Like clothing, transportation is something in which reducing expenses quickly may not be possible in the face of suddenly straitened financial circumstances. Unless you live in New York City or a few other large cities with excellent public transportation, you probably rely upon a personal car to get you the places you need to be.
Yes, you could consider trading down to a less expensive vehicle. However, if like most people you still owe on your car, you need to think carefully before making any decisions. During the early parts of the loan, it is very possible that you owe more than you can get for your car. That means that trying to trade down to a less expensive car would not realize any significant savings in your monthly car payment unless you've been driving a really high-end car. Even if you are driving a paid-off car, unless it's a real gas hog, you're probably not going to be money ahead to try to trade down to something smaller and more fuel-efficient.
However, there are other ways that you can reduce your transportation costs. Most immediately, rethink your driving habits. Most of us go about our daily errands without too much thought. When we need to get something, we go and do it. As a result, we may make a dozen small trips over the course of a week, picking up one or two things at each time. If we can plan out what we'll need over the course of a week and make one or two major shopping trips do, except for the sort of emergency we simply can't anticipate, we can save enough gas that we'll have money for some other bill.
On the other hand, don't skimp on the really important stuff. For instance, it may look like a short-term savings to skip routine maintenance such as oil changes and put that money somewhere else. However, while you may get away with delaying your routine maintenance for a week or two to get you to a paycheck, in the long term it's a false economy. Forcing your engine to run too long on dirty oil can do damage that will quickly negate the savings, and if you can't afford to repair or replace your vehicle, could leave you without transportation altogether.
Another sensible way to reduce your transportation costs is to rethink your leisure time activities. Obviously you don't want to cut them out altogether, because you need some form of rest and recreation for your mental health. But you don't have to spring for expensive airfare to distant places, or even gasoline for a day-long drive, to have fun. Instead of one long trip for a vacation, you might want to look at the possibility of several short day-trips to local destinations. You might be surprised at the range of activities your local area offers, including parks, museums, art galleries and concerts. Many of them don't even charge an admission fee.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Gearing Down, pt 2: Clothing
Coping with a sudden reduction in one's financial circumstances is not easy. We speak of buying habits because they're just that, habits. Things we do automatically. We go into the same stores and buy the same familiar brands. Having to change to make less money stretch further requires conscious thought, not just automatic responses.
Fortunately, clothing may be one of the easier things to change our habits on. Unlike food, we generally don't buy clothing on such a regular basis. Unless we're in a line of work in which we wear through clothes on a regular basis (construction and other manual labor positions) or are required to keep up with the latest fashions (media jobs are notorious for this), clothing purchases often can last a year or more. Seldom-worn special outfits like a good interviewing suit may well last a lifetime.
Still, clothes will not last forever, especially garments we wear on a regular basis. So when faced with a financial downturn that looks to last for months or years, we need to have a strategy for maintaining our wardrobe at a minimally acceptable level.
One important technique for keeping clothing costs low is to buy second-hand. Thrift stores such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army often will have garments that are practically new. Some of them may even be so new they still have the original tags from the high-end stores where they're purchased, although this sort of happy find is most likely at a store that's near a wealthy area where stores will dump unsold merchandise at the end of the season and take the tax deduction rather than store it and risk that it is no longer in fashion the following year.
Of course there are some things that should never be bought second-hand. Personal protection and safety equipment should always be bought new, since you have no idea what used equipment may have been exposed to that may have compromised its ability to protect you. Shoes are another thing that should always be bought new, and not just because of the possibility of transmitting diseases such as athlete's foot and toenail fungus. As we wear our shoes, they mold to the shape of our feet, and will no longer fit anyone else's properly.
The second important thing to stretch one's clothing dollars is to maintain the clothes you have in order to make them last as long as possible. When you have the money to casually replace worn or damaged articles, you don't have to worry about things like care labels or proper storage. Now that you need to avoid unnecessary purchases, you need to pay attention to things like the temperature of water in which to wash your clothes. Also, consider how to store clothes so that they do not become stretched or distorted, or pick up stains or odors from a drawer.
