Frugal Youth: Stuff Does Not Equal Happiness

Age Counseling Youth

Once Upon a Christmas… my Mother-in-Law gifted my children with some thickly quilted fuzzy slippers to put on in the morning when the wood stove in our little cabin had gone out and the water in the dog dish was more often than not frozen solid. Unfortunately both of the pairs of slippers she’d bought consisted of two right feet. So off she went right after Christmas to the store where she’d bought them, and let the kids pick out new pairs that they could wear on both their feet.

The saleslady remembered when Mom had bought them, and the story she told about the kids living in the cold mountains without automatic heat. She asked the kids how they could stand living in a house with no heat. The kids looked at her quizzically, my daughter answered that of course we had heat, we just didn’t have electricity. That really threw the young woman for a loop, so she just had to ask…

If you’ve no electricity, how can you have heat? Daughter smiled. “Fire,” she answered calmly. “Fire is hot.”

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Vacationing on a Shoestring Budget

Since the subject of tourism has been mentioned in the context of affordable necessary medical care, I thought I’d go ahead and mention some cool new developments in vacation tourism for those who may be thinking of what they’re going to do with the family this summer when the kids are out of school.

People who are living frugally don’t have to stop having fun and don’t have to stay home all the time. They just have to weigh their choices more carefully than people who have a lot of money to spend and don’t mind spending it. While it’s true that many of us consider a trip to visit family members in another state to be an actual vacation, but not necessarily because the people we’re visiting are all that fun and interesting. Usually it’s because the cost of gasoline, necessary vehicle upkeep, motels along the way and restaurant meals for the whole family for days or weeks at a time can easily eat up every cent of your vacation savings or tax refund, leaving zip for trips to Six Flags or ski resorts or Disney World – places our kids think of as actual vacations.

There’s a new partnership movement afoot in my state that takes great advantage of the many scenic, historic and educational wonders that make this state a tourist destination for millions of people every year. I strongly suspect there are many other states doing much the same thing, and the information’s not that hard to find. It’s called “Agritourism,” and it’s offering benefits to farmers, rural communities and artists of all varieties via partnerships with arts councils, agricultural extension services, state and federal parks services and small tourism operations in established tourist regions.

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Popularity: 18% [?]

Bread: The Staff of Life

As the recession kicks in – and looks to be a long, deep one extending well beyond this fall’s elections and possibly through 2009 as well – the health and wellbeing of all our families are going to be something at the top of the list of “important” considerations. Worse, there are strong hints of a coming Worldwide Food Shortage caused by expanding droughts in grain growing regions as well as diversion of cropland and crops for the production of ethanol.

So in this post I want to talk about bread. That generally most ignored of foods in the modern world, turned into nutrient-sapping paper maché paste by giant food processing conglomerates. Yet bread is traditionally known as “The Staff of Life,” the most important staple food for human beings since ancient prehistory.

My father was a big fan of “meal bread,” what he called breads that form the belly-filling ‘meat’ of a day’s diet to supplement any vegetables or cheeses that are available. Breads that sop up the “pot likker” liquids left from boiling greens or stewing meats, breads that offer complementary proteins to spreads like nut butters or flavored oils and butters, breads a person can live on if need be while not causing drastic shortages of necessary nutrients.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

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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Popularity: 27% [?]

15 Real Ways to Conserve (and save money!)

Since we’ve been looking at ways to avoid spending money on things we don’t really need, let’s look at some ways to save money on things we really DO need. Like, say energy to heat and cool our homes, cook our food, keep us (and our clothes) clean, etc., etc., etc. Energy – in the form of electricity, gas, heating oil and such for use in our homes is not getting any cheaper, and the generation technologies are contributing greatly to global warming. Water is another diminishing resource we cannot live without. Learning to consume less water is vital for our collective future. One of the best things we can do for our world and our pocketbooks is to learn how to live on less. USE less, NEED less, and be proud of our small footprints on the earth!

Here are some of the best ways to conserve energy and water that are being touted at present. Some of you can put to good use right now, and some of you will want to seriously consider through the coming year as your income allows you to replace things or renovate for a more efficient lifestyle. If you can save a couple thousand dollars a year on your electric and water bills, you’ll have that much more money to spend or save! Check ‘em out…

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Popularity: 84% [?]

A Non-Consumerist Way of Life

Habits of thought that won’t cost you a thing…

My last post offered some Tips for Avoiding Pressure to Shop, mostly in the context of getting out of the usual “girls’ day out” type of expensive, mall-hopping, credit card fueled frenzy that way too many people in the modern world view as entertainment. At least, until the bills come due. Sad statistics demonstrate that if medical costs from an accident or illness in the family don’t lead to bankruptcy, credit card debt will. These are the two biggest contributors to middle class bankruptcies in the U.S. at this time, and as the mortgage crisis becomes ever worse, it’s not going to get any better.

