From WalletPop.
"The recession may have officially "ended," but chances are your financial struggles are far from behind you."
...
"...there's another reason that many of us are going to feel cash-strapped for some time to come. Simply put: Americans are very quick to rack up debt, but slow to pay it off.
And unfortunately, our decades-long love affair with credit and over-consumption won't easily come to an end.
The Numbers on Debt are Dead Wrong
In recent months, we've gotten word that consumers have started paying off debt and saving more money in response to the Great Recession. But those reports largely proved to be unfounded – or misleading at best.
For example, a lot of the hoopla about reduced credit card debt turned out to be much ado about nothing. While it's true that the totals for credit card debt have gone down, it's not because people have starting paying more money toward their bills.
In fact, just the opposite is true. People haven't been paying their credit card debts, leading banks to write off those debts as uncollectible. So the real reason for the reported drop in credit card debt is charge-offs from banks' balance sheets – not payoffs by consumers."
...
"But if we're all doing such a better job of saving money, you'd think savings in other areas might budge too. Yet that's not happening. For most other categories of saving – whether it's saving for our kids' college education or for our own retirement – Americans' savings accounts are severely under-funded.
Why? The truth is that Americans are still borrowers to a far greater extent than they are savers. And in every category of borrowing, consumers are taking more time to pay off their obligations than in previous years."
...
"It's all this debt that holds us back from saving and investing for the future. If your home was under water, and you didn't plan to move anytime soon, you probably wouldn't care.
But if you're a cash-strapped homeowner who wants to borrow against your property, it's a different story. You can't borrow because the equity simply isn't there. And thus, you're feeling financially pinched. Your personal recession is alive and well.
As a nation, we're drowning in debt. And without smart financial planning and improved financial literacy, it's going to take most people a very long time to get rid of all these bills."
See? Frugal living pays.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
An Overseas Perpsective
Having made a military-induced move to Italy and back, I learned quite a few things while over there. One of them was the fact that we take so much for granted here in the U.S., and the lengths we go to maintain that “for granted” stuff.
Things we consider “every day” and “basic living standard” here are classified as “unobtainable” and “for the rich only.” Some examples include:
· Wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners
· Air conditioning
· Screened doors and windows
· Full-size refrigerators and stoves
· Dishwashers and dryers
· Yards front and back
· Closets of any size
· Cars
I have to admit that I went nuts the first year we were stationed in Italy and lived in a rental apartment out in town (“on the economy” in military-speak). Fortunately, I possess a mind that thrives on the necessity of finding alternatives I could live with, and so my journey began…with one addition--the start of questioning my own needs for basic living.
This is where I obtained the beginnings of what I will call my frugal roots.
“What? This place doesn’t have carpeting?” “No air conditioning?” “Where’d the window screens go?” “These appliances look like something a kid would play with!” “Why is there a washing machine in the kitchen and not a dishwasher?” These were the sounds of me apartment-touring. Apartment after apartment, I finally got the hint.
UPDATE: Here in Virginia, there are still washers in kitchens instead of dishwashers--the older homes have pipes that won't handle the excess water from a draining dishwasher. Some clever homeowners replaced the washers with dishwashers, or had the plumbing upgraded to accommodate both machines, but that was a rarity. Out west, the homes have washers/dryers in the garage next to the water heater--here, there is no garage most times, and everything got crammed into the kitchen (washer, dishwasher, and water heater). If a garage is present, it's detached and away from the house, so (legally) stringing electricity and plumbing out there is costly. Basically, the garage is just for the car and lawn toys--nothing else.
My history-buff husband brought me back down to earth by explaining how old this particular town and country was, and that taxes and utility prices were so high that some things were small out of necessity. The tax code, I thought, was rather skewed, too—real estate was taxed by the room, and closets were considered rooms. This explained the armoirs in every bedroom.
After furniture arrived from the U.S. and our new place was put to rights, I began learning how to communicate with the landlord (the military housing office acted as a translator in most instances). By learning basic Italian, cutting out and saving magazine photos of things I wanted for the apartment, and shopping for any materials I could employ for DIY projects, I slowly got most of what I wanted, or thought I needed.
My first lifestyle surprise came when I tried to vacuum the carpet I had shipped over with my furniture. I fired up the vacuum, and a neighbor banged on my door to complain about the loud strange noise. Not being fluent in Italian yet, I opened the door and invited him in, trying to gesture my way through the process of vacuuming. He knelt on the carpet remnant and cried, caressing the plush pile like it was fine fur. He then took me to his apartment and showed me his bare tile floors. He then rolled out his bucket and mop, gesturing the mopping motion.
My first foreign economic lesson: carpeting is for the rich. Apparently so are vacuum cleaners. With apartment floors so completely tiled, the rooms turn into large echo chambers. My little cleaner must be making a racket!
After about a month of trying to sweep the large rug in an effort to clean quietly, I took it out and hung it over my balcony rail and beat it with the broom. I then rolled it up and stored it in a bedroom corner. I became the proud owner of an Italian mop and bucket, some washable slippers from the street market, and began questioning the very need for large rugs—even wall-to-wall carpeting.
Enter history-buff Hubby with a tale of carpet origins…
My next encounter was with the child-size appliances and the onset of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. A turkey of any size wasn’t going to fit in the oven, and leftovers weren’t going to fit in the Fisher-Price-sized ‘fridge. One call to the housing office sent Luigi out with an American stove and refrigerator, equipped to run with the Italian electrical plugs and gas hookup. Later that week, he also brought me an American washer and dryer, but had to set them up outside—they wouldn’t fit in the washer niche made in the kitchen. A cold water garden hose spigot and propane “bombola” were my power sources.
Enter the landlady with a bag of clothespins and gestures toward her outside clothesline…and several hung loads later, I began to question my need for a dryer in good weather.
Fans in summer were just not enough to keep sweltering, humid Italian summers at bay, and the flies coming in the double-door swing-in style of windows was just too much for me. I fashioned my own screens out of 48” sheers with a rod through top and bottom casings, then mounted them top and bottom in the window openings. After spreading the material to cover the entire opening, I had pretty effective screens. I did this to all my windows. I began to wonder how I could fashion a screen door for myself, since they didn’t exist over here. Bingo! A magazine photo and two rolls of screen later, my landlady’s brother built a door frame and stretched the screen over it. He even mounted it for me in the marble doorway. I had no spring for it, but oh well. He added a locking latch for security.
Two weeks later, he returned with screens for all my windows, too. I then noticed he had made the same things for his sister, my landlady. I started a trend.
When I got my first water bill, I figured out why nobody had yards. It was too expensive to maintain a lawn that didn’t produce anything. Their “yards” were small garden plots—just enough room for tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, oregano, and the dog to do his business. Everything else was paved for parking cars on. My landlady felt sorry for me and let me plant things in her old rose garden plot. I got to plant, and she taught me how to properly trim rose bushes and to let God water the plants from the sky.
Since our particular apartment was in town, I found it was much easier to walk to the weekly street markets, the local bakery, the favorite pizzeria, and the cheapest grocery store rather than drag the car out in busy traffic. American cars are so large compared to Italian ones, and their streets are narrow (enter Hubby again with stories of alleys traveled on horseback…) and hard to maneuver in. Buying an Italian car was out of the question because their safety standards are much lower than ours—no safety glass windows, no fireproof upholstery or insulation of any kind, sometimes no horns or blinkers, non-existent pollution control devices, and very dim headlights. I bought an “old lady cart” and walked wherever I needed to go.
This led me to question suburb living. If you have to get in the car to go shopping right back into the same town you moved away from, what’s the point? But now, developers have one-upped us all by moving “town” out to the suburbs. So we move again to get away from suburban sprawl, and the cycle repeats itself. I guess the answer is to stay downtown and walk.
Sometimes we need to “get out of the county”, so to speak, to gain perspective on what it is we call life’s necessities. What may be necessary to you and me might be out of reach for someone else, and questionable at that. Think of how much time, effort, and money we could save ourselves if we merely cock our heads, squint our eyes, and look at things with Italian lenses occasionally and start asking questions of ourselves.
When I got back to the states, I made some long-lasting changes to my own life and way of assessing needs. If nobody else has it, and nobody knows what it is, or what to do with it, do I really need it—even in temporary situations? Just a thought.
Things we consider “every day” and “basic living standard” here are classified as “unobtainable” and “for the rich only.” Some examples include:
· Wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners
· Air conditioning
· Screened doors and windows
· Full-size refrigerators and stoves
· Dishwashers and dryers
· Yards front and back
· Closets of any size
· Cars
I have to admit that I went nuts the first year we were stationed in Italy and lived in a rental apartment out in town (“on the economy” in military-speak). Fortunately, I possess a mind that thrives on the necessity of finding alternatives I could live with, and so my journey began…with one addition--the start of questioning my own needs for basic living.
This is where I obtained the beginnings of what I will call my frugal roots.
“What? This place doesn’t have carpeting?” “No air conditioning?” “Where’d the window screens go?” “These appliances look like something a kid would play with!” “Why is there a washing machine in the kitchen and not a dishwasher?” These were the sounds of me apartment-touring. Apartment after apartment, I finally got the hint.
UPDATE: Here in Virginia, there are still washers in kitchens instead of dishwashers--the older homes have pipes that won't handle the excess water from a draining dishwasher. Some clever homeowners replaced the washers with dishwashers, or had the plumbing upgraded to accommodate both machines, but that was a rarity. Out west, the homes have washers/dryers in the garage next to the water heater--here, there is no garage most times, and everything got crammed into the kitchen (washer, dishwasher, and water heater). If a garage is present, it's detached and away from the house, so (legally) stringing electricity and plumbing out there is costly. Basically, the garage is just for the car and lawn toys--nothing else.
My history-buff husband brought me back down to earth by explaining how old this particular town and country was, and that taxes and utility prices were so high that some things were small out of necessity. The tax code, I thought, was rather skewed, too—real estate was taxed by the room, and closets were considered rooms. This explained the armoirs in every bedroom.
After furniture arrived from the U.S. and our new place was put to rights, I began learning how to communicate with the landlord (the military housing office acted as a translator in most instances). By learning basic Italian, cutting out and saving magazine photos of things I wanted for the apartment, and shopping for any materials I could employ for DIY projects, I slowly got most of what I wanted, or thought I needed.
My first lifestyle surprise came when I tried to vacuum the carpet I had shipped over with my furniture. I fired up the vacuum, and a neighbor banged on my door to complain about the loud strange noise. Not being fluent in Italian yet, I opened the door and invited him in, trying to gesture my way through the process of vacuuming. He knelt on the carpet remnant and cried, caressing the plush pile like it was fine fur. He then took me to his apartment and showed me his bare tile floors. He then rolled out his bucket and mop, gesturing the mopping motion.
My first foreign economic lesson: carpeting is for the rich. Apparently so are vacuum cleaners. With apartment floors so completely tiled, the rooms turn into large echo chambers. My little cleaner must be making a racket!
After about a month of trying to sweep the large rug in an effort to clean quietly, I took it out and hung it over my balcony rail and beat it with the broom. I then rolled it up and stored it in a bedroom corner. I became the proud owner of an Italian mop and bucket, some washable slippers from the street market, and began questioning the very need for large rugs—even wall-to-wall carpeting.
Enter history-buff Hubby with a tale of carpet origins…
My next encounter was with the child-size appliances and the onset of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. A turkey of any size wasn’t going to fit in the oven, and leftovers weren’t going to fit in the Fisher-Price-sized ‘fridge. One call to the housing office sent Luigi out with an American stove and refrigerator, equipped to run with the Italian electrical plugs and gas hookup. Later that week, he also brought me an American washer and dryer, but had to set them up outside—they wouldn’t fit in the washer niche made in the kitchen. A cold water garden hose spigot and propane “bombola” were my power sources.
Enter the landlady with a bag of clothespins and gestures toward her outside clothesline…and several hung loads later, I began to question my need for a dryer in good weather.
Fans in summer were just not enough to keep sweltering, humid Italian summers at bay, and the flies coming in the double-door swing-in style of windows was just too much for me. I fashioned my own screens out of 48” sheers with a rod through top and bottom casings, then mounted them top and bottom in the window openings. After spreading the material to cover the entire opening, I had pretty effective screens. I did this to all my windows. I began to wonder how I could fashion a screen door for myself, since they didn’t exist over here. Bingo! A magazine photo and two rolls of screen later, my landlady’s brother built a door frame and stretched the screen over it. He even mounted it for me in the marble doorway. I had no spring for it, but oh well. He added a locking latch for security.
Two weeks later, he returned with screens for all my windows, too. I then noticed he had made the same things for his sister, my landlady. I started a trend.
When I got my first water bill, I figured out why nobody had yards. It was too expensive to maintain a lawn that didn’t produce anything. Their “yards” were small garden plots—just enough room for tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, oregano, and the dog to do his business. Everything else was paved for parking cars on. My landlady felt sorry for me and let me plant things in her old rose garden plot. I got to plant, and she taught me how to properly trim rose bushes and to let God water the plants from the sky.
Since our particular apartment was in town, I found it was much easier to walk to the weekly street markets, the local bakery, the favorite pizzeria, and the cheapest grocery store rather than drag the car out in busy traffic. American cars are so large compared to Italian ones, and their streets are narrow (enter Hubby again with stories of alleys traveled on horseback…) and hard to maneuver in. Buying an Italian car was out of the question because their safety standards are much lower than ours—no safety glass windows, no fireproof upholstery or insulation of any kind, sometimes no horns or blinkers, non-existent pollution control devices, and very dim headlights. I bought an “old lady cart” and walked wherever I needed to go.
This led me to question suburb living. If you have to get in the car to go shopping right back into the same town you moved away from, what’s the point? But now, developers have one-upped us all by moving “town” out to the suburbs. So we move again to get away from suburban sprawl, and the cycle repeats itself. I guess the answer is to stay downtown and walk.
Sometimes we need to “get out of the county”, so to speak, to gain perspective on what it is we call life’s necessities. What may be necessary to you and me might be out of reach for someone else, and questionable at that. Think of how much time, effort, and money we could save ourselves if we merely cock our heads, squint our eyes, and look at things with Italian lenses occasionally and start asking questions of ourselves.
When I got back to the states, I made some long-lasting changes to my own life and way of assessing needs. If nobody else has it, and nobody knows what it is, or what to do with it, do I really need it—even in temporary situations? Just a thought.
Can Your Life Be Richer Without TV?
From MSN Money. Without TV COMPLETELY, or just moving the entertainment to another source: the computer? So many of us are under the illusion that they're TV-free, but then they watch Hulu and other alternative TV sites on the internet.
If this is you, you're not TV-free--you're just free of the black box (and the cable/satellite bill).
"Want to save some serious green? Stop watching TV.
What to do instead of watching TV:
Cutting the cable or ditching the dish can recoup more than just the monthly service fee. Television-free folks say:
* They spend less when they have less exposure to ads and product placement.
* Their children don't continually shriek for treats, trips and toys (see above).
* They feel better physically and emotionally. The hours formerly spent on channel surfing turned into exercise, volunteering, family time and, oh yeah, getting enough sleep."
...
"I don't feel the need to rush to the public library to borrow Season 3 of "The Closer." It's not that I don't like TV. It's that other things have replaced it in my life."
...
"Those who eschew the tube know they're swimming against the tide. Boy, do they know it. Leigh Henderson, a Manhattan management consultant who also teaches at Baruch College, says her students are horrified.
"They look at me like, 'How can you do it? How can you possibly live without a TV?'" says Henderson, who gave away her bulky old television in March 2007 during an apartment renovation.
Her plan was to buy a flat-screen model. But Henderson liked not being "inundated" with advertising and realized that a lot of programming was, well, dumb.
Since then, she's noticed her students often wail that they don't have time to do all that course reading yet can tell her all about the programs she's missing. Henderson has friends who won't go out because a particular show is on. And at a recent family reunion, one relative watched cooking programs rather than interact with people he hadn't seen in years.
"That just reinforced it for me," Henderson says. "(Television) isn't evil. It just shouldn't be the top priority."
...
""Once I shut the TV off, I realized how much of my time was being wasted," Holden says. "There's a lot of world out there beyond the TV screen."
Now his TV watching consists of "Jeopardy!" on Hulu -- sometimes.
P.S. Holden's electric bill has dropped at least 15%.
Question to consider: How would you improve your life (and maybe other people's lives) if you weren't watching TV?"
...or weren't playing videos or video games, or wrapped up in Netflix or Hulu? My satellite contract's up next month, and we may just let it go--most of our shows are available on the web. I've been dragging out and washing quilting fabric that's been in boxes for the last 8 years--maybe this is the year I actually finish a quilt! :)
"Others who've limited or deleted TV offer these tips:
* Go cold turkey. It's not so bad after the first week.
* Or don't. Allow yourself one show or one hour of viewing per day. Gradually reduce viewing over several weeks.
* Try new things. Be ready to fill the hours you once spent watching. The people I interviewed suggested reading, exercising, volunteering, playing board games, taking classes, playing outdoors with the kids, and cooking and savoring nice meals. (And, yeah, going online to watch a little bit of TV now and then.)
* Bank the savings. If you were paying for cable, set aside what you'd be spending. It could go toward a vacation, a special purchase or a college fund.
* Out of sight, out of mind. Move the TV out of the common area. If it's not in your face all the time, you won't automatically move to turn it on."
I've found that more is less when it comes to TV--most of those 200+ channels are taken up by non-stop revolving marketing (like the Brazil Butt-Lift/Sobongo channel), and the amount of commercials between actual TV shows is increasing. Sometimes, it seems there's more commercials than programming! In an hour-long show, there's only 40 minutes of actual TV show--the rest is commercials (a third of that hour). For every "hour" of programming you think you're getting, a third of it goes to ads and marketing crap nobody wants. Imagine what you could get done in all those third-of-an-hours?
