Getting by with less

I think we can all agree that it has been a tough year. Incomes are either flat or down while costs of stuff is up. Personally, I don't see things getting any better for quite a while. This is an election year, but the people we elect in November won't be able to begin doing anything until next year. Who knows how much time it will take for what they do to actually take affect. Optimistic is not a term I use to describe myself anymore.

Regardless of what else happenes or may happen, I have learned some valuable lessons this year. Perhaps many other Americans have learned this one as well: how to get by with less. I've had to drastically cut my spending just so I could pay my bills. If it's not an absolute essential, I'm not buying it any more. Sure, there are things I miss, but I've discovered that I can get by without them - that I really didn't need them. This is a lesson we all need to learn: how to separate what we need from what we want.

America has been a society of consumers for a long time. A billboard for one of the local "factory outlet" malls near where I live has the slogan: "Shop till you drop". Advertisers show us all the things we need to look good in, smell good wearing, all the stuff we've 'got to have' so that we'll be enticed to go out and buy it. While the money lasted, it was good. But did we really need all that junk?

Did you know that America is the largest consumer of a majority of the natural resources of this planet while not having the largest population? The American Association for the Advancement of Science has this to say: "For many resources, the United States of America is the world's largest consumer in absolute terms. For a list of 20 major traded commodities, it takes the greatest share of 11 of them: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil and natural gas. For many more it is the largest per-capita consumer." When it comes to energy consumption we again are the biggest consumers. And when it comes to oil consumption, no one else is even close.

So it might not be such a bad idea for us all to try and get by with less. Sure, some jobs will go away because of this. However, if we were to start doing/building some of the things that we as a nation really need then new jobs will be created. Some ideas: research and develop alternative forms of energy, rebuild our highway infrastructure (remember that bridge that fell in Minneapolis?), and clean up the environment.

I'll end with a link to a post by Frances Ellen on 6 ways to beat the cost of groceries. She's got some excellent suggestions.