mind meanderings

A doom and gloom post again :)

The economy...
I read a post that explained what a double dip would look like and that we are probably heading into it. I found an 8 dollar tax in my phone bill that hadn't been there before, that's kinda sneaky. My pud company started charging 5 dollars per meter each month. Sucks for me that I have one for the house and a separate one for the mil cottage. 10 extra bucks right there. I still haven't ordered my free tv antenna. It's because deep in the back of my mind I keep expecting things to get better. I know that even though I'm a little short this month I'll catch up next month. Only I noticed that all the groceries seem to have gone up. The sales aren't quite as good as the normal prices used to be. My money isn't going as far as it used to and according to seniors it's only going to get worse.

We have to start cutting back now if we want to survive this down turn. Rather than the cute little microwave popcorn I started buying the air popper kind. You pay a fortune for convenience. I take a lot of my "home made but tastes like store bought" short cuts from this site. My favorite posts of hers are the 'make your own Mondays'. I'm learning how to make my own at a fraction of the convenience price so that I can maintain my standard of cooking but on less money. I'm not ready to serve less yet. Kind of like not wanting to give up cable.

I tried to use the home made laundry detergent. It sucked :) It was ok for bedding and towels but it left the dirt on the kids clothes. They looked clean and smelled clean, but they also looked stained and icky until I washed them in my Arm and Hammer with oxy-something. Then they looked good again. Some short cuts are definitely trial and errors :) I'd rather figure it out now than when I'm desperate.

I'll know when I'm serious about these hard times when I let go of the cable. Isn't that funny? I pay 100 dollars for basic cable and Internet and yet I don't want to let it go. I think it's another convenience thing/mind thing again. Only poor people don't have cable. Only what happens when we're all poor? (I know I know, I'm not slamming poor, just making a point) If our country is going to set a new bar on what luxury is I'd rather be ahead of the game instead of reactionary. I think the emotional toll is going to be devastating to a great many people.

I'm going to watch with great interest on what we'll be giving up and what we'll consider a necessity. Is cable a want or need? Is a cell phone a want or need? How about starbucks? Want or need? ooh...How about Christmas! That's getting close, want or need? Are you going to scale it back or put it on a card?

Did I mention that I no longer have any cards? That was my first response to hard times. We settled them for about 40% at the beginning of the year. It pissed me off when they cut my available balance and doubled my payments. I figured my credit just took a huge hit because it looked like we were at max so why not play hardball. I'm not proud that I didn't pay my full debt but when I totaled it up they received everything I charged, they just dropped the interest when they settled. Whatever. Last thing they said when it was all done was to see them first when we wanted to open another card. How asinine would that be? Get debt free so we could run up more debt?! Nope, all our extra monies will go to pay off the house. As soon as we get some...