...and to think we actually PAY to bring the unwanted marketing into our homes!
I spent my teenage years without TV, so I've been there before. I just haven't been there since... :( My radio got one hell of a workout back then.
If this is you, you're not TV-free--you're just free of the black box (and the cable/satellite bill).
"Want to save some serious green? Stop watching TV.
What to do instead of watching TV:
Cutting the cable or ditching the dish can recoup more than just the monthly service fee. Television-free folks say:
* They spend less when they have less exposure to ads and product placement.
* Their children don't continually shriek for treats, trips and toys (see above).
* They feel better physically and emotionally. The hours formerly spent on channel surfing turned into exercise, volunteering, family time and, oh yeah, getting enough sleep."
...
"I don't feel the need to rush to the public library to borrow Season 3 of "The Closer." It's not that I don't like TV. It's that other things have replaced it in my life."
...
"Those who eschew the tube know they're swimming against the tide. Boy, do they know it. Leigh Henderson, a Manhattan management consultant who also teaches at Baruch College, says her students are horrified.
"They look at me like, 'How can you do it? How can you possibly live without a TV?'" says Henderson, who gave away her bulky old television in March 2007 during an apartment renovation.
Her plan was to buy a flat-screen model. But Henderson liked not being "inundated" with advertising and realized that a lot of programming was, well, dumb.
Since then, she's noticed her students often wail that they don't have time to do all that course reading yet can tell her all about the programs she's missing. Henderson has friends who won't go out because a particular show is on. And at a recent family reunion, one relative watched cooking programs rather than interact with people he hadn't seen in years.
"That just reinforced it for me," Henderson says. "(Television) isn't evil. It just shouldn't be the top priority."
...
""Once I shut the TV off, I realized how much of my time was being wasted," Holden says. "There's a lot of world out there beyond the TV screen."
Now his TV watching consists of "Jeopardy!" on Hulu -- sometimes.
P.S. Holden's electric bill has dropped at least 15%.
Question to consider: How would you improve your life (and maybe other people's lives) if you weren't watching TV?"
...or weren't playing videos or video games, or wrapped up in Netflix or Hulu? My satellite contract's up next month, and we may just let it go--most of our shows are available on the web. I've been dragging out and washing quilting fabric that's been in boxes for the last 8 years--maybe this is the year I actually finish a quilt! :)
"Others who've limited or deleted TV offer these tips:
* Go cold turkey. It's not so bad after the first week.
* Or don't. Allow yourself one show or one hour of viewing per day. Gradually reduce viewing over several weeks.
* Try new things. Be ready to fill the hours you once spent watching. The people I interviewed suggested reading, exercising, volunteering, playing board games, taking classes, playing outdoors with the kids, and cooking and savoring nice meals. (And, yeah, going online to watch a little bit of TV now and then.)
* Bank the savings. If you were paying for cable, set aside what you'd be spending. It could go toward a vacation, a special purchase or a college fund.
* Out of sight, out of mind. Move the TV out of the common area. If it's not in your face all the time, you won't automatically move to turn it on."
I've found that more is less when it comes to TV--most of those 200+ channels are taken up by non-stop revolving marketing (like the Brazil Butt-Lift/Sobongo channel), and the amount of commercials between actual TV shows is increasing. Sometimes, it seems there's more commercials than programming! In an hour-long show, there's only 40 minutes of actual TV show--the rest is commercials (a third of that hour). For every "hour" of programming you think you're getting, a third of it goes to ads and marketing crap nobody wants. Imagine what you could get done in all those third-of-an-hours?
...and to think we actually PAY to bring the unwanted marketing into our homes!
I spent my teenage years without TV, so I've been there before. I just haven't been there since... :( My radio got one hell of a workout back then.
The Ugly Reality of Lowering Debt by Default
From CNN/Fortune.
"It turns out that many households aren't exactly tightening their wallets and using all their saved cash to pay down debts. They're simply defaulting on them."
...
"Shedding away debt - however it's done - is critical to the overall health of the economy. But the wave of households de-leveraging by default is worrisome. And many Americans are using their new savings to buy up U.S. Treasuries instead of devoting it all toward paying down debt. During the past year, households bought 42% of the new Treasury debt issued, equal to about $616 billion and far more than the $432 billion absorbed by foreign investors.
This will probably prolong the de-leveraging process further, say analysts at Capital Economics. Until households can meaningfully shed off debt, it will likely be one of the key factors stalling economic growth and the job market as many companies wait for GDP to pick up significantly before hiring more workers."
...
"...consumers haven't exactly discovered a newfound sense of frugality. In 2009, outstanding credit card debt dropped by about $93.2 billion compared with the previous year, according to a report from CardHub.com, a credit card comparison website. This might sound like good news, but the reality is that the majority of the drop -- $81.6 billion -- is due to Americans defaulting on their debt.
So the real decrease is much smaller - about $11.6 billion - and much of that came during the first quarter when many people used tax returns to pay down card debt. At this rate, CardHub.com predicts consumers in 2010 will actually accumulate at least $26.2 billion more in credit card debt over last year.
"It's alarming," CardHub.com CEO and founder Odysseas Papadimitriou says. "We cannot revert to pre-recession debt levels."
...
"So while consumers' debt burdens might technically be less today than they were just a few years ago, at least on paper, the burden is still quite heavy on the minds of consumers."
So they're just kicking the can down the road--taking the credit record hit NOW so they can run up debt again sometime in the future, and walk away from it again. Is this easier than learning how to tighten the belt, buckle down, and stick with it for some spare CASH every month? It's certainly not more fun!
"It turns out that many households aren't exactly tightening their wallets and using all their saved cash to pay down debts. They're simply defaulting on them."
...
"Shedding away debt - however it's done - is critical to the overall health of the economy. But the wave of households de-leveraging by default is worrisome. And many Americans are using their new savings to buy up U.S. Treasuries instead of devoting it all toward paying down debt. During the past year, households bought 42% of the new Treasury debt issued, equal to about $616 billion and far more than the $432 billion absorbed by foreign investors.
This will probably prolong the de-leveraging process further, say analysts at Capital Economics. Until households can meaningfully shed off debt, it will likely be one of the key factors stalling economic growth and the job market as many companies wait for GDP to pick up significantly before hiring more workers."
...
"...consumers haven't exactly discovered a newfound sense of frugality. In 2009, outstanding credit card debt dropped by about $93.2 billion compared with the previous year, according to a report from CardHub.com, a credit card comparison website. This might sound like good news, but the reality is that the majority of the drop -- $81.6 billion -- is due to Americans defaulting on their debt.
So the real decrease is much smaller - about $11.6 billion - and much of that came during the first quarter when many people used tax returns to pay down card debt. At this rate, CardHub.com predicts consumers in 2010 will actually accumulate at least $26.2 billion more in credit card debt over last year.
"It's alarming," CardHub.com CEO and founder Odysseas Papadimitriou says. "We cannot revert to pre-recession debt levels."
...
"So while consumers' debt burdens might technically be less today than they were just a few years ago, at least on paper, the burden is still quite heavy on the minds of consumers."
So they're just kicking the can down the road--taking the credit record hit NOW so they can run up debt again sometime in the future, and walk away from it again. Is this easier than learning how to tighten the belt, buckle down, and stick with it for some spare CASH every month? It's certainly not more fun!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
More Bang For Your Gardening Buck
Veggies NOT to bother growing (in the U.S.) because they're cheap in the stores all year round, or in the stores cheaper than it would cost to grow: potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, pumpkins, and winter squash.
Veggies with HIGH payback, and worth growing (in the U.S.): asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cucumbers, eggplant, leaf lettuces, green onions, peppers, rhubarb.
Source: Dirt Cheap Gardening (Rhonda Massingham Hart)
Basically, the veggies that always seem to be the most expensive and out-of-reach, even when IN season (especially organic ones), are worth a go. If you're after varieties the stores don't carry, plant, plant, PLANT!
Consider the zucchini: one single seed can produce enough zucchinis to create neighborhood strife.
Veggies with HIGH payback, and worth growing (in the U.S.): asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cucumbers, eggplant, leaf lettuces, green onions, peppers, rhubarb.
Source: Dirt Cheap Gardening (Rhonda Massingham Hart)
Basically, the veggies that always seem to be the most expensive and out-of-reach, even when IN season (especially organic ones), are worth a go. If you're after varieties the stores don't carry, plant, plant, PLANT!
Consider the zucchini: one single seed can produce enough zucchinis to create neighborhood strife.
What-Ya-Got Cake Recipe
READ THROUGH ENTIRE RECIPE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO MAKE!!
Basic recipe:
2 c. flour
½ c. sugar (white, brown, Sucanat/Rapadura, or equivalent sugar substitute)
2 t. baking soda
1 c. liquid (water, milk, or juice)
2 eggs or ½ c. egg substitute
and your choice of:
½ cup fruit (dried, fresh diced, or canned drained)
½ cup nuts, chopped
½ t. flavoring
2 t. spice of your choice
½ cup flavored chips
½ cup flaked coconut
1 cup grated zucchini or applesauce
2-3 mashed bananas
All or any combination of the above
Hey—it’s YOUR cake. What ya’ got to put in it?
Assembly: Combine all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Determine which wet ingred-ients you’ll be using, then add your choice in the quantities listed, stirring carefully to avoid breaking up any frozen fruit. Egg, mashed fruit, juice, milk, water (if using powdered milk), and flavorings can be mixed into a blender if a smooth consistency is desired. Pour into a greased or oil-sprayed 13x9 pan or greased muffin tins. You may have excess batter for muffins. Bake @350 for 12-15 mins. for muffins, or 30-35 mins. for cake. Always test for doneness.
For a larger pan (11x15), double your entire recipe—basic and additional parts. Bake @350 for 35-40 mins. Test for doneness.
Convenience note: Baggies of the basic ingredients can be made up ahead of time. I like to keep the flour, baking soda, and sugar combined in bags ready to go in my fridge. The rest comes from what I have on hand in cupboards and pantry. I empty one baggie of mix into a large bowl. Then, all I have to do is add water or milk, egg, and some sort of fruit, nuts, chocolate, spices, and flavorings to the mix, stir, and I’m ready to bake.
For a fat substitute, use bananas, applesauce, gelatin, or zucchini instead of butter, margarine, or oil, and omit this when using juices—it makes for a too-moist batter. If using frozen orange juice, you’ll notice the batter becoming foamy. This is normal—the citrus is reacting with the baking soda.
Pancakes: For yummy out-of-the-ordinary pancakes, double the amount of liquid in the original recipe—for the basic recipe, use 2 cups milk instead of 1. For variations that include juice for the liquid, simply add 1 can water along with juice. Pour ¼ c. batter into a heated and oil-sprayed skillet and cook as usual.
For added nutrition and a “healing” quality: add 1 c. each of nutritional yeast and oat and wheat bran to the flour canister—these ingredients act as immune system boosters, and make everything baked a “healing” cake without having to think about and measure more ingredients with each baking session.
Addition suggestions:
3 mashed bananas, ½ c. choc. chips, 1/3 c. cocoa powder (for banana/choc. chip)
3 mashed bananas, ½ c. choc. chips, 1 10-oz. jar cherries, chopped (in food processor) with juice (banana/choc. chip/cherry)
1 12-oz. can frozen OJ and 2T. cinnamon (for orange/cinnamon)
1 12-oz. can of ANY frozen juice (undiluted and thawed)—a liquid substitute
1 small box any flavor gelatin or 1 envelope unflavored gelatin—a fat substitute (juice and gelatin combined will add big flavor punch)
3 red delicious apples, peeled, cored, and chopped + 1 c. applesauce (use brown sugar)
1 c. applesauce, ½ c. dried or frozen fruit with ½ c. chopped nuts (for fruit/nut cake)
½ c. chopped nuts, 2T. cinnamon, and 2T. allspice + 1 c. applesauce (for spice cake)
½ c. chocolate chips, ½ c. chopped walnuts, 1 t. mint flavoring, 1 t. green food coloring (for mint chocolate chip)
Go for broke: ½ c. any dried fruit, ½ c. any chopped nut, and 2T. any sweet spice
Flavoring suggestions: (pick one)
2 t. vanilla or orange
¼ t. maple (it’s very strong)
¼ t. butter flavoring (it’s also strong)
1 t. almond
1 t. rum flavoring
Basic recipe:
2 c. flour
½ c. sugar (white, brown, Sucanat/Rapadura, or equivalent sugar substitute)
2 t. baking soda
1 c. liquid (water, milk, or juice)
2 eggs or ½ c. egg substitute
and your choice of:
½ cup fruit (dried, fresh diced, or canned drained)
½ cup nuts, chopped
½ t. flavoring
2 t. spice of your choice
½ cup flavored chips
½ cup flaked coconut
1 cup grated zucchini or applesauce
2-3 mashed bananas
All or any combination of the above
Hey—it’s YOUR cake. What ya’ got to put in it?
Assembly: Combine all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Determine which wet ingred-ients you’ll be using, then add your choice in the quantities listed, stirring carefully to avoid breaking up any frozen fruit. Egg, mashed fruit, juice, milk, water (if using powdered milk), and flavorings can be mixed into a blender if a smooth consistency is desired. Pour into a greased or oil-sprayed 13x9 pan or greased muffin tins. You may have excess batter for muffins. Bake @350 for 12-15 mins. for muffins, or 30-35 mins. for cake. Always test for doneness.
For a larger pan (11x15), double your entire recipe—basic and additional parts. Bake @350 for 35-40 mins. Test for doneness.
Convenience note: Baggies of the basic ingredients can be made up ahead of time. I like to keep the flour, baking soda, and sugar combined in bags ready to go in my fridge. The rest comes from what I have on hand in cupboards and pantry. I empty one baggie of mix into a large bowl. Then, all I have to do is add water or milk, egg, and some sort of fruit, nuts, chocolate, spices, and flavorings to the mix, stir, and I’m ready to bake.
For a fat substitute, use bananas, applesauce, gelatin, or zucchini instead of butter, margarine, or oil, and omit this when using juices—it makes for a too-moist batter. If using frozen orange juice, you’ll notice the batter becoming foamy. This is normal—the citrus is reacting with the baking soda.
Pancakes: For yummy out-of-the-ordinary pancakes, double the amount of liquid in the original recipe—for the basic recipe, use 2 cups milk instead of 1. For variations that include juice for the liquid, simply add 1 can water along with juice. Pour ¼ c. batter into a heated and oil-sprayed skillet and cook as usual.
For added nutrition and a “healing” quality: add 1 c. each of nutritional yeast and oat and wheat bran to the flour canister—these ingredients act as immune system boosters, and make everything baked a “healing” cake without having to think about and measure more ingredients with each baking session.
Addition suggestions:
3 mashed bananas, ½ c. choc. chips, 1/3 c. cocoa powder (for banana/choc. chip)
3 mashed bananas, ½ c. choc. chips, 1 10-oz. jar cherries, chopped (in food processor) with juice (banana/choc. chip/cherry)
1 12-oz. can frozen OJ and 2T. cinnamon (for orange/cinnamon)
1 12-oz. can of ANY frozen juice (undiluted and thawed)—a liquid substitute
1 small box any flavor gelatin or 1 envelope unflavored gelatin—a fat substitute (juice and gelatin combined will add big flavor punch)
3 red delicious apples, peeled, cored, and chopped + 1 c. applesauce (use brown sugar)
1 c. applesauce, ½ c. dried or frozen fruit with ½ c. chopped nuts (for fruit/nut cake)
½ c. chopped nuts, 2T. cinnamon, and 2T. allspice + 1 c. applesauce (for spice cake)
½ c. chocolate chips, ½ c. chopped walnuts, 1 t. mint flavoring, 1 t. green food coloring (for mint chocolate chip)
Go for broke: ½ c. any dried fruit, ½ c. any chopped nut, and 2T. any sweet spice
Flavoring suggestions: (pick one)
2 t. vanilla or orange
¼ t. maple (it’s very strong)
¼ t. butter flavoring (it’s also strong)
1 t. almond
1 t. rum flavoring
What-Ya-Got Casserole Recipe (Meat Optional)
Makes 4 (or more) servings in an 8 X 8" square pan, but recipe can be doubled or tripled for family servings--just increase cooking time to compensate. Use what ya got!
UPDATE: These ingredients are from the Food Stamp Challenge cheats, so consider this one way to use the "limited" foods from the challenge.
RECIPE
1 c. cooked ground or chopped meat (optional)
...and here's the what-ya-got part:
2 c. cooked grain (any type*, or can mix grains)
1 c. cooked legume (any type)
2 c. (total) diced assorted raw veggies (broccoli, carrots, peppers, etc.)
1/2 onion, chopped (any type)
2 eggs
1 c. grated cheese (any type)
1 c. fluid (any type--broth, milk, salsa, tomato sauce, water, etc.)
Spice to taste
*If using amaranth, cooked amaranth will have the consistency of farina, Cream of Wheat, Malt-o-Meal, etc., so augment with 2 c. bread crumbs r 1 c. flour to help thicken. I've normally used rices or sorghum without difficulty, but amaranth is a whole new monster. Millet is next for "strange grain" trials.
________________________________________________________________
Combine all but last four ingredients in a large bowl, stirring to mix. In a blender, combine the eggs, fluid, cheese, and spices, making a thick cheesy sauce. Pour the cheesy sauce over the grain/veggie mix, and stir well to coat.
