Learning To Be an Un-Consumer

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Rocker_IHB

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How do you learn to be an Un-Consumer?



<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand;=&vid=52d12276-827e-4ae0-bad4-37a641cc4eff">Interview on CNBC</a>



IMO, the unfolding of this oil and housing crisis will trigger a change of culture, and if these things keep getting worse, I think it will be a radical change, people will have to adjust and abandon old habits, as some are already doing it. Kind of Dinosaurs vs. Mammals, mammals adjusted, adapted and survived and Dinosaurs struggled and disappeared.



<a href="http://sfcompact.blogspot.com/">The Compact</a> group after going through this new lifestyle change have found the following benefits:



- accelerated payment of their mortgages

- increments in their kids college education funds

- more charity giving



Some of the things that they advocate are easier to do: reduce meat intake, buy local, reuse, eliminate material dependencies and simplify your life than others: buy 2nd hand clothes (I can get good deals buying out of season), reuse gray water in your garden, the logistics of this sound very complicated to me.
 
You joke, but my father does exactly that. I've read comments here from foks saying they have cheap parents, but I think mine get the blue ribbon in frugality.
 
Actually, I do advocate reuse of anything whenever possible. It's not really a "cheap" thing as much as it is an environmental/resource depletion thing.



green, FTW.
 
I do that occasionally, as to plastic bags. Those babies are made of plastic, right? Which

means oil. They are still usable. I actually feel guilty throwing them away.



My grandmother was cheap to the max. My mother has had a very comfortable

retirement, having inherited a very small fortune partly as a result of her cheapness.

It wasn't frugality, it was cheapness. A dress had be be REALLY worn out to be

thrown away.



Actually, we all could easily return and live at a 50s level of prosperity, only

with more tv channels. We had one tv, one phone, no dryer (dried clothes

outside or in the basement). No microwave. We ate just fine, but seldom

ate out. We weren't poor

and didn't feel poor. The grandparents bought a new car about every 5 years.



So I know how to be cheap/frugal, even if I don't want to be. We can live on

what we make, so have not cut very much. Eating out some. I cook better than

most restaurants, anyway.



The rub will come in my law business. I don't know that I can stand litigation, even

if it's real estate litigation, which I have the upper hand in. People owe me money,

people who under normal circumstances would pay me easily.



My small business clients have it bad also. They aren't making much money.



Oh, well, maybe some of those vacant houses in Fla will be filled up when

people realize that they can't possibly afford their heating bills up north.
 
Living in SoCal. is quite a head turner here. I've always though alot of people here were shallow, fake consumerists.... Now I know. It will be a rough time here for the alot of people. I so dearly want to upgrade to a BMW/Audi, but my regular side wants me keep the little Ford Focus and ride out the economy. Oh well, take it easy and don't work too hard.

-bix
 
This economy may be headed back to our grandparents' times - recycle, reuse, hand-me-downs, get what we need and not what we want, etc. Everything is cyclical. Some of my friends are getting laid off from work. They cry poverty yet their kids still take lessons at the country club, they still have a personal trainer come to their house, they still go out to eat for dinner, they still have a housecleaner clean their house.



I think this will change soon.
 
I've seen some clients who have lost everything, and what I notice is that

they keep their lifestyle until they have absolutely no money whatsoever.



It's like they can't conceive living any other way until everything is gone/maxed

out.



And this is for the entire length of my practice, not just recently.



What I can't understand is how they can possibly enjoy it. I would be so

consumed with worry, I couldn't think of anything else.



I can see if you have a budding ballerina or classical musician on your hands,

you might want to keep up the lessons as long as possible, but everything

else would go, and you might want to explain to the kid that he/she might want

to think about earning some money to help out.
 
[quote author="Daedalus" date=1215152382]You joke, but my father does exactly that. I've read comments here from foks saying they have cheap parents, but I think mine get the blue ribbon in frugality.</blockquote>


We may have a competition for blue ribbon here. My grandmother lived through the depression as well and never even bought storage bags/containers. She used to take the empty bags from inside cereal and cracker boxes and use them as "baggies"; for "tupperware" she'd use empty CoolWhip containers and butter tubs--she rinsed and reused both!



Frugal and actually amazingly green. Go Grams!
 
They do reuse cereal bags and plastic containers. They drink water out of old yogurt cups. My father was born during the depression and my mother shortly after. One winter my grandfather took the 4 family dogs "out back" and shot them because having them starve to death would have been a worse fate.

A story my friends find amusing: I was home earlier this year and I try to get as much done around their house as I can during my short, infrequent trips. I asked my father if he had any small nails for some trim I wanted to put up, and he disappeared into his "workshop" and came out with a couple of baby food jars--the same jars I ate from in 1972--with some rusty nails in them. I grabbed one jar and went upstairs to where I was working. I opend it and poured the nails into my hand, and I couldn't believe what I saw. Every single nail was bent. They had all been used and removed! I took the few nails I figured I could straighten enough to use (the rest were hopelessly kinked), then I went into the kitchen to where he was. I gave my father a wild-eyed exasperated lecture about the logic of storing 20 cents worth of unuseable nails for 30+ years. I then dumped the nails into the trash, handed him the jar, and returned to my work. My 30-second job now took me 10 minutes because I had to spend time to straighten each nail out. When I was done I walked through the kitchen to go return the hammer, and my father was in there...picking his precious nails out of the trash. :bug:
 
Maybe there are other issues as he may not be able to throw things out? I could be wrong. My dad, every time i go see him can not throw any magazines, junk mail and other periodicals out so they are in a grocery paper bag waiting for me and my brother when we see him. I browse through both paper bags when i get home but as always it just goes into the trash. I will not ever say anything as that will throw him off kilter and would just bum him out. Nothing you can do...
 
Yeah, I get that. My Gram used to save newspapers, specifically the WSJ. She never could get through the whole thing, so she would fold it back up and "save" it. Her reasoning being that she would read it at some point....and that she couldn't throw them out <em>in case she had missed something important.</em>



Heh, kinda how I feel about these forums ! :)
 
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