Photo: Creative Commons/ilikerender

The average American family is under constant assault by a host of utterly unnecessary expenses.  These regular expenses are often endorsed by the main stream media as being absolutely essential for “normal” people.  They make it seem as if people can’t exist without a smartphone plan, 500 channels on TV, and semi-regular vacations!!!!   But upon closer examination, most expenses of modern life do little to actually improve one’s life.  In fact quite a few such expenses actively decrease your quality of life.  Today I have thankfully gotten rid of one such expense!

As many of you know, I have a conflicted feelings about car ownership.  On the one hand a car can be an amazingly powerful transportation tool.  In effect, a car owner has the power of 100 horses at his disposal.  And there are indeed many areas of the country where you can’t accomplish basic tasks like going to work or buying groceries without a car.

But in many ways the drawbacks of car ownership far out weighs the benefits.  Cars are grossly inefficient in terms of fuel consumption.  To transport a 200 lb man just one mile, a vehicle needs to move about 2000 lbs of metal the same distance, wasting 90% of the fuel!  Cars are also ridiculously expensive to insure, especially if one lives near an urban center.  Finally, cars can be very costly to maintain.

Now I have written quite a bit already about saving money on car maintenance and insurance.  But for the last couple of years, I have maintained a 2 car fleet.  While both are used cars from reliable automakers, the cost of owning them have nevertheless added up.  So 2 months ago, I decided to run a cost-benefit analysis on both cars.  I like working with numbers since it allows me to detach my emotions from the decision-making process.  This analysis provided some great insights:

1. Over the course of a month, we drove Car #1 for a total of 47 miles on 3 separate trips.
2. Two of the three trips could have been made by Car #2.
3. My wife was using car #2 on a daily basis.  We logged 623 miles on Car #2 over the same month.
4. When accounting for insurance, repairs, and fuel costs over the course of a year, Car #2 was costing us 51 cents per mile driven.
5. Crunching the same numbers for Car #1 yielded an astonishing $2.83 per mile driven! :O

Here at SEC, I’m always trying to push the envelope and challenge the status quo when it comes to saving money.  This analysis clearly demonstrates a problem.  Car #1 is an on-going money sink that returns little value to us.  Yet, I cannot just get rid of this car since we plan to move further away from the city within 1 year.  At a more rural location, we would really need a 2 car fleet for day-to-day tasks.  With this in mind, I decided to mothball Car #1 at my parents’ home.  Now putting a car into long term storage was a bit more complicated than I thought.  I tried to do this process as cost-effectively as I can, so here are the steps that I took to do so:

Over-inflated the tires (Cost $1)

When storing a car for long periods of time, all the weight is resting on the wheels.  So to avoid flat wheels, I over pressurized the tires just a tiny bit.

Changed Filter and Motor Oil  (Cost $10)

Fresh motor oil can prevent engine damage when storing the vehicle long term.  I did this myself to save some money.  After changing the oil, I let the car run for about 10 minutes so that the fresh motor oil worked it’s way through the system.

Topped off the gas tank with stabilized fuel (Cost $30)

A half empty tank can rust over time, so I had to top off the tank with premium quality gasoline.  The key is to make sure that the gasoline does not contain ethanol.  The reason is because ethanol causes corrosion on the interior of the gas tank over time.  The last thing I did was to add a small amount of Stabil into the fuel tank.  This is a stabilizer agent that prevents the gasoline from going bad.

Cleaned up the car (Cost $0)

When being stored for months on end, bugs can get into the car.  So what I did was to give this vehicle a through interior and exterior cleaning.  All possible sources of food were removed from the vehicle.  All 4 windows were cracked open slightly to allow moisture to escape from the interior.

Disengaged the parking brake and put on parking mats (Cost $2)

When you leave the parking brake on, the brake pads may fuse over time with the vehicle’s rotors.  By leaving the parking brake disengaged however, I had to find 2 parking mats for the front wheels.    Thankfully, I was able to grab them from craigslist for just $2 dollars!!!!

Disconnected the car battery (Cost $0)

When a car is not driven for long periods of time, the battery will slowly discharge and eventually die.  So to prevent this from happening, I just went ahead and disconnected the battery.  Even disconnected, the charge will slowly be lost but the time frame is now measured in years rather than weeks.

Plug the holes (Cost $1)

Small animals can sometimes make the nooks and crannies of your car into their homes.  To prevent that from happening to my car, I plugged the exhaust pipe and air intake channels with steel wool.

Cover it with a weatherproof tarp (Cost $10)

A good weatherproof tarp is essential when storing the car outside.  Normally, good, multi-layered car tarps retail for $50 dollars and up, but I was able to get mine for a steal on Craigslist.  In fact, I find Craigslist to be one of the first places that I go to in order to buy something.

And that was it!  With just $54 dollars, I was able to moth ball the car.  Now after doing so, I then had to surrender my license plates to the New York State DMV.   After that, I proceeded to suspend my car’s insurance policy.  Since I am no longer paying for insurance, maintenance, state inspections, and vehicle registration on that car, I’m now saving over $200 dollars a month!  And when the time comes, I can easily re-activate the vehicle.  So what do you think?  As always, comments and feed back are much appreciated!

Photo: Creative Commons / Lizard10979

Photo: Creative Commons/Jill A Brown

As a prepper, there are literally dozens of SHTF scenarios that I actively prepare for. But it is often the mundane problems that can have the most devastating impact. Sometimes, we are just so focused on the obvious threats that we overlook the everyday dangers to our well-being. This “deer in the headlights” aspect for preparedness really hit home for me recently. Over the last month I’ve been grappling with a very personal issue, but I think it is time to share it with everyone.

5 weeks ago, I went to the physician’s office for a routine physical. And the doctor had some bad news for me. It turns out that I am pre-diabetic and just a few years away from full-blown type 2 diabetes. While preparing for a total economic collapse, I had completely ignored the lethal dangers of a common “rich-nation” disease.

Now Diabetes runs in my family. My father has it, all of my grandparents had it, and my great grandmother died young because of it. But I have never been overweight. During my 20s, I felt physically invincible. It is only in the last year that I’ve gotten seriously sick multiple times. In hindsight, I really should have examined the lifestyle choices that I had made:

1. I was working way too much. The stress of 80 hour work weeks must have had a detrimental effect on my body over the years.
2. I was not getting enough sleep. Long nights of building passive income likely built up toxins in my body
3. I was eating TOO MANY CARBS. Rice is cheap and I ate too much of it to save money.
4. I was eating TOO MUCH SATURATED FAT. This goes with getting cheaper, fattier cuts of red meat.
5. I was eating TOO MANY SWEETS. Sugar is a vice that is very hard for me to kick.

But even with these lifestyle mistakes, it’s still crazy to think that a man can be pre-diabetic by age 30!!!! :O And here is the thing, diabetes can undo all the preparations that I’ve made for my family. If I get full-blown diabetes, I will likely not be able to hang on to a high stress(well paying) job. If I have to eventually go on insulin, then any crash of the healthcare system would likely kill me. With a disease like diabetes, it would be very difficult if not impossible for my family to become self-sufficient and independent of the system.

With such abysmal thoughts swirling around my mind, I was seriously depressed for a couple of days. But thankfully, my dear wife has been a pillar of support during this time. She cooked healthier meals for me and have done a lot to comfort me during my darker moments. I’m glad to say that I’m over it now and am ready to get back into the fight! So over the last 4 weeks, I’ve embarked upon several major lifestyle changes that will hopefully prevent or at least delay the onset of diabetes. Here is what I have been doing:

1. Eliminated any foods that contains refined sugar 
2. Swapped out red meat for lean protein like skinless chicken breast and white fish
3. Halved the amount of carbohydrates that I eat every day
4. Doubled my daily intake of fresh fruits and vegetables
5. Doubled the time spent doing aerobic exercises every week
6. Permanently gave up my gardening side-gig

The dietary changes have nearly doubled the monthly grocery bill. Giving up the weekend gardening side-gig is going to substantially decrease my income, but I think the benefits far outweigh the costs. Having more time to sleep and hang out with my wife and son means more to me at this point than an extra paycheck. Moreover, having that R&R time to de-stress may prove crucial to getting into better shape. Now that we are 4 weeks into these changes, I’m happy to announce that I’ve lost over 10 lbs of weight and am feeling pretty good all around!

