Molding the Savvy Shopper at Any Age

In response to the Dollar Stretcher article "Molding the Young Savvy Shopper."
______________________________________________________

It’s come to my attention in many subtle ways that a good portion of our population isn’t prepared, or even knows how to get prepared, for a coming economic downturn. The unprepared range in age from pre-teen to a spouse of many years, and encompass both genders.

It doesn’t take a sudden job loss to throw someone off kilter—it could be a death, an out-of-control credit card debt, a bad mortgage deal, or someone who was raised in a household where nobody cooked from scratch, and nobody had reason to think twice about it.

No matter what the age or gender, people shouldn’t be caught unaware of how to defend themselves from inflation, loss of income, or the death of the usual home keeper. Know the basics:

• Learn to say and accept the word NO.

• Know how to use coupons, in-store sales, and rebates to their maximum advantage.

• Know how to read shelf labels and discern the unit price as compared to the shelf price.

• How to keep or reference a price book—what it means, and how to add to it or modify it.

• Know how to read a cookbook and follow written instructions.

• Know your own limits as to taste, food allergies, food restrictions due to health issues, room in the fridge and cupboards, and budget.

• Learn how to read and comprehend a nutrition label—this is one terrific key to choosing foods with actual nutrition versus foods loaded with empty calories.

• Learn how to become deaf to ads, marketing, and other money cons in print, in person, and on the TV. This also goes for trends and fads.

• Scrutinize everything for fine print before buying anything—there’s always a catch, and you want to be informed. If you don’t understand it, don’t buy it.

• Reduce, reuse, recycle, scavenge, and swap—use imagination instead of money.

This is why it’s so very important to teach every member of the household the fine art of frugal living—they may be living without the resident black belt frugalite at any given moment. This could cause a whole myriad of suffering on many levels beyond the expected grief and sadness—it could lead to worsening of health issues requiring special diets, or even someone having to resort to public assistance (or worse) due to needless spending. We want our loved ones to be able to carry on without us, so we must make sure they can before something happens to us.

There are still generations of people entirely dependent on public assistance because they were never taught how to correctly manage their budget and expenses, and frankly, there’s little hope of ever reaching these people to turn things around—“the system” is all they know, and it will be disappearing one day soon.

If you or a loved one find yourselves inadequately prepared to handle the tasks necessary for frugal living, ask yourself this question: “What would (insert resident frugalite here) do?”, only ask it NOW why he/she is still alive, mobile, and able to teach you. People easily become rendered mute or paralyzed from accidents or strokes, so don't wait any longer to learn and educate your friends and loved ones--it may be the one enduring thing you leave behind in this world.

Part of the reason why I write this: a few years ago, my mother-in-law died of ovarian cancer, leaving behind an overly-dependent husband (he was capable of everything, but relied heavily on Mom). As a result, he died seven months later from lack of money- and food-knowledge. He never asked about how to care for himself when she was still alive, and she never bothered to teach him, even though she knew she was dying. Unfortunately, I was stuck on the East Coast due to navy obligations, and couldn’t move out with him. He was unwilling to move here, so he remained alone until his death by microwaveable Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, in spite of my daily e-mailed attempts to instruct him otherwise.

It shouldn’t take a death to wake someone up to the fact that they’re helpless outside of work, and it shouldn’t take a job loss or crushing debt to realize the same thing.

People can learn this skill NOW—at any age, any income level, and for any reason. While still at home, or still married to a longtime spouse/home keeper, or still working, please make every effort to teach, learn, and practice frugality in all its forms and levels—it may be the very thing to save your life (quite literally).

Make frugality a priority in you and in people you choose to surround yourself with. The #1 reason that people go into debt is to keep up with the Joneses, and what they don’t know is that Jones is broke too! If you already know and practice the frugal basics, the Joneses make wonderful teaching opportunities. Don’t be shy—pass it on once you’ve mastered it.

There are other skills besides the ones I mentioned above, but I leave those for you and your tutor. We’re never too old to learn new tricks, and the particular trick of frugality has been around a few centuries. We Americans first saw it in the Victorian era, and continue to see it every day in the Amish—they’re masters of it.

The coming downturn may end up being severe enough to reverse our current achievements in technology and engineering; we may be forced to downsize a lot of things, but mostly expectations. The best you can do is downsize and rethink things for yourself at a personal and household level so as to avoid becoming part of a larger-scale crisis. The word commonly used for this is “conserve.” I’m not sure simple conservation is going to be enough, so learn about and be prepared to take more drastic measures (again, see the Amish for examples). Learn frugality until you reach black belt status, because you will need it to survive largely unscathed (think Dust Bowl and Great Depression here).

Even if things don’t take a turn for the worst, frugality will make you a very wealthy person in strategy and knowledge, if not in money.