Preheat oven to 350. Spray pan before scraping ingredients into it. Bake for 25 mins. or until golden. If doubling, use a 10 x 15" pan and add 5-10 mins. Refrigerate any leftovers.
Casserole may be topped with additional cheese or bread crumbs before baking.
_____________________________________________________________
Recipe adapted from Doris Jantzen Longacre's Rice Squares recipe from the More With Less cookbook. I made her rice squares into a complete meal with the addition of veggies and meat. I haven't tested this recipe for unbaked freezer cooking, but I imagine if you leave out the raw veggies, the rest should go into the freezer nicely--just stir in the raw veggies before baking. Completely baked, it will go into the freezer.
UPDATE: These ingredients are from the Food Stamp Challenge cheats, so consider this one way to use the "limited" foods from the challenge.
RECIPE
1 c. cooked ground or chopped meat (optional)
...and here's the what-ya-got part:
2 c. cooked grain (any type*, or can mix grains)
1 c. cooked legume (any type)
2 c. (total) diced assorted raw veggies (broccoli, carrots, peppers, etc.)
1/2 onion, chopped (any type)
2 eggs
1 c. grated cheese (any type)
1 c. fluid (any type--broth, milk, salsa, tomato sauce, water, etc.)
Spice to taste
*If using amaranth, cooked amaranth will have the consistency of farina, Cream of Wheat, Malt-o-Meal, etc., so augment with 2 c. bread crumbs r 1 c. flour to help thicken. I've normally used rices or sorghum without difficulty, but amaranth is a whole new monster. Millet is next for "strange grain" trials.
________________________________________________________________
Combine all but last four ingredients in a large bowl, stirring to mix. In a blender, combine the eggs, fluid, cheese, and spices, making a thick cheesy sauce. Pour the cheesy sauce over the grain/veggie mix, and stir well to coat.
Preheat oven to 350. Spray pan before scraping ingredients into it. Bake for 25 mins. or until golden. If doubling, use a 10 x 15" pan and add 5-10 mins. Refrigerate any leftovers.
Casserole may be topped with additional cheese or bread crumbs before baking.
_____________________________________________________________
Recipe adapted from Doris Jantzen Longacre's Rice Squares recipe from the More With Less cookbook. I made her rice squares into a complete meal with the addition of veggies and meat. I haven't tested this recipe for unbaked freezer cooking, but I imagine if you leave out the raw veggies, the rest should go into the freezer nicely--just stir in the raw veggies before baking. Completely baked, it will go into the freezer.
5 Things to Know About HSAs
From CNN Money.
1. Your employer is more likely to offer this option.
2. These plans look cheap ...
3. ... And may make sense for certain people.
4. But you should run the numbers for yourself.
5. An HSA can double as a retirement account.
See article link above for details to each one.
1. Your employer is more likely to offer this option.
2. These plans look cheap ...
3. ... And may make sense for certain people.
4. But you should run the numbers for yourself.
5. An HSA can double as a retirement account.
See article link above for details to each one.
Monday, September 27, 2010
"The Craziest Thing I Did to Save Money"
From Bankrate.com--done in gallery format, so you have to go there to see them.
10 Most Overpriced Items You Should Avoid
From WalletPop.
The list:
1. text messages
2. bottled water
3. theater popcorn
4. brand-name drugs
5. hotel mini-bar
6. coffee
7. wine
8. greeting cards
9. hotel in-room movies
10. pre-cut produce
Details in the original article link above.
The list:
1. text messages
2. bottled water
3. theater popcorn
4. brand-name drugs
5. hotel mini-bar
6. coffee
7. wine
8. greeting cards
9. hotel in-room movies
10. pre-cut produce
Details in the original article link above.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Responsibility Deficit
From the NY Times.
"One of the oddities of the current moment is that the country wants a radical change in government but not a radical change in policy."
...
"The result is that over the next two years we’ll probably see gridlock on stilts."
...
"Unable to do anything in the short term, both parties will devote their energies to nothing but campaign gestures for 2012. The rhetoric will fly. Childishness will mount. Public nausea will hit an all-time high.
Somewhere in the country, though, there is a politician who is going to try to lead us out of this logjam. Whoever that person is, I hope he or she is listening carefully to what the public is saying. Because when you listen carefully, you notice the public anger doesn’t quite match the political class anger."
...
"The heart of any moral system is the connection between action and consequences. Today’s public anger rises from the belief that this connection has been severed in one realm after another."
...
"What the country is really looking for is a restoration of responsibility. If some smart leader is going to help us get out of ideological gridlock, that leader will reframe politics around this end.
Philip K. Howard has thought hard about the decay of responsibility and what can be done to reverse it. In a series of books ranging from “The Death of Common Sense” to “Life Without Lawyers,” Howard has detailed the ways our political and legal systems undermine personal responsibility.
Over the past several decades, he argues, a thicket of spending obligations, rules and regulations has arisen, which limits individual discretion, narrows room for maneuver and makes it harder to assign responsibility."
...
"What’s needed, Howard argues, is a great streamlining. He’s not calling for deregulation. It’s about giving teachers, doctors and officials the power to actually make decisions and then holding them accountable. Some of their choices will be wrong, Howard acknowledges, but it is better to live in an imperfect world of individual responsibility than it is to live within a dehumanizing legal thicket that seeks to eliminate risk through a tangle of micromanaging statutes.
Howard proposes expanding specialized health courts, which would be more predictable than the malpractice system. He would lift controls on teachers and civil servants — giving them more freedom but then ending tenure and holding them accountable. He would create commissions to eliminate obsolete laws. He would expand judges’ discretion and end mandatory sentencing."
From what I've seen of the Tea Party candidates and their own personal spending habits (and walk-away habits), you can bet there will be no joy there. I suggest carefully doing research on the candidates in YOUR state, finding the one(s) who can take care of business at home as well as at work, and voting for that person or persons, regardless of party affiliation. Then remember to vote the incumbent out, and start the process all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"One of the oddities of the current moment is that the country wants a radical change in government but not a radical change in policy."
...
"The result is that over the next two years we’ll probably see gridlock on stilts."
...
"Unable to do anything in the short term, both parties will devote their energies to nothing but campaign gestures for 2012. The rhetoric will fly. Childishness will mount. Public nausea will hit an all-time high.
Somewhere in the country, though, there is a politician who is going to try to lead us out of this logjam. Whoever that person is, I hope he or she is listening carefully to what the public is saying. Because when you listen carefully, you notice the public anger doesn’t quite match the political class anger."
...
"The heart of any moral system is the connection between action and consequences. Today’s public anger rises from the belief that this connection has been severed in one realm after another."
...
"What the country is really looking for is a restoration of responsibility. If some smart leader is going to help us get out of ideological gridlock, that leader will reframe politics around this end.
Philip K. Howard has thought hard about the decay of responsibility and what can be done to reverse it. In a series of books ranging from “The Death of Common Sense” to “Life Without Lawyers,” Howard has detailed the ways our political and legal systems undermine personal responsibility.
Over the past several decades, he argues, a thicket of spending obligations, rules and regulations has arisen, which limits individual discretion, narrows room for maneuver and makes it harder to assign responsibility."
...
"What’s needed, Howard argues, is a great streamlining. He’s not calling for deregulation. It’s about giving teachers, doctors and officials the power to actually make decisions and then holding them accountable. Some of their choices will be wrong, Howard acknowledges, but it is better to live in an imperfect world of individual responsibility than it is to live within a dehumanizing legal thicket that seeks to eliminate risk through a tangle of micromanaging statutes.
Howard proposes expanding specialized health courts, which would be more predictable than the malpractice system. He would lift controls on teachers and civil servants — giving them more freedom but then ending tenure and holding them accountable. He would create commissions to eliminate obsolete laws. He would expand judges’ discretion and end mandatory sentencing."
From what I've seen of the Tea Party candidates and their own personal spending habits (and walk-away habits), you can bet there will be no joy there. I suggest carefully doing research on the candidates in YOUR state, finding the one(s) who can take care of business at home as well as at work, and voting for that person or persons, regardless of party affiliation. Then remember to vote the incumbent out, and start the process all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If You Want to Age Gracefully, Don't Eat This
From the Huffington Post.
"Barring an accident, your lifestyle has everything to do with your longevity.
It's already been established that diet can override genetic predispositions for disease, so don't fall into the trap of believing your health and longevity is somehow inescapably tied to what's polluting your gene pool."
...
"This results from two primary conditions: too much sugar and processed foods, combined with insufficient exercise.
Interestingly, controlling these two factors will likely eliminate more than 90 percent of the following medical conditions:
• High blood pressure
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• High cholesterol
Of all the molecules capable of inflicting damage to your body, probably the most damaging are sugar molecules. Fructose in particular is an extremely potent pro-inflammatory agent that accelerates aging."
...
"Fructose adversely affects your body in a number of ways, but one of the mechanisms that causes significant damage is glycation, a process by which the sugar bonds with proteins and forms so-called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. It's a fitting acronym because--along with oxidation--it's one of the major molecular mechanisms whereby damage accrues in your body, which leads to disease, aging and eventually death.
When sugar glycates, it creates inflammation, which activates your immune system in a defensive maneuver. Macrophages are scavenger cells that are part of your immune defense, and as such they have special receptors for AGEs, aptly called RAGEs (think: raging inflammation). These RAGEs bind to the AGEs and get rid of them.
Unfortunately, this process can leave its fair share of battle scars."
...
"As a standard recommendation, I strongly recommend keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day."
...
"This includes keeping track of your fructose intake from whole fruits. For a helpful chart showing the fructose content of many common fruits, please see this link*. I recommend this lower level simply because if you consume processed foods or sweet beverages at all, you're virtually guaranteed to consume "hidden" sources of fructose."
...
"Fresh fruit is nearly always preferred to fruit juices as the processing destroys many of the nutrients in the fruit and many commercial fruit juices are also highly adulterated or deceptively labeled.
Additionally it is important to understand that most commercial fruit juices should be avoided as fruit juice typically has large amounts of methanol, which is wood alcohol, and a metabolic poison. Often the methanol is bound to pectin and when you consume fresh fruits the methanol passes through your body and causes you no harm. However, after the fruit is processed into juice and put into containers, the methanol gradually dissociates from the pectin and dissolves in the juice.
The longer the fruit juice is in the container, or the more heat it is exposed to, the more methanol that is released into the juice."
*I substituted another link to the same information, because the author wanted people to register on his website for his information, which would've opened you up to junk mail and spam. Since the same information was available elsewhere, I used it.
The original article (link at top) contains other useful anti-aging info, but I chose to limit the excepts to fructose.
"Barring an accident, your lifestyle has everything to do with your longevity.
It's already been established that diet can override genetic predispositions for disease, so don't fall into the trap of believing your health and longevity is somehow inescapably tied to what's polluting your gene pool."
...
"This results from two primary conditions: too much sugar and processed foods, combined with insufficient exercise.
Interestingly, controlling these two factors will likely eliminate more than 90 percent of the following medical conditions:
• High blood pressure
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• High cholesterol
Of all the molecules capable of inflicting damage to your body, probably the most damaging are sugar molecules. Fructose in particular is an extremely potent pro-inflammatory agent that accelerates aging."
...
"Fructose adversely affects your body in a number of ways, but one of the mechanisms that causes significant damage is glycation, a process by which the sugar bonds with proteins and forms so-called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. It's a fitting acronym because--along with oxidation--it's one of the major molecular mechanisms whereby damage accrues in your body, which leads to disease, aging and eventually death.
When sugar glycates, it creates inflammation, which activates your immune system in a defensive maneuver. Macrophages are scavenger cells that are part of your immune defense, and as such they have special receptors for AGEs, aptly called RAGEs (think: raging inflammation). These RAGEs bind to the AGEs and get rid of them.
Unfortunately, this process can leave its fair share of battle scars."
...
"As a standard recommendation, I strongly recommend keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day."
...
"This includes keeping track of your fructose intake from whole fruits. For a helpful chart showing the fructose content of many common fruits, please see this link*. I recommend this lower level simply because if you consume processed foods or sweet beverages at all, you're virtually guaranteed to consume "hidden" sources of fructose."
...
"Fresh fruit is nearly always preferred to fruit juices as the processing destroys many of the nutrients in the fruit and many commercial fruit juices are also highly adulterated or deceptively labeled.
Additionally it is important to understand that most commercial fruit juices should be avoided as fruit juice typically has large amounts of methanol, which is wood alcohol, and a metabolic poison. Often the methanol is bound to pectin and when you consume fresh fruits the methanol passes through your body and causes you no harm. However, after the fruit is processed into juice and put into containers, the methanol gradually dissociates from the pectin and dissolves in the juice.
The longer the fruit juice is in the container, or the more heat it is exposed to, the more methanol that is released into the juice."
*I substituted another link to the same information, because the author wanted people to register on his website for his information, which would've opened you up to junk mail and spam. Since the same information was available elsewhere, I used it.
The original article (link at top) contains other useful anti-aging info, but I chose to limit the excepts to fructose.
6 Steps to Ensure Your Urban Garden is Saving You Money
From WalletPop.
"I decided that I had to take some serious steps to make sure my garden actually saved more money than it cost. Here they are, so you can take them, too!
1. Educate yourself on the cheap. Those gardening books add up! Don't buy them off the shelf unless you're at the used bookstore. I stocked my own gardening library with some massive reference books for half off at my local used bookstore, and supplemented it with some books for - get this - a quarter (!) at the local Friends of the Library book sale. Because these inventories are local, they tend to have great specimens of gardening books specific to your region and climate.
Also, search online and see if your city or county government sponsors any gardening courses. For example, in my neck of the woods, the Bay Friendly Landscaping and Gardening Coalition offers amazing low- and no-cost workshops on everything from worm composting to edible garden design to organic pest management.
2. Plant stuff you'll actually eat. Gardening is very future-oriented, even aspirational. You have to plan the foods you'll be eating sometimes months down the road. So, it's easy to plant foods you think you should be eating and foods you want your kids to eat, vs. the foods they actually will and do eat. No savings there. Better to plant more of the things you enjoy eating than to let rot a bunch of things you thought you should try to eat more of. Track the fruits and veg you buy against what you actually eat and what gets thrown away for a couple of weeks before planning what to grow in your garden.
3. Compost. Composting is a process of recycling green and food wastes to create a super-rich, homemade soil conditioner, fertilizer and natural pesticide - all in one! When your bananas turn black or your kids don't eat their broccoli, toss them right into your kitchen compost bin.
Compost makes your garden's soil healthy, which, in turn, makes the food you grow nutrient-rich. This generation of compost bins takes all the odor and mess out of composting, and many offer microbial enzyme boosters or allow for worms or aeration to speed the process - but compost bins aren't always cheap. Many municipal waste management agencies offer deeply discounted, brand name home compost bins; check in with yours to see if you can save.
4. Go organic. The biggest savings your urban garden will ever generate is probably on your long-term health care costs! But the most nutritious and healthful way to eat is organic, so skip all the chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Composting helps: home compost serves not only as a soil booster, but also contains natural, microbial pest killers.
Beyond composting, you can also design your garden to be naturally pest resistant based on which plants you locate near each other, and you can make your own natural pest killers. And if you're not sure what's been in or on your soil lately, consider planting in raised beds with organic soil.
5. Preserve what you don't eat. Most produce can be preserved and used long after the season is over. Freeze your berries for smoothies well into the winter. You can also dry, bottle and pickle many types of fruits and vegetables, or turn them into your house marmalade, jam or jelly!
Organic preserves from your own garden can also make for yummy, frugal holiday gifts.
6. Sell the rest. The savviest urban gardeners zero out their gardening costs by selling their remainders to local restaurants and artisanal bakeries. Increasingly, high-end eateries are committed to the locavore philosophy of sourcing their ingredients within a 50- or 100-mile radius; as such, their chefs are often skilled at tailoring their menus to whatever produce is abundant locally at a given time. The downside to this is that they often struggle to obtain sufficient supplies from any single supplier to fulfill all the orders of a favorite menu item."
Google Books has some particularly handy tomes for reading free online, like The All New Square Foot Gardener, and the important parts of The Vegetable Grower's Bible.
"I decided that I had to take some serious steps to make sure my garden actually saved more money than it cost. Here they are, so you can take them, too!
1. Educate yourself on the cheap. Those gardening books add up! Don't buy them off the shelf unless you're at the used bookstore. I stocked my own gardening library with some massive reference books for half off at my local used bookstore, and supplemented it with some books for - get this - a quarter (!) at the local Friends of the Library book sale. Because these inventories are local, they tend to have great specimens of gardening books specific to your region and climate.
Also, search online and see if your city or county government sponsors any gardening courses. For example, in my neck of the woods, the Bay Friendly Landscaping and Gardening Coalition offers amazing low- and no-cost workshops on everything from worm composting to edible garden design to organic pest management.
2. Plant stuff you'll actually eat. Gardening is very future-oriented, even aspirational. You have to plan the foods you'll be eating sometimes months down the road. So, it's easy to plant foods you think you should be eating and foods you want your kids to eat, vs. the foods they actually will and do eat. No savings there. Better to plant more of the things you enjoy eating than to let rot a bunch of things you thought you should try to eat more of. Track the fruits and veg you buy against what you actually eat and what gets thrown away for a couple of weeks before planning what to grow in your garden.
3. Compost. Composting is a process of recycling green and food wastes to create a super-rich, homemade soil conditioner, fertilizer and natural pesticide - all in one! When your bananas turn black or your kids don't eat their broccoli, toss them right into your kitchen compost bin.
