But how can you live beyond your means? It's the least sustainable lifestyle ever. At some point you're going to have to pay for it all, so you may as well do it now, when it's cheapest.
Mugs -- I have too many of these also as do my in-laws, many of which (oddly) have sentimental value. But it's nice to have an extra one I don't care about just to keep at the office community kitchen. If water bottles were a tad less expensive, I would have included those -- saves money on bottled water and nice to have for cycling and hiking sessions. You could take Will's Blog Action Day Resolution idea and buy CFLs for family members; not exciting but saves energy use.
I think investing in precious metals is a bad idea. If the market totally collapses à la 1929, no one will be looking to trade anything for a gold nugget. Goods (food, etc.)and services will be the ticket if that happens. No one wants gold when their family can't eat. They want a chicken.
Most of these are great !
But the coffee mug ?
OMG, plleeeeaassseee no more coffee mugs, no more coffee cups, no more mugs with teabags, flavored coffee, special cocoas, etc !
Coffee mugs/cups are a dime a dozen at the thrift store, are WAY over-gifted at the holidays, and I don't know anyone from broke college student couple to family of 8 that does not have way too many of these !
The rest of your suggestions ?
Excellent !
Please, no more coffee mugs !
If your family/friends think not including adults in gift-giving "takes all the fun out of Christmas", then they don't understand what Christmas really means, do they?
Do what you feel is right -- if you don't want to exchange gifts with the adults, tell them so -- and stick to it. You need to stand by what you believe in (a more-appreciative & thankful holiday instead of rampant greed & commercialism) AND stick to your budget for your family's well-being.
If they get you gifts, that's their business. There's no such thing as "I bought for you so you HAVE to buy for me" in the gift-giving world -- you give gifts because you want to, not because you HAVE to. If they don't like it, then next year they won't buy you anything and the issue will be closed. If they're so small-minded and greedy that they're angry because you didn't buy gifts (even after you told them repeatedly that you wouldn't) -- that's their problem, not yours.
I've been to Ten Thousand Villages, and while they have some super cool stuff, I've noticed their prices have gone up dramatically over the last few years (input your theory of why here). But if you sift through there you can find some really sweet candles, votives, etc for not too much.
I also really like the movie idea. Blockbuster has the 4 for $20 deal (at least I think they do), so I guess for just over $5, you could add popcord and stuff and take care of 4 people on your list!
Over the years I have noticed of the two people who the have come to represent the meaning of Christmas (Jesus & Santa Claus). Santa seems to be eclipsing the person who's birthday we are celebrating on December 25th. I think Santa Claus should be reveled as the symbol his image has truly come to represent, comsumerism and greed.
This is a great list. I like the movie basket idea best.
I also enjoy making scrapbooks for close friends with a mix of photos, magazine captions and other momentos.
My mom is making pottery pieces for everyone on her gift list. My sister gives beautiful plants from her garden that she bundles with so much love and attention.
Handmade gifts mean so much!
I am doing framed portraits for everyone this year. I'll actually end up paying a lot because we are having our girls photographed by a very talented photographer, but it's something I really wanted to do *anyway* so it allows me to fulfill that wish along with my Christmas list at the same time. Selfish or frugal? You decide, but when I polled my family members, they all said they wanted the portraits.
Your Tshirts idea makes me think for future years, though. It would be fun to come up with some cute Tshirt messages or images to have printed. A family or local in-joke, or some homemade artwork. As a recipient, homemade gifts always trump retail, yet like you, I'm not crafty at all.
I know your intentions were to open the eyes of the "dumb people", but there's a side to this you don't understand.
...one day you're laughing with your husband/wife, or playing with your child. The next day you're faced with never hearing their voice again, never holding them again. They're gone -forever. Finding some measure of peace with their death is what keeps it from eating you up inside. How or where someone finds their peace is minute in comparison to finding it at all.
Unbridled gullibility can destroy science, but unbridled disbelief is no less a threat because it brings both a tolerance for bias and ridicule as well as the supression of untested new ideas. Given that scientific technology hasn't yet advanced enough to test psychic ability, it seems unreasonable and premature to make an absolute declaration of it's validity.
