8. “Simple Budget Ideas and Planning for the “Average Joe” Pt 2 :CMGHOW”

An Excerpt from “Only Yesterday – An informal History of the 1920”s”
By Frederick Lewis Allen

“By every rule of logic the situation had now become more perilous than ever. If inflation had been serious in 1927, it was far more serious in 1929, as the total of brokers’ loans climbed toward six billion (it had been only three and a half billion at the end of 1927). If the price level had been extravagant in 1927 it was preposterous now; and in economics, as in physics, there is no gainsaying the ancient principle that the higher they go, the harder they fall. But the speculative memory is short. As people in the summer of 1929 looked back for precedents, they were comforted by the recollection that every crash of the past few years had been followed by a recovery, and that every recovery had ultimately brought prices to a new high point. Two steps up, one step down, two steps up again-that was how the market went. If you sold, you had only to wait for the next crash (they came every few months) and buy in again. And there was really no reason to sell at all: you were bound to win in the end if your stock was sound. The really wise man, it appeared, was he who “bought and held on.”
Time and again the economists and forecasters had cried, “Wolf, wolf,” and the wolf had made only the most fleeting of visits. Time and again the Reserve Board had expressed fear of inflation, and inflation had failed to bring hard times. Business in danger? Why, nonsense!”

MGHOW Says: And we all know what came after 1929, the huge stock market crash where the DJIA lost 90% of it’s value and the start of “The Great Depression”.  Many private banks went out of business, the privately owned FED consoidated it power and by June 22, 1933 the Reblubic of the Unites States was bankrupt.  Look at the headlines prior to the crash – are they really any different to those today or those prior to the “tech bubble” collapse?  Have we learned nothing as a species and individually?  I would hope, that we have.  Cut your expenses, learn to live on less, save and prepare.

(1)Avoid: Purchasing clothes in the mall, tourist factory outlet mall or trendy store/area.  Look for good quality, practical clothing which doesn’t go out of style quickly.  Items such as shoes, boots, gloves, underwear, jeans, and good shirts are good year after year.  All clothing I purchase looks good on me (or is it I make the clothes look good! ), fits good, are brand new, has no flaws (factory seconds) and are of good quality.  Don’t end up on the clothing “tread-mill” like women whom are often slaves to the fashion INDUSTRY.  Women waste a tremendous amount of money on vanity – fashion which changes seasonally.  Women seek peer approval, appearances and need to feel good.  Men don’t.

Instead:  Many large cities have a location – often in an old warehouse or factory district – where the major chains sell their extra clothes at the end of the season.  As men are less sensitive to artificial trends and we have the advantage in that much of what we purchase is good year after year.  Thus focus on clothing which is practical, good quality and doesn’t go out of style quickly.

Savings:  This year I purchased: running shoes for $ 2.99 / pair (I guess mall price would be $ 29 – $ 39), t-shirts for $ 1.00 (unknown retail cost), polo shirts for $3.00 each (regular price I guess, about $ 20.00), various high-quality light jackets for $ 7.50 each (mall price at Stitches was $ 39.99), vests with removable sleeves and a removable hood for $ 7.50 (mall price at Stitches is $ 39.99), down-filled “bomber jackets” for $ 14.00 (mall price at Stitches is $ 49.99) and so on.  I know 1 women whom paid more for 1 jacket at the mall than I paid for an entire years’ worth of clothes.  

Note: Where possible I always purchase Canadian or American items even if the cost is much greater.  I’d rather support decent industry with fair trade practices, retirement and benefit programs than slave labor in a hostile and foreign nation.  Remember, unless an item is made in the US or a westernized nation it’s likely made with virtual slave labor so support domestic industry.  The real cost of a pair of most clothing is probably under 1 cents / item.  Do you really think a shirt made by small boy/girl under slave earning a few cents a hour is worth $30?  Most brand labels are manufactured in sweat-shops located in nations which have no real worker protections and massive poverty and over-population such as China and Bangladesh.  Our fathers and grand-fathers fought for our rights – keep them!

(2)Avoid: Purchasing goods at retail prices and during peak sales periods such as “Boxing Day” when “fake sales” abound.

Instead:  Find out where low cost merchandise outlets are.   Most malls and stores which feature great savings often do not advertise much.  Some old malls have long ago paid for themselves, the stores therein have lower rents and consequently you may find bargains there.  So BEFORE you need something start keeping your eyes open for the price.  I find places like Wal*Mart and Canadian*Tire are often over prices, even when the item is supposedly discounted.  Avoid trendy malls, fake tourist factory outlets, second hand stores, most garage sales, and some flea markets (unless you know a good deal when you see it).

Likewise many stores have fake “Christmas” and “Boxing Day” sales.  For instance, they may raise the prices before the sale and then claim later it’s on special sale for 50% off (really their regular price).  Most sales occur in late February and March when sales are drastically down, stock is sitting idle, the store may be in financial difficulty and seasons are changing.  Cash talks loudest in a silent store during off-season!

