Economy Blatherings

So the whole world is short on money, or so they'd like us to think. You only need to watch any news channel or nightly news report to have the bejeebies scared out of you. They are saying the economic picture is not good, that things are only going to get worse, and that we can only look forward to abject poverty.

Then they turn off the cameras, button their thousand-dollar suits, and get into their $50,000 Lexus SUVs and drive to their gated community and park in their million-dollar garage and thank their lucky stars they aren't one of those people who have to worry about anything they just reported.

There is a huge gap between the people who have to worry about rising gas prices and food costs and those who forecast doom and gloom on the television. Now, I'm not suggesting communism or some Robin Hood society, not at all. It's just pretty frustrating to me that we turn on our television and see movie stars and those in the entertainment industry driving their gas-guzzling, environment-polluting Hummers, dressing in designer gowns, wearing million-dollar jewelry, and then running their mouth about saving the environment and some country in Africa. It just doesn't ring very true coming from such hypocrites.

Now they aren't ALL like that. There are several celebrities that use their recognition and riches to make things better for the environment and for those less fortunate. Leo DiCaprio drives the electric cars, Eva Longoria just built a solar home, and Angelina Jolie has a personal goal to ADOPT all of Darfur... It's good to see them trying to do their part with the blessings they have been given.

But it's becoming increasingly harder to just cover the basics here at home. With gas at almost 5 bucks a gallon, and food prices going through the roof, we are pretty much forced to tighten things up. I don't take random car trips, I try to run all my weekly errands at once and closer to home. I make a grocery list that no longer includes a lot of fluff. We're cutting down to eating meat more like twice or three times a week, we're making more homemade snacks and not buying pre-packaged convenience foods. We don't have a choice, there are eight of us, and our dollars just aren't going as far as they used to.

But it's a good thing. Convenience foods are almost always less healthy than homemade. We are not polluting the environment with excess fumes from driving so much, and we are spending more time together at home.

The next step? Well, our power bill notched out at $284 this month. We are on budget billing, so that's what we'll be paying every month until our usage goes down. So I'm instituting power outages at least once a week. I'm thinking we'll take one night (like maybe from 4:30pm til 10pm) and go completely lights out, except for the refrigerator of course). I'm hoping this will cut our usage down enough to bring our power bill down to maybe just $200 a month? I dunno, we'll see. Hopefully I'll keep the old blog updated with our progress. :)