If there is alot of toys to be cleaned (toy dishes are the worst), I'll put them in a very diluted hot water / bleach bath and let them soak for a few hours. Then I rinse them thoroughly one by one. (We don't have a dishwasher...)
You also don't want to forget the tub toys themselves... they can get moldy and gross, so wash them separately, using a toothbrush to get some of the gunk off..
Yeah, anything that can be sold globally is going to see its price go up as the dollar drops. Actual buttermilk, probably not so much--too expensive to ship since it's bulky and requires refrigeration. Powdered butermilk, though, can be easily shipped and stored (even if it doesn't store as well as nonfat dry milk).
Yes, people who live overseas but get paid in dollars are in the worst shape. The ideal situation right now would be to live in the US but earn a fraction of your income in a foreign currency. (Actually, living wherever you think of as home is always best, but having a fraction of your income from a foreign source paid in a foreign currency substantially increases the stability of your income stream. If only it were easier to do.)
I've been expecting the rising price of inputs to start working its way through other prices for months now, and it is finally happening, especially in food. For manufactured stuff, it's still in the early stages, but I think it's bound to grow.
That's going to put the Fed in a predicament. They'll be doubly discouraged from cutting rates (because it would both weaken the dollar and feed inflation), but those same rising prices will also weaken the economy and make raising rates almost unthinkable.
Frankly, I think a lot of the Fed's "success" over the past 20 years has been due almost entirely to the effect of globalization on prices. With that string having just about played out, we're likely to start seeing the inflation that was hidden by offshoring manufacturing, but since it's 20 years of accumulated inflation, it's not going to be at all easy to put a stop to it.
I'm unconcerned about whether oil is priced in dollars or not. The price of oil is set by the market, and whether they price it in euros (and hold it steady as the dollar drops) or price it in dollars (and have it go up as fast as the euro rises) makes no real difference.
Unfortunately there are more significant effects to the declining dollar. A week ago a microphone accidentally left on discovered OPEC was actually discussing the weakness of the Dollar and the option to price oil in a different currency, mainly the EURO.
That same weak Iran's president Ahamdinejad called the dollar a "worthless piece of paper" and suggested pricing oil in another currency.
There is a possible bright side to this. As oil and energy prices soar the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels may accelerate and Americans may start to ponder why they are so dependant on Gulf States and Russian oil.
I wonder about the degree to which rising oil prices have directly impacted the 'sale' price of US goods. Here in NZ, the price of gas has gone up $.20 (in NZ dollars) per litre in the past three months. Grapes from the US are still $6.99/kilo. When I've just paid $90 to fill my tank, given the choice between cheap(er) local fruit and expensive imported grapes (or peaches or nectarines) my kids are going to be snacking on NZ apples.
There's also a developing, but very strong, 'Buy NZ' ethos here. I wouldn't say that people see the US as the kind of threat people in the US see China, but it's pretty darn close. Thanks to America's tarnished image, the appetite for American products here has diminished--except for products like the Holden, which people don't recognize as being made by an American company. I wonder too, then, about this phenomenon elsewhere affecting the attractiveness of US goods.
One last point: Many overseas employees (or contractors) of US companies are not paid in the local currency, but paid in USD. (I know, my wife and a few of her friends are some of them!) We've seen our income rise nearly 15% only to fall back again within the course of three months. Our friend in Sweden has lost more than 20% of her income this year. We're not talking about the vicissitudes of the value of a stock portfolio, but people's day-to-day incomes. This is bad, bad, bad for the US (and their employees). They are losing their edge, not gaining one. If the US dollar falls another 10% against the local currency, my wife will no longer have any monetary incentive to continue to take contracts from her American employer. An interest rate cut will only exacerbate this, since we can get 7%-8% on a regular savings account here.
Officially, INFLATION is pegged at less than 3%. But it's foolish to believe the government number. Trust your own eyes when you pay for gas, insurance, food, or anything you need to live. Inflation is probably running in the vicinity of 6 to 8%. Just to get ahead, you have to get a return above the inflation rate.
Yes, you can double your money but it won't help if that cold cash will purchase half of the goods & services you used to be able to buy!
The other problem is getting a decent return on your money in the first place. Yes, you can put it into a 'safe' CD or Money market, but there's a problem. Untracked & un-noticed by the great majority of the public, there are real and very serious problems occurring in the banking and investment world. Failures of major banks and investment firms are right around the corner (they're already happening.)