While I have been writing a great deal about practical survival aspects like frugality and making side income, I’m now going add some physical fitness posts to this blog. Keeping our bodies in peak condition will be a just as important(if not more so) as having ample amounts of money and preps. As always, comments and feedback are welcomed and appreciated!

Photo: Creative Commons/ vonSchnauzer

I always find it an amusing experience to chat with people who drank the corporate cool-aid.  These are guys who actually believe in the system’s propaganda.  Seriously, they think that their place in society is defined by their job!  Only they don’t call it a day job, they call it their “career”!!!!  My reaction to such people is a combination of much amusement and not a small amount of sadness.

For you see, I was once just such a person.  From an early age, I was taught by my parents to get good grades in school.  I was taught to find a stable job at a large company, and to do my best to move up the ranks.  In my mind at the time, people were supposed to follow this linear “career” where after several decades of loyal service, they secure a comfortable corner office and live happily ever after.  Many Americans still believe this myth.  They still believe that if they work hard and are good at what they do, then their company will treat them with some semblance of “loyalty”.  I am just here to point out that this is absolute F**KING nonsense.

It used to be that a person can work at the same company for 30 years and then retire.  But as our world became ever more interconnected and automated, the duration of full time employment has gotten increasingly short.  In 2012, the average  millennial generation American had to switch jobs every 14 months!  And it’s not just the duration of employment that is changing, it is the very nature of employment.  As automation and computers gets faster and cheaper, jobs requiring medium levels of skills (aka middle class Jobs) becomes increasingly harder to find.  Meanwhile, high paying jobs requires either exceedingly high levels of skills/intelligence or money/connections to obtain.  In effect, we are becoming a gilded workforce consisting of a thin golden upper crust(executives, bankers, doctors,engineers….etc) with very high salaries and a vast pool of permanently under-employed, low-wage workers.

My work history mirrors this path quite consistently.  I got an IT support job shortly after coming out of school.  At that job, I saw so many older workers, who gave decades of their life to the company, being chucked onto the curb with little or no severance.  Old and unemployed, that is a damned hard spot for a man to be in!  Unfortunately, I had to survive multiple rounds of layoffs before I realized the nature of this game.  In modern day America, there is no job stability, there is no real “career” for the average person.  At the end of the day, I am just another “human resource”, a living component to be plugged into the system and efficiently disposed of once I am used up.   If fact, they’ll dispose of a worker in a heart beat if they can find a poor person on the other side of the planet to  do the same job for cheaper! And better yet, the same corporations would have no qualms whatsoever with starving that 3rd world person by automating his(formerly your) job with computers and robots.

I did what any sensible person would’ve done in those circumstances.  I spent my nights learning how to program and made a orthogonal jump into software development which offered more pay and security.  Many years have passed and I have kept in touch with quite a few people from my first job, enough to know what happened to that company.  Basically, they kept laying off people, until all the help-desk guys were replaced by workers in India.  Then they proceeded to outsource the web masters, the system administrators,  the database admins, until only a skeleton crew remained onshore.  Then the outsourced employees started to be let go as well.  Interactive Voice Technologies that can recognize and answer most customers’ questions started replacing the Indians (IVR is much cheaper and had no accent).  Then the entire infrastructure of computer servers, network cables, databases started moving into the “cloud” ( think of these as gigantic, largely-automated, server farms the size of football stadiums located in the middle of nowhere), and most of the remaining onshore staff was let go.  All things considered, a workforce of over 50 people was reduced to under 10 people in less than 7 years.

This transformation happened to my old line of work.  It is happening in my current trade, and quite frankly, it is a trend which is re-shaping the entire world. We are heading towards a future where the vast majority will not have steady paying work, let alone careers.  Now here is where it gets tricky…..most people in America define themselves by what they do.  Their entire self-worth and social identity is tied to a stupid title in a corporate spreadsheet.  Think about it, what is the first thing that guys ask each other at a party…..“What do you do?”  Well, if a person has nothing to do, or feel that society has no place for them, then it’s quite possible for that person to go completely postal!  We know that change is coming, and there is no easy way for us to stop it.  But we can adapt to it.  We can train our minds to deal with this brave new world.

My solution is a bit ad-hoc, but it works for me.  And it just might work for you.  Basically, I treat my productive time as a series of tasks rather than the binary state of “on the job” and “not working”.  The output of my productive time can take on the form of money, intellectual property, food/produce , non-perishable goods, favors, and pretty much all things that can help me and my family survive.

Thus, my day job, 3 different small businesses, household repairs, and gardening efforts all combine to form this long list of specific tasks that I  tackle every day.  To better organize things, I keep a little note book to write down these daily lists.  After I complete a task, I just go and check the item off.  Whatever I don’t get done in one day gets pushed to the next day.   This method is simple but highly effective, and where is why:

Your day becomes more productive!!!

Every moment that I allocate to being “productive” is actually spent doing something that has a tangible benefit to me.  For many people(certainly myself in former years), even when on the job, half the time is being wasted.  But when your tasks are ordered and prioritized you  really start to pounce on them.  As time passes, the productive part of the day gets a bit longer without you even realizing it.  Bottom line….more useful work gets done and you reap the rewards.

You get into the “flow”

There is something very organic about being focused on a task that needs to be resolved within the next couple of hours.  I get into this flow where my focus jumps from one near term objective to another all day long.  I don’t think about anything else except for what needs to be done next.  Believe it or not, this kind of “flow” is actually very positive for the human spirit.  I genuinely feel pretty good and happy at the end of every day.  A bunch of things got done and it gives me a sense of accomplishment and contentment.

Your don’t think about things beyond your immediate control

It is wise to think about the big picture every once in a while.  But I find that too many preppers think about the big issues (resource depletion, economic collapse, government tyranny…etc) WAY TOO OFTEN.  The mind creates it’s own reality and thoughts about things that we cannot personally affect or control serves to bring unnecessary stress into our lives.  And here is the rub, excessive stress is more likely to kill you than DHS storm troopers and zombies combined!  With the way I lay out my day, every single thing that I’m working on is immediately actionable.  There is very little time to think about what happens in the next 30 years when I’m purely focused on what happens in the next 30 minutes.

You no longer care about office politics

I used to care a great deal about what my co-workers thought of me.  Nowadays, I breeze through petty office politics without a scratch.  The key is focus.  By focusing on my tasks one at a time, everything becomes very tactical.  I could care less about how my boss views my performance and how that will impact my promotion up the corporate ladder in the next 2 years….etc.  I do however care very much about getting that paycheck on Monday.  This kind of focus basically allows a person to tune out the politics and crappy co-workers every day and concentrate on getting the work done.

You find productive work for yourself to do

After doing this for awhile, I got to a point where I could quantify the amount of free time that I had every day.  With a task based daily system, one will hit a point where there is nothing left to do.  Once that window of free time is known, then we can use that free time to figure out productive things to tackle.  For example, I used my free time to start my side businesses and bring in more money to the household.  I could have used the same free time to work on my preps or to expand my garden.  The key here is to convert our free time into resources or skills that enhance our survival.

So that is pretty much my rant for today.  Yes, I may not have much of a “career”, but I do have a whole bunch of things going on everyday that keeps me healthy, wealthy…and hopefully wise.  As always, comments are welcomed and appreciated!