Compost makes your garden's soil healthy, which, in turn, makes the food you grow nutrient-rich. This generation of compost bins takes all the odor and mess out of composting, and many offer microbial enzyme boosters or allow for worms or aeration to speed the process - but compost bins aren't always cheap. Many municipal waste management agencies offer deeply discounted, brand name home compost bins; check in with yours to see if you can save.
4. Go organic. The biggest savings your urban garden will ever generate is probably on your long-term health care costs! But the most nutritious and healthful way to eat is organic, so skip all the chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Composting helps: home compost serves not only as a soil booster, but also contains natural, microbial pest killers.
Beyond composting, you can also design your garden to be naturally pest resistant based on which plants you locate near each other, and you can make your own natural pest killers. And if you're not sure what's been in or on your soil lately, consider planting in raised beds with organic soil.
5. Preserve what you don't eat. Most produce can be preserved and used long after the season is over. Freeze your berries for smoothies well into the winter. You can also dry, bottle and pickle many types of fruits and vegetables, or turn them into your house marmalade, jam or jelly!
Organic preserves from your own garden can also make for yummy, frugal holiday gifts.
6. Sell the rest. The savviest urban gardeners zero out their gardening costs by selling their remainders to local restaurants and artisanal bakeries. Increasingly, high-end eateries are committed to the locavore philosophy of sourcing their ingredients within a 50- or 100-mile radius; as such, their chefs are often skilled at tailoring their menus to whatever produce is abundant locally at a given time. The downside to this is that they often struggle to obtain sufficient supplies from any single supplier to fulfill all the orders of a favorite menu item."
Google Books has some particularly handy tomes for reading free online, like The All New Square Foot Gardener, and the important parts of The Vegetable Grower's Bible.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Bank Fee Whack-a-Mole--New Fees Popping Up
From CNN Money.
"Bank of America: Just last week, Bank of America said it plans to raise minimum balance requirements over the next 12 months and charge a monthly account fee for customers who can't maintain those balances.
"We currently estimate over time through these and other items we are working on that we will have the ability to offset a substantial majority of the revenue from the various regulatory changes," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a presentation to investors last week.
Customers enrolled in the lender's new eBanking checking account will be charged $8.95 per month if they opt to receive paper statements and visit tellers instead of banking online. Since the launch of eBanking in August, nearly half of all new checking accounts fall into this category.
Earlier this year, annual fees ranging from $29 to $99 were applied to a variety of Bank of America credit card accounts.
Wells Fargo: Remember how Wells Fargo fought a pitched battle with Citigroup for the right to merge with Wachovia? Well, Wachovia customers are now being fully integrated -- including being charged Wells' higher fees. Receive images of cancelled checks with your paper statement? $2. Use your savings as overdraft protection? $10 fee every time you make a transfer.
Previously, these fees already existed for Wells Fargo customers but were only applied to a very small number of Wachovia customers.
HSBC: HSBC is charging a $19 annual fee for customers who open a line of credit beginning July 1 and an additional $10 every day they use the credit line as protection from overdrawing their checking account.
"This is not unusual in the industry and our competitors have been charging similar such fees for some time," an HSBC spokesman said. "The change aligns us with our competitors."
Other banks let customers link their savings and checking accounts as an alternative option for overdraft protection. But HSBC doesn't, meaning customers will either pay a fee to open a line of credit (if they have good enough credit to qualify), pay a fee for overdrafting their account or get their card declined.
Citibank: Citi announced changes to its checking accounts this month and will now assess monthly maintenance fees of up to $30, depending on the checking account and whether the customers meet certain requirements -- such as making a certain number of monthly transactions or carrying a specific minimum balance.
Monthly maintenance fees were previously as low as $3, depending on the account.
Earlier this year, Citi imposed a $60 annual fee that could be waived if customers spent about $2,400 a year. But the new regulations banning inactivity fees led the bank to eliminate the fee soon after it was introduced.
American Express: American Express has added $29 fees to more of its cards. As of July, the new fees affect customers with Delta, JetBlue, Hilton and Starwood co-branded cards who want to recoup reward points they forfeited for paying a bill late.
The point-forfeiture fee already existed on other cards, so the bank said it wanted to be "consistent and have it across cards."
...
"Fees especially are very much negotiable, so if you see something show up in your account that you don't like, call and complain, and threaten to take your business elsewhere," Arnold added. "Chances are if there's a fee or interest rate you don't like one place, you'll find something better somewhere else."
I warned you a year ago that it was time to join a credit union.
"Bank of America: Just last week, Bank of America said it plans to raise minimum balance requirements over the next 12 months and charge a monthly account fee for customers who can't maintain those balances.
"We currently estimate over time through these and other items we are working on that we will have the ability to offset a substantial majority of the revenue from the various regulatory changes," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a presentation to investors last week.
Customers enrolled in the lender's new eBanking checking account will be charged $8.95 per month if they opt to receive paper statements and visit tellers instead of banking online. Since the launch of eBanking in August, nearly half of all new checking accounts fall into this category.
Earlier this year, annual fees ranging from $29 to $99 were applied to a variety of Bank of America credit card accounts.
Wells Fargo: Remember how Wells Fargo fought a pitched battle with Citigroup for the right to merge with Wachovia? Well, Wachovia customers are now being fully integrated -- including being charged Wells' higher fees. Receive images of cancelled checks with your paper statement? $2. Use your savings as overdraft protection? $10 fee every time you make a transfer.
Previously, these fees already existed for Wells Fargo customers but were only applied to a very small number of Wachovia customers.
HSBC: HSBC is charging a $19 annual fee for customers who open a line of credit beginning July 1 and an additional $10 every day they use the credit line as protection from overdrawing their checking account.
"This is not unusual in the industry and our competitors have been charging similar such fees for some time," an HSBC spokesman said. "The change aligns us with our competitors."
Other banks let customers link their savings and checking accounts as an alternative option for overdraft protection. But HSBC doesn't, meaning customers will either pay a fee to open a line of credit (if they have good enough credit to qualify), pay a fee for overdrafting their account or get their card declined.
Citibank: Citi announced changes to its checking accounts this month and will now assess monthly maintenance fees of up to $30, depending on the checking account and whether the customers meet certain requirements -- such as making a certain number of monthly transactions or carrying a specific minimum balance.
Monthly maintenance fees were previously as low as $3, depending on the account.
Earlier this year, Citi imposed a $60 annual fee that could be waived if customers spent about $2,400 a year. But the new regulations banning inactivity fees led the bank to eliminate the fee soon after it was introduced.
American Express: American Express has added $29 fees to more of its cards. As of July, the new fees affect customers with Delta, JetBlue, Hilton and Starwood co-branded cards who want to recoup reward points they forfeited for paying a bill late.
The point-forfeiture fee already existed on other cards, so the bank said it wanted to be "consistent and have it across cards."
...
"Fees especially are very much negotiable, so if you see something show up in your account that you don't like, call and complain, and threaten to take your business elsewhere," Arnold added. "Chances are if there's a fee or interest rate you don't like one place, you'll find something better somewhere else."
I warned you a year ago that it was time to join a credit union.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Voting Republican Won't Help Us Either, Because Politicians Can't Balance Their Own Checkbooks--How Are We Supposed tro Trust Them With the Nation's Checkbook?
From Fox Business News.
"Republicans - even those in the money-conscience Tea Party - have their fair share of troubles!
The nominee for governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, invested $2 million into his daughter's sporting goods store—which of course went bust and now the loan is worth $2.3 million.
Party star Marco Rubio, who is running for the Senate in Florida, is fighting foreclosure on not one, but two homes and is also dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt!
Now there's a good chance he will make it to Capitol Hill, since he has an 11-point lead over his independent opponent Charlie Crist!
And lest we forget: the woman who seems to keep making headlines since her primary victory - Delaware Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell. She's not only facing accusations of dabbling in witchcraft, but the Tea Party princess is being sued by Fairleigh Dickinson University for not paying her student loans.
She is also accused of using campaign funds to pay her rent after staving off foreclosure by selling her home!"
Where are the fiscally-solvent, intelligent, country-loving people to vote for, who don't have an agenda of their own? They're out WORKING!
"Republicans - even those in the money-conscience Tea Party - have their fair share of troubles!
The nominee for governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, invested $2 million into his daughter's sporting goods store—which of course went bust and now the loan is worth $2.3 million.
Party star Marco Rubio, who is running for the Senate in Florida, is fighting foreclosure on not one, but two homes and is also dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt!
Now there's a good chance he will make it to Capitol Hill, since he has an 11-point lead over his independent opponent Charlie Crist!
And lest we forget: the woman who seems to keep making headlines since her primary victory - Delaware Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell. She's not only facing accusations of dabbling in witchcraft, but the Tea Party princess is being sued by Fairleigh Dickinson University for not paying her student loans.
She is also accused of using campaign funds to pay her rent after staving off foreclosure by selling her home!"
Where are the fiscally-solvent, intelligent, country-loving people to vote for, who don't have an agenda of their own? They're out WORKING!
Spiking Summer Fruit in Order to Preserve It
From the NY Times.
"As much as I love the idea of a pantry full of homemade jams, jellies, pickles and syrups, I rarely have the patience for serious canning, with its macerating, simmering and sterilization of jars.
But there is another, easier way: boozy fruit. There are many incarnations but the basic premise is the same — simply mix fruit and sugar with enough hard spirit to keep the fruit well soused, and let it sit. You can sip the liquid as a cordial and eat the sweet, spiked fruit over ice cream or cake. Apart from freezing, it is about the simplest preserving method there is."
A new twist to rum cake and sorbets? If you were to combine strawberries and vodka, or lemons/limes with tequila, you'd already be halfway to a daiquiri or Margarita by now. Dump the contents in a blender, add ice and lid, push a button, and ta-DAH! Frozen mixed drinks, anyone?
"There’s drying, salting, canning and using alcohol, which kills bacteria, meaning you don’t need to futz around with creating an anaerobic environment,” she said, adding that preserving with alcohol is the “lowest rung of entry for beginning canning enthusiasts” because it’s hard to mess up."
...
"Unlike making jam, which you can eat right off the stove, putting up fruit in alcohol is the slow road to dessert. The raw spirit and fruit need some time to get acquainted, traditionally from the end of summer harvest until Christmas."
...
"When it’s ready, she serves the fruit in a large bowl and lets her guests nibble the rum-imbued pieces as they please.
“They’re like edible cocktails.” she told me. “People get smashed.”
...
"I went to the farmers’ market and gathered peaches, nectarines, raspberries, plums, Concord grapes and even late strawberries. Then I swung by the liquor store and stocked up on brandy, rum and gin. (Any high-proof spirit will work, but these appealed to me the most.)
Finally, I stopped by the supermarket to buy jars. On my way out, I snagged several pomegranates, which a friend told me her mother used to preserve with vodka or Korean soju.
Then I got it all home and filled jars with fruit, sugar and spirits, mixing and matching as I saw fit, topping the grapes and plums, separately, with brandy, the pomegranate with gin, and tossing the rum and the rest of the fruit together into a rumtopf-manqué.
By December, if everything turns out as well as I hope, I will have gifts for my friends. But there is a chance I might go the way of Julia Sforza, who blogs about making preserves at What Julia Ate."
...
"When It’s Time to Put the Fruit to Work
FRUIT preserved in alcohol makes a marvelous dessert topping, spooned over ice cream, poundcake, panna cotta or ricotta, and it has other uses:
BOOZY FRUIT TART Line a tart pan with sweet tart dough and fill with frangipane. Top with pieces of fruit and bake until golden.
CAKE GLAZE Mix the liqueur with enough confectioners’ sugar to make it thick and creamy, but still runny enough to pour, then spoon it over simple cakes.
CLAFOUTIS Use preserved Concord grapes in place of cherries.
COBBLERS, CRISPS AND PIES Add pieces of boozy fruit to fresh fruit.
DRUNKEN FOOL Purée the fruit and gently fold into whipped cream, to taste. Chill before serving.
FRUITY APERITIF Put a piece of fruit and a little of its liqueur in the bottom of a flute and top with sparkling wine.
HAIR OF THE DOG MUFFINS Add diced fruit to your favorite muffin recipe. If you are planning to serve these for breakfast, note that much, but not all, of the alcohol will evaporate.
ROASTS Warm brandied plums or Concord grapes and serve with roasted pork, chicken, duck, quail or venison.
TIPSY TRIFLE Use pieces of fruit in a traditional custard-and-cake trifle.
UPSIDE-DOWN TIPPLE CAKE Sprinkle a well-buttered cake pan with brown sugar, then layer with slices of drained fruit. Cover with your favorite butter cake batter and bake until done. Serve with cream whipped with a little of the fruit liqueur."
"As much as I love the idea of a pantry full of homemade jams, jellies, pickles and syrups, I rarely have the patience for serious canning, with its macerating, simmering and sterilization of jars.
But there is another, easier way: boozy fruit. There are many incarnations but the basic premise is the same — simply mix fruit and sugar with enough hard spirit to keep the fruit well soused, and let it sit. You can sip the liquid as a cordial and eat the sweet, spiked fruit over ice cream or cake. Apart from freezing, it is about the simplest preserving method there is."
A new twist to rum cake and sorbets? If you were to combine strawberries and vodka, or lemons/limes with tequila, you'd already be halfway to a daiquiri or Margarita by now. Dump the contents in a blender, add ice and lid, push a button, and ta-DAH! Frozen mixed drinks, anyone?
"There’s drying, salting, canning and using alcohol, which kills bacteria, meaning you don’t need to futz around with creating an anaerobic environment,” she said, adding that preserving with alcohol is the “lowest rung of entry for beginning canning enthusiasts” because it’s hard to mess up."
...
"Unlike making jam, which you can eat right off the stove, putting up fruit in alcohol is the slow road to dessert. The raw spirit and fruit need some time to get acquainted, traditionally from the end of summer harvest until Christmas."
...
"When it’s ready, she serves the fruit in a large bowl and lets her guests nibble the rum-imbued pieces as they please.
“They’re like edible cocktails.” she told me. “People get smashed.”
...
"I went to the farmers’ market and gathered peaches, nectarines, raspberries, plums, Concord grapes and even late strawberries. Then I swung by the liquor store and stocked up on brandy, rum and gin. (Any high-proof spirit will work, but these appealed to me the most.)
Finally, I stopped by the supermarket to buy jars. On my way out, I snagged several pomegranates, which a friend told me her mother used to preserve with vodka or Korean soju.
Then I got it all home and filled jars with fruit, sugar and spirits, mixing and matching as I saw fit, topping the grapes and plums, separately, with brandy, the pomegranate with gin, and tossing the rum and the rest of the fruit together into a rumtopf-manqué.
By December, if everything turns out as well as I hope, I will have gifts for my friends. But there is a chance I might go the way of Julia Sforza, who blogs about making preserves at What Julia Ate."
...
"When It’s Time to Put the Fruit to Work
FRUIT preserved in alcohol makes a marvelous dessert topping, spooned over ice cream, poundcake, panna cotta or ricotta, and it has other uses:
BOOZY FRUIT TART Line a tart pan with sweet tart dough and fill with frangipane. Top with pieces of fruit and bake until golden.
CAKE GLAZE Mix the liqueur with enough confectioners’ sugar to make it thick and creamy, but still runny enough to pour, then spoon it over simple cakes.
CLAFOUTIS Use preserved Concord grapes in place of cherries.
COBBLERS, CRISPS AND PIES Add pieces of boozy fruit to fresh fruit.
DRUNKEN FOOL Purée the fruit and gently fold into whipped cream, to taste. Chill before serving.
FRUITY APERITIF Put a piece of fruit and a little of its liqueur in the bottom of a flute and top with sparkling wine.
HAIR OF THE DOG MUFFINS Add diced fruit to your favorite muffin recipe. If you are planning to serve these for breakfast, note that much, but not all, of the alcohol will evaporate.
ROASTS Warm brandied plums or Concord grapes and serve with roasted pork, chicken, duck, quail or venison.
TIPSY TRIFLE Use pieces of fruit in a traditional custard-and-cake trifle.
UPSIDE-DOWN TIPPLE CAKE Sprinkle a well-buttered cake pan with brown sugar, then layer with slices of drained fruit. Cover with your favorite butter cake batter and bake until done. Serve with cream whipped with a little of the fruit liqueur."
Genetically-Altered Salmon? It Doesn't Stop There!
From Yahoo Science.
"...it's only the start of things to come. In labs and on experimental farms are:
• Vaccines and other pharmaceuticals grown in bananas and other plants.
• Trademarked "Enviropigs" whose manure doesn't pollute as much.
• Cows that don't produce methane in their flatulence.
And in the far-off future, there may be foods built from scratch — the scratch being DNA."
...
"All of the animals, plants and microbes we use in our food system, our agricultural system, are genetically modified in one way or another," says Bruce Chassy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "That, or they're wild."
The modifications are mostly from selective breeding and hybridization, the traditional ways of changing plants and animals. But these methods used for thousands of years are compared by genetic engineers to using a sledgehammer. They say their techniques are like using a scalpel."
...
"More than four-fifths of the soybean, corn and cotton acreage in the United States last year used genetically engineered crops, according to a 2010 National Academies of Sciences study.
David Ervin of Portland State University in Oregon, who chaired the committee that wrote the report, said it found no large-scale environmental risks associated with the current genetically engineered corn, cotton and soybeans in the United States. As for future crops, "you just have to be very cautious," depending on the nature of the plants, he says.
The report, which didn't consider health impacts of eating genetically engineered crops, did recommend large-scale studies of ecological effects of such crops, Ervin said."
...