What might be a good strategy? Invest in gold. Learn as much as you can about it. It's a question of not losing what you already have. It's worked very well for me.
Nothing here is investment advice = do your own due diligence and keep yourselves and your families safe.
Some toys can be put through the dishwasher, especially if you have a low-energy or gentle setting.
The favorite way to clean submersible toys in our house is to put them in the tub with the kids! If something like the toy cars or wooden trains go outside, they come back in with the boys and go straight into the tub, just like them. :)
What ever you're using to clean the surface of your disc, it has to be able to cover the scars on the disc and enable the lasers to reflect back without a problem. It would be better to get the disc scratch fixer product form the store. But if the scars are deep, then it won't help.
The correct way to clean the disc is by moving your cloth from inner circle straight to the outer area of the disc. If you go around the circle cleaning the disc then u might leave a circle scar and that is bad for the disc. That's because the data is read by circling the disc. A continues error reading will give you a mute or jump track. Instead If you have a straight line scratch from inner side to outer area of the disc, then it won't have a problem. That's because it's only a short error and the missing data can be corrected.
As for the CD/DVD for the kids, why not burn duplicate copy for them and keep the original disc. That way, when the disc is damage then you can always burn a new one for them.
We can thank the foreign economies and the sinking dollar for keeping stock values up. All the real growth is coming from sales abroad. I've always maintained that investing in big multi-nationals is an indirect play in the currency markets. Companies that do a great deal of business abroad are currently getting paid in everything but the worthless dollar and reaping the rewards.
If the bond market is a leading indicator/predictor of future interest rates then you could reasonably expect another rate cut by the Fed mid December. What does that mean? It means our good old American dollar will devalue some more and oil prices will go up some more.
But how can you live beyond your means? It's the least sustainable lifestyle ever. At some point you're going to have to pay for it all, so you may as well do it now, when it's cheapest.
I did find a water bottle for under $5! Here's a pink one from Dick's Sporting Goods.
I never thought of using a pillow case! Great idea!
Mugs -- I have too many of these also as do my in-laws, many of which (oddly) have sentimental value. But it's nice to have an extra one I don't care about just to keep at the office community kitchen. If water bottles were a tad less expensive, I would have included those -- saves money on bottled water and nice to have for cycling and hiking sessions. You could take Will's Blog Action Day Resolution idea and buy CFLs for family members; not exciting but saves energy use.
I think investing in precious metals is a bad idea. If the market totally collapses à la 1929, no one will be looking to trade anything for a gold nugget. Goods (food, etc.)and services will be the ticket if that happens. No one wants gold when their family can't eat. They want a chicken.
Most of these are great !
But the coffee mug ?
OMG, plleeeeaassseee no more coffee mugs, no more coffee cups, no more mugs with teabags, flavored coffee, special cocoas, etc !
Coffee mugs/cups are a dime a dozen at the thrift store, are WAY over-gifted at the holidays, and I don't know anyone from broke college student couple to family of 8 that does not have way too many of these !
The rest of your suggestions ?
Excellent !
Please, no more coffee mugs !
Katie:
If your family/friends think not including adults in gift-giving "takes all the fun out of Christmas", then they don't understand what Christmas really means, do they?
Do what you feel is right -- if you don't want to exchange gifts with the adults, tell them so -- and stick to it. You need to stand by what you believe in (a more-appreciative & thankful holiday instead of rampant greed & commercialism) AND stick to your budget for your family's well-being.
If they get you gifts, that's their business. There's no such thing as "I bought for you so you HAVE to buy for me" in the gift-giving world -- you give gifts because you want to, not because you HAVE to. If they don't like it, then next year they won't buy you anything and the issue will be closed. If they're so small-minded and greedy that they're angry because you didn't buy gifts (even after you told them repeatedly that you wouldn't) -- that's their problem, not yours.
Thank you for the link regarding dry-milk prices, I had no idea!
I've been to Ten Thousand Villages, and while they have some super cool stuff, I've noticed their prices have gone up dramatically over the last few years (input your theory of why here). But if you sift through there you can find some really sweet candles, votives, etc for not too much.
