Twenty Buckets!

When Miss Boo was little(r), she heard her daddy say "holy buckets!"  We noticed shortly thereafter that whenever she was amazed or surprised, she would shout "TWENTY BUCKETS!"  It seems like an oddly appropriate exclamation, actually. You picture twenty big five-gallon pails of something, in an imposing row.  Like, "well, looks like it's a twenty-bucket crowd tonight" or "gonna be a twenty-bucket storm, I think!"

Like all my posts of this nature I'm going to give you the disclaimer before I get to the meat: don't panic.  Don't rush off to buy gold coins.  Don't quit your job to go live in a shack.  (Don't quit your job.  Don't quit your job.  Do not quit your job.)  Don't buy gas masks.  Don't decide that the most likely hard time that will occur will probably be like "One Second After" where you'll have to figure out the best way to kill Zombie Mutant Bikers.

Just don't, please.  All that stuff is so silly.

But--

--and this is important--

--twenty buckets, we've been having an interesting economic situation this summer.  Quite calmly, and without getting worked up, I want you to think about it.  I think what we are approaching is not TEOTEWAKI (The End Of ThE World As We Know It) or peak oil or mega-hyper-inflation or any of the other pet scenarios.  I think it will be a much more boring disaster: a depression.

I actually think we're already in a depression.  Consider some facts with  me:

• Food prices have increased by 33% in the last four years, in the U.S.  In other countries it's worse.
• The unemployment rate is 8%.  That's not even the interesting news: the unemployment rate does not count those who have simply quit looking for work or those who do not get unemployment benefits.  The true unemployment rate is probably closer to 16%-18% when you count in those folks.  At the height of the 1930s Great Depression it was something like 20%-25%.
• The price of fuel is high and will probably keep getting higher, even as we end summer.
• We have a huge drought.  This will cause losses in the corn and soybean crops.  This isn't so much a problem because people love to eat piles of corn and soybeans, but because corn and soy are in a lot of inexpensive food in the form of soy flour, corn syrup, soybean oil, and so on.  In other words, if corn and soy get scarcer, inexpensive food gets more expensive.
• The price of gold just keeps going up.  Good for those of us in the industry, a bad indicator for the economy.  This matters because people and countries tend to buy gold when they think currency is going to not be worth as much.  (Please don't do this.  During the last Depression it didn't do anyone any good to have gold coins or bars stored, because the government confiscated everything but gold jewelry.)
• Europe is imploding.  Asia is having difficulties.  South America has been bad for a long time.  As Elrond would say, our list of people with money grows thin.

All of these things say to me that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, possibly for a long time.

So what do I think you should do about it?  Apart from the not panicking thing I mentioned earlier?

1. Learn things.

I start with this one because it's free, and it's actually kind of fun.  Sit down and make a list of stuff that would be useful to know if you had to start making do with less buying power.  Would you want to know how to mend clothes?  Grow a garden?  What the legal requirements are for a small business in your state?  How to bake bread?  Do an online search, go to the library, put the word out at church--and learn those things.  I do all of them right now except for the small business, and I can promise you that they aren't hard.

While you're at it, it can be instructive to study economic hard times in history.  I find it reassuring, for instance, to reflect that there were no Zombie Mutant Bikers during the first depression.  (Some people will tell you this is because we were a more moral, righteous country in the 1930s, but all I can say to that is that they obviously haven't read their history.  Or seen Road to Perdition.)  Cookbooks from the era will give you an idea of how people lived.  Sure, they contained strategies like stretching margarine by whipping in gelatin (eww.....), but they demonstrated that people still had birthday parties and weddings.  Life goes on.

2. Don't spend money.

No more than you have to.  If things will keep getting more expensive as jobs become harder to get, then you'll be glad to have a cushion.  Now is the time to think hard about whether you can justify an expensive cell phone plan, satellite TV, an extra car, dinners out, fancy coffee/energy drinks, or new clothes every month.  I'm not saying that you *can't* justify any of this stuff, by the way.  I'm just asking you to really think about it, instead of spending automatically.  If you really watch your satellite TV and get $100 per month of entertainment out of it, then keep it!  (We do, alas.  Football and NickJr.)  But if you really only watch a couple of shows and the occasional movie, you may want to look into Hulu and Netflix and see if you can reduce costs.  If you adore Starbucks and truly enjoy it, then see if you can keep it.  But if you also have a fancy coffeepot and fancy beans sitting at home, maybe drink homebrew for a few weeks and see whether you like it.

The only thing I will draw a hard line on is what is called "aspirational purchases".  If you are buying Starbucks not because you love it, but because you want people to see you with a Starbucks cup in your hand to prove that you are the kind of person who drinks Starbucks, then I forbid it.  That's a stupid reason for buying anything.  (Cough *iPhone!* cough.)

3. Lower household costs.

This is not quite the same thing as number 2, which was mostly about discretionary spending.  I can decide whether I want to buy another pair of shoes, but I can't really decide whether to pay the electric bill.  What I can do, though, is try to take measures to lower my electric bill.  I can open the windows during the cool of the morning, close up, and use fans instead of using the air conditioner all day.  I can use a clothesline or drying rack instead of my dryer.  I can wash dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher.  (Yep, that really does make a difference.  One family I know of quit the dishwasher and the dryer and saved $1000 in one year.)

Once again, be sensible.  If you need to use the dryer because you live in Alabama and the clothes mold on the line, by all means, use your dryer and cut elsewhere.  But I live in Nevada--using a drying rack is low-hanging fruit for me.

-Wash clothes less frequently.  (A good rule is not to wash except for visible soil or a smell.  Sounds gross, but works fine.  I find that babies usually accomplish both criteria by wearing an item a single time, but adults can usually preserve their clothes more carefully.  Use aprons.)

-Stop buying paper plates and wash your dishes (frugally).

-Save water.

-Turn off lights.

-Don't leave your phone charger plugged in unless it's charging the phone.

-Turn your computer off at night.

There are tons of other tips you can find.  See point 1.

4. Consider hobbies that save you money, rather than cost you money.

An example?  Well, hunting is an expensive hobby--unless you inherit your guns, can pay a reasonable amount for your license, and make a point of eating the deer/elk that you get each year.  Knitting is an expensive hobby--unless you can find an inexpensive source for your yarn and then use it to create items that you would otherwise have to buy.  Reading can be an expensive hobby--unless you get your books from the library or cheap used bookstores.

But gardening as a hobby can save you money.  Woodworking/home repair are treated like hobbies in our society, but they can (if properly looked after) save you money.  Believe it or not home brewing can (if you don't buy all the widgets) save you money.  And so on.

5. Strengthen yourself in the Lord.

Remember, among all the things we do to help ourselves, that God is really in control.  He promises to provide for your needs. He will not let you starve.  You might not have exactly the food you want or like, but He'll see to it that you have food.  This would be a great time to dig deep into the Scriptures, if you don't do that on a regular basis already.  There is no remedy for discouragement except the truth.

That's all I got today.  If you have a moment, why not drop by the comments and share your own tips on lowering costs?

Cheers,

Breanna