Finally, even when clothes become worn, you may be able to repair or repurpose them. This may not be possible for all clothes. For instance, if maintaining a professional appearance means having clothes that look new, it may not be possible to wear clothes that have visible patches or other repairs. However, for everyday clothes or for things such as undergarments and socks which are not in the public view, being able to make some judicious repairs can be a good way to get another week or month of life out of a garment.
Fortunately, clothing may be one of the easier things to change our habits on. Unlike food, we generally don't buy clothing on such a regular basis. Unless we're in a line of work in which we wear through clothes on a regular basis (construction and other manual labor positions) or are required to keep up with the latest fashions (media jobs are notorious for this), clothing purchases often can last a year or more. Seldom-worn special outfits like a good interviewing suit may well last a lifetime.
Still, clothes will not last forever, especially garments we wear on a regular basis. So when faced with a financial downturn that looks to last for months or years, we need to have a strategy for maintaining our wardrobe at a minimally acceptable level.
One important technique for keeping clothing costs low is to buy second-hand. Thrift stores such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army often will have garments that are practically new. Some of them may even be so new they still have the original tags from the high-end stores where they're purchased, although this sort of happy find is most likely at a store that's near a wealthy area where stores will dump unsold merchandise at the end of the season and take the tax deduction rather than store it and risk that it is no longer in fashion the following year.
Of course there are some things that should never be bought second-hand. Personal protection and safety equipment should always be bought new, since you have no idea what used equipment may have been exposed to that may have compromised its ability to protect you. Shoes are another thing that should always be bought new, and not just because of the possibility of transmitting diseases such as athlete's foot and toenail fungus. As we wear our shoes, they mold to the shape of our feet, and will no longer fit anyone else's properly.
The second important thing to stretch one's clothing dollars is to maintain the clothes you have in order to make them last as long as possible. When you have the money to casually replace worn or damaged articles, you don't have to worry about things like care labels or proper storage. Now that you need to avoid unnecessary purchases, you need to pay attention to things like the temperature of water in which to wash your clothes. Also, consider how to store clothes so that they do not become stretched or distorted, or pick up stains or odors from a drawer.
Finally, even when clothes become worn, you may be able to repair or repurpose them. This may not be possible for all clothes. For instance, if maintaining a professional appearance means having clothes that look new, it may not be possible to wear clothes that have visible patches or other repairs. However, for everyday clothes or for things such as undergarments and socks which are not in the public view, being able to make some judicious repairs can be a good way to get another week or month of life out of a garment.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Gearing Down
One of the most difficult things in an economic downturn is having to quickly learn to live in straitened financial circumstances. Curiously enough, food waste often actually goes up immediately after such a downturn, as people try to economize and purchase unfamiliar items, particularly cuts of meat that they don't know how to cook properly.
So one of the most important skills to learn if you have reason to anticipate a sudden reduction of income is how to cook less expensive foods in tasty ways. Buying food that just goes in the garbage is a false economy, whether it spoils because of uncertainty about how to cook it or the family flatly refuses to eat it.
In fact, even if you haven't been hit yet by economic reverses, it might well be the time to get the family used to eating a wider variety of foods, and especially less expensive ones. Find a way to make it an adventure instead of a deprivation, so there'll be less resistance when it becomes a necessity.
So one of the most important skills to learn if you have reason to anticipate a sudden reduction of income is how to cook less expensive foods in tasty ways. Buying food that just goes in the garbage is a false economy, whether it spoils because of uncertainty about how to cook it or the family flatly refuses to eat it.
In fact, even if you haven't been hit yet by economic reverses, it might well be the time to get the family used to eating a wider variety of foods, and especially less expensive ones. Find a way to make it an adventure instead of a deprivation, so there'll be less resistance when it becomes a necessity.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Wisdom from Abroad
The central theme of Grandma's Depression Memories is using the skills that enabled our ancestors to survive previous economic downturns to pull ourselves through the current one. However, social and technological change since the Great Depression has led to concern that those lessons may not be as relevant or useful as one might expect.
