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Ha ha ha. This is a joke title.  Yes, you can live well on an Israeli salary and have plenty of leisure time if you're a member of the Knesset or chief rabbi of some town in Israel in which no one knows or cares what a chief rabbi does.  There now, I've done it, insulted both political and religious sensibilities.

Now for the rest of us. 

We all know the problem words in this title:  "well"  "Israeli" and "salaries".  If we want to live well here, we're supposed to have come with an overseas salary or pension or simply be a successful entrepreneur. (Like me. I have my own business selling wisdom.  Alas, for some reason, some people sometimes think their wisdom is better than mine.)

As for the word, "well" in the title – yes, a few million people are indeed living on Israeli salaries and yes, the banks and the credit card companies are happy because they have an interest, shall we say, in people's struggles to stay afloat every month. 

It is simply hard for hypothetical families (the HFs) with three children and two salaries of NIS 5,000 to NIS 5,500 net monthly and a social security children's subsidy of about NIS 500, adding up to about NIS 11,000, unless they have a secret trust fund. (Like me. My secret source of money is so secret that even I haven't found it yet.)

A rough monthly budget for the HFs:

* There is no such thing as a free education in Israel

** For the growing kids and, occasionally, the lady of the house and very, very rarely for the man when he needs a new pair of shoes.

*** The lady and children of the house have to look, smell and feel good; the man occasionally needs ointment for his toe fungus.

There, I've sketched out HF's budget with NIS 1,000 left over for toilet paper, sundries, and no overdraft.   But these are full-time working parents with no leeway for when the air conditioner goes kaput. As for the true children's costs including childcare fees and fun stuff like toys, iPads and keeping up with the Cohen kids,  nu savta, saba?    

Don't you like reading about other people's expenses?  You can't help comparing yourself with them, can you?   Listen, this is purely make-believe here.  

From time to time, the newspaper publishes the average salary in Israel. This is called a statistic, aka, a lie; people and politicians love to quote them.  It's somewhere just shy of NIS 9,000 a month and it's wholly inaccurate in terms of the true challenges in many homes.

I'm going to get mathematical here, so feel free to yawn or skip this part.  An average is also called a "mean".   The mean salary in Israel includes the NIS 40,000 which a Knesset member "earns", the NIS 60,000 -120,000+ monthly salaries of bank managers and corporate executives combined with lots of salaries of NIS 5,000 or less and divided by the whole to get the average.   The more meaningful statistic that I've never seen published in an Israeli news source is called "a median" or midpoint (an equal number of items falls above and below the median figure).

If you take 100 salaries of NIS 5,000 and 20 salaries of NIS 25,000 and add them up, you get a million shekels.  Divide that by 120 and you get an average salary of NIS 8,333.33.    But if you find the median / midpoint above which there are 59 salaries and below which there are 59 salaries, you get a median of NIS 5,000. (With an even number, you have two numbers at the midpoints; both of these in this example are 5,000). 

If you like statistics, you can find in the Wikipedia article on "Median Household Income" that Israel is listed at $14,055 a year for 2007, working out to a median of below NIS 5,000 a month.   Huh?  How in the world do they pay the rent and, and, and . . .?

In short, dear readers, if we can afford to be donors to charity, we are doing a lot, and I mean A LOT, better than more than half of all households in this land of miracles.  It might also mean that many households are earning unreported income, but that's a subject for a zealous tax collector or investigative journalist.

Now, let's get back to the title of this article, "How to Live Well on Israeli Salaries".  We have now established that this is a gargantuan struggle for a large percentage of the population, many of whom somehow own fancy electronic devices, take trips overseas and drive cars manufactured in the last five years (some paid for in installments with interest or fees.)  

Now, I, a fiscally conservative and self-professed savvy person, have a few things to say on this topic to anyone dealing with this existential monthly challenge. 

The first place to start for the family needing to get its spending in line with its bank account is with a record, a budget, of what's spent each month.  Take a notebook and mark down outgoing expenses over a few months and then average it (electricity costs, for instance, are quite different in January and April). This is helpful for finding out where to trim costs. 

In the case presented above, the HFs might consider cutting down on the Friday newspapers, eating out, utilities and transportation costs or, dare I say, not travel abroad every year. These families, like each of us, need a savings plan which should be included in the monthly budget.  Even if these 'parents of three' are squeaking through every month, they need to reduce spending so that they’ll be able to lay out money for their children's bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings, and their own lives in future retirement. Many salaried workers have a keren hishtalmut (in-service training fund) from which they can take a lump sum after seven years, but this is also informally dubbed a car-buying fund; hence, it's quite inadequate.  Of course, what to actually do with the money set aside as savings is the subject of untold articles, books, and conversations with taxi drivers.

Second, after you've determined the budget, you have to start chopping.  And be serious about chopping – vegetables, for example.  Eat homemade salads and drink your coffee at home.  Take a bottle of water with you every hot day. Teach your children everything from turning off unused electricity to using the library instead of needing an iPhone (my neighborhood free public library has internet access and DVDs along with its thousands of old-fashioned, low-tech reading devices).   If you need to save money to get through the month, do it relentlessly for a period of months and see how that affects your household. Maybe you'll all still be alive. 

Third, if you're fortunate enough to have them, nurture the generosity of grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I just wrote that because grandparents love and deserve phone calls and visits. On the other hand, some of you reading this are relatives who are able to bestow loving and useful gifts (hint: teenagers will smile for cash). 

Finally, if you need to, look seriously into how your household can increase its monthly income. This is a topic for another day.

And now after a grueling morning of putting finger to keyboard, I am going to follow none of my advice on frugality and go out and meet a friend at a café for a NIS 15 cup of coffee.