Lastly, look for promotions, loss leaders, coupons sales and once a year “real” sales.  Wal*mart has a great anniversary sale including 50% off on vitamins and supplements.  Parma-plus occasionally has coupons for 50 % off vitamins (2 for 1), stores like Shoppers Drug Mart is targeting basic foods and have daily specials like milk for $ 3.99 / bag and coffee for $2.99 / tin.  Dominion recently had a 2 for 1 sale on whole chickens, No-Frills often has a great “dollar” sale once or twice a year and Zellers had 50% off already heavily discounted clearance items.  Know what you’ll need and be patient – buy when you find a great deal no sooner!  Use a credit card with an bonus “extended warranty program” to add an extra year (free) to your purchase warranty and always buy new.  Oh – and don’t foget the “dollar stores” and discount strip malls – great deals there!  I aim for 50 – 75 % off the REAL regular price – that’s a good deal!

Savngs: Some purchases I made this year (in Canadian $): 600 W, 1200 peak watt DC – AC Inverotor for $15.00 (regular $80.00), a laser level for $ 3.00 (regular $30.00), 8-cup coffee maker which I’ll send to the Philippines for $ 4.00 (regular $ 29.95),  organizional swing out tray with 15,000 screws, bolts, nails and fasteners was $ 5.00 (regular $ 40.00), tarps at the dollar store for – well – a dollar (reg. at Canadian Tire is about $ 10 -$  20 / tarp) … and so on.

(3)Avoid: High speed internet (ADSL, cable..) unless you really need the download/upload bandwidth.

Instead: Find a low cost dial-up provider in your area.  Use Firefox or newer versions of Internet “Exploder” (IE) and use “tabs” to open multiple pages at a time whilst you get a coffee.

Savings: At work I hooked up a 100 Mbps wireless MAN/WAN back in the 1998 timeframe.  I had high speed ADSL service to my house for many years.  I went back to a unlimited dial up account with no advertising or popups.  For high-speed I paid about $ 50 / month including taxes and the router rental. Now I pay $ 2.95 / month (not including taxes) for unlimited use, no pop-up ads, web space and an email addresses.  In a year that is $600.00 after-tax cost / year vs. under $40.00 after tax cost.  The savings work out to $ 560 / year and adding 40% for “income tax”, means I would have to earn about $ 784 at work (everyone pays income tax).  Over 5 years that is a gross savings of $ 3, 920 !!  Roughly $ 4,000 ($ 2,352 net) I do not have to slave for!  Dial up may be slow but I rather invest in ASSETS which do not disappear on me.

Tip: I mostly read financials, download weekly financial podcasts so my needs are quite lite.  So I start loading all the financials into allot of Firefox tabs, walk away and have my morning coffee.  As for podcast downloads, I do them overnight or when my wife and I are not home.  It’s fun to watch videos but quite frankly, it’s not worth the money.

Bonus: As my connection is so limited it’s very hard to hack my system.  It’s pretty obvious when bandwidth is being used by another application which gives me allot of time to check my firewall.

(4)Avoid: Bottled Water, Tap Water, plastic water containers

Instead: Purify your own water!  50% of water sold in China is simply tap water.  Many bottled waters including many popular brands are simply filtered tap water.  Again, it’s the whole question of quality and safety.  As the global economies asianize business will increasingly get done that way.  In other words, “whom you know” will become more important that “what you know” and connections and short-term profit will be far more important than high quality and long term growth.  So build or buy your own top quality gravity water filter or siphon filter and know you are drinking filtered water sans most chemicals, hormones, bacteria and viruses (*killing viruses may require another step such as water pasteurization).  Water is big business, public water interests are being sold off daily to large private compnaies so you an expect eventially costs to go up, quality to go down and coverups for the times when things go wrong.

Savings: You can build a gravity fed water filter system using a Berkley water filter (as used by the Red Cross in places like Africa and disaster zones, where only untreated water is available) for under $ 80.00.  It’s good for about 6,000 gallons (3,000 gallon / filter).  That’s about 1.3 cents / gallon (about 4 liters).  The cost goes up slightly if you want a post-filter (needs to be changed yearly) added which removes fluoride and arsenic.  As fluoride is a poison and not good for you (or your teeth!) I recommended that highly.  The cost goes up slightly, maybe to 2 – 4 cents / gallon not including the cost of the unfiltered water should you have a water meter.

* Water meters in the US are RF.  I’ve read that the reason that Wal*Mart has a interest in them (as in owns) is that they are designed to read RDIF tags in your products such as clothing and household goods.  As RDIF has a very short range and is passive, companies needed an excuse to get something into each and every home which could activly read the RDIF tags and then transmit back useage.  Likewise, water meters just based on simply consumption metric can be used to tell how many people live in a household, when they are home, and so forth.  Did you know some toothpaste tubes have caps with embedded RDIF tags which transmits when the tub has been opened.  “Big Sister” meets marketing.

MGHOW (V1.0)

Disclaimer:  I’m just an “average Joe”, what do I know?  Do take what I write for entertainment purposes ONLY, consider my posts to be written by a imbecile, or even as the mummers of a mad-man!  In other words, in no shape or form do I accept any liability for what I: have written, will write, or am writing!  Likewise for what I have copied, will copy or am copying!  Hey got to cover my past, present and future!  Likewise, no full posts or excerpts shall be copied off this site or sued without asking for my permission first.  Hey, it’s cool if some men use it but sorry, this stuff isn’t for feminists.