- Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession
- 20 Ways to Live On Almost Nothing
- 15 Real Ways to Conserve (and save money!)
- Putting Old Clothes To New Use
- Ways to Live On Almost Nothing - 2
- Ways to Live On Almost Nothing - 3
- It's Better Than Cheap... It's Free!
- Ways to Live On Almost Nothing - 4
- Craig's List: Great Resource or Scary Place?
- Vacationing on a Shoestring Budget
Basic Health Maintenance: Part I
September 24th, 2007
The Situation: Desperate, as usual
Even as the many politicians line up on both sides of the party divide to try and convince the citizenry they’re the man or woman for ‘The Job’ of cleaning out the mess our current national leadership has made out of D.C. over the past 6 1/2 years, research studies, issue forums and public opinion polls are consistently tracking growing concerns about the state of health care in America. From many worsening indications, it looks like the patient is fading fast.
It’s not just the cost of health care, though at this point a significant majority of the solid middle class is just a single serious illness or accident away from bankruptcy. Rapidly increasing numbers of the insured are discovering that despite paying more for insurance every month than for the mortgage, their for-profit provider will not actually pay for health care. Most insurance companies these days pay whole departments full of people whose only job is to deny coverage. Other companies are requiring larger co-pays and deductibles, even while raising the premiums. And governments have capped the safety net systems (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP) so that they can’t accept the millions who have fallen through the cracks.
Filed under Alternatives, Education, First Aid, Health Care | Comments (7)Living on Less: The Alternative Economies
September 17th, 2007
Some people get into the economics of living on less because they don’t have much of a choice. Others get into alternatives because they believe our living-beyond-our-means lifestyles are harmful both to ourselves and to the environment. Either way, it’s good to know that there are alternatives, and plenty of room for people to invent their own levels of participation.
The ‘Money Economy’ is the one most people live in here in the modern world. It causes us to trade our lives - our time, our talents, our energy - for a certain valuation calculated in cash, and in that economy different people have different value placed on their lives. Women are still worth less than men, even in the same jobs with the same responsibilities. Women also tend to have to work more hours than men do, despite also being saddled with most of the housekeeping, child-rearing and food preparation jobs.
Minority workers are also valued poorly, as are teen workers and entry-level jobs in all sectors are notorious for paying less than it takes to live, eat, and repay student loans for that semi-worthless college degree.
Filed under Alternative economics, Barter, Economic Recession, Recycling, Thrifting | Comments (5)Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession
September 10th, 2007
The news is bad. The “housing bubble” has burst, job growth has become job loss, and the cost of credit is going nowhere but through the roof. It looks like the ’shoestring’ some of us have been living on for awhile now just got a little more frayed.
While there is lots of moaning and groaning about how bad things are getting out in the real world of trying to make do, there’s not a whole lot of good advice about how the middle class can hope to survive the crunch. I’ve surfed around a bit and found a few pages offering real help and analysis, and have linked those at the bottom of this entry.
Filed under Brand New Used, Economic Recession, Recycling, Thrifting | Comments (11)Thrifting: It’s An Art Form!
September 4th, 2007
Thrifting - shopping at secondhand stores and estate/garage sales for bargains - can do more to stretch a tight budget than shopping at Wal-Mart ever could. Even better, many secondhand outlets are charity sponsored, so the money you do spend goes to worthy causes. I am particularly fond of the smaller Catholic Charities and a couple of Kiwanis/Lions outlets in my town, but for basics and a large selection you can’t beat Goodwill and the Salvation Army.
Once you get into the spirit of thrifting it can become addictive, so do be careful to keep yourself to a set budget, only occasionally allowing yourself to make that ‘extra’ purchase because you might never find that item again if you don’t get it right now. When they say “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” they mean women, mostly. I have bought so many bargains at secondhand stores in my life that my motto is “she who dies with the most junk wins.”
Filed under Clothing, Fashion, Recycling, Thrifting | Comments (7)
