This repost from the old blog is not about economic inequity, nor does it explicitly predict societal collapse. Its purpose here is to recommend commons resiliency over authoritarian efficiency, as expressed in life choices. Applicable anytime, methinks.
Let's assume that you are urban and have work. Big assumption right now, I know. If you're running out of unemployment, it might be time to think about making some work (a livelihood). Grab a copy of Small Time Operator and start selling something you can make or do. Because rule one in spending less than your income is have an income. Even if you're a vegetarian selling hot dogs.
Aside from disasters (and you've done your minimum preps for those, right?), debt is likely to be your big issue. It's what's holding you back from heading for the country, if that's what you wanted, or from living the "American Dream," whatever that is. A shortage of disposable income and freedom because of, you know, the student loan, the car loan, the mortgage, and the credit cards. And you're not as happy as you thought you were going to be.
There are lots of strategies for debt reduction. Seek and ye shall find. We've used doubled mortgage payments ourselves, effectively. To make such things work, though, the first thing to do is bring outgo below income. Bring frivolous outgo to a halt and you are on your way.
"Voluntary simplicity" is touted as a proper response to modern malaise, but common sense suggests this is what people talk about when they're afraid to take the real plunge and go for the gold: voluntary poverty. Maybe it's anything but voluntary, letting that word "poverty" slip in there, but if your goal is to rise up from slavery (and debt is exactly that), it can be necessary to redirect our pride.
In the reality we've been brought up to -- validated not by our own good sense but by a lifetime barrage of television and other advertising -- we're supposed to aspire to "more" -- a shinier house, a shinier car, bigger and brassier parties, endless gadgets, and smarter and smarter phones, all of which we're dumber and dumber to get in hock for. The trick is to voluntarily take pride in, not these ultimately empty and unsatisfactory acquisitions, but the opposite: de-acquisition.
If there are more than one of you, it might take a very, very serious "family meeting" to all get on the same page, but it can be very focusing to open the meeting with, "here's one thousand dollars a month we can count on for the time being; how do we get by on nine hundred?" (I know; but bear with me here; I'm just old.)
Maybe your line in the sand is three times that, or more. Goodness knows, a buck is not a buck anymore. But that's going to get worse, so ... well, here's a story.
When I had my mid-life crisis in the 90s, I moved (with family permission) temporarily to town for over a year. They depended on my income, so I got a budget of four hundred a month (in 1998 dollars). Here's how it was done.
First, we did research on rent. The best deal (cheapest housing) was, as it happened, two blocks from my university library job. It was what is known as a quad: a room with a vanity sink corner, sharing, from a tiny common hallway, a bathroom and kitchen with three other such rooms. They are intended for students who can't afford an apartment but don't want to live in the dorms. With heat, electric and dumpster fees, a set of shelves, a bed, two chairs, and a table, it was under three hundred a month.
So I moved in.
I took along a bicycle with a rear rack and basket. I had found the bike, a decent old ten-speed that still knew where six of its speeds were, leaning against a driveway fence with a sign taped to it: "Free. Take me." Best bike I ever had. With it I brought along my bike helmet, cable, padlock, and key.
On
the bike I rode to the discount grocery store, stopping to top up the
air pressure in the old leaky tires at a filling station along the way.
Inside the store I grabbed a shopping cart and sought out a twenty-pound bag of quick oats, twenty-pound sack of white beans, another sack, same size, of long-grain rice, a sack of yellow onions, a five pound bag of russety Idaho potatoes, a can of salt, and a family-sized jar of Italian seasoning. I also splurged for a head of Chinese cabbage.
You might think all this would not go home on the bike in one trip, but it can.
I now had more than a month's food, purchased for under fifty dollars, rolling home beside me as I gripped the handlebars.
Sure, people looked at me funny. So? In most places, it's how you roll.
Back at the apartment I set up the steamer on the "dining room" table, near the wall, and loaded it with water. This was a little Sunbeam with a forty-five minute timer -- much better ones are available, but as Goodwill steamers go, it was not bad. Its plastic rice dish was long gone, but I could put a cup of rice or beans or diced potatoes and dandelion greens in one of the bowls, add the appropriate amount of water and some salt and Italian spices, set the timer, and, by and by, take out the bowl and there was dinner -- or breakfast, or lunch.
Waitaminnit! says the careful reader. Surely that was not breakfast!
Why not? And without coffee or tea, usually. Didn't miss them at all.
Reader: But you couldn't --
Yes, I could. For months on end. I lost a little weight, but in my case, that was a good thing. None of this required refrigerating, if managed carefully, and though I was charged for it, I never haunted the communal kitchen, which was a howling disaster area non-maintained by my three student roomies, who by the way I never met. There was no need to go there.