"With the world population predicted to surpass 9 billion before 2050, genetically engineered food is the only hope to avoid starvation, he says.
That many people cannot be fed "using agriculture as it is right now," Murray says. "What is the cost to humanity if we do not use this technology?"
My questions:
1. When will the FDA require these foods to go through the same clinical trials as newly-invented drugs, testing to see what the side effects are and if any allergy risks are associated with food.
2. If scientists are so worried about how we're going to feed the population in the future, perhaps they ought to think about adding birth control to the food instead of other genes! I'd like to take this time to remind scientists that we already produce enough food to give away to the rest of the world, so what's the problem?
It's getting to where we may need to consider going vegetarian or vegan just to get clean, affordable food in the future. Organically-raised meat prices will certainly shoot through the roof (like they aren't there already) because of new demand for clean meats.
By getting FDA approval NOW, we're essentially all being used as guinea pigs in food trials.
"...it's only the start of things to come. In labs and on experimental farms are:
• Vaccines and other pharmaceuticals grown in bananas and other plants.
• Trademarked "Enviropigs" whose manure doesn't pollute as much.
• Cows that don't produce methane in their flatulence.
And in the far-off future, there may be foods built from scratch — the scratch being DNA."
...
"All of the animals, plants and microbes we use in our food system, our agricultural system, are genetically modified in one way or another," says Bruce Chassy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "That, or they're wild."
The modifications are mostly from selective breeding and hybridization, the traditional ways of changing plants and animals. But these methods used for thousands of years are compared by genetic engineers to using a sledgehammer. They say their techniques are like using a scalpel."
...
"More than four-fifths of the soybean, corn and cotton acreage in the United States last year used genetically engineered crops, according to a 2010 National Academies of Sciences study.
David Ervin of Portland State University in Oregon, who chaired the committee that wrote the report, said it found no large-scale environmental risks associated with the current genetically engineered corn, cotton and soybeans in the United States. As for future crops, "you just have to be very cautious," depending on the nature of the plants, he says.
The report, which didn't consider health impacts of eating genetically engineered crops, did recommend large-scale studies of ecological effects of such crops, Ervin said."
...
"With the world population predicted to surpass 9 billion before 2050, genetically engineered food is the only hope to avoid starvation, he says.
That many people cannot be fed "using agriculture as it is right now," Murray says. "What is the cost to humanity if we do not use this technology?"
My questions:
1. When will the FDA require these foods to go through the same clinical trials as newly-invented drugs, testing to see what the side effects are and if any allergy risks are associated with food.
2. If scientists are so worried about how we're going to feed the population in the future, perhaps they ought to think about adding birth control to the food instead of other genes! I'd like to take this time to remind scientists that we already produce enough food to give away to the rest of the world, so what's the problem?
It's getting to where we may need to consider going vegetarian or vegan just to get clean, affordable food in the future. Organically-raised meat prices will certainly shoot through the roof (like they aren't there already) because of new demand for clean meats.
By getting FDA approval NOW, we're essentially all being used as guinea pigs in food trials.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The REAL Fix For the Economy--Savings
From CNN Money.
"The Treasury is borrowing $862 billion in funds that families and governments don't need to use now, and hence are saving. The federal government is then spending part of it quickly and returning the rest, through programs like the "Making Work Pay" tax rebates, to consumers most likely to spend it. The rationale is that all the extra outlays in these two categories will raise GDP far more than if all of that money had flowed to places where savings go, into corporate bonds, stock offerings, CDs, or bank deposits.
But the plan contains a gaping hole. The rub is that savings, just like the dollars government channels into salaries and auto fleets -- and that consumers lavish on restaurants, tourism and computers -- are all spent. They're simply spent on different things, namely corporate investment for research, robots and software. Hence, a dollar transferred from savings to consumption doesn't add to total spending, or to GDP, at all."
...
"Let's assume that the government never borrowed that $862 billion and that the money stayed in the hands of American families and foreign governments. Remember, all of that $862 billion is being spent under the stimulus by our government or consumers. If the savers simply kept the money, all of it would remain as savings. So those dollars would flow into the banks in savings accounts and CDs. That money would then be available for the banks to lend, chiefly to large and small businesses."
...
"The answer is that banks are in the business of collecting interest, and would indeed lend the extra deposits. "Money never sleeps," says J.D. Foster, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, borrowing a line from the title of the new movie "Wall Street II." How would that money make its way to private investments in a market where demand for capital is extremely weak?
It would happen in two ways. First, the supply of savings would surge, and government borrowing would be far lower. So the pool of funds available for companies would increase, and the competition for those funds would fall. As a result, interest rates would drop even below today's bargain levels. Lower rates would reduce financing costs for companies, making it more attractive to buy everything from forklifts to new systems for logistics.
It's not that America would produce more goods and services. It's simply that a larger slice of the same pie would go to investment, and hence capital equipment. Once again, Obama is simply transferring the same dollars from cars to, say, forklifts."
...
"Demand for loans is indeed extremely weak. The businesses "screaming for credit" fall into one of two categories. First, borrowers who are facing severe financial problems due to the recession, and are no longer creditworthy. Second, small companies typically had a single bank that knew their credit, and trusted their leaders. Many of those banks disappeared during the financial crisis. Hence, a number of healthy companies can't persuade one of the remaining banks to establish a fresh relationship, and start lending them money.
But for most companies, the problem isn't the availability of loans at all. It's their reluctance to invest for the future. Right now, most companies are borrowing simply to finance their inventories and replace worn-out equipment. Any plans for expansion are now on hold.
To ignite a strong recovery, the U.S. needs a surge in both consumer spending and private investment. In a good recovery, consumer spending contributes around 2% to GDP growth and investment gives the extra juice by adding another two points or so, bringing the total to 3.5% or 4%. Consumer spending is already near the levels needed for a decent rebound. The problem is investment. Once again, simply reducing government spending and borrowing will not add to GDP right away. It will simply subtract the same amount from consumption, leaving national income the same."
...
"A convincing plan to reduce spending would give corporate America a shot of confidence. It would banish fears that taxes will rise sharply and sap earnings. Companies also fret that interest rates will rise dramatically as the government absorbs most of the pool of private savings, forcing manufacturers and retailers to pay dearly for what's left over. Those high rates, in turn, will raise the threshold for what qualifies as a profitable investment. Less borrowing and more savings would do the exact opposite, and open a galaxy of lucrative opportunities.
"If incentives change, growth can pick up in about ten minutes," says John Cochrane, an economist at the Booth School of Business the University of Chicago. The reason is simple: As a leap of faith, companies start to produce more products, confident they'll be able to sell them to consumers who work more hours and companies that keep more of their revenues. The important thing, says Cochrane, is that families and companies feel that the changes aren't a one-time gimmick, but will lead to durable increases in their incomes. "Investment rises first," he says. "Then people work longer hours. Then families have more money to spend, and consumer spending rises along with investment."
This spells out exactly how savings and productivity will save the economy.
"The Treasury is borrowing $862 billion in funds that families and governments don't need to use now, and hence are saving. The federal government is then spending part of it quickly and returning the rest, through programs like the "Making Work Pay" tax rebates, to consumers most likely to spend it. The rationale is that all the extra outlays in these two categories will raise GDP far more than if all of that money had flowed to places where savings go, into corporate bonds, stock offerings, CDs, or bank deposits.
But the plan contains a gaping hole. The rub is that savings, just like the dollars government channels into salaries and auto fleets -- and that consumers lavish on restaurants, tourism and computers -- are all spent. They're simply spent on different things, namely corporate investment for research, robots and software. Hence, a dollar transferred from savings to consumption doesn't add to total spending, or to GDP, at all."
...
"Let's assume that the government never borrowed that $862 billion and that the money stayed in the hands of American families and foreign governments. Remember, all of that $862 billion is being spent under the stimulus by our government or consumers. If the savers simply kept the money, all of it would remain as savings. So those dollars would flow into the banks in savings accounts and CDs. That money would then be available for the banks to lend, chiefly to large and small businesses."
...
"The answer is that banks are in the business of collecting interest, and would indeed lend the extra deposits. "Money never sleeps," says J.D. Foster, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, borrowing a line from the title of the new movie "Wall Street II." How would that money make its way to private investments in a market where demand for capital is extremely weak?
It would happen in two ways. First, the supply of savings would surge, and government borrowing would be far lower. So the pool of funds available for companies would increase, and the competition for those funds would fall. As a result, interest rates would drop even below today's bargain levels. Lower rates would reduce financing costs for companies, making it more attractive to buy everything from forklifts to new systems for logistics.
It's not that America would produce more goods and services. It's simply that a larger slice of the same pie would go to investment, and hence capital equipment. Once again, Obama is simply transferring the same dollars from cars to, say, forklifts."
...
"Demand for loans is indeed extremely weak. The businesses "screaming for credit" fall into one of two categories. First, borrowers who are facing severe financial problems due to the recession, and are no longer creditworthy. Second, small companies typically had a single bank that knew their credit, and trusted their leaders. Many of those banks disappeared during the financial crisis. Hence, a number of healthy companies can't persuade one of the remaining banks to establish a fresh relationship, and start lending them money.
But for most companies, the problem isn't the availability of loans at all. It's their reluctance to invest for the future. Right now, most companies are borrowing simply to finance their inventories and replace worn-out equipment. Any plans for expansion are now on hold.
To ignite a strong recovery, the U.S. needs a surge in both consumer spending and private investment. In a good recovery, consumer spending contributes around 2% to GDP growth and investment gives the extra juice by adding another two points or so, bringing the total to 3.5% or 4%. Consumer spending is already near the levels needed for a decent rebound. The problem is investment. Once again, simply reducing government spending and borrowing will not add to GDP right away. It will simply subtract the same amount from consumption, leaving national income the same."
...
"A convincing plan to reduce spending would give corporate America a shot of confidence. It would banish fears that taxes will rise sharply and sap earnings. Companies also fret that interest rates will rise dramatically as the government absorbs most of the pool of private savings, forcing manufacturers and retailers to pay dearly for what's left over. Those high rates, in turn, will raise the threshold for what qualifies as a profitable investment. Less borrowing and more savings would do the exact opposite, and open a galaxy of lucrative opportunities.
"If incentives change, growth can pick up in about ten minutes," says John Cochrane, an economist at the Booth School of Business the University of Chicago. The reason is simple: As a leap of faith, companies start to produce more products, confident they'll be able to sell them to consumers who work more hours and companies that keep more of their revenues. The important thing, says Cochrane, is that families and companies feel that the changes aren't a one-time gimmick, but will lead to durable increases in their incomes. "Investment rises first," he says. "Then people work longer hours. Then families have more money to spend, and consumer spending rises along with investment."
This spells out exactly how savings and productivity will save the economy.
Death to Deficits By "A Thousand Cuts"
From CNN Money. It would take a thousand budget cuts to do away with the deficit.
"...to hit the target through spending cuts alone, Congress would have to enact a:
* 75% cut in direct agriculture subsidies;
* 40% cut in federal funding for roads and bridges;
* 30% cut for conservation-related agencies such as the Forest Service;
* 50% cut in federal aid to D.C. and to rural telecommunications services to rural areas;
* 12.5% reduction in defense spending;
* and the elimination or reduction of more than 15 tax breaks, which many experts say amount to spending.
If spending cuts only account for one-third of the solution, lawmakers would "just" need to come up with $85 billion in 2015."
...
"Their $85 billion proposal would rely most heavily on cuts in defense spending and tax breaks. But it would also cut agricultural subsidies in half and reduce federal employee and military pensions. It would also trim spending on the federal highway and aviation agencies as well as on "energy supply" projects, that among other things, support fossil fuels and nuclear energy research.
The report's proposals are not recommendations, but the report's authors did make some value judgments about cuts that could be made while not sacrificing economic growth, hurting the vulnerable or compromising national security."
What budget cuts would YOU make? Go here and make your own federal budget cuts.
"...to hit the target through spending cuts alone, Congress would have to enact a:
* 75% cut in direct agriculture subsidies;
* 40% cut in federal funding for roads and bridges;
* 30% cut for conservation-related agencies such as the Forest Service;
* 50% cut in federal aid to D.C. and to rural telecommunications services to rural areas;
* 12.5% reduction in defense spending;
* and the elimination or reduction of more than 15 tax breaks, which many experts say amount to spending.
If spending cuts only account for one-third of the solution, lawmakers would "just" need to come up with $85 billion in 2015."
...
"Their $85 billion proposal would rely most heavily on cuts in defense spending and tax breaks. But it would also cut agricultural subsidies in half and reduce federal employee and military pensions. It would also trim spending on the federal highway and aviation agencies as well as on "energy supply" projects, that among other things, support fossil fuels and nuclear energy research.
The report's proposals are not recommendations, but the report's authors did make some value judgments about cuts that could be made while not sacrificing economic growth, hurting the vulnerable or compromising national security."
What budget cuts would YOU make? Go here and make your own federal budget cuts.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Why Frugal-Minded Savers Hate Inflation
From CNN/Time.
"Inflation helps debtors and spenders at the expense of creditors and savers."
That's because the purchasing power of each dollar is diminished by the percentage of inflation. $1.00 minus the current inflation rate (say 2% for example) makes $1.00 worth .98, meaning the retailer now has to jack up the price of products by .02 to recapture each full dollar value spent. To get as full dollar's worth of something, you now have to spend $1.02 plus all the taxes that go along with it, raising the taxes as well as the original item price.
Let's take this into double-digits for a better example.
$10.00 (price of item) X 5% (rate of inflation) = .50 (increase in price of item)
$10.50 (new price of item) X 6% (sales tax) = .63 (total price of item)
$10.50 (new price) + .63 (sales tax) = $11.13
Your $10.00 item now costs $11.13--an 11% increase, even though the inflation rate was only 5%.
$11.13 (total price) - $10.00 (original price) = $1.13 more in total
$10.00 (original price) divided by $11.13 (total price) = .89 (two digits)
$1.00 - .89 = 11% (the inflation rate after taxes), making your dollar now worth only .89, so prices have to be raised at least 11% for the retailer to make full dollar values on each item sold, and that's just to break even. Retailers are seeking PROFIT, so you can bet the price increases will be much higher than that to ensure a profit.
Since the original price for the item was $10.00, the sales tax on a $10.00 item would have been .60 ($10.00 X 6%), for a total of $10.60 without inflation. The example total price above of $11.13 - the new total price of $10.60 means you save .53 without coupons, rebates, or store discounts because of an absence of inflation.
Bring inflation back into the picture, and that .53 in savings gets eroded away, and may even cost you out of pocket in the end. Inflation is like an extra tax on your money (courtesy of the Fed), and the higher the rate, the more you get charged in the end for the same item. This is why frugal people tend to spend when prices, taxes, and inflation are low in total--it costs less.
Back to the article.
"There's an argument to be made that inflation—or at least a reasonable increase in our current level of inflation—will help the economy. How? Inflation does two things: 1) It makes your money you have less valuable as times goes past—and so there's more reason to spend it now, which helps the economy. And 2) It makes the real value of debts shrink, or at least become less burdensome—making it easier (relatively speaking) for debtors to pay off what they owe, which also helps the economy (especially if these borrowers take on new debts)."
...
"...you can't really expect anyone—let alone the government—to help you save. There are far more forces out there that'll help you help out the economy by handing over your hard-earned dollars to somebody else.
Throughout the economic crisis, consumers have been sent a mixed message: that individually, it is wise and prudent to save, but that collectively, we need to spend to get the economy humming along again. Such an ambivalent message gives some merit to the theory that the government wants you in debt, mainly because when people are in debt it's good for the economy in two key ways: 1) The fact that you're in debt means you have been buying stuff; and 2) People who are in debt tend to work their butts off in order to get out of debt—or to keep buying stuff."
Inflation is the OTHER way to supposedly bring back the economy when savings and productivity are not possible. The current administration is doing its utmost to ensure savings and productivity aren't possible, and won't be for some time to come--Uncle Sam needs money!
Real total debts are reduced by the amount of inflation, making inflation more attractive to spenders. $100 in debt is reduced by the amount of inflation (say 5%), making the total true debt only $95 instead of $100, and the higher the inflation, the lower the true debt value becomes--paying down your debt without actually sending in money.
Now multiply this times the trillions Uncle Sam owes...not only does inflation diminish spending power, it also diminishes debt and interest on savings.
"Inflation helps debtors and spenders at the expense of creditors and savers."
That's because the purchasing power of each dollar is diminished by the percentage of inflation. $1.00 minus the current inflation rate (say 2% for example) makes $1.00 worth .98, meaning the retailer now has to jack up the price of products by .02 to recapture each full dollar value spent. To get as full dollar's worth of something, you now have to spend $1.02 plus all the taxes that go along with it, raising the taxes as well as the original item price.
Let's take this into double-digits for a better example.
$10.00 (price of item) X 5% (rate of inflation) = .50 (increase in price of item)
$10.50 (new price of item) X 6% (sales tax) = .63 (total price of item)
$10.50 (new price) + .63 (sales tax) = $11.13
Your $10.00 item now costs $11.13--an 11% increase, even though the inflation rate was only 5%.
$11.13 (total price) - $10.00 (original price) = $1.13 more in total
$10.00 (original price) divided by $11.13 (total price) = .89 (two digits)
$1.00 - .89 = 11% (the inflation rate after taxes), making your dollar now worth only .89, so prices have to be raised at least 11% for the retailer to make full dollar values on each item sold, and that's just to break even. Retailers are seeking PROFIT, so you can bet the price increases will be much higher than that to ensure a profit.
