This mom was shocked to see the cost of her fill-up. So, she suggested that her two daughters, Carla and Emma, consider sharing a bedroom so she could rent out the other bedroom for the money. From this photo, it appears they’re not quite on board.
Unless you’re a hermit living in a tent in the forest, you have no doubt noticed that the cost of gasoline, groceries, and dining out has gone through the stratosphere. In fact, based on the spiraling inflation that appears to have no end in sight, my immediate recommendation for cost savings is to seriously consider becoming a hermit. I’d suggest a tent in the forest, but have you seen the price of nylon lately? You’re better off with a sturdy cardboard refrigerator box and a nearby creek for bathing.
According to recent reports, some economists now believe gasoline could eventually reach $175 a gallon, and a loaf of bread could hit $60. Admittedly, those projections are for the year 2250 – but the trend line is clearly not headed in a direction that screams “relax and order appetizers.”
So what can you do to stop the financial hemorrhaging and preserve your rapidly shrinking nest egg?
For starters, tell your lazy unemployed spouse to get off the couch and find a job. Unless, of course, that lazy spouse is you – in which case, let’s not rush into anything. You still have three more seasons of Breaking Bad to finish because you somehow missed it the first time around in 2008. Priorities.
If you’re retired and in reasonably good health, you might consider going back to work. Quick caveat: I would suggest trying your hand as a humor writer, but based on my own experience, that path leads mostly to personal fulfillment and a suspicious lack of income. You may want to aim slightly higher – say, Walmart greeter or middle school bus driver, both of which come with hazard pay.
Here are some additional strategies to preserve your retirement portfolio – and what’s left of your sanity:
Decide which child is not going to college.
You love both your kids equally, of course. But let’s be realistic – college tuition has reached the point where you need to start thinking like an NFL general manager. Tough decisions must be made. Sit Justin down and explain that college is overrated and, frankly, based on his SAT scores, he was trending toward a very strong community college experience anyway. He’ll understand…eventually – hopefully before your check for the nursing home bounces.
Charlie is showing off his his pride and joy – his 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie season baseball card. He needs cash to keep up with all the high prices lately. So, it’s either sell Mickey or tell his son Nate no college for him. Charlie has a tough decision.
Sell your gas guzzler. Buy an electric car.
With gas hovering around $5 a gallon and climbing, it may be time to part ways with your 17-MPG SUV. Do the responsible thing – save the environment and your wallet by switching to an electric vehicle. Just be prepared for the moment when your electric bill shows up and you realize you’ve essentially adopted a very large, very hungry appliance.
Sell your electric car. Buy a Schwinn.
So now you’re driving electric and feeling good – until someone casually mentions that replacing the battery could cost somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000. That’s when you pivot.
My advice: ditch the car entirely and go old school. Buy a basic ten-speed bike. Skip the e-bike—those cost more than your first used car. But go ahead and splurge on the bell and handlebar tassels your mom never let you have when you were seven. You’ve earned this.
Say no to costly eating out.
A typical steak dinner can now set you back $50 to $75. Slightly less at Waffle House, but you’re rolling the dice in other ways there.
Think of how much money you’ll save by cooking at home. Of course, grocery prices are also skyrocketing, so you may want to focus on a steady diet of rice and lettuce. The upside? You’ll save money and finally lose that “drive-thru lifestyle” spare tire – mainly because you’ll be in a constant state of serious depression.
Cancel unnecessary subscriptions.
Take a hard look at your monthly expenses. Do you really need five streaming services? Especially when you spend 30 minutes scrolling through them every night before giving up and watching the same episode of The Office you’ve seen 17 times (the one where Jim moves Dwight’s entire desk setup – computer, phone, and all – into the men’s restroom, leaving him to work in the stall area. It never gets old, I agree).
Pick one service. Two, max. And if you’re feeling especially frugal, just start “borrowing” passwords from friends and family like it’s 2015 again. It’s not stealing – it’s relationship-building.
Embrace creative housing solutions.
If your mortgage or rent is crushing you, it may be time to think outside the box. Literally. Have you considered converting your garage into a luxury studio apartment? Or renting out rooms in your house to complete strangers who describe themselves as “super chill” and “usually between jobs”?
If things get really tight, circle back to the hermit-in-the-tent-in-the-woods idea. It’s gaining momentum.