Photo: Creative Commons/seanmcgrath

Photo: Creative Commons/Hamed Saber

As many of you know, my family and I currently reside in the New York Metro region.  As such, we live under the most draconian gun control laws in the entire country.  For all intents and purposes, citizens of New York City are banned from owning fire arms of any kind.   Here in NYC, even BB guns are considered firearms.  I’m totally serious, a person can go to jail in NYC for owning a BB gun!  Heck, a man can even go to prison for owning a knife with a blade longer than 4 inches!  So unfortunately I’ve been reduced to defending myself and my loved ones with a slingshot

NYC is as gun free as a city can possibly be, yet the streets around here are not in any way a safe place.  This city has one of the highest per capital violent crime rates in the entire country, nearly double the national average.    Now if you listen to the main stream media, it would seem as if New York is some kind of Utopian Progressive Paradise where life is better than most parts of the country.  I’m here to tell you that it is an absolute lie.   Over the course of just one weekend this past summer, 34 people were murdered in the Bronx alone, you will never see CNN broadcasting this tidbit of fact across the country.

There is widespread poverty in large parts of this metropolis.   Just about half of the population, or around 4 million people, are on some kind of government handout program.  Free food, housing, and money has a toxic effect on the human condition.  Families are broken up as women realize they can get free government benefits simply by being unmarried with children (usually with different men).

Many of the men are themselves discouraged from gainful employment and marriage by the very same laws.  If a guy works a full time menial job in the city, he would likely lose his government medicaid and food stamps.  If he got married, then his woman will lose her section 8 housing, leaving both of them homeless.  But a low-end service job would not pay him nearly enough to obtain housing and health insurance in this city.   So it makes rational economic sense for the inner-city male to form armed gangs,  impregnate several women, and live in their government supplied housing.  With ample amounts of free time on their hands, these shiftless young men have reverted to an almost savage-like state.  Now I know it would be easy to dismiss these people as a bunch of lazy parasites, and Lord knows I rant way to often about them, but that would not be the truth.  I feel that just about anyone, when placed under such stifling economic and social conditions, would soon become just like our city’s crop of hoodlums.

Now there are people in these ghettos with some self-respect.  Life is, imho, extremely difficult for such exceptional individuals.  If he manages to get a low-end service job, the government will simply dial down his benefits so that he gets the same standard of living as the rest of the non-working caste.  If he tries to improve himself, there are road blocks at every turn.  The education that he receives is atrociously bad, the corrupt NYC teacher’s union has such a strangle hold on this city that something like 1/3 of graduates from public high schools are functionally illiterate.   If by a miracle the man gets a higher paying job, his girlfriend more often than not drags him back down into poverty through bearing his child, and then milking him for child support payments for the next 18 years.  If by a string of miracles the guy finds a good woman and builds up a respectable living, chances are he would become the target of well-armed gangs and thugs in his neighborhood.  Since the man is law-abiding, NYC laws leave him with no means to defend himself with.

Knowledge, self-sufficiency, and civic virtue are all attributes of the middle class citizen.  But a place like New York city has little room for the middle class.  Instead this city seems to create a tiny elite(guarded by armed security) along with a huge defenseless underclass with almost biological efficiency.

So along with poverty, we have vast social inequality.  Being the world’s financial capitol, we have the super rich and the super poor all crammed together into 5 tiny boroughs.  Neighborhoods with million dollar homes and BMWs abut government housing projects.  Shi-shi restaurants are just blocks away from ghettos with crumbling basic infrastructure.  This volatile mixture of wealth and destitution causes immense internal pressures around here.  The welfare recipients and the working poor deeply resent the wealthy.  Anytime there is an emergency like a hurricane or a snow storm, people start looting.  And you’ll see hundreds of cops defending the rich neighborhoods as if they were citadels of some sort.

Now if one talks to people on welfare(as I have), one can quickly learn the source of their dissatisfaction.  Many of the “poor” around here believes that the rich were given their money by the government, that the only difference between the rich and the dependent class is that the rich people gets much more money.  And I have to say that in NYC, they are largely RIGHT!  The financial industry here is fundamentally a parasite on the broader economy, taking vast government bailouts while unloading their bad debts onto the backs of the citizenry.

So how is it possible for the super rich and the super poor to live in such close proximity without there being anarchy and revolution?  Well, we have what you would call a POLICE STATE here in NYC.  That’s right, when all of the citizens are disarmed, police and paramilitary forces really can do anything that they want.  At some point, state security forces simply becomes a more powerful version of local thugs, I personally believe that NYC has reached that threshold.  Here are some of the fun and fancy police actions that I encountered while living in the gun-free paradise that is NYC:

Brutal beatings of homeless people

Imaging walking down the street to work and seeing a bunch of cops brutally beating a homeless person for being on “their turf”.  I see this happening on a regular basis, not a month goes by without such a  public “example” by the NYPD.   And by being there in person, it is obvious to me that most of the beatings I saw where inflicted without cause.

Stopping and frisking of “suspicious-looking” people

I have seen this happen way too often to not write about this.  Imaging walking down the street, a cop notices you and demands that you stop and then proceeds to do a full body search.  No warrant is required for the police to do such things in NYC.  A mere-suspicion of wrong-doing is enough to justify such acts.   I have seen men attempt to resist it only to be badly beaten.  One time, an officer even pointed his pistol at a guy who refused to be searched.  The most dishonorable instance of this policy that I saw was 3 months ago when a male cop groped a young woman as he was “frisking” her.

Running all manners of extortion rackets

The police around here have all types of extortion rackets.  Sometimes they would stop a taxi cab and search the passenger supposedly for the driver’s safety, after finding nothing they give the man a summons to appear in criminal court to meet their quota and raise revenue for the corrupt criminal justice system.  Other times, they would go to small businesses along a street and demand “protection” money for not issuing tickets on that street.  Sometimes they would go as far as forcing prostitutes to give them money or provide them with free “services”.

Arbitrary murder of innocent people

This is the worst part of living in NYC.  The police around here can shoot and kill innocent people on a semi-regular basis.  And more often than not, they get away with it!!!  Even cutting off a cop car on the highway is liable to get you shot and killed around here.  Several times a year in my little borough of the city, innocent people are killed by the police.  The average citizen has nothing to defend himself with.  We have baseballs and slingshots.  The thugs have UZIs and the police are sporting fully automatic assault weapons.

So to make a long story short, the disarming of the people in NYC has left us helpless against the ravages of common criminals AND state security forces.  As if the insanity of NYC is not enough, the New York State legislature has passed yet another Gun Control law that effectively bans 95% of the semi-automatic rifles across the entire state. Now there is even talk of a NATIONAL gun ban in congress.

I am so glad that I will be leaving this city within a year.  If you are lucky enough to live in an area where honest citizens can be heavily armed…..you have a DUTY to fight for your 2nd amendment rights.  NEVER, EVER, let them take your weapons away from you.  NYC is an example of the perfect “gun-free” zone.  If you don’t want to end up defending your loved ones with a sling shot, NOW is the time to write to your elected representatives to stop this legislation!

Photo: Creative Commons/Amani Hasan

As of today, we are officially DEBT FREE!!!!!  For the first time in my entire adult life, I don’t owe anything to the bank.  We have finally escaped the evil chains of debt serfdom.  This has been a truly massive undertaking.  Over the course of 38 months, my wife and I systematically paid off $192,141 dollars of debt.  It has been a hard journey but well worth the sacrifice.

It is as if a great burden has suddenly been lifted off my shoulders.  I no longer have to pay a crushing amount of interest to the banks every month.  The total pile of disposable income available to me has ballooned.  The road to many of our future plans is now wide open.  So net net, 2013 is off to a great start.