Since the original price for the item was $10.00, the sales tax on a $10.00 item would have been .60 ($10.00 X 6%), for a total of $10.60 without inflation. The example total price above of $11.13 - the new total price of $10.60 means you save .53 without coupons, rebates, or store discounts because of an absence of inflation.
Bring inflation back into the picture, and that .53 in savings gets eroded away, and may even cost you out of pocket in the end. Inflation is like an extra tax on your money (courtesy of the Fed), and the higher the rate, the more you get charged in the end for the same item. This is why frugal people tend to spend when prices, taxes, and inflation are low in total--it costs less.
Back to the article.
"There's an argument to be made that inflation—or at least a reasonable increase in our current level of inflation—will help the economy. How? Inflation does two things: 1) It makes your money you have less valuable as times goes past—and so there's more reason to spend it now, which helps the economy. And 2) It makes the real value of debts shrink, or at least become less burdensome—making it easier (relatively speaking) for debtors to pay off what they owe, which also helps the economy (especially if these borrowers take on new debts)."
...
"...you can't really expect anyone—let alone the government—to help you save. There are far more forces out there that'll help you help out the economy by handing over your hard-earned dollars to somebody else.
Throughout the economic crisis, consumers have been sent a mixed message: that individually, it is wise and prudent to save, but that collectively, we need to spend to get the economy humming along again. Such an ambivalent message gives some merit to the theory that the government wants you in debt, mainly because when people are in debt it's good for the economy in two key ways: 1) The fact that you're in debt means you have been buying stuff; and 2) People who are in debt tend to work their butts off in order to get out of debt—or to keep buying stuff."
Inflation is the OTHER way to supposedly bring back the economy when savings and productivity are not possible. The current administration is doing its utmost to ensure savings and productivity aren't possible, and won't be for some time to come--Uncle Sam needs money!
Real total debts are reduced by the amount of inflation, making inflation more attractive to spenders. $100 in debt is reduced by the amount of inflation (say 5%), making the total true debt only $95 instead of $100, and the higher the inflation, the lower the true debt value becomes--paying down your debt without actually sending in money.
Now multiply this times the trillions Uncle Sam owes...not only does inflation diminish spending power, it also diminishes debt and interest on savings.
The Limited Returns to Higher Education
From Prudent Bear.
"As higher education costs escalate faster than inflation while the global job market remains largely depressed, increasing numbers of commentators are questioning the value of higher education as a whole. The question becomes more urgent, as state budgets become increasingly burdened by higher education's further expansion. However the answer to the question of education's value seems pretty clear to me: it depends who is getting educated in what."
...
"In 1973, college was cheap compared to today, but the differential in average earnings between college graduates and high school graduates was also smaller than today."
...
"Looked at in a different way, if we assume the average career in full-time employment lasts for 30 years, so that the differential between college and high school earnings becomes a 30-year annuity (with both college costs and earnings being at 1973 levels, corrected for inflation), then 1973's pretax return on investment for a man from college education becomes 36%, for a woman 26%. Post-tax the returns become 25% and 18%. For the state, the returns on subsidization are 10% for men and 7% for women. All healthy figures, confirming the belief that in 1973, even with the earnings differential between high school and college less than it later became, a college education was on average a pretty good deal. Even allowing for the fact that the average includes many students whose benefits from college education were lower than average, college must have been an adequate or better deal for pretty well all those undertaking it."
...
"Now look at 2009. The cost of college in real terms has escalated by a further 29%. However with the lackluster economy of the 2000s followed by a further grinding recession, the earnings premium for college-educated workers has declined, by 9% for men and 5% for women. It still remains around 80% higher than the 1973 earnings premium, for both sexes, but the effect of continued ratcheting up of college costs and the modest decline in the college earnings premium has made college dramatically less attractive on a return-on-investment basis. Instead of the healthy 25% and 18% post-tax returns that had been achieved in 1973, and the higher returns in the intervening years, the post-tax return from college investment has fallen to 21% for men and 18% for women. Because of the huge increase in costs, the college investment is also much riskier in relation to people's earnings and assets than that of 1973. As for the government, the tax return from providing full scholarships has declined into single digits, 8% for men and 5% for women."
...
"the average conceals large differences and two countervailing factors. As to the differences, college remains highly financially attractive to those enrolled in the best schools. If you can get into Princeton, you should go there; it costs little more than other private schools and your potential earnings uplift is stunning. Furthermore, your return is better from a scientific or technical degree than from a liberal arts degree. That should not be taken too far; petroleum engineers currently enjoy the best average education premium, but that reflects current buoyant hiring trends in the oil business, which are unlikely to last over an entire career – as a petroleum engineer in the oil price downtrend of 1986-2002 your earnings stagnated and you may well have suffered periods of unemployment. Nevertheless, a degree in biotech today is unquestionably worth more than one in women's studies."
...
"...the income benefits outlined above may not in fact be caused by college degrees but simply coincidental with them, because those who go to college are on average smarter than those who don't."
...
"For society as a whole therefore, the benefits of college education may be diminishing, though still considerable. Pushing to educate students ever further down the ability spectrum seems likely to have costs exceeding its benefits unless the students are very highly motivated to undergo the college experience. Rather than expanding the U.S. college system it would make more sense to streamline it, closing marginal colleges with a population of indifferent students and cutting back subsidies to programs of low economic value. Likewise, subsidizing low-ability students in for-profit colleges, generally without campuses, generally adds little value."
...
"For individual students, college should only be undertaken for those who expect to gain especial benefit from the college experience, either academically or through its other offerings. The initial four-year college should thus be the province of no more than 15-20% of students. Most of the next 60% of the ability group should get higher education in smaller doses, a year or two initially, the rest spread throughout their careers. With this approach, there will be far fewer students wasting four years studying political correctness and binge drinking – but, far more important, many fewer steel workers and auto workers finding themselves made redundant at 50, and unable to transition to a new life phase of renewed productivity."
"As higher education costs escalate faster than inflation while the global job market remains largely depressed, increasing numbers of commentators are questioning the value of higher education as a whole. The question becomes more urgent, as state budgets become increasingly burdened by higher education's further expansion. However the answer to the question of education's value seems pretty clear to me: it depends who is getting educated in what."
...
"In 1973, college was cheap compared to today, but the differential in average earnings between college graduates and high school graduates was also smaller than today."
...
"Looked at in a different way, if we assume the average career in full-time employment lasts for 30 years, so that the differential between college and high school earnings becomes a 30-year annuity (with both college costs and earnings being at 1973 levels, corrected for inflation), then 1973's pretax return on investment for a man from college education becomes 36%, for a woman 26%. Post-tax the returns become 25% and 18%. For the state, the returns on subsidization are 10% for men and 7% for women. All healthy figures, confirming the belief that in 1973, even with the earnings differential between high school and college less than it later became, a college education was on average a pretty good deal. Even allowing for the fact that the average includes many students whose benefits from college education were lower than average, college must have been an adequate or better deal for pretty well all those undertaking it."
...
"Now look at 2009. The cost of college in real terms has escalated by a further 29%. However with the lackluster economy of the 2000s followed by a further grinding recession, the earnings premium for college-educated workers has declined, by 9% for men and 5% for women. It still remains around 80% higher than the 1973 earnings premium, for both sexes, but the effect of continued ratcheting up of college costs and the modest decline in the college earnings premium has made college dramatically less attractive on a return-on-investment basis. Instead of the healthy 25% and 18% post-tax returns that had been achieved in 1973, and the higher returns in the intervening years, the post-tax return from college investment has fallen to 21% for men and 18% for women. Because of the huge increase in costs, the college investment is also much riskier in relation to people's earnings and assets than that of 1973. As for the government, the tax return from providing full scholarships has declined into single digits, 8% for men and 5% for women."
...
"the average conceals large differences and two countervailing factors. As to the differences, college remains highly financially attractive to those enrolled in the best schools. If you can get into Princeton, you should go there; it costs little more than other private schools and your potential earnings uplift is stunning. Furthermore, your return is better from a scientific or technical degree than from a liberal arts degree. That should not be taken too far; petroleum engineers currently enjoy the best average education premium, but that reflects current buoyant hiring trends in the oil business, which are unlikely to last over an entire career – as a petroleum engineer in the oil price downtrend of 1986-2002 your earnings stagnated and you may well have suffered periods of unemployment. Nevertheless, a degree in biotech today is unquestionably worth more than one in women's studies."
...
"...the income benefits outlined above may not in fact be caused by college degrees but simply coincidental with them, because those who go to college are on average smarter than those who don't."
...
"For society as a whole therefore, the benefits of college education may be diminishing, though still considerable. Pushing to educate students ever further down the ability spectrum seems likely to have costs exceeding its benefits unless the students are very highly motivated to undergo the college experience. Rather than expanding the U.S. college system it would make more sense to streamline it, closing marginal colleges with a population of indifferent students and cutting back subsidies to programs of low economic value. Likewise, subsidizing low-ability students in for-profit colleges, generally without campuses, generally adds little value."
...
"For individual students, college should only be undertaken for those who expect to gain especial benefit from the college experience, either academically or through its other offerings. The initial four-year college should thus be the province of no more than 15-20% of students. Most of the next 60% of the ability group should get higher education in smaller doses, a year or two initially, the rest spread throughout their careers. With this approach, there will be far fewer students wasting four years studying political correctness and binge drinking – but, far more important, many fewer steel workers and auto workers finding themselves made redundant at 50, and unable to transition to a new life phase of renewed productivity."
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Ultimate Emergency: The EMP Pulse (L-O-N-G and Updated)
Just a few years ago, we were told that the sudden end of oil would be our new and enduring emergency. Currently, we’re in the middle of an oil glut—over-production, combined with greatly-diminished demand, have rendered that particular voice mute, and it is expected to be silent for at least the next decade. So much for prognostication!
Electricity, notably the generation of electricity, is our actual bogeyman in the wings. Obama is doing his part by over-regulating and cap-and-trading coal-fired utility companies into buying their power from “clean energy” sources, and directing funding toward new sources of “clean energy”, even though they aren’t as cheap and plentiful, or as efficient, as traditional sources.
It’s bad enough that energy-time-of-use rationing has occurred with peak- and off-peak hours, but now we have overall rationing with the sourcing of energy from so-called “clean” but inefficient and unreliable sources, which don’t exist in sufficient quantity to supply all of America at peak productive output—even in GOOD weather! Never mind when clouds or rain occur, or when the wind stops.
Eventually, we’re going to become like Iraq, with electricity only available for limited times during the day, from whatever source we have at the time. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford your own power generation, you won’t be subject to the limits of government-sponsored and utility company-provided power, however limited.
Even worse is the eventual threat of an EMP pulse—the weapon of all weapons, creating ultimate destruction without harming a living soul, unless that living soul is hooked up to some sort of medical device dependent on electricity. Even solar-powered homes would be vulnerable—the panels themselves would be alright, but the wiring leading from the panels into your home would not. DC power from total-solar-powered homes would be as susceptible as AC-powered homes. All electricity and all devices requiring electricity would cease to work. Your car would be stuck in the garage because the door wouldn’t open unless you had a manual override, but never mind that. Your car would have become a useless heap of metal, plastic, and dead electronics—everything from the onboard computer, to the electronic ignition, to the power windows and seats would be toast. The guy down the street with the ’59 Rambler would probably be the only one with a working car, but only as long as his gas held out.
_____________________________________________________________
UPDATE: Engineer Hubby tells me that our EMP wouldn't take out the entire country's grid, and it wouldn't be a permanent end to power--it would knock out power for a short time, but it could be reset, and life as we know it would continue. Sorry to scare the hell out of you--nothing to see here. It does give you something to think about when preparing for emergencies, though.
_____________________________________________________________
Side note: electromagnetics would also render any credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, or ATM cards void. Not only could you NOT use them when there isn’t any electricity to run the swipe machine, but even IF there was electricity, the magnetic strip on the backs would be wiped clean, and all your information on them lost.
Unless you have an alternative source of power for refrigeration, you’ll soon run into the immediate #2 great emergency of humankind: keeping medicine fresh. Insulin comes to mind—insulin can be used unrefrigerated, but it is only good for 30 days regardless of the expiration date. After your bottle of insulin is gone, or your 30 days are up, THEN what do you do? Assuming the insulin factories are rendered useless, and the drug stores are inoperable and looted, what does one do if insulin-dependent? Such is the dilemma of modern science—plenty of people that shouldn’t be alive are alive and kicking today because of modern medicine.
Speaking of modern medicine, EMPs, and electricity, people with pacemakers would probably be wiped out immediately. If not done in immediately, they would certainly die off when their battery goes up. In fact, anyone with a battery-powered implant of any kind (brain implants, heart implants, you name it) would probably be among the first to go. Watches and battery-powered clocks would probably stop.
The next to go would almost certainly be people dependent on life-saving medications, since the medicine factories and medicine access points (drug stores and pharmacies) would be inoperable. It doesn’t help that insurance companies limit medicines to a 90-day supply, and our laws state that someone coming into the country with MORE than a 90-day supply of medicines can be arrested for drug trafficking, so stocking up is virtually impossible.
Next, there’s the implication of a dentist-free world: without electricity, a dentist couldn’t properly care for your teeth, besides manual cleanings and pulling teeth. Dentistry would revert back to the Wild West days, and toothpaste, toothbrushes, and floss would become worth gold one day because the supply would eventually run out.
Then we also would have a hospital-free world, and many women and babies would die for lack of once-simple Caesarian-sections. People would die from a ruptured appendix, gall stones, cancer, and all those things we used to take care of with surgery.
Let’s move onto the world of food. So many of us microwave our food, and wouldn’t know how to live without electricity, refrigeration and freezers, and the microwave. Just like that, our push-button, high-tech world would cease to exist, not to mention the source of push-button food: the grocery stores. Cooking it would be a trick, unless you have a gas stove (which may or may not work, depending on whether or not electricity is needed for natural gas delivery to your home—then, there’s the electronic stove ignition), or a charcoal or gas/propane BBQ, as long as the supply of charcoal, gas, or propane held out. Perhaps a solar cooker would come in handy here, or an open campfire…but then again, what if your fuel source ran out?
How on earth would you stock up and keep food under these circumstances, let alone cook it and keep any leftovers?
How would you heat and cool yourself and what’s left of your home? What would you do for transportation? What about medical care? How would you get your news? Where would your clothes come from?
You begin to see how very easy it would be to set one of these EMP puppies off and throw us into Third World status overnight. Never mind government shenanigans with manipulating money supplies and installing Socialist economic policies, never mind terrorist activities or Iran’s nuke plants, never mind illegal alien infestations, because there’s something far worse that could happen, and God knows if anybody will ever be able to get the power back on.
For all of us, no power means no pay, because banks and ATMs would be useless. Jobs would cease to exist in today’s world, because we can’t operate without electric power. No pay means no purchases, but there wouldn’t be any place TO purchase in these conditions. Those of us who didn’t get the chance to stock up while we had power and money to do so are going to be the ones hurt most (again, as in all dire emergencies). Those of us who DID stock up merely bought ourselves time before we, too, would run out of supplies and would have to form or join roving bands of smash-and-grab thieves.
I don’t know for sure, but I have the feeling the pulse would kill of all electronics world-wide, and not just in one country or one region. There would be no escape from our new powerlessness, except to drag out or recreate 18th and 19th century technology that was all mechanical and much was water-driven, if not horse-driven. One again, farmers would probably come out ahead, as well as the Amish…too bad we don’t have enough of them around. Big Farm would be out of business without fuel and supplies to run the machinery for agribusiness, so whatever food was produced would be about quadruple the price it is now. Goodbye cheap Chinese goods and goodbye manufactured anything for a while. Junkyards will become the new treasure troves.
What can we do toward preparing ourselves for this remote-but-devastating possibility? For starters, understand that there’s no way to stock up enough stuff and keep it secure to ride this out. Know that some of us are going to die off for sure. Know that there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent it, and know that the current world supply of emergency goods will run out, leaving us much like the cast of Lost (or even Gilligan’s Island). We will eventually be reduced to tracking time and days with our versions of Mayan calendars scratched into surfaces, until we realize the futility of our efforts--no reason to keep time when there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Now for some action: we can pre-prepare for this remote possible emergency by pulling the plug NOW and learning to live with minimal power usage—that way, if and when the power cessation comes, we’ll already be used to living without a certain amount of power in our lives. We’ll just have to make adjustments to accommodate the rest of the power loss. In the event that someone figured out how to get the power back on, anything already unplugged won’t be damaged by the EMP, and will be usable again, provided you have a place to plug it in—the electronics won’t be fried, but your house’s wiring might be.
We go through very mini-versions of this with storms, power surges, and lightning—we either unplug our computers completely, or use surge protectors to keep the electronics from being fried. There is no surge protector big enough to ward off an EMP attack.
When the lights go out temporarily, and we lose power, we bring out our emergency gear and compensate. The emergency doesn’t last long, though. An EMP attack’s results would last forever until someone got the power back on, and that could take years, decades, or even centuries. It may never happen, and it would spell the eventual doom of our civilization and planet. At the very least, we would be blown all the way back to Roman times.
In the event of an ongoing emergency with possibly no end, how would you survive? What would you do for food and food storage? What about fuel sources? What about medicines and hygiene supplies, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and community leadership or local authority? What about our kids and pets? What about personal protection? What about all the important documents you scanned into your computer and stored on the web, that are now lost for who knows how long?
Who would bury us? Worse, who would bury the last living person?
Bartering would become the currency of trade, and having a barterable skill will be useful. Current-day computer techies and others who make their living from electricity-driven objects might want to learn a more useful non-powered skill just in case. We can’t all be prostitutes, and not enough of us went through the Boy Scouts.