I should mention our town seems to have a good supply of unattended cherry, apple, pear, plum, and Asian pear trees and no end of blackberries, dandelions, lamb's quarters and such free for the picking, for all of which the bike basket came in handy. And over time I got to learn how to ask grocers what they were about to throw out. When company came, I felt I was in a position to be generous.
Reader: And the rest of your time -- ?
No problem. I slept, or bathed, or ate, or thought, or went for walks or bike rides. Of course, if you are at all like me, it helps immensely to do this sort of thing in a college town. A college town has, in effect, a functional commons. I went to town meetings, galleries, museums, free concerts, free plays, and lectures. I read many books; all those on hand several times and all I could carry back from the library. I spent long evenings in that library, which closed in those days at eleven p.m. (it was only two blocks from home, remember). I had access there to not only books but music, DVDs if I wanted them (I didn't), magazines, newspapers, and of course the Internet. I worked on my volunteer project, at my own desk after my colleagues had gone home for the day, and produced first drafts of several books. I was also in school (full-time employees could take classes for next to nothing), and when I could I would take the bus out to the country and do a stint of parenting and farm upkeep.
Reader [weakly]: On -- on $400 a month?
Yes, with change left over. I am telling you this because if you have a bit of luck (I had no major illnesses back then), you can probably live on less than you may currently think you will need, and perhaps even find yourself happy.
Anyways, here are some lifeways resources, in case there's anything I've come across that may be of use to you in the times we're heading into. You be good to yourselves.
Inside the store I grabbed a shopping cart and sought out a twenty-pound bag of quick oats, twenty-pound sack of white beans, another sack, same size, of long-grain rice, a sack of yellow onions, a five pound bag of russety Idaho potatoes, a can of salt, and a family-sized jar of Italian seasoning. I also splurged for a head of Chinese cabbage.
You might think all this would not go home on the bike in one trip, but it can.
I now had more than a month's food, purchased for under fifty dollars, rolling home beside me as I gripped the handlebars.
Sure, people looked at me funny. So? In most places, it's how you roll.
Back at the apartment I set up the steamer on the "dining room" table, near the wall, and loaded it with water. This was a little Sunbeam with a forty-five minute timer -- much better ones are available, but as Goodwill steamers go, it was not bad. Its plastic rice dish was long gone, but I could put a cup of rice or beans or diced potatoes and dandelion greens in one of the bowls, add the appropriate amount of water and some salt and Italian spices, set the timer, and, by and by, take out the bowl and there was dinner -- or breakfast, or lunch.
Waitaminnit! says the careful reader. Surely that was not breakfast!
Why not? And without coffee or tea, usually. Didn't miss them at all.
Reader: But you couldn't --
Yes, I could. For months on end. I lost a little weight, but in my case, that was a good thing. None of this required refrigerating, if managed carefully, and though I was charged for it, I never haunted the communal kitchen, which was a howling disaster area non-maintained by my three student roomies, who by the way I never met. There was no need to go there.
I should mention our town seems to have a good supply of unattended cherry, apple, pear, plum, and Asian pear trees and no end of blackberries, dandelions, lamb's quarters and such free for the picking, for all of which the bike basket came in handy. And over time I got to learn how to ask grocers what they were about to throw out. When company came, I felt I was in a position to be generous.
Reader: And the rest of your time -- ?
No problem. I slept, or bathed, or ate, or thought, or went for walks or bike rides. Of course, if you are at all like me, it helps immensely to do this sort of thing in a college town. A college town has, in effect, a functional commons. I went to town meetings, galleries, museums, free concerts, free plays, and lectures. I read many books; all those on hand several times and all I could carry back from the library. I spent long evenings in that library, which closed in those days at eleven p.m. (it was only two blocks from home, remember). I had access there to not only books but music, DVDs if I wanted them (I didn't), magazines, newspapers, and of course the Internet. I worked on my volunteer project, at my own desk after my colleagues had gone home for the day, and produced first drafts of several books. I was also in school (full-time employees could take classes for next to nothing), and when I could I would take the bus out to the country and do a stint of parenting and farm upkeep.
Reader [weakly]: On -- on $400 a month?
Yes, with change left over. I am telling you this because if you have a bit of luck (I had no major illnesses back then), you can probably live on less than you may currently think you will need, and perhaps even find yourself happy.
Anyways, here are some lifeways resources, in case there's anything I've come across that may be of use to you in the times we're heading into. You be good to yourselves.
