I’m really, really tired of all this talk about how bad the economy sucks. You’re right it does. But it’s our fault too. And while an inept president may have tipped us further in this direction, we should carry the blame as well. We’re the ones who bought more house than we can afford. We’re the ones who carry multiple credit lines with us. We’re the ones who mortgaged our future for a piece of paper that says we’re educated. Our system is broken. When my tax dollars go to bailing out big businesses and financial brokers and mortgage companies with shady CEOs and Boards of Directors, it’s time to say enough is enough. When they get fired for their “indiscretions” and get to walk away with huge severance packages and new jobs somewhere else repeating their same mistakes, it’s time to say enough is enough. When Wal-Mart moves into my neighborhood and gets tax breaks handed to them on a silver platter and someone else to wipe their ass, while I bend over and take it from Uncle Sam, it’s time to say enough is enough.
We are complicit in our silence and our apathy. I think it’s time for a noisy holy rage that turns the tables and exposes them for what they are. I think it’s time for a quiet resistance that lives as if the government is irrelevant. I think it’s time to opt-out.
I don’t want to hear another conservative bitch about our education system when they’re financing 720 million dollars a day for the Iraq War. I don’t want to hear another conservative bitch about our falling economy when they’re financing 720 million dollars a day for the Iraq War. Enough is enough. There couldn’t be a larger contradiction than that. You can’t eat your cake and have it to.
Is there any surprise why the dollar is worth so little overseas? When you have to print 720 million a day the value tends to go down really quickly. You can call me a hippie. You can call me a liberal. But I just think it’s really sad when the “conservative” becomes the “liberal” and the “liberal” become the “conservative”. And it’s even sadder that we’ve somehow forgotten just how provocative and changing Jesus actually is.
I was talking to Eric on the phone this afternoon and he said my thoughts on water this weekend weren’t feasible. Or at the very least unfair. To which I agree. His point was that each house shouldn’t be rationed the same amount of water. That it wouldn’t be fair for a house of 6 to get the same amount of water as an apartment of 2.
Again . . . I wholeheartedly agree. My point was simply that it also isn’t fair that a family of 2 (us) who uses about $10 of water a month shouldn’t be punished for our conservation. When I take marine showers and Anna takes short showers . . . when we’ve installed low pressure flushing accessories to our john . . . when we don’t take baths or multiple showers in a day . . . when we combine loads when we do laundry and air dry half of our stuff . . . we shouldn’t be punished when we want to keep our lawn as green as possible while we try to sell our house. Or when we want to wash our dirty car.
My point is that there needs to be a more equitable system.
Eric makes a great point. That equality is not a suitable alternative to our water crisis. However, there is a difference between equality & equity. Something that Brian McLaren develops in his latest book Everything Must Change (review forthcoming).
EQUITY is all about fairness and justice. While EQUALITY is about sameness.
There is certainly a place for both. And this is not an attempt to discredit equality. Equality can certainly be a value when it is in regard to our humanity, rights, and opportunities. But in the context of economic systems or even sharing . . . the arbitrary nature of equality is in desperate need of it’s relational cousin . . . equity.
Equality tends to end up focused on black and white rules or concrete morals. While equity is much more contextual in nature and focuses on fairness and justice. It’s more conversational and dynamic.
So in regards to this water situation . . . I’m not advocating a Communist equality system where every one is alloted a certain concrete amount that is the same across the board. But rather a system framed by equity that is more conversational to the legitimate aims of some at conservation and the hyper-consumption actions of others at waste and excess.
Jordon Cooper linked to a MSN (they’re still around) article entitled 10 Easy Ways to Save $500 or More. Some of the ideas are really legit and we are even practicing a few of them. I thought it might be a cool little thing to do on the blog. Give a few of my “money-saving” tips. Some people think of me as a tight-wad. Which I don’t really understand because some of my other friends would think of me as an excessive materialist. A label that I would probably agree with. It’s not that I don’t like to spend money. It’s just that if I do actually spend money, I do it on things that I enjoy and that are quality and that will last as opposed to transient trends or cheap stuff.
