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Carla Emery • P.O. Box 133 • San Simon, AZ 85632 Further
information about these topics can be found in Copyright 2004 by Carla Emery. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| NEWSLETTERS Modern Homesteading Movement
2) Carla's Next Tour Schedule, Latest Version 3) What Is "Frugality"? "What Is 'Frugality'?" the sweet young thing chuckled at me. "This generation knows nothing of 'frugality.'" Well, my friends, here is what 'frugality' means: Stay out of debt, or get out of debt--except to buy land (not a house, LAND). Young people are being trapped into a lifetime of debt as they exit our high schools. Ruthless, huge, multi-national corporations with no morality except the bottom line of maximizing their profit use sophisticated mind manipulative techniques and devious legal traps to ensnare people into a lifetime of debt slavery to them. To stay free, don't even own a credit card, only a debit card. Over half of Americans are in trouble with credit card debt. Researchers found that the mere fact of owning a credit card (or an equity line of credit) caused persons to spend 25 percent more than they would have spent if they didn't have the things--just too much temptation. How will you rent a car without a credit card? Get a debit card. That only spends money that you actually have. Then give your business to Enterprise. They're the only car rental company that will do business with a debit card. Over 60 percent of new debt now involves such tragic concepts as "equity line of credit" or "no-interest loan," or an adjustable-rate mortgage. All of those are TROUBLE and should be dumped. People go to check borrowing agencies and pay a 350 percent credit fee. If you have credit cards, cut them up, throw them away. If you have an equity line of credit, burn it. Never use it again. Otherwise, you'll probably lose the home. Want to know your credit score? A new federal law requires credit reporting agencies to give consumers a free credit report once a year. The three big credit reporting agencies are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You can request the credit report from each of them. Or visit www.AnnualCreditReport.com. Throw out your TV. Research shows that the more hours per day people watch TV, the deeper in debt they are. TV teaches vanity, pride. The company that buys $1,000,000 worth of advertising for a detergent in the soap opera slots is not doing that because it wants to support the art form (?) of the soap opera. It spends that money because ad researchers assure the corporation that viewers who watch those ads over and over will get programmed. That is true. The message sinks to the bottom of the viewers' brains. Then they walk into the supermarket. The hand gets a life of its own; it reaches out and grabs the detergent and puts it into the cart. Advertisers sell you drinks that aren't good for you (sugar or fake sugar) in containers that aren't good for you or the environment (aluminum, plastic). Unfortunately, the same TV advertising / mind-programming mechanism works on the big ticket items, too. You watch TV and you start to believe that, of course, you should have the fastest, prettiest, most fuel-efficient, or sexiest car and OF COURSE you'll buy it on credit. It teaches the assumption that you want and need a NEW car and, of course, you'll buy it on credit. TV tells us that teeth, noses, and homes must be perfect, even at the cost of mortgaging your future. It teaches that a $30,000 loan to finance a "kitchen makeover" is reasonable, normal--when in fact it is bizarre, crazy. The TV teaches you to expect to buy an expensive, impractical home because everybody's doing it. It urges you to desire one of these monuments to conspicuous consumption, a huge house on a tiny lot that you will spend half your income for the rest of your life paying for. This type of house is in the grip of price inflation brought on by overbuilding and speculation. Speculators put a deposit on an unbuilt home, then sell it after completion, or before. The most active part of the U.S. economy right now is this endless suburbanization, building of big expensive homes on tiny lots. These homes are totally dependent on urban utility systems for water and power. They have no space to garden and no permission to keep livestock. But the more stuff you buy on credit, the poorer you will be. The young person who graduates from high school and gets several credit cards, goes to college on credit, buys a car on credit, buys a house on credit, and the furniture on credit, and the TV on credit will have only half of his or her lifetime's income available to spend--because the other half will go to service that credit habit. If you never do debt, then you will have ALL your lifetime's income to spend. Don't rent. To rent is to throw away money, down the toilet, month after month, year after year--all that money gone and NOTHING to show for it. Buying a condo isn't as bad as renting, but buying land is much, much better. How can you get enough money together to buy anything? Save. That may require being nice to your parents, moving home for a while. Or find a friend