It feels like most of us in Central Iowa are either somewhat confident in the economy and life in general - but when we gather with friends, the conversation is typically about how we really don't know what's going on, how many fresh obstacles our kids face, and how we feel bad...about feeling bad about things here in the amazing USA. I've never been more confused Dave. I'll send you an email with a link to an article I just published about this topic and how I'm going to go about dealing with it. Hope all is well.
I can well remember interest rates on savings much higher than what they currently are and it made it easier to save money as a result! Now everybody wants cheap interest rates so they can spend money, no one wants to save! I am pretty well fixed these days, I'm 73 and went through plenty of struggles getting here, but made it through long periods of unemployment, a divorce, and other upsets in my life and times, but I struggled to overcome these adversities, by doing things others wouldn't even lower themselves to do, and still won't. I was so poor at one period that every dime I made was going to someone besides me, and at the end of the day my meal for the evening would consist of whatever I could get from the soda cans I recycled! I haven't stopped! Over the last three years I have rescued over $2,200 worth of bottles and cans from a single dumpster at the end of a canoe take out! A period of about three to four months. I save the drinking water to water my plants and whatever food stuffs and snack food I find to feed my brother-in-laws chickens. Now, this year I am exrtending my dumpster diving and working on an apartment dumpster behind my house. There are plenty of people with kids that have little money, but you coldn't tell it from the stuff they throw away! I pull over 100 to 125 cans and bottles out of that dumpster every week, most of it soda cans. I still find snack food for chickens, but I have also found cookware, books, gloves, and all sorts of material someone else could use if they only made it available to others rather than toss it in the garbage. It really would make sense if people would be responsible enough to not be so wasteful and think about what they are doing that simply is wasting resources! For two years I kept telling people not to ditch their water in the land fill, pour it back into narture where it can return to the water supply,! The usual response was "Huh"???? I finally gve up and started saving the bottles of water being tossed by pouring the partials together in gallon jugs and taking it home to water plants and fruit trees in this dry Iowa weather. It may only be a small thing that I'm doing, but it satisfies me to tell others about how much I make doing it, which surprises them. So if you ask me how I'm feeling, my response would be "A lot richer because of wasteful people!"
It feels like most of us in Central Iowa are either somewhat confident in the economy and life in general - but when we gather with friends, the conversation is typically about how we really don't know what's going on, how many fresh obstacles our kids face, and how we feel bad...about feeling bad about things here in the amazing USA. I've never been more confused Dave. I'll send you an email with a link to an article I just published about this topic and how I'm going to go about dealing with it. Hope all is well.
I can well remember interest rates on savings much higher than what they currently are and it made it easier to save money as a result! Now everybody wants cheap interest rates so they can spend money, no one wants to save! I am pretty well fixed these days, I'm 73 and went through plenty of struggles getting here, but made it through long periods of unemployment, a divorce, and other upsets in my life and times, but I struggled to overcome these adversities, by doing things others wouldn't even lower themselves to do, and still won't. I was so poor at one period that every dime I made was going to someone besides me, and at the end of the day my meal for the evening would consist of whatever I could get from the soda cans I recycled! I haven't stopped! Over the last three years I have rescued over $2,200 worth of bottles and cans from a single dumpster at the end of a canoe take out! A period of about three to four months. I save the drinking water to water my plants and whatever food stuffs and snack food I find to feed my brother-in-laws chickens. Now, this year I am exrtending my dumpster diving and working on an apartment dumpster behind my house. There are plenty of people with kids that have little money, but you coldn't tell it from the stuff they throw away! I pull over 100 to 125 cans and bottles out of that dumpster every week, most of it soda cans. I still find snack food for chickens, but I have also found cookware, books, gloves, and all sorts of material someone else could use if they only made it available to others rather than toss it in the garbage. It really would make sense if people would be responsible enough to not be so wasteful and think about what they are doing that simply is wasting resources! For two years I kept telling people not to ditch their water in the land fill, pour it back into narture where it can return to the water supply,! The usual response was "Huh"???? I finally gve up and started saving the bottles of water being tossed by pouring the partials together in gallon jugs and taking it home to water plants and fruit trees in this dry Iowa weather. It may only be a small thing that I'm doing, but it satisfies me to tell others about how much I make doing it, which surprises them. So if you ask me how I'm feeling, my response would be "A lot richer because of wasteful people!"