Tough Economic Times

If we think things are ever going to return to the way they were, we are probably wrong. Washington is miring the country in so much red ink that we are now headed the way of the banking and corporate institutions they are bailing out. Don’t wait for manufacturing to return to our shores. Why is a CEO going to pay a union worker here $30 an hour to make a widget when he can get someone elsewhere in the world to make it for $1 an hour? Also, why conduct business here when success is demonized and the only solution government can think of for their economic woes and to prop up their dependent voter base is to tax the successful?
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We need to be alert to the socialistic shenanigans on the move and how they will eventually destroy liberty. But in the meantime, we need to tighten our belts and redefine our needs. Here are some ideas on how to live with less and still have a happy and fulfilled life. 

1. Make being frugal a challenge that you can take pride in and enjoy succeeding with.
2. Redefine success and being rich. Having your family’s basic needs cared for – if you are doing it and not depending on others to do it for you – is wealth.
3. Make recreation something other than shopping.
4. Consolidate trips in the car. If you make one trip rather than two, you just doubled your gas mileage, one instead of three, you just tripled it. This also decreases the wear and tear and the need for repair.
5. Borrow (and return), rent, and share, rather than buy.
6. No credit cards, unless you are paying the bills before interest is added.
7. Stay healthy. Exercise, sun, natural food, and loving relationships. The cost of illness can bankrupt you. This is not a place to skimp.
8. Reuse and repair. Learn how to sew and how to use tools. Keep a neat junk pile for parts you can improvise with.
9. Learn how to prepare healthy meals at home.
10. Redefine success. It is not easy street and lots of stuff filling the garage. It is creative work you can be proud of and taking care of yourself.
11. Buy what you need, not what you want. Take a good look at your closets before running to the mall.
12. Don’t pay retail. With some ingenuity, particularly with the Internet, you should never have to.
13. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
14. Compost, grow a garden, can or sell your extra crops.
15. Figure out how to get off the grid—or as close to that as possible. You can even make your own solar panels and windmills.
16. Go to garage sales and have garage sales.
17. Give to others without spending. Give of yourself.
18. Don’t waste money on education that does not prepare you (or the kids) for a specific job. Classes from teachers who have no real world record of success, in topics like geography, business, biology, communications, liberal arts…or something like ebonics and multicultural studies squanders money and is pretty much worthless in the job market.
19. Get a second job. Do what you have to and forget “pride.”
20. Make yourself indispensable to your employer. Don’t stop looking for work once you land a job.
21. Help your employer make the company successful and solvent—work is not just about what you can get. That mentality is what is ruining American business and this country.
22. Enjoy what you have. Smell the daisies. Be content and forget the pop culture mania.
23. Grow your mind. Be a part of society’s solution, not its problem. Lots more ideas on how to do this in Living Life As If Thinking Matters.