who will let you live in a tent or little trailer in his back yard for a couple years, paying $100 a month, or some such. If you choose that course (family or friends), you must take this a sacred rule: EVERY PAYDAY, THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT YOU WOULD HAVE PAID OUT FOR RENT AND UTILITIES NOW GOES INTO SAVINGS. At the end of a year or two, you will have enough money to make a down payment on your land. Move your little trailer onto that land and live in it while you're saving the money to build a home. Even better, is to save money. Our nation's savings rate is at a record low. Don't be part of that sad statistic. Save 10 to 20 percent of your income. When you cut up all those credit cards, put $1,000 into savings. That savings account will take the place of the credit card, providing a cushion for emergency expenses. Above and beyond the $1,000 cushion, invest your savings. Invest wisely. Buy something that you're knowledgeable about wholesale, and then sell it retail. Or buy a tool with which you can manufacture a product to sell. Or buy a building to rent, or a piece of land on which you can grow wool, wood, fruit, vegetables, meat, or a fiber plant. Or buy seeds and then sell garden produce at the farmers' market. Or buy a buck rabbit and three does of a meat breed, and you can sell rabbit meat. Or buy chicks and in five months or so you'll have eggs to sell, "non-caged layers," at $3 a dozen. When you save money and then put that savings to work for you, your lifetime's income can be twice or four times what it would have been otherwise. My big brother started out saving 50 percent of his income when he graduated from high school. His career was as a simple enlisted man in the Air Force. He never earned big wages, but he always saved and invested as much as he could. It involved great self-sacrifice for him and his wife and children when they were young. Now he is in his 70's and I figure he's at least a millionaire. Maybe multi... Living very comfortably. If you are in financial difficulties, there are only two possible responses: you can spend less money or you can earn more money. The best solution is usually to make some improvements in both categories. Lose the vanity, lose the pride, and spend less money. We are afraid to look poor. We are afraid to look REAL. That prideful lifestyle is a dangerous, doomed path. It's better to drive the car you really can afford, the one you pay cash for, buy it used, cheap. It's better to live in the home you know you can afford, the tiny, shabby, fixer-upper--not the one the bank says you can afford. It's better to live in a van, or a tent, or a 15-foot long trailer, or in a small, old motorhome with a dead engine on several acres of productive land than to live in a gorgeous, mortgaged new home on a tiny piece of land. Times are going to change. Money will be harder to get. Food will be harder to afford, and to find. Then, your friends in mansions will envy you that small, modestly outfitted home on several acres of land--a home with space for rabbits, poultry, a dairy animal, and a big garden. Work on developing multiple streams of income, so you can earn more money. Having multiple streams of income protects you against the loss or shrinking of any one source. Shop with cash. If you don't have the money, don't buy. Shop from a list. Avoid impulse buying. If it isn't on the list already, don't buy it. If you see something you want, put it on the list, the bottom of the list. When you go shopping, buy only what has been on the list long enough to rise to the top of the list. Look for bargains. Buy used. When you shop with cash, you can grab a bargain. When you live the no-credit, cash life, your money will go at least four times as far as it would in the debt lifestyle. In a credit economy (that's what we live in), cash is POWERFUL. Shopping with cash puts you in a position to bargain and you'll be amazed at the deals you can get in every buying category. We are coming into times when there won't be enough food to go around. Who will eat and who will not? The Bible says that the person who works will eat; the person who does not work will not eat. If you have a work ethic, I promise, you will be able to eat. Unfortunately, we have a generation out there that is not only clueless about the meaning of "frugality," but they're also ignorant of the principles of the "work ethic." What is a work ethic? It is the habit of practicing the following six rules. These rules are so ingrained in your upbringing that they're like a groove in your brain. You can't imagine acting otherwise; that's somebody with a work ethic. That's somebody who will eat in hard times--whether it's the food they worked to raise themselves, or the food they bought with money earned by working for somebody else. 1. Look for work, a volunteer job or a paying job. When you see work that needs to be done, you go up to the person who seems to be in charge and ask, "How may I help you?" 2. If you are given work to do, you are grateful. You are proud, and appropriately so. You know that only the worthy are allowed the privilege of working. 