With that said I am writing down the major goals that I want to get done this year.  I am making these goals public to keep myself accountable.  Furthermore, I feel that the macro economic/political situation in this country is deteriorating at an accelerated pace.  So I really need to step up in my preparations.  In my previous post about the performance of my 2012 goals, I mentioned that some were successfully met and others were dismal failures.  This year, I’m going to roll over some of the unmet goals and add a few more challenges, my expectation is to meet every single goal by the end of this year.  So without further ado, here are my goals for 2013:

 1.  Create 3 new passive income streams

To pay off our debts, I have been working 70-80 hours a week and it’s killing me.  Thus I have this urgent need to reduce the amount of time I spend working on my flower-gardening and teaching side jobs.   These jobs take up a huge amount of time because they require my physical presence.  I have to actually be there working X number of hours to earn Y dollars.   In effect, I need to replace the active income of these 2 side-gigs with several passive streams of income.   So one of my goals for 2013 is to create 3 additional passive income sources.  The criteria for success is that each new passive revenue stream will require less than 1 hour of my time per month to maintain and will consistently deliver at least $200/month, or a least $600/month altogether.

This will be a difficult goal to take on since the broader economy is still in the dumps.  However, I now have 2 key advantages on my side.  The first advantage is that I have already created a number of passive income streams in my attempt to pay off debts.  So the business experience, and technical skills are already in place.  Secondly, I now have the means of funding the creation of these passive income streams.  Before paying off my debts, I didn’t have the surplus income to invest, so all the work of setting up passive income had to be done by myself.  With surplus money every month, I can now outsource/automate the creation of these revenue streams.  I currently have several new income streams in the works, and I will update everyone on how these ideas are panning out.

2.  Do my car’s oil changes and brake replacements myself

Car ownership is usually one of the top 3 expenses of the average American household.  The cost of car repair has been a huge pain point for me last year and I’m all about finding self-sufficient solutions.  So several months ago, I learned how to change the car’s oil by doing it with a friend.  Very recently, I managed to rotate the car’s tires on my own which was a huge step!  So the next step in this quest is to do oil changes and brake pad installations by myself.  The big idea here is to figure out how to do 80% of a car’s regular maintenance at home, and leave the remaining 20% of the complex repair work to my auto-mechanic.  While it is difficult to be entirely self sufficient with car repairs, being 80% self-sufficient should take no more than 20% of the effort!

 3.  Adopt a 5-Day vegetarian diet

That’s right guys, I’m turning semi-vegetarian for health, economic, and security reasons.  Being a habitual carnivore, this is not an easy decision, but I simply must do this.  We know that Obamacare is coming, thus it is likely that future healthcare will not be as extensive nor as good as what we got now.  So I must take preventative measures to preserve my health.  Eating less meat greatly lowers the likelihood of heart disease.  Furthermore, by eating meat only 2 days out of the week, I can afford to buy higher quality meat such as grass-fed beef or free-range chickens, thus also lowering the risk of cancer.

Now in terms of economics, it’s a no-brainer.  Meat is ridiculously expensive right now and will become increasingly cost-prohibitive as large numbers of people from the 3rd world move up the dietary food chain.  Even 100 years ago, meat was a rare luxury that the ordinary person had just a few times every year.  It may become like this again for many Americans.  So by proactively reducing my meat intake now, I am adapting to this lifestyle early and saving some money at the same time.

Finally, there is a security aspect to this diet.  Hurricane sandy has taught me that the veneer of civilization is very thin indeed.  The ugly side of human nature made an appearance after a few days of food and fuel supply disruptions in my neighborhood.  If there is ever a large scale food crisis, people on a normal American diet would be rioting and looting in short order.  Now a diet composed largely of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains requires a much smaller amount of land to grow.  If we do have a global economic collapse in the next 5 years, it is entirely possible for me to sustain a family on such a diet with just 1-2 acres of land.  If I had to, I could scrounge up the limited amounts of animal protein through hunting, fishing, and bartering.  Vegetables and fruit bushes can also be disbursed in hard to find spots.  The average looter probably won’t recognize many of the food plants that I can grow.  So a 5-day vegetarian diet also helps with my family’s general food security.

4.  Master 2 non-firearm weapons for self defense

I’ve been living in the NYC metro area for 6 years now.  Aside from high taxes, poor infrastructure, and a corrupt municipal government, there exists a huge population of gang-bangers, druggies, and people addicted to government corn.  This is a highly unstable system, and I’m well aware of what happens when the government handouts stop.  Thus to protect my family, I can either move out of here or arm myself.  I am already planning to move out of this area, but it will be at least another year before it happens.

So in the meantime, I need to beef up my self-defense skills.  Unfortunately,there is a law banning the ownership of firearms in the NYC area.  Given that the local police are often corrupt criminals themselves, this is the most absurd law that I’ve ever had to live under!  So to defend myself, my wife and my child(and not go to prison), the next best thing is for me to master 2 non-firearm weapons.  To achieve this, I will need to do some strength training.  I haven’t yet decided on which weapons to learn, but ideally it would be a close-in weapon and something that will allow me to accurately strike at a distance.  Right now, I’m open to suggestions.

5.  Average monthly savings rate of 70% of net income

Over the last 3 years, I adopted frugality and minimalism largely as a way of saving money to pay off debts.  But as I lived this minimalist lifestyle, I gradually began to enjoy it.  There really is something beautiful about living simply and close to the earth.  It is true that happiness(or any other great change) must come from within.  Spending money on gadgets, vacations, and status symbols didn’t really make me happy.  Becoming debt free makes me happy, being married to the love of my life makes me happy, and holding my child after a long day of hard work makes me unbelievably happy!

So the best things in life really are free.   And as an added perk, once I figured out what actually makes me happy, I no longer needed to waste money on consumerist crap.  Thus my savings rate began to grow at a very rapid clip.  As I made more and more money, I actually required less and less money to live well.  This process is still on-going.  6 years ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck as a bachelor.  This past year, our family of 3 lived on less than what I made 6 years ago.  This resulted in an average savings rate of 62% for 2012, nearly all of which went towards debt repayment.  In 2013, the plan is to boost our savings rate to 70% of after-tax income.  This number may seem impossible to many people, but trust me, once you see the light, it becomes very easy to do.

So that’s pretty much it for my 2013 goals.  What are your goals for the new year?

Photo: Creative Commons/Denise Cross Photography

Photo: Creative Commons/laverrue

As another year comes to an end, it is a good time to give a performance report on how I did with my 2012 goals.  Creating goals is a key step towards actually getting important stuff done.  And evaluating the results of these goals can really help me understand not only where I succeeded but also where I crashed and burned.  This past year, I did in fact meet many of my goals, but I also failed on a number of them.

For each goal, I am going to be focusing on the following areas:

• What did I do well?
• What did I do wrong and why?
• What’s next?

1.  Lose 30 pounds through diet and exercise!  (Failed)

Due to overwork and a not so great diet, I had put on quite a few pounds by the end of last year.   So I set out the goal of loosing 30 lbs by the end of 2012.  To try to meet this goal, I increased the amount of walking that I did to around 15 miles/week.  Additionally, I cut in half the amount of red meat and increased the amount of vegetables consumed.   All of this culminated in the loss of  about 10 lbs since this time last year.   So did I meet this goal?  I would have to say no.

The trouble here is that when I cut down on the red meat, my desire for dessert consequently increased.  So I effectively substituted one unhealthy food for another.  I just couldn’t train my mind to block out the temptations of delicious foods since it’s one of the few vices that I have in an otherwise monk-like material existence.  And while I definitely made some progress on loosing weight, there is much more that I can do.  So without a doubt, further weight-loss and a healthier body will be one of my goals for 2013.

2.  Slash our family’s student debt by 50% (Succeeded)

We really knocked this one out of the park!  At this point, we are less than a month away from paying off ALL of our student debt.  What really allowed us to do this was a combination of lowering living expenses and increasing income.  In practice, just about every aspect of a person’s monthly spending can be cut to the bone.  A cell phone bill can be no more than $10/month.  Cable TV can be replaced with entirely free alternatives.  Internet, Phone, Car Insurance, Rent and other such bills can all be negotiated downwards by a substantial margin.  Grocery bills can be reduced via bulk purchases of staples as well as through eating more locally and sustainably.  The beauty of this down-shifting strategy is that we actually end up not only richer but also happier.  I have way less distractions to eat up my time now and I don’t have as much stuff to worry about on a daily basis.  On the income side, this year has been dominated by big pay raises at the day job, lucrative side-gigs, and increased passive income revenues. Our household income has grown enormously since the end of 2011, and this increased income really accelerated the debt pay off schedule.

