If this doesn’t take away whatever may be left of your faith in humanity, nothing will.

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday after an “out of control” throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains broke down the doors at a suburban store and knocked him to the ground, police said.

At least four other people, including a woman eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

…

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help the man were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said. Witnesses said that even as the worker lay on the ground, shoppers streamed into the store, stepping over him.

One person bumping into another…that happens.

One of said people taking a tumble…that also happens.

The person who fell getting trampled to death by a savage horde of materialism zombies eager to spend spend spendspendSPEND!!!!…no.  No fracking way.  Not in any civilization that I want to be part of.  Unfortunately I don’t see any way to vote with my feet on this one, since America, while importing everything else so that our trade deficit kind of looks like our national deficit, has managed to balance things up nicely if you figure in consumerism and materialism as exports.  So, as we’ve gone, the rest of the world will be following shortly.

If you read the full article, it says the guy was a temp–probably picking up some extra work to buy Fluffy McRufflepants the Flying Dinosaur or Suzie the Doll that Poos Real Poo or whatever the stupid overpriced toy of the year is for his spawn, or else expensive jewelry for his lady friend.  Or I’m wrong and he was using the opportunity to get a few bucks to make rent in the economic clusterfrack created by the real estate market being unable to support that many not-even-interest home loans.  Either way, materialism at its finest has given this worker’s family a funeral for Christmas.

Scrooge was onto something, referring to the festivities of Christmas as “humbug,” which, loosely translated, means “BS.”  I would say that for people to trample someone to death in order to go shopping, to put a human life’s value below that of stuff, qualifies as BS.  So, bah humbug to all, and to all a good right.

Technically, I stayed home.  However, because I had a turkey TV dinner and my cats split a can of ground turkey and giblets cat food, and because two of the cats have been in the family for three feline generations, I can legitimately say that I had turkey dinner with my family.  This is good in case anyone asks because it’s hard to fake a perfect life while saying you spent a holiday on your own.  I mean, a real holiday that people celebrate, not Presidents’ Day or something.

The cats behaved well and enjoyed the treat.  Today they seemed to be asking for more; they were sniffing at the bowls I fed them in and meowing at me.  No, you little beggars, that was a special occasion, you’ve got plenty of kitty kibble.   Squirrel’s been letting me pet her more lately–the day before yesterday she even walked onto my lap with all four paws.  That kitten may turn out cuddly yet.

There was no TV watching as the TV is still not hooked up (still haven’t scraped together the $300 deposit).  This is for the best as I’m sure Christmas toy ads have become insanely obnoxious, and I get to miss them this year.  Hooray!

If you’re like me, sometime while you were writing a budget, you’ve said or thought “I could balance this thing if it weren’t for _____.”  Usually _____ is either the rent (yeah…that is what it is) or a loan payment.  Congress has this same problem: they “can’t” pay down the national debt (hit refresh a few times while you’re looking at that, but only if you don’t have a blood pressure problem).  Maybe running a ten trillion dollar debt can work if only one entity does it, but it’s not just the government.  Debt has become normal to Americans, because “if the government does it, it must be OK.”  Just remember…the government can get away with it because it’s the government.  You probably aren’t.

The problem with debt is, you can’t cut back on that part of your budget like you can on the rest of it by eating out less, going to the library instead of the bookstore, etc.  When your resources go away (layoffs or salary reduction because the economy sucks, for example), your loan payments still just kind of sit there, teaming up to go for the jugular.  You’ve heard of “too much month at the end of the money,” right?  Having to pay off a loan that looked fine when you had more to work with is one place that comes from.

A lot of those loans where it seemed like we could make it work at the time are related to keeping up with the Joneses–we “need” a certain house, a certain car, a certain wardrobe, yadda yadda yadda ad nauseam.  I’m as guilty of it on the clothes thing as anybody–I don’t even like clothes shopping but I was semi-traumatized by my grad school advisor going on for half an hour this one time, telling me I needed to Dress For A Professional Image, so now if I see something I don’t hate and the “a successful person would wear that” neuron fires, and I remotely have the money, it’s pretty likely to go in the cart.  Which is stupid.  Faking a perfect life by spending money is ridiculous.  News flash: Half of us make under $32,000.  The Joneses can’t even keep up with the Joneses any more.

Teresa told us about how she’s killing her debt.  It begs to be compared to the debt snowball method.  Any major way of making debts go away is going to boil down to “throw money at it,” though, which isn’t very useful if you aren’t even making the minimums.