This is why I don’t buy a lot of clothes. And when I do, I buy solid color shirts and nice jeans. Then wearing the jeans 6 out of the 7 days. Gross right? But what I don’t spend on clothes I spend on tech stuff. I guess I learned this from my parents. Where growing up I wore off brand shoes and clothing, ate generic store brand cereal and poptarts, and kept my old shampoo bottles so that I could refill them with the 5 gallon bucket of shampoo that my parents special ordered from a beauty salon supply store. But what my parents saved by being excessively frugal in those areas afforded them the luxury of having a beach house. It all evens out in the end. So this is no way bragging. We just bought a Vespa afterall. It’s just a few of the ways that Anna and I have chosen to save money in certain areas so that we can use it in other areas. I’m convinced the only reason we have the nice things that we have (house, computers, scooter, cameras, dog(?), etc) is because we’re both penny pinchers in the areas below. And because I’m lucky enough to have a wife who doesn’t care about “things” as much as she cares about us.
Anyway . . . my list.
Be Selective In Your Clothing Purchases: This is the easiest one for me. While the others are much more of a challenge. Try to by clothes that aren’t “trendy” and fashionable for a season. If you shop like that, you’re constantly having to buy a new wardrobe every 4-6 months. Which most of can usually never afford. So we end up buying a “trendy” purse, shirt, pair of jeans, and/or shoes every now and then. A couple of years later we look like a fashion timeline of outdated fashions. Still rocking the Louie V from 5 years ago. Or still believing Birkenstocks are going to come back in style. We end up having a hodge podge collection of outdated stuff that was trendy a couple of seasons ago. This is the thing I’ve learned about fashion. It’s extremely transient. What is cool today will be lame tomorrow. And I know fashion is lame. But let’s be honest, 95% of us want to look half way stylish and nice when we go out. So my recommendation . . . stick to the basics. Stick to what always works. Whether it’s 1980 or 2020. For me, it’s nice jeans and solid colored shirts. Or basic, simple stripes. Or solid color button ups. In this way, I only spend $100 every 6 months or so. I’ll go out and buy some new solid colored shirts and a new pair of jeans to replace the ones with the holes in the knee. And I’m certainly not trying to brag, but I always feel “stylish”. And I do it on less than $250 a year. It also helps to buy things at the end of a season. By your winter clothes at the beginning of the Spring when all of the winter stuff goes on sale. It sits in your closet for 8 months but it’s a whole lot nicer paying $14 for a sweater as opposed to $60. Same for summer clothes. By bathing suits, sandals, and shorts at the end of the summer. For women . . . I’m not sure what to tell you! But again, I think basics and solids are hard to go wrong with.
Conserve Energy: Anna will probably divorce me for this at some point because of my constant nagging. But turn off the lights when you leave the room. Turn off the television and radios when you leave the house. If you’re gone on vacation, turn your air off and your hot water heater down. Try changing the air temperature by just 2 degrees in the winter and the summer and you’ll easily shave $25 off your monthly bill. Wear sweat pants and long sleeves in your house in the winter and knock it down another 2 degrees and you can $400 in one winter. Change out a few light bulbs and you save another $100 or so.
Cut Back On Entertainment: This one is hard for me because I like television, music, movies, and concerts. But if you only go to 2 concerts a year as opposed to 10, you can save another $400. Try renting your DVDs instead of buying them. Most of us buy DVDs on a whim because we like the movie and then rarely ever watch them again. We usually spend between $15-20 on them. But we could rent them 3-4 times for that amount. Try limiting what you see in the theaters. And ultimately, just cut back on media in general. Anna and I went without any television, cable, or satellite for our first year of marriage. Instead we opted for coffee houses, Yahtzee & Backgammon, actual conversation, and movies cuddled in bed. Which is a much better posture than sitting on separate couches anyway. Even now . . . just get basic cable (8 channels) for $15 as opposed to the expanded package for $60+ and you can save another $600. Even if the show you love only comes on cable, you’re still cheaper buying the season on iTunes than you are going with satellite or expanded cable. And music, movies, and television are easy to if you believe in piracy . . . ahem . . . I mean open-source.
Food & Drink: This one is the hardest one for me/us. Us on the food. Me on the drink. We eat out a lot. And every time we do usually spend $20-25 easily. Getting rid of just one of those meals a week saves us $1200 a year! Considering that most times I’ll drink a couple of beers. That adds in as much as $10. Choosing to drink water over a soft drink will save you $150 a year just by substituting 2 soft drinks a week. And sharing meals cuts the price in half. That’s what we call easy math.
These are just a few of the ways that we try to save money so that we can spend/give it in other areas. I recognize that one mans frugality is another man’s excess. I know it’s all about perspective. There are many things that we still buy that we think are frugal but others would think are excessive. And vice versa. This is just an exercise at thinking about what we spend money on and why we do it.
