Posted 3 days 13 hours ago by Philip Brewer
The economy is way short of full employment, so naturally, consumer spending is down. Sooner or later employment, I think, will return to normal levels. Consumer spending will return to normal too--but don't look to the first half of this decade as "normal." Normal is something very different.
Posted 4 days 15 hours ago by Philip Brewer
I have a pair of shoes that are about to wear out. This sucks because they're shoes I wear pretty often (which is no doubt why they're wearing out). I'll probably have to replace them. I was mulling over a possible post on the universal experience of things wearing out, when it occurred to me that this experience may not be quite as universal as it used to be.
Posted 1 week 2 days ago by Philip Brewer
A while back, I heard an interview with a guy who, troubled by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, decided the right response was to quit driving. The bit of the interview that stuck with me was the part where he talked about how surprised he was at the negative reactions. He wasn't telling anyone else that they shouldn't drive, but people were treating him as if he was a walking criticism of their lifestyle.
Posted 2 weeks 9 hours ago by Philip Brewer
I spent my whole adult life trying to figure out how to get by on a lot less money, because I wanted to be a full-time writer and knew that it wouldn't pay enough to support the lifestyle I was living. Now that I've made the transition, I can see that I was worrying needlessly--there are three sources of big savings that come along almost automatically when you start to get by on a lot less money.
Posted 2 weeks 2 days ago by Philip Brewer
Everyone knows that cooking is cheaper and healthier than eating out. It's also better (i.e. more to your taste) than eating out, and easier than eating out (no driving, parking, standing in line, making reservations, waiting to be seated, dealing with hostesses, waiters, and busboys). Besides all that, I'm going to argue below that--even with shopping and cleaning up--it can also be quicker than eating out.
Posted 2 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
There's a store near where I live that sells stuff for organizing your other stuff--racks, boxes, cabinets, and shelves for tools and toys, sweaters and shoes, spices and CDs. They've got a perfect container for anything. But there's only one right time to buy any of that stuff: When the stuff you want to store in it is already organized.
Posted 3 weeks 18 hours ago by Philip Brewer
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Arthur Laffer that shows a scary graph of the monetary base, which has surged enormously in the past year. He suggests that this is "potentially far more inflationary" than the monetary policies of the 1970s. I'm as worried about inflation as anybody, and agree that the Fed should already be taking steps to minimize it, but I think Laffer is off-base here.
Posted 3 weeks 1 day ago by Philip Brewer
When I went off to college in 1977, inflation was high and rising, but the maximum interest rate you could earn on a savings account was capped by the government at a fraction over 5%. The conventional wisdom was "It's dumb to hold cash when inflation is over the rate you can earn." I absorbed that conventional wisdom, and it led me to make some dumb decisions.
Posted 3 weeks 3 days ago by Philip Brewer
If you want to get good at something, you need to practice. If you're not trying to get better, and just want to enjoy doing whatever it is, there's no need to practice--do what you love and ignore anyone who wants you to do it better. But if you're going to practice, then practice. Don't do something else and call it practice. That's no good.
Posted 4 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
Many couples keep their finances partially (or even completely) separate. One big reason is that spending joint money on individual expenses can lead to disputes, and keeping separate accounts can reduce that. There is, however, another reason to keep some amount of personal money: Simplifying budgeting.
Posted 5 weeks 1 day ago by Philip Brewer
Having a prosperous country (as opposed to having merely a prosperous elite) depends fundamentally on the rule of law. The system can work adequately well with various sets of rules, as long as they're known in advance and fairly applied. During hard times, though, there's a strong temptation to ignore the rules in a search for a less-bad result. Both borrowers and lenders need to watch out.
Posted 6 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
I have a guest post up at Get Rich Slowly that suggests that you be a bon vivant: "A bon vivant is a person who lives well — someone who enjoys the best things in life, especially with regard to food and drink. The stereotypical bon vivant is someone who can afford the best (or has generous friends), but that’s not the only way. You can be a bon vivant on a budget."
Posted 7 weeks 1 day ago by Philip Brewer
Spend any time reading personal-finance blogs and you'll come across a particular kind of equal-and-opposite post: lists of luxuries. Half the posts will advocate giving up a few specific luxuries to live more cheaply. The other half have titles like "Three things I won't give up" or "Five luxuries that are worth the money." Both kinds of articles miss the point of luxuries: they're indefensible (and I mean that in a good way).
Posted 8 weeks 4 hours ago by Philip Brewer
Various times here in my posts I've admitted to an unfortunate tendency toward smugness. It's really a negative character trait, and one that I struggle against. There are ways, though, that it can be turned into a positive, at least partially.
Posted 8 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
Preventing a collapse of the financial system is part of preventing a depression. However, the shorthand term for this--getting the banks able and willing to lend--is misleading. There are plenty of banks that can lend. The problem is the borrowers: Those that could be counted on to repay their debts are mostly uninterested in borrowing, and those who want to borrow probably can't afford to take on more debt. That's the truth about the fix we're in. There are, however, two ways to fix it.
Posted 9 weeks 17 hours ago by Philip Brewer
Everybody has a "best time" of their life. Maybe it was the summer you spent hiking the Appalachian trail, or a semester abroad during college, or the second half of the first year at a new job (after you'd mastered the work and before it became routine). But why should the "best time" of your life be some time in the past? With some clear thinking and some effort, you can recapture what was great then for today.
Posted 9 weeks 4 days ago by Philip Brewer
The money economy is one of the givens of modern life. For the ordinary person with bills to pay, getting by without money is almost inconceivable. Even someone who tries hard to escape the money economy is faced with taxes, utility bills, and the like. Personally, though, I find the lure of non-money economies seductive. That's why I've been very interested in this Spanish site whose name means "without money."
Posted 9 weeks 6 days ago by Philip Brewer
While health authorities worry about the human cost of pandemics, other policy-makers have tended to focus on the economic costs. Economic impact takes many forms--drops in production as workers stay home, drops in commerce as shoppers avoid crowded places, drops in tourism as travelers avoid affected areas. Does the current economic crisis make us more vulnerable than usual, if the swine flu outbreak in Mexico and a few US cities goes pandemic?
Posted 11 weeks 11 hours ago by Philip Brewer
In the days when self-sufficiency was simply the normal way of things, you'd learn the necessary knowledge and skills from your parents. (And from your grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and whatever other adults happened to be around.) Now that most of us work for money to buy what we need, rather than growing or making things ourselves, few of us have the knowledge or skills to be self-sufficient. Few of us even know anybody we could learn from. This book tries to fill that gap.
Posted 11 weeks 2 days ago by Philip Brewer
In the old days, companies actually produced stuff. They invented it, designed it, made it, marketed it, and sold it. Although there are still some companies like that, they're a lot less common now. Many companies have shifted to an "asset light" model where they no longer own their own factories and equipment. Instead, they hire other companies to do most of the work. Understand how this works and you can turn it in your favor.
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| Posts | Cmts | |
|---|---|---|
| Andrea Dickson | 5 | 5 |
| Carrie Kirby | 2 | 1 |
| Frugal Duchess | 2 | 0 |
| Jeff Yeager | 4 | 3 |
| Julie Rains | 3 | 7 |
| Linsey Knerl | 12 | 20 |
| Myscha Theriault | 5 | 24 |
| Nora Dunn | 3 | 7 |
| Paul Michael | 6 | 14 |
| Philip Brewer | 9 | 21 |
| Silicon Valley Blogger | 2 | 0 |
| Torley Wong | 3 | 4 |
| Xin Lu | 8 | 14 |
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