Frugal Living Today

I told people early last year, when the economy was really just beginning to look dire and then president Bush was still claiming that we were not in a recession, that it was a matter of time before people across the country would realize that they needed to return to their roots - literally.

By growing your own vegetable plants at home you not only ensure that you have the best quality produce on the block but you also save a ton of money in the process.  Have you seen how much supermarket hot house tomatoes go for per pound these days?  Last year I got more tomatoes off one of my plants than I could use and ended up making sauces and salsas for my friends and neighbors just to keep up with what the plant was giving me.  What’s more, the tomatoes were so flavorful that I hardly ever had to season them when added to salads or eaten raw!

The best part of all? I spent no money at all on my two tomato plants last year (they were toss aways given to me by a local nursery) and by my calculations, I had over sixty pounds of delicious tomatoes from them by season’s end.  At the current market rate for heirloom tomatoes (about $2.99/lb) I save myself over $175.  Imagine what that’s going to be like for my four tomato plants this year, much less the peppers and other veggies I plan to have feeding me, my family and my neighbors!

I quit smoking two days ago.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gone smoke free and I have never had the severe withdrawal symptoms that many experience, thanks in no small way to a non-addictive personality that probably kept me from becoming an alcoholic in my youth as well. Every time I’ve quit though I am always on the lookout for those symptoms that others report - hyper sensitivity to the smell of smoke, for example. I never get those and I feel cheated somehow.

I quit this time because I am tired of wasting money on something as ridiculous as smoking cigarettes and I can think of at least 1,000 other productive uses for that money such as putting it into my savings account. Even if I put it in the stock market it has the chance of returning something to me, that’s a far cry better than smoking ever did for me.

I call this my “common sense bailout program”.

The more I read the news the more upset I become over the economic state our country has allowed itself to get into.I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green, Libertarian or what your party affiliation is and I don’t care to sit here and play the blame game that seems to be the in-vogue thing to do these days.  The bottom line is that America has become drunk on power while we were getting fat on a nationwide diet of excess and now that our wallets have run dry, multi-millionaire CEOs are flooding Capitol Hill shaking their tin cups under the noses of our elected representatives in the hopes of getting their share of the next big bailout.When I was younger I played a card game called Bullsh*t and I was pretty darned good at it.  The object of the game was to be able to bluff - or to call someone’s bluff accurately.  I can’t seem to turn on the news or read the newspaper now without subconsciously playing the game all over again except in this version there are no winners.  I therefore offer Michael’s Frugal Living Bailout Plan to all who care to read it:1.  If you don’t have it, don’t spend it. Credit is a trap, pure and simple.  It is an excuse for people to live outside their means.  Pay cash or use a debit card.2.  Pay on time, every time. If you see that you will be late on a payment for any reason at all, contact the creditor and talk to them.  You may be able to avoid late fees and negative marks on your credit score.3.  Get to know your neighbors. Once upon a time, we knew our neighbors.  When someone was sick, the people who lived in the surrounding areas brought food, took care of their yards, even cleaned their houses for them.  What happened to those days?  Why not arrange a monthly pot luck supper with your neighbors and get to know them better?  It won’t cost much more than you’d pay for cooking a meal for your family anyway and you’ll get an evening’s worth of entertainment and kinship out of it.4.  Talk to the Angels.I’ve written here about AngelFood Ministries  before.  It is the opportunity to save a ton of money and get a ton of great quality food every month for less than half of what it would cost at the supermarket - even if you use coupons.  Spend $30 and feed a family of four for a week?  Done deal.5.  Do It Yourself. You probably sit on your lazy rump all weekend watching those DIY shows on television thinking ‘I could do that’, right?  Well prove it.  Check a book out at the library and learn to manage the basic plumbing at home.  You can teach yourself to re-wire a lamp, too.  In fact, most of the things you’d otherwise need to call a repairman to do can be done with just a bit of know-how and the cost of the supplies.While I’m on the DIY subject, learn to thread a needle and fix your own buttons.  Stop throwing away clothes or giving them to charity because you’re too lazy to make minor repairs that would take you five minutes, tops.Here is some food for thought: During the Great Depression there were thousands of people who didn’t even notice much of a difference.  Those people were already what most of us consider ‘poor’.  They grew and raised what they ate, they made what they wore and many of them built their own homes and furniture out of necessity.  I don’t consider that poor in any sense of the word.  I consider it self-sufficient.   And finally, a word of advice for Washington D.C.:   When I was growing up, my grandparents used to say “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”  Do with that what you will.

I should start by saying that the entire concept of the holidays is beyond me.  What was once a spiritual and religious celebration has turned into a decadent spending orgy with the only true winners being the credit card companies who are charging ridiculous interest rates on all those ridiculous expenditures you just made.  If you think the U.S. is in a financial crisis right now, wait until January when the first of the credit card bills start pouring in.

If I have said this once I have said it a million times - if you don’t have it, don’t spend it.   It really is a simple concept, I just don’t understand why so many people find it difficult to grasp.

Credit is not money.  Credit is debt.  Stop using credit unless you can afford to pay the entire balance when the next bill comes in.

I have been watching the goings on in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street with a great deal of interest over the past few months and I have come to only one conclusion - we need a recession. Before you set your phasers on “stun” and leave terrible comments allow me to explain myself.

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A fellow blogger reminded me just this morning about National Blog Posting Month where bloggers commit to posting to their sites every day for an entire month.  Of course that has been my goal from day one but as we all know, sometimes life gets in the way.

The ironic thing is that my time away from Frugal Living Today has not been unrelated to what I write here.  I’ve been conducting interviews and reading review copies of books that have been sent to me so that I have new and relevant frugal tips to share with my wonderful readers.

Coming soon is an interview with the author of a quirky book called “The Cornbread Gospels” by the unlikely name of Crescent Dragonwagon (yes, that’s her real name), as well as some great tips from a couple in the Northwestern United States who transformed their small patio garden into a lush vegetable paradise.  They have a lot to tell us about canning and preserving their harvest for these cold months ahead!

I’ve been a bad frugal blogger lately but there are times when life gets in the way of my Internet time and these past few days have been some of those times.

I took a rare few hours to myself recently and actually spent money on me for a change.  The vast majority of what I purchased were things that I really needed but I did happen to splurge a bit and purchased two huge books that were reasonably priced and right up my alley, so to speak.

“The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living” is an impressive tome with the subtitle “Advice and Information on Just About Everything You Need to Know to Live on Planet Earth” and from what I’ve perused so far, they aren’t that far off.  Editor Walter Szykitka seems to be a guru of self-sufficiency and self-reliance.  Seriously folks, this book even tells you how to replace worn webbing in a bra.  I’m not making this up.

The second book is called “Country Widsom & Know How - Everything you need to know to live off the land”  from the Editors of Storey Books.  It even tells you how to cook a porcupine.  Again - not kidding.

While I’m pretty sure I won’t be replacing any bra webbing or broiling a porcupine anytime soon, my dream is to someday live a live of self-reliance and to live as close to the earth as I possibly can and while these two books may have cost me forty bucks, they will provide me years of information and entertainment and for that reason I think them well worth the price.