The one pain point of paying down the debt is that it’s REALLY REALLY hard.  I had to work like a dog to make this happen.  And putting in so many 80-90 hour work weeks is really beginning to take a toll on my body.  After the debts are gone, we are thinking of saving up to get a house with some land.  We are also looking to massively ramp up our charitable donations.

3.  Pay off the rental property Mortgage (Succeeded)

As many of you know, we own a house in another state.  And by “own” I mean actually OWN it free and clear.  That’s right, we paid it off this summer.  Now the Mortgage was small, but then again the house is pretty small as well.  We were able to do this by plowing all the rent money that we received from this property against the mortgage debt.  Furthermore, I did much of the home repair work myself to save money.

Now on the flip side, our tenants have become increasingly late in paying the rent every month.  Sometimes I would get the rent 2 weeks after the beginning of the month.  This tardiness is aggravating me in more ways than one.  On the one hand, I empathize with them since they are just trying to get by and raise a family during hard times.  But on the other hand, I need to be compensated on a timely manner since the tenants are living in my house which my family has sacrificed a great deal to own.  So in terms of next steps, I need to work with our tenants to get the rent in a more timely manner.

4.  Increase my monthly small business earnings to $1000/month (Succeeded)

I totally smashed this goal in 2012.  A combination of side-jobs and passive income streams vastly exceeded the $1000 ceiling that I had set.  In my best month this year, I pulled in over $7000 in side-income after taxes.  And that was just me, if you include my dear wife’s side income, we broke $8000 that month.

The key to success with this goal was to put in an insane amount of hard word and to follow a set of small business tactics.  Essentially, I started very small with a business idea and never plowed substantial time/resources into it until the idea begins to make money.   Once the idea proves itself to be profitable, only then did I massively scale it up.  The point is to create a minimally viable product or service that people will pay for, then use the earnings to fund expansion.   While working so much did result in many late nights and lost weekends, I could have never imagined just how profitable small business income streams can be until I dove headlong into it!

However, there’s no rose without a thorn!  This year, one of my high earning income streams crashed and burned.  This is the content farming side-business that I had spent nearly 2 years slowly building up.  Essentially I wrote articles on a variety of topics on my train rides to/from work, and these articles would then be posted onto article directories such as HubPages and make money via Adsense.   I crafted hundreds of such articles and was making over $1000/month at it’s peak.  Unfortunately, Google released several updates to their search engine over the last 6 months which drastically lowered the search visibility of my articles.  These days, I’m earning less than $150/month on the same set of articles.  This just goes to show that putting all of one’s eggs in the same basket could have terrible consequences. 

Nevertheless, my small business income goal was met and exceeded this year.  I plan on continuing to build up these income streams next year with an emphasis on more passive rather than active sources of small business income.

5.  Grow 30 percent more produce from my backyard garden (Succeeded)

Using continuous cropping and bio-intensive organic gardening techniques, I was able to substantially increase the yield from my small vegetable garden.  We basically got all of our vegetables from the garden this summer.  Now by not growing staple crops such as corn or potatoes, I was able to maximize the production of succulent and leafy vegetables such as tomatoes and Swiss chard.  Since these vegetables cost much more per pound than even grains bought in bulk, we were able to save a substantial amount of money on our grocery budget.  Another added benefit of meeting this goal is that my family is now eating healthier than ever.  The next steps for this goal would be to scale it up, but to really scale up food production, I need to move to a place with more land!

6.  Learn how to change a car’s oil and rotate it’s tires (Failed)

While I did go through the motions of changing my car’s oil with the help of a friend,  I basically failed in this goal.  Even though car maintenance and repairs is an expensive and re-occurring headache for me, I just didn’t have enough time to fully absorb the lesson.  I just couldn’t find the time to learn how to change and rotate tires.  This is going to be on my priority list for next year.

7.  Hunt and fish at least once this year! (Failed)

This is a shameful failure on my part!  I have the fishing equipment in my backyard cellar.  I have my rifle and shotgun in storage.  But I just could not find enough time to do either of these things this year.  In fact, I even went as far as getting a hunting license and scheduling a hunt with extended family only to cancel it at the last minute due to a pressing work deadline.   It is a really sad fact of modern life that all of my energies this year have been devoted towards paying off debts rather than towards activities that I’m biologically designed to do.

Needless to say, hunting and fishing will be at the top of my list of stuff to do in the new year.  There can be no more delay on this since I will lose my skills in these areas if I don’t use them.

8.  Have 3000 Twitter Followers (Sort of Failed)

At last count, I have a tad over 2,200 followers on Twitter.  Yes, there were many tricks that I could have used to get followers on Twitter, but ultimately I want people to follow my site when they are genuinely interested in reading my long rants.  While this is technically a failure, I did manage to create a face book fan page, and over 600 people have subscribed to it.  Additionally, over 1000 people are subscribed to this blog’s newsletter.  So overall I think it is not such a terrible failure.  Moreover, it looks like this blog, aside from giving me stress-relief, is also providing free entertainment to several thousand other people.  So it’s  a win-win in my book!

9. Spend at least 10 hours of quality time with my wife and baby son every week (Succeeded)

I knocked this goal out of the park this year.  The one thing that I did right is to block off at least an hour every weeknight to spend with my wife and son, regardless of the circumstances.  Time with my family is worth more to me than debt freedom.  So in the coming year, my plan is to spend even more time with them.

So that pretty much sums up my performance report for 2012.  Lots of unexpected things happened, both good and bad.  But overall, I’m very happy with how this year turned out and I can’t wait to share with everyone my goals for 2013!  Have a safe and happy New Year!

Goal Post above a serene desert valley!

Photo: Creative Commons/whylogwhy

As winter approaches, I settle into a well-worn routine.  I clean up my garden beds, carefully tuck away the tools, and then proceed to put down garlic bulbs for the coming spring.  As I go about these tasks, I couldn’t help but be amazed by the ridiculous amount of food that we got from our little vegetable garden this year.   This is a piece of land that could comfortably fit inside of a small bedroom.  Yet this 200 square feet of cultivated soil has proved so fruitful that we basically didn’t buy any produce during the summer.  During the fall season, every other meal that we cooked contained some garden crops.  Even as winter descends upon our little corner of the country, my family is still eating canned tomato sauce, frozen kale, and air-dried garlic from our little garden.

Indeed, the produce of nature has bewitched and delighted my taste buds.  I’ve learned to love my vegetables in ways that few “modern” Americans can appreciate.  Home grown foods are incomparably superior in taste to the food bought from supermarkets.  My own crops are so damned delightful due to the following reasons:

• They are all organically grown, essentially made out of air, earth, and water…. assembled by sunlight
• They come in many heirloom breeds  rarely found in Supermarkets,  each with highly distinctive flavors
• They can be harvested and eaten at various stages of life, each stage offering a uniquely different taste and texture.
• Some delectable parts of crops are never even sold at Supermarkets (aka Squash Flowers, Turnip Greens)

In modern agriculture, 90% of the average American diet consists of just 4 crops: Corn, Soy, Wheat, and Rice.  All 4 of these super crops are genetically engineered and then cloned up the wazoo.   These clones are then planted in near sterile soils and fed loads of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Essentially, we are talking about a world wide mono-culture, brutally locked into place by heavy doses of fossil fuel inputs.  This ridiculous system kills the soil, pollutes the air, poisons the water, and ultimately causes resource wars all over the world!!!!   And as it’s not bad enough, the end product of all of this damage is a piece of crap to boot!  What most Americans are eating EVERY SINGLE DAY is a kind of industrial byproduct made out of petroleum residue and natural gas.  This stuff contains nothing but empty calories, eating it day in and day out will make you fat, give you diabetes, and drastically shorten your natural life span!  The fact that most people can be fooled into thinking this crap is “food” just goes to show the amazing, brain-washing capabilities of Corporate Marketing and the MSM!!!

