guest article

GUEST ARTICLE
Bison Economics
While we have all checked in each weekday to learn how to survive on a budget, (sometimes checking in on the weekends in case our great leader forgot to mention a guest article), we humbly hold ourselves to the greater ideals of frugality given to us by the illustrious leader and we are enthralled by how his shining wisdom is presented by example.***Let us take it one step further though. Why just be frugal at surviving? Why not be frugal in living? Granted The Great Daken has gone out of his way to show us how it is done. I think he could go a bit further. "How so?" you ask....
***Let us learn to be truely frugal. Let us make those pennies scream before we let them go. Let's make Scrooge McDuck look like a philanthropist. Our wallets should require the jaws of life to open them before we pay out our hard earned cash.
***Examples. Never pass up free food. A meal you don't pay for is real savings. Let me say it again. NEVER pass up free food! -Samples in the store aisle. (the ones they hand out, don't open containers!) -Hot dog day at the car lot. -Watch the newspaper for civic events where food will be served free. -Make friends with a real Estate agent. In our area, agents have special open houses for other agents on Tuesdays. (It's a networking and smoozing thing). They often try to outdo each other in the food they serve. If you "happen" to walk in to one of these, just explain you are looking at the house. Don't try to pretend you are an agent. Trust me, you will get fed.-get the boss to start providing something at the weekly/monthly meeting. At one place I worked they did a full catered lunch once a month, you just had to listen to the "state of the business" speech while you ate.
***Save on water. Take a shower only 3 times a week and birdbath it the rest of the time. -If you are really cheap, you will get to work early and do your birdbath in the restroom there. -Use their hot water to shower! (some places even have showers for work crews, see if you can use one of those and really save on the hot water bill!) -For even greater "Bison frugality" save yourself and take your dumps at work. use their toiletpaper! -Don't forget to get your fill if they offer free coffee or tea.
***Need to charge up the cell phone, pda, laptop, etc. ? Do it at work on their dime! Does your town have christmas lights in the trees? Look for where they plug in. Let the city pay for your electricity! (watch it on this one, some cities may frown on it) If you use a laptop, take it to work, log into the network with it and use Outlook or a similar program to download all your email as the battery charges. Get as many of your RSS feeds to save for offline as you can. When you go home, you can read your email offline and write responses that will get sent the next day when you return to work. Since you don't have to plug the notebook in at home, you save a little more electricity. The new netbooks that can run 10 hours on a charge are great for this.
***Never pass on a free sample (except maybe makeup and perfume!)... if you have small kids or grandkids, these often make great gifts when they come visit. SOmething unique to make them happy and it didn't cost you!
*********There is a darker side to this though. So let's say the day has come and the hordes are roving the countryside looking to put you in the stewpot. You are holed up with your family and feeling pretty smug with your frugal preps. However, while planning your preps, you noticed that you only used a loaf of bread a week, so stored flour accordingly. But now you notice that you are suddenly going through 3 loaves a week! WHY??? Oh, yeah, no more free food at the office. No more school lunches for the kids. Everyone is actually eating more at home now. And while you are sitting around waiting for the zombies to show, you find you are eating more out of boredom.
***You noticed that you only used about a gallon of water a day at home for drinking, for everyone...so you stored 7 gallons for a week. OOPS! Forgot that you have to make all your own coffee and tea now. No more freebies from the office. Gotta use more to clean up now, no more restroom birdbaths. And don;t even get me started on how much toilet paper we are going through now!
***To top it all off, the solar panels can't keep the car battery charged enough. Used to be fine, just not anymore. Oh, you forgot about having to charge all your little gadgets at home now....
***The point is, make frugality a way of life, but don't let it fool you when planning your preps. Understand that frugality in life and frugality in survival have two different measuring sticks.
TMM