving the lucky few an additional $13 a week in their paychecks.  I’m sitting here listening to all this whining about how lousy that is and thinking, “Oh if only I can get that too!”  I don’t know if that $13 a week will help someone in my position or not, but oh how I would love to be one of the lucky few that gets it.

It seems, however, like the only ones that will get it are those who do not need it and are only going to complain it’s not enough.  So, what can someone do with $13 a week from someone that $13 a week would REALLY mean something to?  Well, a lot actually.  If I was able to qualify for that additional $13 a week the things I can think of that could be done with it include:

NETFLIX - Subscribe to Netflix and make a “Family Movie Night”

For $4.99 a month you can have one movie at a time shipped to you, that makes it $1.24 a week, so out of your $13 a week you have $11.76 a week to get some snacks such as cookies or some popcorn to pop up for movie night.

If you watch movie on weekend and mail it back on Monday you will have next one in plenty of time to watch on Friday or Saturday and mail back Monday – that’s  a movie every week of the month, plus snacks.

Other plans with Netflix include $13.99 a month for 2 movies at a time, $16.99 for 3 at a time… right up to $47.99 for 8 movies at a time.  A plan for anyone that still leaves $4.01 a month even at the most expensive level.  ($4.01 a month into a savings account for a year is $48.12, so 8 movies a month from Netflix, plus almost $50 into your piggy bank.)

SAVINGS - How about putting all of that $13 a week into a savings account?  I know it is not what they were thinking in terms of stimulating the economy, but after that year you would have $624 to spend on something totally unnecessary for you.

Or you could get into a habit of setting $13 a week aside into savings and after 30 years you would have put $18,720.00 into a retirement account.

This is about stimulating the economy, however, so lets see what else $13 a week can do…

GAS – Let us assume that gas costs $3.00 a gallon, and your car gets 20 MPG… If my math is right…

$13 * 4 = 52 / 3 = 17.333 * 20 = 346.66

Weekly stimulus of $13, multiplied by the number of weeks in a month equals $52 a month, divided by $3 a gallon, multiplied by 20 MPG equals 346.66 miles worth of gas.

So, for $13 a week you can buy enough gas to drive an added 346 miles in a month… that is an 86 mile Sunday drive every week.

GROCERIES – In Alaska milk costs between $3.50 a gallon and $5 a gallon.  Bread varies between $1.29 and $3 and up.  Now it might not be much, but if you are buying staples for getting by week to week, then an added $13 can be a lot of money for groceries.

WEBSITES – You can get 1 Gig web hosting for $50 a year at platonicsolid.info, so each month you could pick up another website and create your own online money making empire using online advertising such as AdSense or by creating Amazon.com storefronts.  That $13 a week can easily build you a second job that you can use to make a lot more.

So… what can you do with $13 a week? I can think of a lot more ideas, but I’d like to hear what you can come up with.  So, what could you do with $13 a week?