Survive the ‘08 Meltdown: Part 2

Food: Eating What You Can Get

World markets continue to take dramatic hits and the Dow has fallen below 10,000 for the first time in four years. Seems a lot of banks and other players are unhappy with the trillion dollar bailout package passed last Friday because it limits their personal golden parachutes and stock option scams. Awwww. Should we call the waaaaambulance for these whiners? Nope. If they didn’t need our money they shouldn’t have begged for a handout in the first place. In the meantime, regular people are having a much harder time putting food on the table as prices rise dramatically and more and more find themselves out of work. This post is a beginner’s primer on how to get food if you can’t afford it.

Before I get to the list of good links readers may find helpful depending on their particular situations, readers should know that many states, such as the one where I live (NC) have budgetary caps on how much relief in the form of food stamps they are able to provide. This can mean that even as increasing numbers of people find themselves going hungry, fewer people will have access to the standard governmental relief. Thus more people must turn to other providers. A good overview of those providers supported by the USDA commodity program is provided at Amber Waves. If your family is in danger of ‘food insecurity’ be sure to familiarize yourself with emergency providers in your area. Cities generally have soup kitchens, places where you can go for a hot meal. Most smaller cities and many towns or counties also have food banks, check into what you will need to provide to qualify.

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Survive the ‘08 Meltdown: Part 1

Roadblocks and Interference

As Congress meets today and tomorrow to grill the principals before Friday’s vote on the $700 billion “emergency” Wall Street bailout plan (which has been in the works for months but strategically dumped on us all as an “emergency”), oil companies have instituted “rolling shortages” all over the Southeast. Some areas have been out of gas for more than a week and a half, and the situation is not expected to ease until Monday at the latest. Some gas – a single tanker at a time – is being delivered to stations along the Interstates and is being strictly rationed unless it’s diesel, one station per county.

State police are managing the gas lines to prevent violence, which did break out last week in the Nashville, Tennessee area when people started cutting in line. Food prices are rising so fast the stock boys at the grocery stores can’t mark up the goods fast enough, and the specter of looming fuel shortages for winter heat – or price increases that will force people to do without – is beginning to look very scary.

Bailout or no bailout – and despite the launch of FBI investigations of Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG – the United States may well be fully in the clutches of major economic depression before winter even hits. Whether or not that translates to global recession isn’t much of an issue to regular people, as we here in our own homes wonder how we will survive. This post and several following posts in a new series will take a look at the steps citizens should take as soon as possible to ensure their families will make it through the next 6 months. If depression goes on longer than that, additional strategies will be necessary, some already compiled as series in this blog and available under the “Our Most Popular” header on the left side of the page.

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Roundup: Those Silly Financial Advisors

As the economy continues to slide ever deeper into recession – dragging the entire civilized world along with it in one spectacular leap into the great oil scam abyss – we get the mainstream media’s too-cute economic pundits telling us things designed to make us laugh out loud. Which could actually be semi-useful, considering how many neurosciencey-type researchers keep telling us how much humor can help us conquer stress and depression and other unavoidable side-effects of living in interesting times. But only if you actually read their sage advice *as* comedy, meant to lighten your mood.

For instance, the jokers over at CNN Money have some real thigh-slappers on what we regular people should do ‘just in case’ the worst happens (the whole house of cards comes tumbling down). We need to beef up our “emergency funds,” we’re told, as if we had more cash to stash in zip lock bags in the freezer than the two to three weeks’ worth (which we’d still have to scrimp to save up) advised in the post Hold On: The Ride’s Just Starting.

We are told that in the face of bank failures, job losses and investment wipeouts that the “standard advice” is to keep at least three months’ worth of living expenses ’socked away’ if there are two wage earners in the family, six months’ worth if there’s just one breadwinner. Surely it can’t be that difficult to just take ten or twenty thousand dollars out of your bank or investment portfolio in small bills and find a safe place in the house to hide it from the teenagers, right? Hahahaha. That’s a good one.

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Ways to Live On Almost Nothing – 4

Part 4: Items 16 – 20

In this last entry on our 20 ways to live on little-to-nothing, some further ways to take honest stock of your situation and prospects, plan accordingly, and make use of systems already in place to stretch the dollars you’ve got left.

16. Who Are You Supporting?

If your habit is to always buy new, who is that supporting? In a serious recession, it’s probably not supporting some skilled worker in a factory in your area, since the US has already stripped its manufacturing capability to almost zip. Are you supporting the call center bill collectors? Do you really WANT to support them?

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Ways to Live On Almost Nothing – 3

Part 3: Items 11-15

NYC Bread Line

Installment three of this series of 20 ways to live on little-to-nothing. In these we’ll look at some basics about food, using all of your abilities, and taking honest stock of exactly what you need to do in your life to get through the hard times. If you get hit hard by what’s happening – and cutting back on luxuries just won’t fix the problems – you’ll need to learn to rely on yourself.