So if you made it this far? What tips do you have? What are areas/ways that you try to save money?
BTW – I think the world would be a whole better place if everyone practiced #2 on their list (wink wink).
We got the below letter in the mail today from my credit card company. They kindly increased our credit line (without our asking of course). I’m not complaining because as long as we don’t use it and jack it up, it helps our credit score. Crazy how you have to take on the potential for debt before you can boost your score but that’s another story for another day. The letter bothers me on multiple letters. Read below for my airing of grievances.
Numero Uno: Follow the top arrow. I hate these 3 phrases and am quite confused as to what they have to do with my finances.
- You’re ready.
- You can do it.
- Grab it while you can.
Naturally, this leads into the text near the 2nd arrow where I’m imagining they are attempting to connect those 3 phrases with what I need to do in regards to my clothing and athletic events (?).
Numero Dos: I find this whole little series of sentences troubling.
Get more. You’re ready now to hit the mall for new clothes or back-to-school items. Or how about those tickets to the big game?
Really? What is “more”? More being directly related to my new clothes? I’m not sure how new clothes, back-to-school items, or tickets for the big game would ever necessitate credit card use. I mean I know I’m conservative when it comes to credit but are you kidding me?!? And have we as a culture devolved to the point where it expected that this “sales pitch” will work on us? That we actually embrace our credit limit bump so that we can now go buy new clothes?
Anna and I were talking last week about how the generations directly in front of us will be the first to probably end their lives with credit debt, passing it on to their children. I can’t imagine that our grandparents would ever take on the amount of debt that most in our culture have. I mean I’m sure they had their mortgage and a few loans here and there. But it’s hard for me to imagine that it would be the norm rather than the exception that Brokaw’s greatest generation would approach the final years of their life and their consequent death with massive amounts of debt hanging over their head. And to think that my parent’s generation will be the first to begin the swing in the other direction and that our generation will be the first for it to be the gross majority is kind of scary.
My grandparents took on debt for necessities like housing, basic transportation, and equipment for farm and home. My parent’s generation took on debt for their children like college, education, larger homes, larger vehicles, second homes, etc.
My generation . . . we’re running up debt on O’Charley’s, clothes, and football tickets.
Hey, I’m really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I’m glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch — maybe just the first course. I’m glad that solar and wind power are “soaring” toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the “20 green things” suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.
But, as I said, this is not just about “them.” It is still very much about us. Peter Bakker is the chief executive of TNT, the biggest express delivery company in Europe. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2007 just listed TNT as the No. 1 company in terms of energy and environmental practices. Mr. Bakker, whom I met in China, told me this story:
“We operate 35,000 trucks and 48 aircraft in Europe. We just bought two Boeing 747s, which, when fully operational, will do nine round trips every week between our home base in Liège [Belgium] and Shanghai. They leave Liège only partly full and every day fly back to Europe as full as you can stuff them with iPods and computers. By our calculations, just these two 747s will use as much fuel each week as our 48 other aircraft combined and emit as much CO2.”
That’s why we’re fooling ourselves. There is no green revolution, or, if there is, the counter-revolution is trumping it at every turn. Without a transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space, all of the incremental gains we’re making will be devoured by the exponential growth of all the new and old “Americans.”
Agree or disagree?
I tend to agree with this assessment. I think what we need besides a “green revolution” is a better way of thinking about consumption, i.e. CONSUME LESS.
I was reading The Knot’s wedding magazine (a friend gave it to Anna for photography reasons and I read it when I’m using the bathroom so lay off!) and they had a big article on Your Wedding Saving the World. I mean give me a break. Right? The problem is not with weddings not being “green” enough. But rather with the decadent hyper-consumption that the entire industry is built off of.
The same goes for every magazine and TV show host (Oprah, Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, etc). Spinning out a few green tips and giving everybody in the audience a cloth shopping bag is not the solution for a greener, more sustainable world. Rather the hyper-consumption on every level when you enter a chain box supermarket. Where bananas are shipped in from overseas (in the middle of February?) and fish is raised in a drainage ditch farm in Seoul.
Real “green living” is not created by changing a few light bulbs and carrying a green Whole Foods cloth bag. But rather when we examine why we need to turn our lights on all the time and leave them on. Why we need the temperature so cold/warm in our home. Or why we need an SUV to tote our groceries from point A to point B. Or why we need to eat food shipped from across the world when we could be from down the street or from our neighbor’s backyard.
We don’t need more tips. But rather a new way of looking at our consumption.
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