Try These Money Saving Tips

Enough with the stimuli and the bank stress tests. What we all need, and I think I speak for everyone here, is a weeks' rest from business. Post some guards along Wall Street and close that sucker down for a week so we can have a few minutes to feel safe and think about other things.
The merciless DOW had it's worst week in a while, jobless claims have been revised sharply higher. Do I have to keep caring?
Yes. Yes I do. Because the stock prices affect what will happen with my husband's job (and, indirectly, mine). They've done layoffs and buyouts before. But we know something more is coming. We just don't know what or when.
It's out there, like the creepy mist "destroyer" in the Ten Commandments. We huddle in fear, wondering if the moving finger will write our name on the wall. Oh, hold on. That's a different Bible story.
We talk about how we'd survive pay cuts, furloughs, even "the worst." We could cancel our contribution to the 401K, or cut off the cable TV. I make mental lists of things around the house that might get us some money on EBay. But I'm tired of dreaming up more ways to disappoint our daughter and make life less fun. I'd just like to be...excused. Please?

None of the "money saving tips" ever seems to help, either. Skip the lattes? Learn to cook and eat at home? Launder your own shirts? Please! That's about as helpful as telling me to fire all our servants and put the polo ponies to plow.

So--purely in an effort to cheer myself up--I've come up with a list of my own money saving tips that have a little more, shall we say, muscle.

1. Recipe for a lard sandwich: Two slices bread. Sugar. Lard. Take the lard and spread it on the bread. Sprinkle on some sugar. Top with second slice and eat. (Var. for Sunday. Add some cracklings)
This is something my grandmother, who lived through the Great Depression, spoke of often. And wistfully. (The idea for the Sunday sandwich is mine.)

2.Ditch harvesting. If you've already scrapped the expensive bag salads and are wondering how to bring down the price of greens even further, learn to forage for purslane, dandelion and nettles, which make excellent eating.
3.Shoe repair. Forget the expensive duct tape. Newspapers fill in the holes nicely. And--here's a plus--they'll help keep the industry alive until it figures out how to make money.

4.Car too expensive to drive and insure? Take heart. In the summer months, you can easily convert the undriven car into a solar cooker. If you don't want to go to the work and expense of building a solar oven out of cardboard and insulation (as we've done) the car could be the second oven you're looking for. If it'll cook your pets in the summer's heat, it'll probably cook that quiche.

5.Ever been frustrated that you have to throw out dryer lint? Surely it could be put to good use. At our house, we mix it with paraffin for fire starters. But this doesn't seem very imaginative. Could the lint be re spun into yarn a la Knitting with Dog Hair? There's a MacArthur grant waiting for someone to claim.

6.Use your exercise time to look for tools. No--not that kind. I mean the countless wrenches, sockets and screw drivers that bounce out of trucks every day. If you ride a bike often, you've seen them and perhaps even built up a little collection. Maybe you can sell them on EBay.

7.Weave rugs out of old bread bags. No I'm not kidding. My grandmother used to do this all the time. You ended up with a colorful braided rug to wipe your muddy farm shoes on, and then when it was destroyed, you didn't feel guilty about throwing it out. I can't figure out how it's done, though. Wait! Couldn't we also use the plastic bags newspapers come in?

Ok. There. I feel a little better. There are still ways I can cut my budget.
But just for good measure, I'm not listening to or reading any financial news until next week.

Count your Blessings

Just about everyone who gives advice to the eternally pessimistic eventually comes around to this: Count your blessings. Look at your life and be grateful.
At the risk of sounding like a completely horrible person, I have to admit that this is hard for me. First of all, I have a rule about not resorting to "it could be worse" as a fall back, and just about everything I can think of falls into this category. Yeah, it could be worse. But it isn't. So that thought is meaningless.
Then, the items I do come up with turn out to be two sided. My joy in our big garden plot morphs into worry about runoff from the chemicals the church next door uses on its grounds. My happiness at finally saving enough for full-season Kansas City Wizards tickets becomes concern that the economy could stop them from ever getting their new stadium built. I guess the problem is I think about things too long.
Now that I've been trying for about a month to be an optimist, I figure it's time. Time to make that list of things I'm grateful for. I'll just do the best I can and try not to linger too long or expect the list to be too perfect. After all, I'm new at this optimism stuff.

1. I'm grateful for the tight credit market/banking crisis because it may postpone the destruction of earth via a black hole.
When scientists cranked up the Large Hadron Collider last fall in Switzerland they did it over protests from some people that their attempt to study particle physics by smashing atoms could end in the creation of tiny black holes. Said holes could then join together into one big black hole that would eat us all. The economic downturn would slow some of the massive amount of money it takes to keep the thing going. (This is my assumption. I have absolutely no sources on this.)

2. At last rich people may be forced to shut up about themselves and quit flaunting their money at the rest of us.
The New York Times carried a story this week about a real estate broker who will give up her Rolls Royce--a part of her "brand"--because it looks too ostentatious. (Read about it here, for those of you with subscriptions.)

3.Deflation. Economists are all concerned it's a bad thing but I'm ecstatic some things are coming down in price. Especially gasoline. Seeing the price at $1.86 makes me smile every time I pass a station. (Then again, our electric utility wants a big rate hike and...Oh. Lingering too long.)

4.For years I've been toiling in the garden, canning and freezing everything I can get to grow. But I've had to keep quiet because...well because people tend not to like to hear about it. They think you're some kind of food snob, or that you think you're superior. (And let's be truthful. I am and I do.)
Now I find out from the Kansas City Star that there are lots of us. Enough that we're a movement and we have a name. Urban homesteaders. Yee haw!

5.And finally, I'm thankful my grandparents aren't around to see what's been happening. The Great Depression left them both ultra cautious, afraid of taking a risk on a dream or anything that wasn't "practical." Neither would speak their mind in a group for fear that word would get back to their employers or business contacts and they would be out of a job. I remember in the 1970s when the stock market had a bad day, hearing my grandfather bay, "Nooooo!" When I came in to see what was up, he was gripping his armchair tight and may even have had tears in his eyes. I can only imagine, if they were still around, how all this talk of "global meltdown" would affect him.

Five things to be thankful for. Only five?
Well, like I said, I'm still new to this.