11. Taking Honest Stock

If you don’t want to go all Gypsy (and have a family to support), you can still take control of your situation. Keep a careful record of where the money goes over a month. Examine your ‘necessary’ expenses (home, utilities, car, insurance, food, gas, any other fixed expenses). If the ‘necessary’ expenses are larger than net income, it’s time to get out from under the big ones and take a good look at less expensive ways to live. You can live through hard times, but first you have to acknowledge you’re in hard times.

Housing markets are bust right now, so it’s difficult to sell your house even if you were willing to take an equity loss. Same is true for cars and light trucks. It can be the best option to make a clean break and declare bankruptcy, which can allow you to start fresh with a whole different way of approaching life.

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Ways to Live On Almost Nothing – 2

Part 2: Items 6-10

This is the second installment of the 20 ways to live on little-to-nothing. Obviously, not all of these alternatives will appeal to everyone. But perhaps some will appeal to some.

6. Personal Housing for the Gypsy Tread-Lightly

If your lifestyle doesn’t require thousands of square footage consider the advantages of an RV or travel trailer. No, not one of those $200,000 new fancy jobs, but one just “big enough” and in desperate need of some handy TLC.

Getting “free” will take more ingenuity that most people have to spend, but getting “cheap” is entirely possible. Unless you’re a serious mechanic, travel trailers are a much better option than RVs or old city buses that probably need totally rebuilt engines. A trailer can be moved as regularly as necessary (many state and national forest sites have 2-week limits) so long as you’ve something to haul them with.

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20 Ways to Live On Almost Nothing

Part 1: Items 1 – 5

As Janice Joplin sang to us all those many years ago, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. That doesn’t have to be a sentence to despair. It can also be a defiant gesture to the powers that be, and the license we need to live joyfully, peaceably and responsibly on our planetary home. After that kind of commitment, any money that does come in can pad our own safety nets and perhaps even inspire others to tread lightly on the earth.

With millions of Americans losing their jobs and their homes in this recession – and hardly any available cheap rentals or backup jobs to take up the slack – there will be a lot of people out there trying hard to survive.

The adage that it takes money to make money doesn’t mean much to people who have none to spare, but it also takes (some) money to live on little-to-no money if you want to do it well. Mostly it requires nothing more than a different way of approaching life, and a willingness to choose the less-traveled road. Or, in some cases, choosing the road…

1. Decide What You Want From Life

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief… scientist, artist, writer, woodworker, mechanic. Most choices of career outside the big business and financial sectors can be pursued without great expense once you’re out of school. Sit down and make the list. Then once you’ve got it, arrange it into priorities top to bottom. Any lower items that conflict with the top items can be crossed off. Then decide what your time investments are to be. With that well-honed list you can then begin a Plan – 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20. Things don’t usually go according to plan, but if you’ve got a plan you’re already several steps ahead of life’s fast balls.

If what you want from life is love and happiness, seconded by rewarding work, take heart! The best things in life really can be free. On this decision, bear in mind that no matter who you are, the greater your range of skills, the more you can do for yourself, and the more satisfaction you can gain. Diversify, diversify, diversify!

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ATG Debunks 7 Thrifting Myths

Selena at Apron Thrift Girl ventured into video this past November, and it turned out so well that I hope it won’t be her last video venture! Here she debunks 7 common myths about thrifting, which may help those who are new to living on a shoestring budget get past their preconceived prejudices and ingrained shopping habits. It also reinforces the things that us seasoned thrifters already know!

If you enjoy Selena’s video, don’t forget to check out her blog! There’s plenty more knowledge where that came from…

Previous Posts About Thrifting:

Thrifting: It’s An Art Form!
Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession
Living on Less: The Alternative Economies
The Payoff: Thrifting and Re-Selling
Free Yourself from Debtor’s Prison
Tips for Avoiding Pressure to Shop
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?

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Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?

A good friend read my post It’s Better than Cheap… It’s Free! and mentioned Craigslist as another very useful resource for the sale and exchange of items, along the lines of the Freecycle Network. I had never made use of Craigslist and wasn’t very familiar with how it works, so in this post let’s look at what it actually has to offer those of us trying to live well on limited budgets.

Craigslist is a lot broader in scope than the Freecycle Network, which maintains local sites devoted exclusively to the exchange of ’stuff’ for free – you advertise what you have to give away or want someone to give to you, and responses are routed through the administrators (sans personal information) to facilitate the exchange. In contrast, Craigslist advertises community news, businesses and services, housing, personals, for sale items and job openings (or wanteds), just like your local newspaper’s want ads – but much, much moreso!

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It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

The Wonderful World of Freecycling

Way, way back in 2004 Grist Magazine published an article entitled Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now about a cool new environmentally friendly idea called “Freecycling.” Begun in 2003 by Deron Beal, a recycling program worker in Tucson, Arizona, freecycling is a network of people with ’stuff’ they don’t want to throw away to take up landfill space, but don’t want to keep either. It’s a way of getting rid of stuff by giving it to someone who wants it, and you’d be surprised at some of the great stuff there is to be had for free!

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