However, we can also look outside the United States for more recent examples that may be more useful in relation to our current situation. In her blog Sarah Hoyt relates her experiences living in Portugal during its financial difficulties a couple of decades ago.
To my eye, one of the most telling things is her discussion of the post office going unreliable. Not just the usual petty annoyances, but sending anything becoming a crapshoot. Letters may or may not arrive. Sending anything valuable means having to find very clever ways to conceal it, because postal workers pilfer from packages with impunity. A basic social stricture has broken down, such that people feel no shame whatsoever about stealing from strangers.
It dovetails with something that John Ringo has been talking about of late, especially in The Last Centurion about familial trust vs. general trust. In a familial trust society, you can trust your relatives and close associates, but everybody else is fair game. In a general trust society, that trust is extended to everybody, and it's generally expected that you will deal fairly with everybody. General trust is essential to having an advanced technological civilization, since you're constantly having to work with strangers on critical things, often sight unseen.
Even in the worst of the Great Depression, societal trust never broke down on a broad scale. Sure, there were the usual local issues of people who found it easier to cheat than to deal squarely, but grifters we'll always have with us. So long as the number of bad apples remains reasonably small, they can be kept from causing too much damage. On the whole, people stayed within the boundaries of acceptable social conduct. They did their jobs even when they weren't being watched. And the postal workers who handled the mail still treated it as a public trust they were honor-bound to maintain.
But one can question whether we still have that sense of honor. Over the past few decades American society has slip-slid into a culture of getting by, of doing whatever you can get away with. And that, more than any technological change, may well be the most worrisome shift that could make this financial downturn different from previous ones.
However, we can also look outside the United States for more recent examples that may be more useful in relation to our current situation. In her blog Sarah Hoyt relates her experiences living in Portugal during its financial difficulties a couple of decades ago.
To my eye, one of the most telling things is her discussion of the post office going unreliable. Not just the usual petty annoyances, but sending anything becoming a crapshoot. Letters may or may not arrive. Sending anything valuable means having to find very clever ways to conceal it, because postal workers pilfer from packages with impunity. A basic social stricture has broken down, such that people feel no shame whatsoever about stealing from strangers.
It dovetails with something that John Ringo has been talking about of late, especially in The Last Centurion about familial trust vs. general trust. In a familial trust society, you can trust your relatives and close associates, but everybody else is fair game. In a general trust society, that trust is extended to everybody, and it's generally expected that you will deal fairly with everybody. General trust is essential to having an advanced technological civilization, since you're constantly having to work with strangers on critical things, often sight unseen.
Even in the worst of the Great Depression, societal trust never broke down on a broad scale. Sure, there were the usual local issues of people who found it easier to cheat than to deal squarely, but grifters we'll always have with us. So long as the number of bad apples remains reasonably small, they can be kept from causing too much damage. On the whole, people stayed within the boundaries of acceptable social conduct. They did their jobs even when they weren't being watched. And the postal workers who handled the mail still treated it as a public trust they were honor-bound to maintain.
But one can question whether we still have that sense of honor. Over the past few decades American society has slip-slid into a culture of getting by, of doing whatever you can get away with. And that, more than any technological change, may well be the most worrisome shift that could make this financial downturn different from previous ones.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
And So It Begins...
We now have our Ebola Patient Zero in the United States. Already we are beginning to see panic on social media sites, especially among people who have seen the current Administration fumble so many important things in recent days. Can a CDC that's mislabeled vials of viable anthrax spores and sent them to non-secure facilities be relied upon to handle one of the world's most infectious diseases (requiring as few as ten virus particles per exposure to result in the patient coming down with it)? Can an Administration that's been caught lying and covering up on other important things be trusted to tell the truth about the preparedness of the nation's medical system for this threat?