Today’s three Living On Almost Nothing tips relate to dealing with debt.

• Prioritize.  You need a house/apartment and a car (you may be able to scale back on either or both of these, that’s a separate issue).  If rent/mortgage and the car-related expenses are the only things you can definitely keep “current enough,” then most of the credit cards are just gonna have to get mad.  If you can’t drive to work, you can’t pay anything.  I hate to say it, and I especially hate that I’ve had to use this, but when it comes to student loans…they can’t repossess your brain.  If you have to ignore something, though, choose a lower interest thing to slack off on and pay the higher interest stuff.  (I’m not saying you should ignore a lower interest payment to pay extra on higher interest things–if you’ve got it in the budget to keep everything current, do it, because this is nicer to your credit and helps with the next thing.)
  • If you absolutely have to choose between the home and the car…first of all, avoid this if you have to sell a kidney on eBay (note: don’t sell a kidney on eBay, it’s illegal plus if you’re reading this you probably don’t have medical insurance so you shouldn’t be selling body parts because there can be complications from that)…but if it comes down to that…my gut tells me to keep the car instead of the home.  You can sleep in a car, you can’t drive an apartment to work.
    • If it comes down to this, you also need a hotpot, electric skillet, and 12V inverter, because you can’t afford to eat out so you’ll have to cook in the car.  Yes, this would suck.  Don’t do this.
• Use low interest to pay off high interest.  If you can get a lower interest loan so that you can pay off and cut up a higher interest credit card, go for it.  If you have two credit cards, as you pay down the lower interest one, do balance transfers from the higher interest one.  It probably won’t count as that month’s payment but at least you’re throwing less away on interest that way.
• If student loans are chewing your face off, consider going back to school.  (I know, you all think I’m crazy now.)  You can get a deferment if you’re half-time (usually 6 credits undergrad, 4.5 graduate).  In practical terms this means two classes, which usually means two nights a week if you’re working full time.  You can usually get loans and sometimes scholarships or grants to cover the tuition.  If you get any of this funding, you may have money left over from your school expenses; use it for living expenses that are part of living on almost nothing, then for paying down debts, nothing else.  Also, even if you’re doing Debt Snowball Classic, even if its “smallest first” rule has a lower interest loan on the chopping block right now, do not use extra student loan money to pay down a debt with a lower interest rate than the student loan.  That would be dumb.

First of all, it’s not that I have a problem with gun control.  As in background checks, and by all means use both hands.  And a reasonable minimum age (no one wants five-year-olds carrying to kindergarten).

What I have a problem with is the utter brainwashing that leaves otherwise intelligent people saying dumb crap like “guns are evil and disgusting.”  Ridiculous…a gun is a thing.  It’s a tool.  It’s an assemblage of metal parts.  It has no soul and no moral alignment for good or evil; that’s up to the owner of the hand with the finger on the trigger.

Since they aren’t of themselves good or bad, it all depends on how they’re used.  Well…as it turns out…CCW permitholders are less likely to commit crimes than the general population.  And crime rates, including violent crime and crimes with guns, go up when guns are banned and down when laws allowing concealed carry go into effect.

In summation:

The good that guns make possible outweighs the bad.

Don’t blame a tool for things done by humans.

I ordered a textbook and left my old address in and realized it 5 seconds too late.  Whoooooooooops.  And then couldn’t fix it myself.  And I no longer have any real access to that address.  Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap.

Little-known fact: Amazon humans will fix this.  There’s a Help link toward the top of the page.  This takes you to a page with a “Contact Us” button.  You might have to sign in again.  From there, you can request a phone call for help on any recent order.  And when you say you want the call right away, that’s when it happens.  As in I was talking to my dad about it and had to put him on hold about five seconds after I pushed the button.  This wasn’t during office hours; it was just about the crack of midnight.

Anyway, yay for online shopping that will provide a human to talk to and fix stuff for you.

I’m sitting by the phone, staring at the computer, refreshing the available jobs list.  Basically, hoping someone gets sick.  And quickly reaching the conclusion that subbing enforces a degree of schadenfreude.

As my loyal readers will already know, I’m somewhat between jobs at the moment (trying to get subbing and tutoring up and running) and basically existing for now on what my parental units drop into the bank account.  As such I feel an obligation to make my parents’ hard-earned money go as far as possible; and because I have too many loans and crap I’ll also keep doing this for a while once my cashflow gets back to normalish, to make my hard-earned money go as far as possible.  This is part of my attempt to balance my budget.