Rob a bank.
Okay, I’ll admit – this one is a bit extreme. But if you’re truly desperate and can’t figure out how in the world you’re going to make next month’s mortgage payment, it may be your quickest path to financial relief – assuming you don’t mind a dramatic lifestyle change involving federal prison or assuming a new identity in Guatemala, where they don’t ask a lot of questions. How would you feel about growing a beard, dying your hair black, and changing your name to Hector Ramirez? Just something to keep in your back pocket.
The good news is that this surge in the cost of everything from food to gasoline to healthcare won’t last forever. The bad news is… I just lied. It absolutely will.
So yes, you’re going to need to get creative. Maybe start by selling off some valuables. If you happen to have a mint-condition 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card lying around, congratulations – you’re officially inflation-proof. The rest of us will be comparing lettuce prices and debating whether toothpaste is really essential.
Okay, so it’s not nearly as cool as my SUV I had to sell because of the high cost of gasoline and car maintenance. But at least it doesn’t pollute the environment. And all the kids in my neighborhood appear to be very jealous … or maybe confused. Not sure which, actually.
In the meantime, stay flexible, stay frugal, and if you happen to see an older Seattle Seahawks fan pedaling past you on a Schwinn bicycle with bright pink handlebar tassels… mind your own business. I’m doing just fine.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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You may not have heard (if you’ve been in a coma since 1994), but our national debt is spiraling out of control. If you could imagine a fire hose spraying a stream of $100 bills instead of jets of water, that’s essentially the way our federal government pisses through money on an average day. If you’re having trouble staying awake at night, here is a number that might help: $233 billion. That’s not the latest national debt figure. Oh, no. That’s just the interest on it we pile up each year.
Won’t somebody come up with a plan to stop all the fiscal hemorrhaging? Anybody? Nobody? Okay, I guess it’s up to me to bail out America…. Again.
Last week, I shared Part I of my solution to our national debt problem. In this week’s thrilling conclusion, I solve it even more. So let’s get started, shall we?
Cape Canaveral – Kennedy Space Center: $11.5 billion. If you’re still a kid at heart, this one’s for you. Located on the pristine golden beaches of Central Florida’s Atlantic coast and just a two-hour drive from Disney World. Always wanted to be an astronaut? Now you can own a whole crew of them. Guess who gets to press the “Blast off” button at Mission Control? You do! Comes with a free ride on the next Space Shuttle Endeavour flight. (Fine print: Next scheduled Endeavour flight: 1st of Never.)
State of Alaska: $780 billion. Call the Last Frontier your home with this incredible once-in-a-lifetime bargain. See Russia from your house. Be the first among your friends to own your own state. Comes with tons of room to spread out all your stuff, not to mention access to our nation’s largest oil and natural gas pipeline. Stunning views of mountains, grizzly bears, bald eagles and hot ex-governors. Juneau what else? For just $20 billion more, we’ll even rename the state capitol after you. Flexible payment terms. Ask about our layaway plan.
US Interstate 80: $87.6 billion. If you thought you could “get your kicks on Route 66”, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Own a part of the world’s greatest highway network. The nation’s second longest interstate, I-80, runs from scenic California through the Nevada Dessert (where you can do 130 mph and the state troopers won’t hassle you) through the golden corn fields of Nebraska, before your journey ends at glamorous New York City. (more…)
Here’s a number that might scare you: $17,746,662,973. That’s almost 18 trillion dollars, give or take a few hundred billion. That’s the current estimate of our national debt according to the OMB (Office of Management and Budget).
Here’s a slightly smaller but equally frightening number: $1 million. That’s the amount our nation’s debt is expanding – per minute. The clock is ticking. Economic experts estimate that our national debt will increase by another $10 trillion in the next decade. And I thought I was bad about managing my money. I look like Ebenezer Scrooge compared to Uncle Sam.
Depressed? Don’t be. Because I have a brilliant solution to our nation’s debt crisis. And it doesn’t involve painful tax hikes, closing down your favorite park or eliminating daily delivery of your mail.
As many of you know, I (often imagine that I) am a highly sought-after, award-winning, Harvard-educated economist. I won’t drone on about my many notable achievements in the fields of econometrics or applied macro-economic asset price modeling theory (because I have no idea what those words mean). Suffice to say, I took both Econ-201 and Econ-202 Pass-Fail in my second year of college.