I also really like the movie idea. Blockbuster has the 4 for $20 deal (at least I think they do), so I guess for just over $5, you could add popcord and stuff and take care of 4 people on your list!
Over the years I have noticed of the two people who the have come to represent the meaning of Christmas (Jesus & Santa Claus). Santa seems to be eclipsing the person who's birthday we are celebrating on December 25th. I think Santa Claus should be reveled as the symbol his image has truly come to represent, comsumerism and greed.
I just washed my 2 yr old'd Pooh Bear this weekend for a bit of a facelift. But I put him in the dryer inside a pillow case to dry him up faster.
This is a great list. I like the movie basket idea best.
I also enjoy making scrapbooks for close friends with a mix of photos, magazine captions and other momentos.
My mom is making pottery pieces for everyone on her gift list. My sister gives beautiful plants from her garden that she bundles with so much love and attention.
Handmade gifts mean so much!
I adore that picture Linsey. It is a wonderful addition to a wonderful article.
Great list Julie! It's a bit more than $5, but Threadless is having a $10 shirt sale. They have lots of cool shirts, check them out. =)
I am doing framed portraits for everyone this year. I'll actually end up paying a lot because we are having our girls photographed by a very talented photographer, but it's something I really wanted to do *anyway* so it allows me to fulfill that wish along with my Christmas list at the same time. Selfish or frugal? You decide, but when I polled my family members, they all said they wanted the portraits.
Your Tshirts idea makes me think for future years, though. It would be fun to come up with some cute Tshirt messages or images to have printed. A family or local in-joke, or some homemade artwork. As a recipient, homemade gifts always trump retail, yet like you, I'm not crafty at all.
I know your intentions were to open the eyes of the "dumb people", but there's a side to this you don't understand.
...one day you're laughing with your husband/wife, or playing with your child. The next day you're faced with never hearing their voice again, never holding them again. They're gone -forever. Finding some measure of peace with their death is what keeps it from eating you up inside. How or where someone finds their peace is minute in comparison to finding it at all.
Unbridled gullibility can destroy science, but unbridled disbelief is no less a threat because it brings both a tolerance for bias and ridicule as well as the supression of untested new ideas. Given that scientific technology hasn't yet advanced enough to test psychic ability, it seems unreasonable and premature to make an absolute declaration of it's validity.
If there is alot of toys to be cleaned (toy dishes are the worst), I'll put them in a very diluted hot water / bleach bath and let them soak for a few hours. Then I rinse them thoroughly one by one. (We don't have a dishwasher...)
You also don't want to forget the tub toys themselves... they can get moldy and gross, so wash them separately, using a toothbrush to get some of the gunk off..
Yeah, anything that can be sold globally is going to see its price go up as the dollar drops. Actual buttermilk, probably not so much--too expensive to ship since it's bulky and requires refrigeration. Powdered butermilk, though, can be easily shipped and stored (even if it doesn't store as well as nonfat dry milk).
Thanks for the good comments.
Yes, people who live overseas but get paid in dollars are in the worst shape. The ideal situation right now would be to live in the US but earn a fraction of your income in a foreign currency. (Actually, living wherever you think of as home is always best, but having a fraction of your income from a foreign source paid in a foreign currency substantially increases the stability of your income stream. If only it were easier to do.)
I've been expecting the rising price of inputs to start working its way through other prices for months now, and it is finally happening, especially in food. For manufactured stuff, it's still in the early stages, but I think it's bound to grow.
That's going to put the Fed in a predicament. They'll be doubly discouraged from cutting rates (because it would both weaken the dollar and feed inflation), but those same rising prices will also weaken the economy and make raising rates almost unthinkable.
Frankly, I think a lot of the Fed's "success" over the past 20 years has been due almost entirely to the effect of globalization on prices. With that string having just about played out, we're likely to start seeing the inflation that was hidden by offshoring manufacturing, but since it's 20 years of accumulated inflation, it's not going to be at all easy to put a stop to it.
I'm unconcerned about whether oil is priced in dollars or not. The price of oil is set by the market, and whether they price it in euros (and hold it steady as the dollar drops) or price it in dollars (and have it go up as fast as the euro rises) makes no real difference.