In this post I’m going to offer some ways of thinking that can become habitual without too much trouble, that will help keep you out of debt by not going into debt in the first place. Not everyone can put these to good use, but those who can will find that their shoestring budgets go a lot farther in covering necessities.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Taking Control: Energy Independence

Analyzing Your Usage and Expense

In the 21st century almost all of us are acutely aware of the challenges of global warming, unsustainable consumption habits, the real human costs of petroleum dependency and the ever-rising cost of all forms of energy. When it’s difficult for regular middle class city and suburban dwellers to maintain their few hours of home down-time due to rising costs, the burden on rural dwellers can easily be impossible to bear.

Anyone committed to sustainable and self-sufficient living should have already begun planning their energy strategies. There are many things to consider before investing in energy sources. One of the first things a homeowner needs to become aware of are the various federal and state incentive programs available to them if they choose to meet some or all of their own energy needs with ‘green’ sources. These incentives have been fluctuating at the same time the per-watt price of the technology has been steadily falling. In some places the cost trade-off – where the cost to install is paid for by the incentives and further energy is basically free-for-upkeep – is down to 3-5 years. Which is a point when someone planning to live the whole rest of their lives on their homestead has no really good excuse not to invest! The Database of State Incentives offers a clickable map with details for all 50 states and is updated as incentives are tweaked or changed.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Free Yourself from Debtor’s Prison

I was in my late twenties when I finally grasped a tiny bit of the Mystery of Mammon – the magic of money. It occurred to me while awaiting a payment for services rendered that the person who owed me money was waiting on someone who owed him money too. I realized that among the full-time residents of that small New Mexico town there was never more than about $5,000 in circulation on any day of any month. That money made its rounds every month starting at the top and ending right back there when the month was over. The only new money anybody ever saw came in by way of tourists from Texas, but that got immediately swallowed up by big bank accounts in somebody else’s town.

Many regular people have a certain psychological aversion to money, or to the idea of allowing money to rule their lives. The capital class depends upon this deep psychological aversion to empower the “money myth” they depend upon to amass ever more of it in their own coffers. Terms like “filthy lucre” and traditional religious prohibitions of usury speak to this deep uncomfortableness with artificial value, yet it is the general public’s uncomfortableness with artificial value that allows the capitalist system to operate.

People who are not comfortable with artificial value don’t tend to amass much money and are prone to use the artificially valued paper to purchase things that for them have actual value. A home. A reliable means of transportation. Nice clothes, big televisions, enough food to make themselves obese, computers, entertainment, toys… it’s what makes our consumerist lifestyles hum and it’s every bit as unsustainable – both personally and economically on the national level – as chemical-intensive force-farming. These days a college graduate begins his or her working career deeply in debt and remains deeply in debt for most or all of his or her life. And it never seems to matter how deeply in debt you are, there are at least 10 new credit offers in the mailbox every week to dig you deeper.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Basic Health Care Maintenance: Part II

Garlic!

In Part I of this series we looked at the actual current situation with health care in America, the impossibility of purchasing usable health insurance by increasing millions of citizens barely getting by, and what regular people can do to help themselves. Now that increasing inflation is fully evident – mostly due to $100+ a barrel oil – more and more people whose incomes are not increasing as fast as the costs of living will find themselves beneath the floor after “falling through the cracks.”

Thus it is increasingly important for people living on a shoestring budget to take care of themselves – to do what they can to prevent disease from striking, which translates directly into less need for expensive treatment after the disease has them in dire straits. And the best way to do this is to make the healthiest affordable choices for the food you and your family consumes on a daily basis.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

The Thrifty Have Long Been Green!

October 15 has been designated “Blog Action Day”, when bloggers are encouraged to write about our environment and things regular people can do to reduce their environmental footprint on the planet and help steward the environment we all depend upon to sustain our lives.

This is pretty easy to do if you’re living on a shoestring budget, as our previous excursions into bargain-hunting, recycling, thrifting and doing for yourself have demonstrated amply. Yet at a time when the Nobel Peace Prize can go to Al Gore for his crusade to educate the nations of the world about the threat of global warming and how our poor choices of lifestyle are contributing to it, this is a great time to do some thinking about how we live. Maybe earn a new appreciation not just for our cleverness in being able to get by on less, but for our wisdom in doing so. Even if we didn’t have to.

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Popularity: 4% [?]