Posts from — February 2008

Simplify. Downsize. Get Rid of Stuff.

This weekend I had to prepare to move from an expensive house to a much cheaper room. I needed to downsize and sell off some of my stuff. Over the last couple weeks, I had made progress and sold off much of my furniture. However, with the end of the month occurring this Friday, I need to be nearly finished this weekend! I emptied almost all the remaining contents of the house into my living room to take inventory.

It was a practical idea. Two years ago when I drove here from Minnesota – I was able to downsize enough to fit all my possessions into a 6′x12′ covered U-Haul trailer (which almost killed me several times on downhill sections – but that is a different story). I eventually rented a 2-bedroom house here in California – and at the same time, my supervisor at work moved away and they sold me lots of stuff to fill up the house (because they didn’t want to have to drive a moving van across the country a second time within a year).

Anyways, I no longer have the V6 SUV to tow the 6′x12′ – I downsized to the 4-cylinder pickup – so I need to be able to fit my life into a 5′x8′ trailer. I have had people comment on my soon-to-be monk-like existence – but do monks have 5′x8′ storage units?
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WWMBD?

It’s a Human Brain’s World

Out of the three brains: the Lizard Brain, the Monkey Brain and the Human Brain – the Human Brain has the power to overcome the Lizard and the Monkey. For better or worse – our society is geared towards a Human Brain existence.

Our brains can be thought of as three functional areas – the Lizard Brain, the Monkey Brain, and the Human Brain.

Out of these three, the Lizard Brain is the oldest and most primitive. The Lizard Brain is the cerebellum and the brain stem. Lizards only have this structure – while for us it is just a small portion at the base of our skulls – “the brain is like an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player”. The Lizard Brain controls reflexes – and reflexive actions. All of our instincts are housed in the Lizard Brain. Lizards – having only Lizard Brains – do not think, they only act instinctually.
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The Year of Living Frugally – Week 2

I have no doubt the average citizen of this country is traveling through a jungle of debt. During the last decade, the average saving rate has turned negative. Credit became easier to obtain, and we were all encouraged to spend and buy and consume. Not because it would make us a healthier country – but because we needed to keep the Gross Domestic Product growing, and we no longer produce any real goods to sell on the global market. Our major export from this country is our debt. Our largest product is our debt-spending and consumption.

Even though we are traveling through a jungle of debt, there is a well-worn path for us to follow. The companies and politicians who need us to spend ourselves deeper into debt (keep the GDP growing!), continue to clear their preferred path through the jungle for us.

When one tries to get off of this path and escape the jungle, is when one really finds out how difficult and dense this jungle really is.
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While I was at work today an interesting news article came through the internet tubes. This article discussed how The Fed was going to lower the prime rate by at least .5% at the upcoming March 18 meeting. In fact, Wall Street was predicting it with 100% certainty.

Wall Street is in a great position to pressure the private corporation known as the Federal Reserve. Wall Street can accuse them of ruining the economy if they don’t lower the interest rates (and we’re already heading into recession). We’re approaching a crossroads – a fairly bad recession while the economy “sheds” it’s speculative-bubble values, or we devalue the money by pumping a lot more of it into the economy so it appears as if there is growth. Wall Street thinks that this is an easy recipe: Take a shot of bad recession (maybe a 2% loss of Gross Domestic Product), followed by a chaser of a 5% inflationary money devaluation and don’t we get a net 3% gain in GDP? (Imagine a barrel of oil costs $100. After 5% inflation the same barrel costs $105. We have now increased the amount of money spent by 5%, which increases the GDP by 5%.)

They’re playing high-stakes economic “chicken” with our future.
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How much do you know about the world around us?

Let’s play a mental game…

Pick a country or a region that you believe to be “third world”.

Do you have your country in mind?

What do you think their life expectancy is? How about the number of children per family? How does this compare to the United States? How about China?

Write down your guess.

Have you written it down? We can’t go on until you do…

A friend recently shared a new website with me – he introduced me to TED.

Technology, Entertainment, Design.
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Why Travel?

Travel is uncomfortable, at times. Dangerous, others. By traveling, you expose to yourself to unknown danger – to types of danger you have never even thought about.

What a crock. (except for the part about sometimes uncomfortable).

Part of the “dangerous” statement is true. The realty is, that more often than not the place you live right now is more dangerous than where you want to travel. Like anywhere, bad things can happen to you. The uncomfortable part is that you may not know what to do next (that is, if you are unfamiliar with the area you in which you are traveling).

Chances are though, it is less likely that bad things will happen to you while you’re traveling, than it is when you are in your hometown.
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Year of Living Frugally – Week-One Adjustments

I’m actually surprised at the amount of work it took to get a budget together and figure out monthly costs over 2007. I also appreciate all of the suggestions, the critical eyes and the encouragement at the Frugal Village and the About: Frugal Living forums. There were some definite common themes running through your feedback – some of it was expected, others were a poke in the brain about something I haven’t thought of. Since it is always easiest to start with the low-hanging fruit (to work towards the frugal goals), I’ll start with:

Food
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Does It Imitate Us, Or Do We Imitate It?

I gave away my television.

I had been thinking about it for awhile.

I had fallen into the trap of watching too much TV. It’s easy to do – especially with cable. Especially with free cable, which was part of my house rental. It didn’t happen right away… it took awhile to sink into it.

How do you know when you’re watching too much TV? I think that television can be a great source of news, especially The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. And what’s wrong with Futurama and The Family Guy? Even Aqua Teen Hunger Force can have it’s place in a healthy dose of TV-watching.

After some training though, the post work TV-ritual can last longer… especially during the cold dark winter months…
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Employed? Uh, heh…

You don’t go out looking for a job dressed like that, do you? On a weekday?

Is this a… what day is this?

Escape from the Job?

The golden handcuffs.

I should be glad they’re golden. I’ve worked as an auto mechanic, in construction, general labor, as a security guard, dishwasher, barrista, clerk, pizza delivery driver and fast-food worker. I may hate working at a computer eight hours a day – but at least I’m not busting my knuckles, breaking my back, bored out of my skull, cleaning slop off plates, steaming the skin off of my hands while pulling ’spro for arrogant doctors, getting bit by dogs or coating myself in grease.
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It’s time to do the nasty.

Whoa – hold on, not that nasty…

I mean the nasty of taking a cold hard look at where my money is going. I dread this in a way – I like keeping some parts of my life personal. I can only hope that my pseudonym provides some sort of a buffer…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been down-sizing my expenses for a year and a half already. I’ve already picked most of the low-hanging fruit (I sold the gas-guzzling SUV, stopped the Starbucks habit, and brought my lunch to work – I’ll write an analysis of this in a future post… did the motorcycle really save me money?). I’ve managed to get to a financial stream where I’m treading water instead of sinking. What next?

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