Unfortunately there are more significant effects to the declining dollar. A week ago a microphone accidentally left on discovered OPEC was actually discussing the weakness of the Dollar and the option to price oil in a different currency, mainly the EURO.
That same weak Iran's president Ahamdinejad called the dollar a "worthless piece of paper" and suggested pricing oil in another currency.
There is a possible bright side to this. As oil and energy prices soar the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels may accelerate and Americans may start to ponder why they are so dependant on Gulf States and Russian oil.
Dorian Wales
Personal Financier
I wonder about the degree to which rising oil prices have directly impacted the 'sale' price of US goods. Here in NZ, the price of gas has gone up $.20 (in NZ dollars) per litre in the past three months. Grapes from the US are still $6.99/kilo. When I've just paid $90 to fill my tank, given the choice between cheap(er) local fruit and expensive imported grapes (or peaches or nectarines) my kids are going to be snacking on NZ apples.
There's also a developing, but very strong, 'Buy NZ' ethos here. I wouldn't say that people see the US as the kind of threat people in the US see China, but it's pretty darn close. Thanks to America's tarnished image, the appetite for American products here has diminished--except for products like the Holden, which people don't recognize as being made by an American company. I wonder too, then, about this phenomenon elsewhere affecting the attractiveness of US goods.
One last point: Many overseas employees (or contractors) of US companies are not paid in the local currency, but paid in USD. (I know, my wife and a few of her friends are some of them!) We've seen our income rise nearly 15% only to fall back again within the course of three months. Our friend in Sweden has lost more than 20% of her income this year. We're not talking about the vicissitudes of the value of a stock portfolio, but people's day-to-day incomes. This is bad, bad, bad for the US (and their employees). They are losing their edge, not gaining one. If the US dollar falls another 10% against the local currency, my wife will no longer have any monetary incentive to continue to take contracts from her American employer. An interest rate cut will only exacerbate this, since we can get 7%-8% on a regular savings account here.
Officially, INFLATION is pegged at less than 3%. But it's foolish to believe the government number. Trust your own eyes when you pay for gas, insurance, food, or anything you need to live. Inflation is probably running in the vicinity of 6 to 8%. Just to get ahead, you have to get a return above the inflation rate.
Yes, you can double your money but it won't help if that cold cash will purchase half of the goods & services you used to be able to buy!
The other problem is getting a decent return on your money in the first place. Yes, you can put it into a 'safe' CD or Money market, but there's a problem. Untracked & un-noticed by the great majority of the public, there are real and very serious problems occurring in the banking and investment world. Failures of major banks and investment firms are right around the corner (they're already happening.)
What might be a good strategy? Invest in gold. Learn as much as you can about it. It's a question of not losing what you already have. It's worked very well for me.
Nothing here is investment advice = do your own due diligence and keep yourselves and your families safe.
Some toys can be put through the dishwasher, especially if you have a low-energy or gentle setting.
The favorite way to clean submersible toys in our house is to put them in the tub with the kids! If something like the toy cars or wooden trains go outside, they come back in with the boys and go straight into the tub, just like them. :)
What ever you're using to clean the surface of your disc, it has to be able to cover the scars on the disc and enable the lasers to reflect back without a problem. It would be better to get the disc scratch fixer product form the store. But if the scars are deep, then it won't help.
The correct way to clean the disc is by moving your cloth from inner circle straight to the outer area of the disc. If you go around the circle cleaning the disc then u might leave a circle scar and that is bad for the disc. That's because the data is read by circling the disc. A continues error reading will give you a mute or jump track. Instead If you have a straight line scratch from inner side to outer area of the disc, then it won't have a problem. That's because it's only a short error and the missing data can be corrected.
As for the CD/DVD for the kids, why not burn duplicate copy for them and keep the original disc. That way, when the disc is damage then you can always burn a new one for them.
We can thank the foreign economies and the sinking dollar for keeping stock values up. All the real growth is coming from sales abroad. I've always maintained that investing in big multi-nationals is an indirect play in the currency markets. Companies that do a great deal of business abroad are currently getting paid in everything but the worthless dollar and reaping the rewards.
If the bond market is a leading indicator/predictor of future interest rates then you could reasonably expect another rate cut by the Fed mid December. What does that mean? It means our good old American dollar will devalue some more and oil prices will go up some more.