So in my humble opinion, growing one’s own produce is about far more just getting tasty food.   It is the closest contract between a person and the natural world.  Take good care of the earth and she will return the favor!   The very act of nurturing the land and making it bloom engenders a kind of humanity and virtue within people.  Through cultivation, one learns to appreciate just how beautiful and fragile life really is.   The crops that we eat had to endure sickness, pestilence, and the fury of the elements to make it onto our dinner plates.  Thus, people should make every effort to eat every edible part of the produce that they do have.

Speaking of not wasting food, I want go into detail today about some of the edible parts of vegetables that people usually just throw away!  If you’ve spent the time to read my philosophical rant, you must know just how I feel about chucking away perfectly good food.  So to get to the point, here is a list of absolutely DELECTABLE vegetable parts that we harvest from the garden and eat on a regular basis.   These vegetable parts are awesomely yummy, very nutritious, and saving my family boatloads of money on the grocery bills, so here goes:

 1.  Pearly garlic “rounds”
During the middle of summer, garlic plants sprouts a white round flower at the top.  We harvest these “rounds” and use them in soups.  It creates a very delicate onion-like flavor with the savory hint of garlic, making any soup delicious.

2.  Broccoli leaves 
These are the leaves around each head of broccoli.  These leaves can be chopped into small pieces and used in soups, casseroles, or stir-fries.  Broccoli leaves takes a little more time to cook than most green vegetables, and they taste just like cabbages.

3.  Squash Flowers
Summer Squash is a highly versatile plant and almost entirely edible.  The orange “male” flower is perfect for harvesting and dipping in beer batter and then frying or baking.  There is this very pleasant flavor in the flesh of these flowers that is quite unlike any other vegetable that I’ve ever had.  One thing that I always make sure to do though is to dust the male flower over the female flowers before harvesting.  This ensures that the female flowers are pollinated and thus subsequently produce squash for us.

4.  Garlic Greens
The stems and leaves of garlic plants are incredibly flavorful.  It can be used to condition the taste of food in the same way that we use onions and garlic bulbs.  Moreover, since garlic plants can grow to a huge size, the stem and leaves can be used as a green vegetable in their own right.  One tip on the preparations of garlic greens.  If you cut them when the garlic is young, you can continue to harvest these tender garlic greens several times in the Spring.  If however, you wait until the garlic round comes out(early summer) before cutting, then the greens will be much tougher and you’ll need to slice it super thin and cook it for much longer.

5.  Sweet Corn Stalks
Most people consider the stalks of sweet corn to be a kind of bio-waste.  There are even government-funded schemes to convert these corn stalks into bio-fuels.  However, the best use I’ve found for these wonderful things is to eat them.  In the late summer, you can cut a section of sweet corn stalk and chew it just like a piece of sugar cane.

6.  Summer Squash leaves and stems
The tender leaves and stems of Summer Squash plants are quite delectable.  Their only drawbacks are these little spikes that seems to coat the entire plant.  The thing to remember here is to always harvest the smaller leaves and stems and leave the big, tough ones alone.  First, we tenderize these greens by soaking them in a bowl of salty water for an hour.  Then we would pick out the spikes along the stems and leaves.  Each leaf looks as if there are hundreds of spikes, but removing them is surprisingly easy.  After doing this for awhile, I can de-spike an entire squash leaf every second.  Cooked summer squash leaves and stems taste very much like Kale.

7.  Pumpkin Seeds
When carving a pumpkin for Halloween or Thanksgiving, make sure to save all the seeds.  These seeds can be placed in a lightly oiled baking pan with a pinch of salt and roasted at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.  The roasted pumpkin seeds taste just like pistachios, only smoother and richer.

8.  Pea shoots
The green stems of Pea plants are an incredible tasty delicacy in many Asian cuisines.   So in the early summer we harvested a whole bunch of pea shoots right after getting the tender young peas.   One should make sure to only harvest the young pea shoots, because the older ones can be quite tough. Pea shoots can be boiled or stir-fried with some garlic and olive oil.  They taste a lot like spinach, only with a firmer texture to it.

9.  Turnip Greens 
The green tops of turnips are extremely delicious.  The trick here is to cook it a bit longer than normal green vegetables so that it becomes tender.  The flavor of turnip greens can be very much like a spicy kind of watercress.

10.  Cauliflower Leaves
These are the broad green leaves that grow around the heads of a cauliflower plant.  Most people only get to eat the Cauliflower heads because these heads can be easily stored and transported.  The greens on the other hand shrivels up very quickly after harvest, so they must be eaten the day that they are harvested.  Now the taste of Cauliflower leaves are quite amazing, just imagine eating insanely smooth and velvety cabbage leaves, that’s what cauliflower leaves taste like.

11.  Carrot Tops
The green tops of carrots can be diced very finely and added to soups and stews.  Carrot tops have this sweet citrus-like flavor that goes very well with tomatoes for some reason.  I tend to use carrot tops in moderation.  Add too much of it and the entire dish can take on a strange medicine-like flavor.

12.  Beet Greens
The green leaves on the tops of beets can be harvested, boiled, and eaten.   The texture is quite similar to that of Kolrabi.   It has this bitter-sweetness to the flavor, and it can be very pleasant.

So these are the vegetable parts that my family eats on a regular basis.  It keeps us healthy, it saves us money, and most importantly of all, it connects us with the good earth from which we came and to which we will all eventually go!  As always comments are welcomed and appreciated!

Photo: Creative Commons

Photo: Creative Commons/Philip Taylor

For more than two and a half years, my wife and I have been doing our utmost to pay off a giant mountain of debt.  Through a combination of extreme industry and monk-like frugality, we were able to dramatically reduce our overall debts, month after month, year after year.  Our efforts have not been in vain.   If the economy manages to keep itself together, the $192,141 dollars of debt that we started with should be entirely paid off in just a couple of months!  You can find all the gory details of our debt paying Odyssey in my microblog.

With the end of this milestone in sight, I am pondering my next moves.  Up to this point, my entire adult life has been that of a debt slave.  Ever since I turned 18 and went to college, I have always owed money to the banks and/or the government.  So becoming debt free is a very interesting and novel situation for me.  Paying off our debts will free up a huge amount of income, well over $10,000 dollars a month.  The extra money, if used appropriately, can permanently insulate my loved ones from another major economic crash.  It can help us build a bright future for our little son.  Conversely, this lump of disposable income could just as easily be wasted on useless consumer goods and vacations.  Without careful planning and execution, all of our sacrifices so far could come undone.  So the question in my mind is how to deploy this extra income to maximum effect.

After researching this topic for awhile, I have created a rough road map of the high level goals that I need to pursue once the debt has been paid off.  I’m going to share these objectives with everyone today for two reasons.  The first reason is that by making these goals public, readers can help me be accountable.  Secondly, the debt free life is truly a kind of undiscovered country for us, so we are extremely open to practical advice.  I’m sure that there are readers out there who has rid themselves of debt long ago, thus any suggestions from you guys would be deeply appreciated!

So without further ado, here are the big goals that I am going to tackle once the debts are paid off:

 1.  Build up a 6 month emergency fund

Ever since the first round of mass layoffs at my day job in 2008, I’ve been preparing for the day that I would be cut from the corporate pay rolls.  An integral part of this preparation was to create several income streams on the side.  This side income can now more than cover our living expenses if I lost my day job.  Nevertheless it might be possible for an expensive health issue AND a job loss to come at the same time.  So it still makes sense to have an emergency fund that can cover 6 months of our living expenses.  Right now, our fund can only cover around 2 months.  Increasing this fund to cover 6 months of expenses will take less than 2 months worth of savings after becoming debt free.