Particularly given the horrific nature of Ebola (in its end stage, the victim's tissues literally turn to mush and disintegrate), there's an atavistic urge to flee, to swathe ourselves in bubble wrap, to shut out the world and hope to wait it out until the whole mess blows over. Obviously it's not practical to shut ourselves away indefinitely from the outside world, so what can we do to protect ourselves?
First, get the facts. Fear thrives on misinformation, and half-knowledge often leads the imagination to paint things in far darker colors than the actual situation. If you don't trust the CDC or other US government agencies to provide accurate, factual information, seek out the websites of other countries' government health agencies, of privately run hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic, and of international health groups such as Doctors Without Borders.
Second, take basic sanitary precautions and be rigorous about them. Wash your hands regularly, particularly after using the bathroom and before eating.
Third, make basic preparations for a disruption in basic services. If things were to prove worse than anticipated, it is possible that the United States could experience a general quarantine period similar to the one in Tom Clancey's Executive Orders
in which nobody would be allowed to leave their immediate area. Most grocery stores have only a day's supply of basic goods, and even the local warehouses have only a few days' supply -- a problem we see whenever a hurricane or winter storm disrupts the transportation of goods into the area.
Preparing means first knowing what you need. Food is an obvious one, but also think about the toiletries and cleaning supplies you and your family use in a week. Things can get very nasty, very fast if you run out of toilet paper or dishwashing soap. Also, make sure to lay in an adequate supply of water for your family. Municipal water supplies may be interrupted or contaminated in an emergency, and you don't want to be in a situation where desperate thirst would drive you to drink from contaminated sources. Also, think about any medicines you or family members may need. Can you make sure that you'll have an adequate supply on hand if you can't get to the pharmacy for days or weeks?
The key think is don't panic, but be prepared.
Particularly given the horrific nature of Ebola (in its end stage, the victim's tissues literally turn to mush and disintegrate), there's an atavistic urge to flee, to swathe ourselves in bubble wrap, to shut out the world and hope to wait it out until the whole mess blows over. Obviously it's not practical to shut ourselves away indefinitely from the outside world, so what can we do to protect ourselves?
First, get the facts. Fear thrives on misinformation, and half-knowledge often leads the imagination to paint things in far darker colors than the actual situation. If you don't trust the CDC or other US government agencies to provide accurate, factual information, seek out the websites of other countries' government health agencies, of privately run hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic, and of international health groups such as Doctors Without Borders.
Second, take basic sanitary precautions and be rigorous about them. Wash your hands regularly, particularly after using the bathroom and before eating.
Third, make basic preparations for a disruption in basic services. If things were to prove worse than anticipated, it is possible that the United States could experience a general quarantine period similar to the one in Tom Clancey's Executive Orders
in which nobody would be allowed to leave their immediate area. Most grocery stores have only a day's supply of basic goods, and even the local warehouses have only a few days' supply -- a problem we see whenever a hurricane or winter storm disrupts the transportation of goods into the area.Preparing means first knowing what you need. Food is an obvious one, but also think about the toiletries and cleaning supplies you and your family use in a week. Things can get very nasty, very fast if you run out of toilet paper or dishwashing soap. Also, make sure to lay in an adequate supply of water for your family. Municipal water supplies may be interrupted or contaminated in an emergency, and you don't want to be in a situation where desperate thirst would drive you to drink from contaminated sources. Also, think about any medicines you or family members may need. Can you make sure that you'll have an adequate supply on hand if you can't get to the pharmacy for days or weeks?
The key think is don't panic, but be prepared.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
It's Not So Simple Any More
Although we can look at a lot of the skills our grandparents and great-grandparents used to survive the Great Depression in order to guide us through the current mess, some things have changed radically. This was brought home to me as I was preparing a set of articles on identity theft for a website on money and credit I am working on.