Can you start a fire from scratch, make a shelter from what’s around you, or hunt/forage your next meal and know consuming it won’t kill you? Can you do it for someone else?
Running out of oil, and electricity rationing through some cockamamie cap-and-trade scheme would be the least of your worries—in fact, you’d be wishing for them. Power would eventually make a comeback, but only if the engineers with the know-how survived long enough to make it happen. We could start all over again as a society, but will the necessary people needed to make it happen still be with us, or will they already be dead?
Will it be too late for us? It’s not like there’s a Time-Life book sitting in the library on how to rebuild a power grid, or how to convert things to run on oil! And speaking of libraries…I won’t go there. You already know how under-funded they are, and can guess how little current useful information there’d be in the case of a dire emergency like this one. We won’t be able to just go online like we used to, abandoning our library system for Google, or even Kindle.
Our own military already has an EMP device, and does its damndest to make sure nobody else does, but it may be too late for that, too.
Remember back when we freaked out over the A-bomb and the nuke? Compared to an EMP, those are child’s play, so why are we so worried about running out of oil one day?
Just be glad you aren’t on the space station with no way to communicate or return home. :)
Electricity, notably the generation of electricity, is our actual bogeyman in the wings. Obama is doing his part by over-regulating and cap-and-trading coal-fired utility companies into buying their power from “clean energy” sources, and directing funding toward new sources of “clean energy”, even though they aren’t as cheap and plentiful, or as efficient, as traditional sources.
It’s bad enough that energy-time-of-use rationing has occurred with peak- and off-peak hours, but now we have overall rationing with the sourcing of energy from so-called “clean” but inefficient and unreliable sources, which don’t exist in sufficient quantity to supply all of America at peak productive output—even in GOOD weather! Never mind when clouds or rain occur, or when the wind stops.
Eventually, we’re going to become like Iraq, with electricity only available for limited times during the day, from whatever source we have at the time. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford your own power generation, you won’t be subject to the limits of government-sponsored and utility company-provided power, however limited.
Even worse is the eventual threat of an EMP pulse—the weapon of all weapons, creating ultimate destruction without harming a living soul, unless that living soul is hooked up to some sort of medical device dependent on electricity. Even solar-powered homes would be vulnerable—the panels themselves would be alright, but the wiring leading from the panels into your home would not. DC power from total-solar-powered homes would be as susceptible as AC-powered homes. All electricity and all devices requiring electricity would cease to work. Your car would be stuck in the garage because the door wouldn’t open unless you had a manual override, but never mind that. Your car would have become a useless heap of metal, plastic, and dead electronics—everything from the onboard computer, to the electronic ignition, to the power windows and seats would be toast. The guy down the street with the ’59 Rambler would probably be the only one with a working car, but only as long as his gas held out.
_____________________________________________________________
UPDATE: Engineer Hubby tells me that our EMP wouldn't take out the entire country's grid, and it wouldn't be a permanent end to power--it would knock out power for a short time, but it could be reset, and life as we know it would continue. Sorry to scare the hell out of you--nothing to see here. It does give you something to think about when preparing for emergencies, though.
_____________________________________________________________
Side note: electromagnetics would also render any credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, or ATM cards void. Not only could you NOT use them when there isn’t any electricity to run the swipe machine, but even IF there was electricity, the magnetic strip on the backs would be wiped clean, and all your information on them lost.
Unless you have an alternative source of power for refrigeration, you’ll soon run into the immediate #2 great emergency of humankind: keeping medicine fresh. Insulin comes to mind—insulin can be used unrefrigerated, but it is only good for 30 days regardless of the expiration date. After your bottle of insulin is gone, or your 30 days are up, THEN what do you do? Assuming the insulin factories are rendered useless, and the drug stores are inoperable and looted, what does one do if insulin-dependent? Such is the dilemma of modern science—plenty of people that shouldn’t be alive are alive and kicking today because of modern medicine.
Speaking of modern medicine, EMPs, and electricity, people with pacemakers would probably be wiped out immediately. If not done in immediately, they would certainly die off when their battery goes up. In fact, anyone with a battery-powered implant of any kind (brain implants, heart implants, you name it) would probably be among the first to go. Watches and battery-powered clocks would probably stop.
The next to go would almost certainly be people dependent on life-saving medications, since the medicine factories and medicine access points (drug stores and pharmacies) would be inoperable. It doesn’t help that insurance companies limit medicines to a 90-day supply, and our laws state that someone coming into the country with MORE than a 90-day supply of medicines can be arrested for drug trafficking, so stocking up is virtually impossible.
Next, there’s the implication of a dentist-free world: without electricity, a dentist couldn’t properly care for your teeth, besides manual cleanings and pulling teeth. Dentistry would revert back to the Wild West days, and toothpaste, toothbrushes, and floss would become worth gold one day because the supply would eventually run out.
Then we also would have a hospital-free world, and many women and babies would die for lack of once-simple Caesarian-sections. People would die from a ruptured appendix, gall stones, cancer, and all those things we used to take care of with surgery.
Let’s move onto the world of food. So many of us microwave our food, and wouldn’t know how to live without electricity, refrigeration and freezers, and the microwave. Just like that, our push-button, high-tech world would cease to exist, not to mention the source of push-button food: the grocery stores. Cooking it would be a trick, unless you have a gas stove (which may or may not work, depending on whether or not electricity is needed for natural gas delivery to your home—then, there’s the electronic stove ignition), or a charcoal or gas/propane BBQ, as long as the supply of charcoal, gas, or propane held out. Perhaps a solar cooker would come in handy here, or an open campfire…but then again, what if your fuel source ran out?
How on earth would you stock up and keep food under these circumstances, let alone cook it and keep any leftovers?
How would you heat and cool yourself and what’s left of your home? What would you do for transportation? What about medical care? How would you get your news? Where would your clothes come from?
You begin to see how very easy it would be to set one of these EMP puppies off and throw us into Third World status overnight. Never mind government shenanigans with manipulating money supplies and installing Socialist economic policies, never mind terrorist activities or Iran’s nuke plants, never mind illegal alien infestations, because there’s something far worse that could happen, and God knows if anybody will ever be able to get the power back on.
For all of us, no power means no pay, because banks and ATMs would be useless. Jobs would cease to exist in today’s world, because we can’t operate without electric power. No pay means no purchases, but there wouldn’t be any place TO purchase in these conditions. Those of us who didn’t get the chance to stock up while we had power and money to do so are going to be the ones hurt most (again, as in all dire emergencies). Those of us who DID stock up merely bought ourselves time before we, too, would run out of supplies and would have to form or join roving bands of smash-and-grab thieves.
I don’t know for sure, but I have the feeling the pulse would kill of all electronics world-wide, and not just in one country or one region. There would be no escape from our new powerlessness, except to drag out or recreate 18th and 19th century technology that was all mechanical and much was water-driven, if not horse-driven. One again, farmers would probably come out ahead, as well as the Amish…too bad we don’t have enough of them around. Big Farm would be out of business without fuel and supplies to run the machinery for agribusiness, so whatever food was produced would be about quadruple the price it is now. Goodbye cheap Chinese goods and goodbye manufactured anything for a while. Junkyards will become the new treasure troves.
What can we do toward preparing ourselves for this remote-but-devastating possibility? For starters, understand that there’s no way to stock up enough stuff and keep it secure to ride this out. Know that some of us are going to die off for sure. Know that there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent it, and know that the current world supply of emergency goods will run out, leaving us much like the cast of Lost (or even Gilligan’s Island). We will eventually be reduced to tracking time and days with our versions of Mayan calendars scratched into surfaces, until we realize the futility of our efforts--no reason to keep time when there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Now for some action: we can pre-prepare for this remote possible emergency by pulling the plug NOW and learning to live with minimal power usage—that way, if and when the power cessation comes, we’ll already be used to living without a certain amount of power in our lives. We’ll just have to make adjustments to accommodate the rest of the power loss. In the event that someone figured out how to get the power back on, anything already unplugged won’t be damaged by the EMP, and will be usable again, provided you have a place to plug it in—the electronics won’t be fried, but your house’s wiring might be.
We go through very mini-versions of this with storms, power surges, and lightning—we either unplug our computers completely, or use surge protectors to keep the electronics from being fried. There is no surge protector big enough to ward off an EMP attack.
When the lights go out temporarily, and we lose power, we bring out our emergency gear and compensate. The emergency doesn’t last long, though. An EMP attack’s results would last forever until someone got the power back on, and that could take years, decades, or even centuries. It may never happen, and it would spell the eventual doom of our civilization and planet. At the very least, we would be blown all the way back to Roman times.
In the event of an ongoing emergency with possibly no end, how would you survive? What would you do for food and food storage? What about fuel sources? What about medicines and hygiene supplies, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and community leadership or local authority? What about our kids and pets? What about personal protection? What about all the important documents you scanned into your computer and stored on the web, that are now lost for who knows how long?
Who would bury us? Worse, who would bury the last living person?
Bartering would become the currency of trade, and having a barterable skill will be useful. Current-day computer techies and others who make their living from electricity-driven objects might want to learn a more useful non-powered skill just in case. We can’t all be prostitutes, and not enough of us went through the Boy Scouts.
Can you start a fire from scratch, make a shelter from what’s around you, or hunt/forage your next meal and know consuming it won’t kill you? Can you do it for someone else?
Running out of oil, and electricity rationing through some cockamamie cap-and-trade scheme would be the least of your worries—in fact, you’d be wishing for them. Power would eventually make a comeback, but only if the engineers with the know-how survived long enough to make it happen. We could start all over again as a society, but will the necessary people needed to make it happen still be with us, or will they already be dead?
Will it be too late for us? It’s not like there’s a Time-Life book sitting in the library on how to rebuild a power grid, or how to convert things to run on oil! And speaking of libraries…I won’t go there. You already know how under-funded they are, and can guess how little current useful information there’d be in the case of a dire emergency like this one. We won’t be able to just go online like we used to, abandoning our library system for Google, or even Kindle.
Our own military already has an EMP device, and does its damndest to make sure nobody else does, but it may be too late for that, too.
Remember back when we freaked out over the A-bomb and the nuke? Compared to an EMP, those are child’s play, so why are we so worried about running out of oil one day?
Just be glad you aren’t on the space station with no way to communicate or return home. :)
Saturday, September 18, 2010
One More Cheap SuperFood to Add to Your Arsenal
Sprouts--all kinds. They are much higher in nutrients than their full-grown counterparts, and easy to grow yourself. Sprouts can also be added to the Volumetrics list of foods in the article below.
An idea of sprout nutritional value. Sprouts are also useful when full-size greens are out-of-season, and can be used the same way the bigger relatives are used: cooking, in salads, in sandwiches and wraps, juicing, you name it.
An idea of sprout nutritional value. Sprouts are also useful when full-size greens are out-of-season, and can be used the same way the bigger relatives are used: cooking, in salads, in sandwiches and wraps, juicing, you name it.
Updated: Uncle Sam is Glad You Refinanced!
Originally written back in 2005.
___________________________________________________________
So you did your darndest to secure a lower rate, grab some of that equity, or cash out all together—now get ready for the consequences.
The good:
1. Some points are deductible, but not all, unless you used your proceeds to make home improvements (backed by receipts, of course).
2. If you’ve “serial refinanced”, then you likely have some unamortized points.
3. You put cash in your pocket one way or another.
The bad:
1. The reduced deduction may put you below the itemization cutoff.
2. Some points are not deductible in the year they were incurred.
The ugly:
1. Now you owe taxes on that extra money. Have you held enough aside to pay the extra “income”?
2. This “extra income” may be enough to bump you up into another tax bracket, possibly triggering the dreaded AMT.
The possible bright spot:
1. You may still come out ahead even after paying the taxes on this “income.”
You may want to give your TurboTax a preliminary workout to see if you’ll owe the IRS this year. If so, then you still have some time to make adequate adjustments elsewhere to offset this new income. Making increased payments to a taxable retirement account, an adjustment to your withholding, or merely making January’s mortgage payment in December may be enough to save you from owing Uncle Sam this year.
UPDATE: This is what they aren't telling you about the foreclosure rescue programs, and the same sort of thing goes for mortgage renegotiation, credit card debt renegotiation, and other debt settlement programs. The money you "saved" is still taxable as income, even though you didn't actually make any money from it. Welcome to the world of phantom income!
___________________________________________________________
So you did your darndest to secure a lower rate, grab some of that equity, or cash out all together—now get ready for the consequences.
The good:
1. Some points are deductible, but not all, unless you used your proceeds to make home improvements (backed by receipts, of course).
2. If you’ve “serial refinanced”, then you likely have some unamortized points.
3. You put cash in your pocket one way or another.
The bad:
1. The reduced deduction may put you below the itemization cutoff.
2. Some points are not deductible in the year they were incurred.
The ugly:
1. Now you owe taxes on that extra money. Have you held enough aside to pay the extra “income”?
2. This “extra income” may be enough to bump you up into another tax bracket, possibly triggering the dreaded AMT.
The possible bright spot:
1. You may still come out ahead even after paying the taxes on this “income.”
You may want to give your TurboTax a preliminary workout to see if you’ll owe the IRS this year. If so, then you still have some time to make adequate adjustments elsewhere to offset this new income. Making increased payments to a taxable retirement account, an adjustment to your withholding, or merely making January’s mortgage payment in December may be enough to save you from owing Uncle Sam this year.
UPDATE: This is what they aren't telling you about the foreclosure rescue programs, and the same sort of thing goes for mortgage renegotiation, credit card debt renegotiation, and other debt settlement programs. The money you "saved" is still taxable as income, even though you didn't actually make any money from it. Welcome to the world of phantom income!
Rerun: Filling Up On Fewer Foods With Less Calories--Volumetrics and "Negative Calories"
Originally written in March 2009.
_________________________________________________________________
Before you object mightily to the term “negative calories” and start yelling “MYTH! MYTH!”, I want to explain exactly what they are, how to use them, and why you should start.
First, the WHAT: Negative calorie foods aren’t foods that contain calories less than zero—there is no such thing. What this term signifies is negative NET calories—foods that take more energy to digest than the food itself gives off in calories. If you do a Google search, you may find additional information under the term “Volumetrics”—a diet that includes negative net-calorie foods along with lean meats and select starches.
Second, the HOW: Use these foods in conjunction with lean proteins to get a balanced meal without having to resort to refined carbs, sugary foods, or fatty foods to achieve long-lasting fullness. Whether you cook them or eat them raw, they still work because of their high water and fiber content.
Third, the WHY: Well, there are many reasons, but I’ll just skip to what I think are the pertinents:
1. Improved nutrition—these foods are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, which will serve to help cut down health care expenses.
2. The additional water and fiber in these foods will go toward speeding up your metabolism, digestion, hydration, and colon health. Water and fiber both serve to clean out your digestive tract and blood, pulling out excess fat, hormones, cholesterol, sugar, and salt.
3. Less reliance on refined carbs that break down into sugar (which becomes stored as fat) means ultimately less fat in the system.
4. In this time of recession, shortening the shopping list and using only inexpensive, filling foods like these saves money, time, and space in the kitchen—most of these foods are refrigerated and don’t require cupboard space. Plus, these foods don’t rely on coupons or rebates to entice you to buy them. They can also be grown at home.
5. Most of these foods can be served raw (as in salads), by the piece (such as fruit), or cooked in some way (baked in desserts, added to soups, stir-fried, boiled, fried, you name it), meaning they allow for greater cook’s imagination—no tie-downs to a cookbook or package directions.
6. This may be the most important—because these foods have negative net calories, you can eat more often, or more per meal. Because of their relative cheapness, you can afford to serve larger portions—but their high fiber and water content means you may not have to, because it takes less to fill you up.
Negative net-calorie foods
Corn
Rice
Potatoes
Kidney Beans, Black Beans—I’d include small red beans as well
Cauliflower
Lettuce (all varieties)—I’d include chard and kale as well
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Carrots
Beets
Green Cabbage
Celery
Chili Peppers
Cucumber
Endive
Garden Cress
Garlic
Green Beans
Onion
Peas
Radishes
Spinach
Turnips
Zucchini
Bananas
Apples
Papaya
Pineapple
Grapefruit
Asparagus
Watermelon
Apples
Berries—black-, blue-, straw-, rasp-, and cran-
Cantaloupe, Honey Dew melons
Mango
Oranges, Tangerines
Peaches
Pineapple
If you’d like to hone this list down much further, here are the absolute highest-nutrition foods from this list (I call it “the Wenchypoo magic 8”):
Plums
Navel oranges
Carrots
Broccoli (you can substitute other crucifers—cabbage, collards, cauliflower, etc.)
Red bell peppers
Berries (straw-, blue- and black-) Small red beans can be substituted for blueberries due to high antioxidant level.
UPDATE: Recently, black rice and forbidden rice was discovered to have more antioxidants than blueberries or beans.
I personally use the Magic 8 as a starting point in my diet, and add leafy greens for salads, lean meats, and red potato, bean, or rice servings (as Volumetrics will tell you to). Quite often, I throw it all into the salad—the meat, the fruits/veggies, and the beans or rice—and have an all-in-one dish of mostly negative net-calorie foods. Pre-preparing foods helps cut down kitchen time (see “How I Make My Own Kitchen Convenience”), so I have even more time to spend elsewhere, like at the computer writing articles for my blog.
Not only did I cut down on time, needed space, and money, but also weight*, and you can too with a little re-thinking and re-allocating. No more choice overload when it comes to the grocery stores, or even diet food lists, and no more slaving yourself to coupons, rebates, or other gimmicks, because these negative net-calorie foods are already at rock-bottom prices when in season—even cheaper when grown yourself!