I have successfully balanced my personal checkbook 8 of the past 12 months. And I have completely paid off our family’s credit card debt on all but 5 of our 17 credit cards. I saved $4,000 by the time I was 18 years old by doing summer jobs, and I didn’t blow it all until late spring of my freshman year of college (hey, I needed a new stereo system). So when I say I have a solution for the nation’s debt crisis, I think my credentials speak for themselves.
It seems like I’m paying more in income taxes every year. My tax preparer just completed my return and it appears that I owe more in taxes than I actually earned last year. Very discouraging. In full disclosure, my tax preparer was my college-age daughter. I’m thinking subtraction may not be her forte. But in her defense, she was tutored in math by her father.
Like most Americans – other than my brother Todd – I always pay my taxes. But I am concerned the government will just squander my taxes on unnecessary government boondoggle projects. I assure you, I am perfectly capable of squandering those funds on my own boondoggle projects with no help from Uncle Sam, thank you very much.
I read the other day that many of the largest Fortune 500 companies routinely claim so many business deductions and tax loopholes that they avoid paying any federal income tax at all. Apparently the key is to become a multi-billion dollar global enterprise with incriminating photos of a U.S. Senator having gay sex with an under-age intern or a sheep, and you won’t have to pay a dime. That seems totally unfair. The only incriminating photos I can get my hands on are a couple embarrassing selfies I took at last year’s company holiday party dressed as Gumby in drag.
I believe it’s time that we demand our government take drastic action to simplify the tax code. I’ve come up with a plan that will make it far easier for me to pay my fair share – which based on my rough calculations, comes to nineteen dollars and forty-seven cents (give or take a quarter). Under my plan the following items would become tax deductible expenses:
I was recently astounded to read that the USA has more prisoners per capita than any other country in the world, easily surpassing #2 Russia. Did you know that the USA makes up just 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners? All I can say is WAY TO GO, AMERICA!
We now have over 2 million Americans living in prison (several million more if you include New Jersey). The cause of the explosion in our inmate population over the past thirty years is primarily thanks to the incredible success of our War on Drugs, and only secondarily because of the many cast members of Jersey Shore who have served time.
A thoughtful examination of America’s War on Drugs leads to only one obvious conclusion: By any standard (other than reducing the level of our nation’s rampant drug abuse problem), this war has been an overwhelming success. The only thing left to do is hang a Mission Accomplished banner atop the fence along the U.S. – Mexican border.
Thanks to our impressive victory in the war on drugs, we have corralled thousands of our nation’s most dangerous habitually stoned South Park viewers and thrown them into the Graybar Hotel. Law-abiding Americans can now sleep safely, knowing they no longer have to fear that a deranged pothead might break into their home during a late night Harold and Kumar movie marathon in search of Doritos or other snack foods with dangerously unhealthy levels of high-fructose corn syrup.
America is the world leader in most important categories: #1 in nuclear warheads, #1 in citizens incarcerated, and breaking into the top 50 in healthcare. We don’t look to Europe for solutions to our problems because those countries are a bunch of whiny, over-indulged socialist brie-eaters with funny accents. If there is one thing every patriotic American knows, it’s that socialism is pernicious and has no place in the American way of life.
That’s why our cherished Constitution forbids socialism to flourish anywhere within our borders – with the very narrow exceptions of our public schools, postal system, fire and police departments, interstate highway system, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, federal prisons, all state universities, most community colleges, Social Security Administration, National Guard, Coast Guard, public libraries, most local garbage collection services, the National Weather Service, and a few thousand other minor social service programs.
My point is, with a few isolated exceptions, the USA simply does not tolerate the tyranny of socializing our civil services (if you don’t count the folks at the Civil Service Administration). The mere mention of the word socialism stirs a visceral fear in the hair-trigger psyche of our proud democracy.
Socialism enslaves people through intrusive government over-regulation. Case in point: Canada’s socialized healthcare system. Ask any Canadian how they feel about their healthcare compared to ours. An astonishing 98%* of Canadians surveyed said they would gladly swap their healthcare system for ours (* if it was necessary to do so in order to get their child back from kidnappers).
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