Back in the 1930's, people generally knew one another, and there was little need for formal identification documents. A person could easily go for weeks or even months without needing to produce one. Most Americans of the time found loathsome the very idea of having to routinely carry documents proving who you were -- it belonged in nasty dictatorships Over There, not the land of the free and the home of the brave.
How things have changed since then. Not only do we have to regularly prove who we are, but our very identity is continually susceptible to being misused to defraud others, leaving us vulnerable to being punished for what someone else did with our name. We have to constantly think about what everything we say and do reveals about our private information, something unthinkable in the 1930's. (If people worried about what they said and did, it was to keep from being accused of sexual immorality or other reputation-damaging activities, not because someone else would take their information and use it to create a paper persona).
Even as late as the 1980's, when I was first beginning to submit stories to publishers, it was considered the normal thing to do to include one's Social Security number on one's manuscript. This enabled the business office to send a check for an accepted story without having to go through the trouble of asking for the SSN so that the 1099 could be filled out for the IRS. But by the mid-90's, I remember being scolded that I was putting myself in danger by doing so, which somewhat bewildered me because other Authoritative Voices were instructing me to put it there.
Although some things do stay the same, there are some things that change, so we need to be aware and avoid getting tripped up by them.
Back in the 1930's, people generally knew one another, and there was little need for formal identification documents. A person could easily go for weeks or even months without needing to produce one. Most Americans of the time found loathsome the very idea of having to routinely carry documents proving who you were -- it belonged in nasty dictatorships Over There, not the land of the free and the home of the brave.
How things have changed since then. Not only do we have to regularly prove who we are, but our very identity is continually susceptible to being misused to defraud others, leaving us vulnerable to being punished for what someone else did with our name. We have to constantly think about what everything we say and do reveals about our private information, something unthinkable in the 1930's. (If people worried about what they said and did, it was to keep from being accused of sexual immorality or other reputation-damaging activities, not because someone else would take their information and use it to create a paper persona).
Even as late as the 1980's, when I was first beginning to submit stories to publishers, it was considered the normal thing to do to include one's Social Security number on one's manuscript. This enabled the business office to send a check for an accepted story without having to go through the trouble of asking for the SSN so that the 1099 could be filled out for the IRS. But by the mid-90's, I remember being scolded that I was putting myself in danger by doing so, which somewhat bewildered me because other Authoritative Voices were instructing me to put it there.
Although some things do stay the same, there are some things that change, so we need to be aware and avoid getting tripped up by them.
Goodbye SHARE Food of Central Illinois
Illinois and Indiana residents who had been getting monthly packages of discount food via Peoria-based SHARE Food of Central Illinois received an unhappy surprise at yesterday's distribution yesterday. As a result of shrinking participation levels combined with rising costs of food, fuel, and other essentials, they are no longer able to sustain their operation and will be closing their doors at the end of the year.
December 18 will be the last monthly food distribution. After that time, there will probably be a clearance sale at the Peoria distribution center to get rid of the remaining food.
This is an unfortunate loss for families who had been relying on SHARE packages to make their food budget stretch further. However, this does not mean that we are completely out of luck. Most of the area served by SHARE is also served by AngelFood Ministries, another faith-based discount food-buying system working on pretty much the same lines. The Bit o'Blessing box is roughly equivalent to the SHARE unit, but there are also larger Bread of Life and Bountiful Blessing boxes available, as well as various specialty boxes.
December 18 will be the last monthly food distribution. After that time, there will probably be a clearance sale at the Peoria distribution center to get rid of the remaining food.
This is an unfortunate loss for families who had been relying on SHARE packages to make their food budget stretch further. However, this does not mean that we are completely out of luck. Most of the area served by SHARE is also served by AngelFood Ministries, another faith-based discount food-buying system working on pretty much the same lines. The Bit o'Blessing box is roughly equivalent to the SHARE unit, but there are also larger Bread of Life and Bountiful Blessing boxes available, as well as various specialty boxes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