2.  Buy a house with some land

This is one of my top priorities after the debts have been paid off.  Right now the rent in the NYC metro region is still ridiculously high.  Every month, we pay a staggering $1,500 dollars  for a small 2 bedroom apartment, a parking space, and a 400 square feet backyard.  This is a huge amount of money that I need to shell out every month just to keep a roof over our heads.  Yet within a one hour train ride of my workplace, there are houses that are selling for well under $200,000 dollars.  So it is entirely feasible for us to purchase a modest -sized  single family house with an acre of land for around $180,000 dollars.  Saving up the money to buy such a house with no mortgage would take us a little over a year after becoming debt free.

Getting a house to live in can save us far more than just rent.  With such a house, our family can become semi self-sufficient.  All of our fruits and vegetables can be grown locally using intensive organic gardening techniques.  The greater portion of our meat consumption can be met via hunting.  We would also realize massive savings on our energy and auto insurance bills due to living further away from the city.  A garage would give me enough space to set up a small workshop where I can make repairs on our bicycles and cars, further cutting down on monthly expenses.

A house further away from the core of NYC also offers an added degree of security.  During the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, things were getting quite ugly in my little corner of the city. Disruptions in the supply of food and gasoline caused fist fights to break out on the street near my current home.   And the worst thing about it is that ordinary citizens are not allowed to own guns in NYC!!!  I can totally see these disruptions increasing in the years ahead.   So if we were to move outside of the city, I would be able to take my firearms out of storage and better protect my family from hoodlums and looters!

3.  Shift all active side-income sources to passive income ones

As many of you may know, I work in IT and my wife teaches children with special needs.   Neither of us make huge amounts of money from our day jobs.  We are able to pay down our debt so quickly because of our various side income streams.  As such, I get a giant chunk of that side income by growing flowers for rich people and by teaching night classes on Skillshare.  Doing these side jobs have allowed me to consistently pull in thousands of extra dollars every month.  While this is a good approach for paying down debts, it also forces me to work a brutal 80-90 hours every week.  And in the past 2 years, my body has become increasingly worn out by such high workloads.

I’m getting sick way more frequently now than I ever did 5 years ago, so this active approach to making extra money is just not sustainable in the long run.  Thankfully, some of our side income streams are passive in nature.  I own a small rental property, I sell apps and software components on the internet, and my wife gets a nice little income from her ebooks.   The big goal here is to make as much money every month as we do now without me breaking my back to do so.  This will involve massively increasing the amount of money we make via passive income sources while greatly reducing the amount that we earn via active ones.  After our debts are paid off, we will be able to deploy some of the extra money every month towards this goal.  I already have several additional passive income ideas in the works.  These ideas involve using more automation technologies, outsourcing more of my online work, and investing much more into revenue generating financial assets!

4.  Boost monthly savings rate to 70%

The average American family saved just 2.6% of their after-tax income last year.  This is an atrociously low savings rate and it speaks volumes about why so many American families are in dire financial straits these days.  Here at the Thriving Admist Collapse family, we took a road less traveled.  If the money applied towards our debt last year is counted as a part of our savings, then we achieved a net savings rate of 61.2% of income in 2011.  While we achieved this high savings rate by greatly expanding our income beyond just our day jobs.  We also did it by cutting our expenses to the bone.  Over time, I’m beginning to realize that I need less and less material things to live a happy life.  As my wife and I shed our consumerist habits and embrace a minimalist lifestyle, our monthly savings rate just keeps going up.  Stuff that we thought we could not live without 2 years ago seem entirely unnecessary today.  After our debts are paid off, the plan is to continue paring away stuff that we do not truly need, and in doing so, boost our net savings rate to above 70% every month.

5.  Donate 3% of net income to charity

With the debts nearly paid off, my little family is decisively moving from a state of hardship to one of prosperity and advancement.  Yes, I live frugally.  Yes, I worked hard and made great sacrifices for what I have.   But let’s face it, I have also been EXTREMELY LUCKY to get this far.  I am blessed with responsible parents who taught me vital life lessons such as being frugal, having a strong work ethic, and maintaining strong family ties.  I was lucky enough to keep working in my day job through several economically turbulent years while millions of equally qualified people were laid off.  I am extraordinarily fortunate to find a loving wife who is willing to be just as thrifty as I am.  Finally, I have been gifted with good health.  I haven’t gotten a major medical condition yet and with the insane number of hours that I’ve been working, it is a true blessing.

So once our debts are paid off, it really makes sense for us to give more back to the community. The plan is to dedicate 3% of our after-tax income to this goal.  Right now, I am thinking that 1% will go towards our church, 1% will go towards charities for the poor, and the last percent will be contributed towards educational endowments.

So these are my major goals for when the debts are paid off.  I am sure there are many other worthwhile objectives that debt-free families can devote their resources to.  These are just ones that I can think of at the comment.  If any of you readers have been there, done that,and have good advice to share, please do leave a comment!

Photo: Creative Commons/Ben Fredericson

Photo: Creative Commons/JD Hancock

As many of you know, my family and I are in debt. Like most families in America, we unwittingly trapped ourselves into this situation and must dig our way out of it. So for the last 2 years, we have been doing everything in our power to cast off the shackles of debt slavery. And the single most important weapon we brought to the fight is our ability to lower living expenses.

If a person can drastically lower the amount of money needed every month to get by, then the surplus can all be applied towards reducing debt. Now if we looked at the average American’s spending profile, it’s abundantly clear that there is a lot of fat to cut. Collectively we have been brainwashed by modern consumerist culture to waste incredible amounts of money each and every month on worthless plastic junk.

Cutting the fat is quite easy once you recognize it for what it is. It is easy to skip eating at restaurants, when you see the damage it does to your future. It is trivial to avoid upgrading to a giant flat-screen TV, when you realize it’s just an energy-hogging brain-washing device. A man with even a moderate amount of self-discipline will be able to cut out most of his discretionary spending without too many difficulties. So within a short period of time, I had trimmed out just about all the fat that could be removed from my monthly budget.

Once the unnecessary discretionary spending have been cut however, all that is left are essential services, stuff that we need to survive. At this point, reducing your living expenses further requires a degree of surgical precision. Anything essential that you cut may harm you in the long run. Thus, the only way I could cut my costs further is by negotiating down the price of these essential purchases. Over the course of many months, I have gathered a bag of negotiation tricks that basically allowed me to bring down the costs of just about everything that I absolutely need to buy on a regular basis. I apply these tricks when I need to purchase just about anything, and especially for re-occurring expenses. These techniques are saving me several hundred dollars a month, so here goes:

1. Ask for discounts.

The first step to a price reduction is to just ask. A lot of essential goods and services are occasionally discounted due to excess inventory or unexpected local competition. For re-occurring monthly expenses it’s always a good idea to check for special offers or deals every couple of months. If you are a long term customer, be sure to mention that. A lot of companies will give you a special offer discount reserved for new customers if they think that giving you the deal now will keep you with them for another 5 years. It is important to always be nice and polite when asking. Everything goes down easier with honey….

2. Sign up for bundled offers

Many times you can get a discount by simply bundling multiple services under the same provider company. Its great for the company providing you with the bundled package because they get more business from you. Its awesome for you since you are paying less money. For example bundling your car insurance and home insurance with the same company will usually reduce the cost of both packages. Getting your home phone and Internet service from the same ISP would usually give you a very nice 10-20% overall price reduction.  However, this tactic can be a double-edged sword.  A lot of times companies bundle unnecessary services with essential ones and you might end up over paying.

3. Pick Ala carte deals

Many essential things that we require are bundled together with other non-essential services. Many times, if we can get the service just by itself, we can save substantial amounts of money. The classic example is the Triple-play packages that Cable companies offer. For a fixed amount of money you can get Internet, Phone, and Cable TV. Now the Internet is an important and necessary communications tool in my opinion.  But Cable TV is unnecessary, since you can buy an internet video streaming device, plug it into the TV, and get hundreds of channels for free.