Whether I deserve something, for example, is no longer an issue: when you’re down to $4 in mostly loose change, it doesn’t matter whether “you deserve a break today”–you’re eating what’s on the shelves or you’re not eating.  (Plus what’s on the shelves is less likely to kill you than most fast food.)

Three tips for the day:

• Ramen.  Lots of ramen.  Buy it by the case (yes, this usually means a little less selection in the flavors, but it is cheaper).  I can use the seasoning packet because I know from bloodwork back when I had insurance that I don’t have sodium issues.  If you have sodium issues or don’t know, use half the packet or throw it away and dump cheap tomato sauce on it instead.
• Find cheaper places to shop.  Places you already shop can be made cheaper by joining the preferred customer club or whatever it’s called.  Get one of those cards for every store that’s convenient to where you live so that you’ll never get in the mind trap of “I have to go to _____ because that’s where I have a card.”  If you’re a privacy activist, have a friend get the card, swap the keytags (these days you usually get a card and two keytags), or shop with friends and pass one card around at the self-scan, and enjoy confusing the heck out of The Man.  If you really believe that anyone is paying attention to what you buy, laugh in your sleeve about them thinking that one person is somehow going through six gallons of milk a week.
• A simple, cheap recipe:
  • 1 handful lentils
  • water sufficient to boil lentils until soft
  • 1/2 can peas
  • 1 bouillon cube (you pick the flavor, woooooo! (although it doesn’t really matter–I used chicken, and the stuff didn’t come out tasting like chicken–it just tastes less bland))
  • cheese-equivalent of three slices, cubed (I’ve found that for what you get, colby-jack is the cheapest, though mild cheddar is a little cheaper if you don’t mind that it’s mild cheddar)

• • Boil lentils in water until soft.  Do something else while this is going on because it’s very boring to watch–just stay close enough to hear the less-wet boiling sound so you can add water before your food catches fire.
  • Drain most of the water.
  • Add bouillon cube and peas.  Continue boiling until most of the remaining water is boiled off.  Stay with it and pay attention for this part, turning your back on it only to cut up the cheese for the next step.
  • Add cheese.
  • Stir until cheese is melted.
  • Divide into three servings.  If you’re cooking for just yourself, refrigerate or freeze two.

If you have a problem with the political leanings of the site I’m linking to here, just watch the videos.

Obama is talking about a “civilian national security force” (second video, halfway down the page), whatever that is.  Best case scenario is he’s talking about putting more into our police, firefighters, etc.  Worst case scenario will give WWII vets flashbacks.  Comparitively speaking, this is old news.

More recently, Obama’s chief of staff has said in an interview that everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 would have to spend three months in “joint, similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service” (first video, same page as above link).  I say…’scuse me?  I wasn’t aware of the federal government going into the summer camp business.  I don’t see how this isn’t either slavery or wrongful imprisonment if someone doesn’t want to go to it.  I don’t see how either slavery or wrongful imprisonment would teach me what it means to be an American.  And I don’t see how dropping a frackload of money into it is going to help our economy out.

So, my two questions:

1. How is this legal?
2. Who’s going to pay for that?

Readers who have blogs or other web sites, please help get the word out about this.

I’m increasingly convinced that a balanced budget, as in earning more than you pay, is the only way to fix the world economic crisis.  I’m not just talking about government budgets at the local, state, and federal level, although those are important too–I’m talking about our budgets.  Regular people.

So here’s what we need to do.  Cut down the bills, bump up the earning if you need to, knock out the debt (it’s the interest that’s killing most of us)…run the money stuff in our lives like a business.  This is going to be as hard for me as for anyone–being between full-time jobs is funny like that–but it’s also the only thing that’s going to work.  We’re coming up on the first of the year so I’ll give everyone a month and a half to get a running start.  After January, I want to hear about people either balancing their budgets, being closer than the month before, or dealing with an emergency without it blowing up in their faces (yes, crap happens).

Post your “living on almost nothing” and other related advice in comments.  Off topic, including financial advice (e.g. investment tips), will be deleted.  This isn’t about getting rich, it’s about getting un-fracked.

If enough people do this, it would be fun to send a message to Congress, and every company that gets a bailout on my tax dollar, to the effect of “we can write balanced budgets, why can’t you?”