Beg, Steal and Borrow (June Edition)

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Little Idea and a Little Lie

i have put nothing on here, and for that, i am sorry. call it a practice in simplicity or call it laziness, but believe me i have a few things to say. the first being.

check out this book. and i mean literally, check it out, dont buy it. there was an article in the paper the other day about a book "The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches" by Jeff Yeager. seeing as it was recently in the paper, all the copies are checked out, but that is the beauty of the library, they will be back soon. he talks about a philosophy when shopping for food. he doesn't buy anything unless it is 1$ a pound or less. pretty crazy i know, but provocative none the less. worth hearing what he has to say and then adapting it to how you live.

which leads me to my next point.

a penny saved is NOT a penny earned.

i think this is a cornerstone principle on which middle-class consumerism is based. (it also effects upper-class, just in bigger numbers.) but most of us live in middle america, so i am going to speak to that.

there is a lie out there, that has a lot of truth in it, so it keeps spinning. that lie, is that if you buy something at a cheaper price, you are actually making money. this seems so common sense doesn't it. like, duh, of course that is true. well it is and it isn't. so lets talk about both.

Truth - you worked all week for say, 1000$. that week you bought a flat screen TV for 900. (that might be undercutting it a bit, i dont know flat screens) you did your research looked for the one that was most affordable, with what you wanted, waited for the right deal and BAM, you snatched it up. now you are feeling pretty good. if you would have bought it a week earlier it would have cost 1100$ and you would have had to dip into the savings to get it. but now the savings stay put, and you are up 100$ from the week. nothing like making 200$ in 30 minutes.

Lie - except for the fact that you did not make any money that day. in fact, you are out 900$. this is a lie that car dealers tell most obviously. that whole cash back guarantee. we love it, because it says to us, we are getting 1000$, and how many times has a major corporation handed you 1000$ and you stood there and said no...none. adding on to that the idea that we need this thing we are buying, we figure, i might as well save money while buying it. doing this just frees up money to go buy more things, thats what we are all thinkin' right? well, not many are into investment banking in order to reinvest that money in people and good stuff, its all for cheaper than first advertised things, and the cycle continues. the cycle of buying more and more stuff because we just saved 100$ there, so that is free money, that i can now spend. 

at the end of the day, businesses price things so that you will buy them. they might overprice them at first to grab hold of the people who think they really need it, and then it gets put on sale. like that cash back guarantee, they could have simply priced the car at 1000$ less, but they wanted people to think they were making money. they are making money, you are losing it, plain and simple. everybody wants to pull one over on the house. the sad fact is that no one really pulls one over on the house, the house's survival is built on that principle.

im not saying that buying things on sale is bad, heck, thats the only way to shop. but do not believe the lie that this is making you money. because if you bought everything you could on sale, at the end of the day, you will still be broke with a twice as much junk.

nor am i saying that buying things is bad. lets get away from all the you are bad, i am bad language and all try to move toward something better. its a rocky journey moving closer to simplicity, and the lines are not clear, but lets try not to fool ourselves, lets try to see things for what they are, call them by name, and stay aware of what they might do to us.

in the beginning, God separated the light from the darkness, and He has been trying to teach His people to do the same, ever since.

Toy Recycling

Did you know you can recycle old toys? Check out this link if you have some toys you'd like to get rid of.