The difficulty with Ala carte options is that businesses will often make it difficult for you to pick just the essential options. I had to endure literally half a dozen attempts by my cable provider to get me to keep my triple play package before they finally relented. The trick is to be polite and insistent about it.

4. Offer to do them a favor or two

Many times, you can get something for cheaper by offering to do something to the provider of that essential product or service.  If you scratch their back they will usually scratch yours.  One example would be car insurance.  If you take a defensive driving course, your insurance provider must slash your rates by 10%.  The same principle can be applied to other things like rent and even groceries.  I take care of the drive way for my current Landlady during the winter time, and in exchange I get a permanent parking spot which around here goes for $50-$100 a month.  When buying food at the farmer’s market, I made a deal with a local Dairy farmer.  I update his website twice a year and I get a gallon of free organic milk every week.

I always make sure to be super polite when negotiating this.  Depending on the mood of the other person you can make out like a bandit with this tactic.  The key aspect of such exchanges is relative value.  What you offer to do in exchange for the price reduction must be worth LESS to you than the money you are saving and the same goes for the other side.  In the case of the parking spot, for less than 5 hours of work a year shoveling snow out of the driveway, I’m getting about $1000 worth of parking.  Now I don’t know about you, but $200/hr tax free is a pretty good salary for me!!!

5. Threaten to take your business to the competition

This tactic can be used in lots of places. Everything from internet service bills to your rent to Auto repair expenses can be substantially reduced with a well placed threat. Before you threaten however, make sure to do some research. First you need to figure out the cheapest price for the given product or service in your local area. If what you are paying is already the cheapest price in your local neighborhood, then broaden your search until you find another business who offers the same service for 10-20% less. This competitor does not actually need to be operating in your neighborhood for this tactic to work.

Once you found a cheaper competitor somewhere, all you need to do is mention that you’re thinking of taking your business to that competitor and half the time you’ll get 10-20% discount from your current provider. In these hard times, many business are running on slim margins so they cannot afford to lose long term customers. Even if a cheaper competitor is not yet doing business in the area, your current company cannot easily rule out the possibility of that happening. So as long as your demand is reasonable, most of the time you’ll get an immediate price reduction.

6. Go into desperation mode

This is like the nuclear weapon of negotiating tactics. It should only be applied when all else fails. And even then it doesn’t always work. Pulling this trick off requires a very thick skin. Basically you need to convince the other person that you got nothing left to loose.

Several years ago, in the early days of the great recession, I lost my landscaping business. My day job was laying off droves of people and my work hours were reduced. I had just met my wife at that time and we were still in the dating phase. So I was saddled with high interest student loans and a small commercial loan for my failed business with not much money coming in. It got so bad that I had trouble feeding myself and was unnaturally thin. Thus I had to demand that my already low rent be further reduced. Of course the landlord wouldn’t budge. So I threatened to put my stuff into storage, and go live in my car parked on the street in front of his house!  Keep in mind that most normal people are scared of big guys who appear desperate. In my case it worked. That landlord lowered my monthly rent by $200!

With these negotiating techniques, I’ve managed to shave hundreds of dollars off our monthly budget.  At the end of the day, money is hard to come by.  So it’s all about getting the most out of the limited resources that we do have.  Have money saving negotiation tips of your own?  Please share it with us by leaving a comment!

Photo: Creative Commons/jean-louis zimmermann

Photo: Creative Commons/ Sister72

Hurricane Sandy was one hell of a storm.  This city has never suffered such a huge blow.  Plenty of my friends are still without power and heat.  Some of my friends had to evacuate their homes.  And 2 of my friends lost everything they had due to the massive flooding here in the NYC metro region.

Thankfully, our household survived the storm entirely unscathed.  My house was one of two on the entire block that didn’t lose power.  In fact, even during the most dangerous period of the hurricane, we still had internet access.  So over the last 4 days, many things have happened in NYC, and a lot of it is unreported by the national news.  Watching CNN or NBC today is like tuning into Government Propaganda channels.  They are all showing how this “recovery” is swiftly progressing and how evacuated people are living in hotels and such.  The local news channels are providing a much more accurate assessment of the situation.  This entire metro region is crippled, and will be for months.

While God has really blessed us during this trying time, we are safe, we have electricity, and we have food.  Thus, it is my privilege and honor to give everybody a little snapshot of what is actually happening on the ground here in NYC.  Perhaps it might serve as a kind of reality check to the whole “recovery” story that the MSM is selling these days.

Millions of people without power for the last 5 days

All of lower Manhattan, most of Staten Island, half of Queens, and large parts of Jersey City have been in the dark for at least 5 days.  This is becoming a huge problem for high rises where the lack of electricity translates directly into the lack of drinking water, heating, and flush toilets.  I’ve already heard that many elderly people living in these high rises are becoming sick due to the sheer amount of raw sewage that has accumulated in some of these buildings.  A co-worker of mine mentioned that sanitation is becoming such a huge problem in his neighborhood that people are beginning to dump buckets of human waste onto the streets.   Moreover, night time temperatures have dropped sharply over the last couple of days.  Without heating, many young, elderly and disabled people are at risk of exposure.

We have opened our home to friends and family for the time being.  And several have already come to recharge their phones and laptops as well as to take hot showers.  Surprisingly enough, the Mayor of NYC has requested that everyone go back to work and get on with their lives.  But it’s quite impossible when we are literally living in the dark and have no public transportation.

Millions of people still without transportation

Public transportation is way cheaper than owning a car, but when it goes down, suddenly millions of people become trapped.  In the short term, they can’t escape the city.  In the slightly longer term, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs because of this.  In this horribly bad economy, you can’t NOT go to work for a week and still expect to remain employed.  I’m ridiculously thankful that my job can be done remotely from home.  If not, I’m sure I would’ve been given the pink slip by now.

Supermarkets still have bare shelves

Even in my neighborhood where the damage has been minimal, there are quite a few bare shelves at the local supermarket.  Just-in-time delivery insures that Supermarkets only carry 1-2 days worth of food.  So in the hardest hit areas, the Supermarkets have literally run out of food.  It’s gotten so bad that people are eating out of dumpsters to survive.

Looters are cropping up everywhere

If you watch ABC or NBC, the impression given is that there are like 10 looters in the entire city.  The reality is that WAY more looting is happening here than TV would have us believe.  Several of my friends in Hoboken saw BANDS of looters ransacking parts of the city that were flooded.  Some co-workers living in Queens mentioned that large groups of people are ransacking flooded stores after dark.  In no way is looting a small scale phenomenon, at this point, it’s widespread in Queens, Jersey, and parts of Staten Island.

And now we’re running out of gasoline

The ThrivingAdmistCollapse household is in a bit of a pickle at the moment.  There are massive gasoline shortages in my part of the city, leading to mile-long gas lines.  And while, we have a full tank of gas in the car, we can’t just flee the city.  We still need to make it to work everyday to pay the bills, pay the debts, and not get laid off!!!

Moreover, this catastrophe have brought many unsavory people to my part of the city.  In fact, over the last 2 days, many people from the South Bronx have been walking around my neighborhood.   Now I’m not saying that all people from the South Bronx are dangerous, BUT many of the ones walking around here look like thugs.  And there have already been fist fights on my street over gas!  So I’m not sure just how stable the situation in my neighborhood really is.  Today, there was a 2 mile long line of cars waiting for gas stretched along my street.  After 10 hours of this madness, apparently the gas station ran out of petro and police cars came to disperse the crowd.  It was pretty horrible.  So for all intent and purposes, we are stuck in the city for now.

Hopefully, deliveries of food and gasoline supplies will stabilize soon.  In the meantime, my family will weather this situation and come out all the stronger!

Photo: Creative Commons/ MTAPhotos