3. When working on a task, keep working until the job is done. You don't wander off. You don't sit down unless it's a sit-down job. You keep doing what needs to be done until the job is finished or the boss tells you to stop. 4. As soon as that job is finished, you ask for more work. "Now what can I do to help you?" 5. Once you learn the routines, start getting things done on your own, so that it is no longer necessary for the boss to tell you to do it. 6. Be tidy. Keep your work area neat. Don't expect somebody else to pick up after you. 7. Always maintain a positive attitude on the job. NEVER COMPLAIN. 8. Always show up at work well rested and drug free. 9. Once every few weeks, you might offer a suggestion to improve the job's efficiency or the business's profit. You preface that by asking, "May I offer a suggestion?" 10. When offered greater responsibility, say "Yes." Follow these rules and one day, you'll be the person they call "Boss"--and you'll have food to eat. 3) News and Links a) Peak Oil Info In the August Edition of the National Geographic is an article "After Oil." Plus... b) Dental Work in East Europe Lots of folks are going to India for their chemo and operations (Apollo Hospitals). Around here lots of folks go to Mexico border towns to get their dental work done. Now you can get a similar deal (and face some similar risks) in Eastern Europe. Dental Work in Eastern Europe? http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-07-28-dental-tourism_x.htm "...something is terribly wrong with psychiatry today. What's wrong is its total focus on drugs. Although drugs may have some secondary value, they have never cured mental disorders. Psychiatry¬¼s most effective and successful therapeutic tool has long been counseling within a compassionate, understanding doctor-patient relationship - but this has been abandoned for a mess of pharmacological pottage. Schizophrenia and depression are no more illnesses than fever is; all three are reactions. These and other psychiatric conditions result from the collision of difficult psychosocial situations with existing habit and thinking patterns. Truly curative treatment requires addressing and correcting these INDIVIDUAL patterns and situations within a trusting therapeutic relationship. As a psychiatrist since 1947, I am deeply concerned about the extent to which my specialty has been taken over and prostituted by the drug companies. The psychiatrist's labeling and drugging patients has replaced his addressing the problems bothering them; those real issues, when dealt with at all, are relegated to relatively untrained non-medicals. Psychiatric treatment has conseequently become A MAJOR CAUSE (if not THE MAJOR CAUSE) of chronic mental illness, as is shown by the near-doubling over the past 15 years of the number of people receiving social security disability payments for mental illness. The harmful effects of the drug-makers' take-over of psychiatry is clearly documented in Robert Whitaker's superb book, "Mad in America." Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D., 10 Nob Hill Gate, Roslyn NY 11576; 516/626-0238; former Clinical Director, Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, Brooklyn NY; former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein and SUNY Downstate Colleges of Medicine N.S.Lehrman, M.D. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0802/p18s02-hfks.html?s=hns Zimbabwe locks up traders. Nearly 10,000 people have been arrested in the government's recent dragnet. By Abraham McLaughlin. Answer: What I've been learning by trial and error is desert gardening. It's "southern" gardening, but dry--not wet. Still, some principles that I've figured out might apply to both. I learned to plant every day of the year, not just in spring. I learned to divide the garden crops into winter, early spring, late spring, late summer, and fall plantings. Okra, peppers, melons (actually, all the Cucurbit family of vegetables), and tomatoes get planted as seeds or transplants in late spring. Everything else is planted in fall, winter, or early spring. (Morgan County catalog will tell you when.) The toughest plants for surviving winter chills in the south are onion species, the Brassica family (rutabaga, turnip, cabbage, radish, kale, kohlrabi), any lettuce variety, and any root vegetable (in addition to the Brassicas, that includes parsnips, carrots, and beets). You can plant them in fall, winter, or early spring. Plant any type of peas any time from Christmas on. They know when to come up. Avoid "raised beds." The plant roots get too hot. In the desert, planting late spring and summer crops in a "wide row" mass can be helpful. The plants shade each other and provide enough ground cover to help hold water in the soil. In late summer you can begin fall plantings of heat-sensitive plants such as carrots under the shelter of Cucurbit leaves. After the first frost, yank out the vining plants. Then the fall crop really gets growing. b) Source of Sodium Silicate Carla, Back to Newsletters |
Write:
Carla Emery • P.O. Box 133 • San Simon, AZ 85632 Further
information about these topics can be found in Copyright 2004 by Carla Emery. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