* Weight loss alone gave me more benefits, such as better health, lower cost of clothing, more closet space, more dresser space, less laundry, and less shopping time needed because now my husband and I can share clothes like sweats, shorts, t-shirts, and tube socks. Our clothing sizes no longer have an X or XX in front of them thanks to negative net-calories and The Magic 8 foods.
_________________________________________________________________
Before you object mightily to the term “negative calories” and start yelling “MYTH! MYTH!”, I want to explain exactly what they are, how to use them, and why you should start.
First, the WHAT: Negative calorie foods aren’t foods that contain calories less than zero—there is no such thing. What this term signifies is negative NET calories—foods that take more energy to digest than the food itself gives off in calories. If you do a Google search, you may find additional information under the term “Volumetrics”—a diet that includes negative net-calorie foods along with lean meats and select starches.
Second, the HOW: Use these foods in conjunction with lean proteins to get a balanced meal without having to resort to refined carbs, sugary foods, or fatty foods to achieve long-lasting fullness. Whether you cook them or eat them raw, they still work because of their high water and fiber content.
Third, the WHY: Well, there are many reasons, but I’ll just skip to what I think are the pertinents:
1. Improved nutrition—these foods are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, which will serve to help cut down health care expenses.
2. The additional water and fiber in these foods will go toward speeding up your metabolism, digestion, hydration, and colon health. Water and fiber both serve to clean out your digestive tract and blood, pulling out excess fat, hormones, cholesterol, sugar, and salt.
3. Less reliance on refined carbs that break down into sugar (which becomes stored as fat) means ultimately less fat in the system.
4. In this time of recession, shortening the shopping list and using only inexpensive, filling foods like these saves money, time, and space in the kitchen—most of these foods are refrigerated and don’t require cupboard space. Plus, these foods don’t rely on coupons or rebates to entice you to buy them. They can also be grown at home.
5. Most of these foods can be served raw (as in salads), by the piece (such as fruit), or cooked in some way (baked in desserts, added to soups, stir-fried, boiled, fried, you name it), meaning they allow for greater cook’s imagination—no tie-downs to a cookbook or package directions.
6. This may be the most important—because these foods have negative net calories, you can eat more often, or more per meal. Because of their relative cheapness, you can afford to serve larger portions—but their high fiber and water content means you may not have to, because it takes less to fill you up.
Negative net-calorie foods
Corn
Rice
Potatoes
Kidney Beans, Black Beans—I’d include small red beans as well
Cauliflower
Lettuce (all varieties)—I’d include chard and kale as well
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Carrots
Beets
Green Cabbage
Celery
Chili Peppers
Cucumber
Endive
Garden Cress
Garlic
Green Beans
Onion
Peas
Radishes
Spinach
Turnips
Zucchini
Bananas
Apples
Papaya
Pineapple
Grapefruit
Asparagus
Watermelon
Apples
Berries—black-, blue-, straw-, rasp-, and cran-
Cantaloupe, Honey Dew melons
Mango
Oranges, Tangerines
Peaches
Pineapple
If you’d like to hone this list down much further, here are the absolute highest-nutrition foods from this list (I call it “the Wenchypoo magic 8”):
Plums
Navel oranges
Carrots
Broccoli (you can substitute other crucifers—cabbage, collards, cauliflower, etc.)
Red bell peppers
Berries (straw-, blue- and black-) Small red beans can be substituted for blueberries due to high antioxidant level.
UPDATE: Recently, black rice and forbidden rice was discovered to have more antioxidants than blueberries or beans.
I personally use the Magic 8 as a starting point in my diet, and add leafy greens for salads, lean meats, and red potato, bean, or rice servings (as Volumetrics will tell you to). Quite often, I throw it all into the salad—the meat, the fruits/veggies, and the beans or rice—and have an all-in-one dish of mostly negative net-calorie foods. Pre-preparing foods helps cut down kitchen time (see “How I Make My Own Kitchen Convenience”), so I have even more time to spend elsewhere, like at the computer writing articles for my blog.
Not only did I cut down on time, needed space, and money, but also weight*, and you can too with a little re-thinking and re-allocating. No more choice overload when it comes to the grocery stores, or even diet food lists, and no more slaving yourself to coupons, rebates, or other gimmicks, because these negative net-calorie foods are already at rock-bottom prices when in season—even cheaper when grown yourself!
* Weight loss alone gave me more benefits, such as better health, lower cost of clothing, more closet space, more dresser space, less laundry, and less shopping time needed because now my husband and I can share clothes like sweats, shorts, t-shirts, and tube socks. Our clothing sizes no longer have an X or XX in front of them thanks to negative net-calories and The Magic 8 foods.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Principles for Economic Revival
From the Wall St. Journal.
"The most fundamental starting point is that people respond to incentives and disincentives. Tax rates are a great example because the data are so clear and the results so powerful. A wealth of evidence shows that high tax rates reduce work effort, retard investment and lower productivity growth. Raise taxes, and living standards stagnate."
Exactly--why should we do something when we're only going to get taxed (more) for our efforts?
"When higher taxes reduce the reward for work, you get less of it."
Bingo--productivity takes the hit.
"Long-lasting economic policies based on a long-term strategy work; temporary policies don't. The difference between the effect of permanent tax rate cuts and one-time temporary tax rebates is also well-documented. The former creates a sustainable increase in economic output, the latter at best only a transitory blip. Temporary policies create uncertainty that dampen economic output as market participants, unsure about whether and how policies might change, delay their decisions.
Having "skin in the game," unsurprisingly, leads to superior outcomes. As Milton Friedman famously observed: "Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as they spend their own." When legislators put other people's money at risk—as when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought risky mortgages—crisis and economic hardship inevitably result. When minimal co-payments and low deductibles are mandated in the insurance market, wasteful health-care spending balloons.
Rule-based policies provide the foundation of a high-growth market economy. Abiding by such policies minimizes capricious discretionary actions, such as the recent ad hoc bailouts, which too often had deleterious consequences."
...
"The history of recent economic policy is one of massive deviations from these basic tenets. The result has been a crippling recession and now a weak, nearly nonexistent recovery. The deviations began with policies—like the Federal Reserve holding interest rates too low for too long—that fueled the unsustainable housing boom. Federal housing policies allowed down payments on home loans as low as zero. Banks were encouraged to make risky loans, and securitization separated lenders from their loans. Neither borrower nor lender had sufficient skin in the game. Lax enforcement of existing regulations allowed both investment and commercial banks to circumvent long-established banking rules to take on far too much leverage. Regulators, not regulations, failed."
...
"More deviations occurred when the government responded with ineffective temporary stimulus packages. The 2008 tax rebate and the 2009 spending stimulus bills failed to improve the economy. Cash for clunkers and the first-time home buyers tax credit merely moved purchases forward by a few months."
...
"There is perhaps no better indicator of the destructive path that these policy deviations have put us on than the federal budget. The nearby chart puts the fiscal problem in perspective."
...
"The good news is that we can change these destructive policies by adopting a strategy based on proven economic principles:
• First, take tax increases off the table. Higher tax rates are destructive to growth and would ratify the recent spending excesses. Our complex tax code is badly in need of overhaul to make America more competitive. For example, the U.S. corporate tax is one of the highest in the world. That's why many tax reform proposals integrate personal and corporate income taxes with fewer special tax breaks and lower tax rates.
But in the current climate, with the very credit-worthiness of the United States at stake, our program keeps the present tax regime in place while avoiding the severe economic drag of higher tax rates.
• Second, balance the federal budget by reducing spending. The publicly held debt must be brought down to the pre-crisis safety zone. To do this, the excessive spending of recent years must be removed before it becomes a permanent budget fixture. The government should begin by rescinding unspent "stimulus" and TARP funds, ratcheting down domestic appropriations to their pre-binge levels, and repealing entitlement expansions, most notably the subsidies in the health-care bill.
The next step is restructuring public activities between federal and state governments. The federal government has taken on more responsibilities than it can properly manage and efficiently finance. The 1996 welfare reform, which transferred authority and financing for welfare from the federal to the state level, should serve as the model. This reform reduced welfare dependency and lowered costs, benefiting taxpayers and welfare recipients.
• Third, modify Social Security and health-care entitlements to reduce their explosive future growth. Social Security now promises much higher benefits to future retirees than to today's retirees. The typical 30-year-old today is scheduled to get an inflation-adjusted retirement benefit that is 50% higher than the benefit for a typical current retiree.
Benefits paid to future retirees should remain at the same level, in terms of purchasing power, that today's retirees receive. A combination of indexing initial benefits to prices rather than to wages and increasing the program's retirement age would achieve this goal. They should be phased-in gradually so that current retirees and those nearing retirement are not affected.
Health care is far too important to the American economy to be left in its current state. In markets other than health care, the legendary American shopper, armed with money and information, has kept quality high and costs low. In health care, service providers, unaided by consumers with sufficient skin in the game, make the purchasing decisions. Third-party payers—employers, governments and insurance companies—have resorted to regulatory schemes and price controls to stem the resulting cost growth.
The key to making Medicare affordable while maintaining the quality of health care is more patient involvement, more choices among Medicare health plans, and more competition. Co-payments should be raised to make patients and their physicians more cost-conscious. Monthly premiums should be lowered to provide seniors with more disposable income to make these choices. A menu of additional Medicare plans, some with lower premiums, higher co-payments and improved catastrophic coverage, should be added to the current one-size-fits-all program to encourage competition.
Similarly for Medicaid, modest co-payments should be introduced except for preventive services. The program should be turned over entirely to the states with federal financing supplied by a "no strings attached" block grant. States should then allow Medicaid recipients to purchase a health plan of their choosing with a risk-adjusted Medicaid grant that phases out as income rises.
The 2010 health-care law undermined positive reforms underway since the late 1990s, including higher co-payments and health savings accounts. The law should be repealed before its regulations and price controls further damage availability and quality of care. It should be replaced with policies that target specific health market concerns: quality, affordability and access. Making out-of-pocket expenditures and individual purchases of health insurance tax deductible, enhancing health savings accounts, and improving access to medical information are keys to more consumer involvement. Allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines will lower the cost of insurance.
• Fourth, enact a moratorium on all new regulations for the next three years, with an exception for national security and public safety. Going forward, regulations should be transparent and simple, pass rigorous cost-benefit tests, and rely to a maximum extent on market-based incentives instead of command and control. Direct and indirect cost estimates of regulations and subsidies should be published before new regulations are put into law.
Off-budget financing should end by closing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Bureau of Consumer Finance Protection and all other government agencies should be on the budget that Congress annually approves. An enhanced bankruptcy process for failing financial firms should be enacted in order to end the need for bailouts. Higher bank capital requirements that rise with the size of the bank should be phased in.
• Fifth, monetary policy should be less discretionary and more rule-like. The Federal Reserve should announce and follow a monetary policy rule, such as the Taylor rule, in which the short-term interest rate is determined by the supply and demand for money and is adjusted through changes in the money supply when inflation rises above or falls below the target, or when the economy goes into a recession. When monetary policy decisions follow such a rule, economic stability and growth increase."
...
"These pro-growth policies provide the surest path back to prosperity."
"The most fundamental starting point is that people respond to incentives and disincentives. Tax rates are a great example because the data are so clear and the results so powerful. A wealth of evidence shows that high tax rates reduce work effort, retard investment and lower productivity growth. Raise taxes, and living standards stagnate."
Exactly--why should we do something when we're only going to get taxed (more) for our efforts?
"When higher taxes reduce the reward for work, you get less of it."
Bingo--productivity takes the hit.
"Long-lasting economic policies based on a long-term strategy work; temporary policies don't. The difference between the effect of permanent tax rate cuts and one-time temporary tax rebates is also well-documented. The former creates a sustainable increase in economic output, the latter at best only a transitory blip. Temporary policies create uncertainty that dampen economic output as market participants, unsure about whether and how policies might change, delay their decisions.
Having "skin in the game," unsurprisingly, leads to superior outcomes. As Milton Friedman famously observed: "Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as they spend their own." When legislators put other people's money at risk—as when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought risky mortgages—crisis and economic hardship inevitably result. When minimal co-payments and low deductibles are mandated in the insurance market, wasteful health-care spending balloons.
Rule-based policies provide the foundation of a high-growth market economy. Abiding by such policies minimizes capricious discretionary actions, such as the recent ad hoc bailouts, which too often had deleterious consequences."
...
"The history of recent economic policy is one of massive deviations from these basic tenets. The result has been a crippling recession and now a weak, nearly nonexistent recovery. The deviations began with policies—like the Federal Reserve holding interest rates too low for too long—that fueled the unsustainable housing boom. Federal housing policies allowed down payments on home loans as low as zero. Banks were encouraged to make risky loans, and securitization separated lenders from their loans. Neither borrower nor lender had sufficient skin in the game. Lax enforcement of existing regulations allowed both investment and commercial banks to circumvent long-established banking rules to take on far too much leverage. Regulators, not regulations, failed."
...
"More deviations occurred when the government responded with ineffective temporary stimulus packages. The 2008 tax rebate and the 2009 spending stimulus bills failed to improve the economy. Cash for clunkers and the first-time home buyers tax credit merely moved purchases forward by a few months."
...
"There is perhaps no better indicator of the destructive path that these policy deviations have put us on than the federal budget. The nearby chart puts the fiscal problem in perspective."
...
"The good news is that we can change these destructive policies by adopting a strategy based on proven economic principles:
• First, take tax increases off the table. Higher tax rates are destructive to growth and would ratify the recent spending excesses. Our complex tax code is badly in need of overhaul to make America more competitive. For example, the U.S. corporate tax is one of the highest in the world. That's why many tax reform proposals integrate personal and corporate income taxes with fewer special tax breaks and lower tax rates.
But in the current climate, with the very credit-worthiness of the United States at stake, our program keeps the present tax regime in place while avoiding the severe economic drag of higher tax rates.
• Second, balance the federal budget by reducing spending. The publicly held debt must be brought down to the pre-crisis safety zone. To do this, the excessive spending of recent years must be removed before it becomes a permanent budget fixture. The government should begin by rescinding unspent "stimulus" and TARP funds, ratcheting down domestic appropriations to their pre-binge levels, and repealing entitlement expansions, most notably the subsidies in the health-care bill.
The next step is restructuring public activities between federal and state governments. The federal government has taken on more responsibilities than it can properly manage and efficiently finance. The 1996 welfare reform, which transferred authority and financing for welfare from the federal to the state level, should serve as the model. This reform reduced welfare dependency and lowered costs, benefiting taxpayers and welfare recipients.
• Third, modify Social Security and health-care entitlements to reduce their explosive future growth. Social Security now promises much higher benefits to future retirees than to today's retirees. The typical 30-year-old today is scheduled to get an inflation-adjusted retirement benefit that is 50% higher than the benefit for a typical current retiree.
Benefits paid to future retirees should remain at the same level, in terms of purchasing power, that today's retirees receive. A combination of indexing initial benefits to prices rather than to wages and increasing the program's retirement age would achieve this goal. They should be phased-in gradually so that current retirees and those nearing retirement are not affected.
Health care is far too important to the American economy to be left in its current state. In markets other than health care, the legendary American shopper, armed with money and information, has kept quality high and costs low. In health care, service providers, unaided by consumers with sufficient skin in the game, make the purchasing decisions. Third-party payers—employers, governments and insurance companies—have resorted to regulatory schemes and price controls to stem the resulting cost growth.
The key to making Medicare affordable while maintaining the quality of health care is more patient involvement, more choices among Medicare health plans, and more competition. Co-payments should be raised to make patients and their physicians more cost-conscious. Monthly premiums should be lowered to provide seniors with more disposable income to make these choices. A menu of additional Medicare plans, some with lower premiums, higher co-payments and improved catastrophic coverage, should be added to the current one-size-fits-all program to encourage competition.
Similarly for Medicaid, modest co-payments should be introduced except for preventive services. The program should be turned over entirely to the states with federal financing supplied by a "no strings attached" block grant. States should then allow Medicaid recipients to purchase a health plan of their choosing with a risk-adjusted Medicaid grant that phases out as income rises.
The 2010 health-care law undermined positive reforms underway since the late 1990s, including higher co-payments and health savings accounts. The law should be repealed before its regulations and price controls further damage availability and quality of care. It should be replaced with policies that target specific health market concerns: quality, affordability and access. Making out-of-pocket expenditures and individual purchases of health insurance tax deductible, enhancing health savings accounts, and improving access to medical information are keys to more consumer involvement. Allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines will lower the cost of insurance.
• Fourth, enact a moratorium on all new regulations for the next three years, with an exception for national security and public safety. Going forward, regulations should be transparent and simple, pass rigorous cost-benefit tests, and rely to a maximum extent on market-based incentives instead of command and control. Direct and indirect cost estimates of regulations and subsidies should be published before new regulations are put into law.
Off-budget financing should end by closing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Bureau of Consumer Finance Protection and all other government agencies should be on the budget that Congress annually approves. An enhanced bankruptcy process for failing financial firms should be enacted in order to end the need for bailouts. Higher bank capital requirements that rise with the size of the bank should be phased in.
• Fifth, monetary policy should be less discretionary and more rule-like. The Federal Reserve should announce and follow a monetary policy rule, such as the Taylor rule, in which the short-term interest rate is determined by the supply and demand for money and is adjusted through changes in the money supply when inflation rises above or falls below the target, or when the economy goes into a recession. When monetary policy decisions follow such a rule, economic stability and growth increase."
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"These pro-growth policies provide the surest path back to prosperity."
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