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I'm really buckling down to get my debt (one credit card and car loan) paid off. I need some inspiration.
Please share lessons older relatives have shared from living through the Great Depression, including food/recipes.
Thanks!
If something is free, take it if it's usable. My father-in-law used to love to go to car dealership openings. He'd get a cap or T-shirt and a couple of hot dogs or whatever they were serving. A couple of years ago, my son picked up a large stainless steel gas grill by the side of the road. It worked! He cleaned it, made a small repair, and now has a very nice grill. When it kicks, he'll take it to the salvage place and get a few dollars.
My grandmother saved string and had a button tin. There were some beautiful buttons in that tin--horn, Bakelite... I wouldn't bother these days.
......TV. The ads are constantly trying to get you to part with your money for things you didn't even know you wanted and probably don't need.
But, the commercial breaks are when I do my dishes, feed the dogs, do laundry,clip the dog's toenails, and do chores I hate to do, so I do them in small batches, like filing receipts for income tax.
Some of the advice is useful but some would be outdated. Food and clothing were more expensive back then, but housing was less and transportation not as burdensome. You might argue transportation is less important when you have no job to get to, but you need to get to interviews and the part time job you might get.
I think people are projecting 2015 onto the 1930's.
My parents were both depression kids and grew up poor.
Nobody had an automobile or maybe one very used car. That was a huge luxury. You took public transportation everywhere. Most poor people lived in urban areas where they had access to public transportation or rural areas where they could grow their own food. The suburbs mostly didn't exist.
"Entertainment" was listening to the radio or taking a book out of the library. A movie was an occasional luxury.
You heated your apartment or tiny home with a coal stove because that was the cheapest energy source.
A family of 5 would jam into 2 or maybe 3 bedrooms and typically less than 1000 square feet.
Meat on the table didn't happen every day. Lots of potatoes. Eggs as a protein source. A restaurant meal was simply out of the question.
Children wore hand-me-downs. If it ripped, it got mended.
I guess the "lesson" is that you can get by without any of the modern conveniences if you really have to. I kind of like central heat, the internet and my laptop computer, my smartphone, my reliable automobile, and a refrigerator/freezer/pantry stocked with food I didn't have to grow myself. I could get by just fine with a 350 square foot studio apartment, public transportation, and a nearby library.
My Mom was born in 1921, so grew up in the depression, in the upper Midwest. One thing she told me was it really didn't matter if you had money, because there simply was nothing to buy. So, perhaps living like there was nothing to buy would work now.
Yeah, I forgot about that. My mother owned a darning egg for darning the holes in socks. She never used it, but her own mother used it to keep socks going for another year or two. I was taught to sew and mend, and I still do those things.
I save a very few of my old clothes for rags, but my mother wore things until they were threadbare and then they went into the "rag bag" where they were repurposed. All buttons were cut off and saved and reused.
I was taught to knit, but, quite honestly, it is a heck of a lot cheaper to buy a knit item from Pakistan than it is to buy yarn to knit your own. That's an economy that is past its sell-by date. That's true of sewing your own clothing unless what you are making is a specialty item that involves specialized sewing skills.
Yeah, I forgot about that. My mother owned a darning egg for darning the holes in socks. She never used it, but her own mother used it to keep socks going for another year or two. I was taught to sew and mend, and I still do those things.
I save a very few of my old clothes for rags, but my mother wore things until they were threadbare and then they went into the "rag bag" where they were repurposed. All buttons were cut off and saved and reused.
I was taught to knit, but, quite honestly, it is a heck of a lot cheaper to buy a knit item from Pakistan than it is to buy yarn to knit your own. That's an economy that is past its sell-by date. That's true of sewing your own clothing unless what you are making is a specialty item that involves specialized sewing skills.
Same with my mother--darning egg kept socks mended, clothing was patched and mended. No one threw pants out just because the knees were worn through; you made a patch and sewed it onto the knees. Old clothes were cut up and put into the rag bag. Do people really buy cleaning rags? I still just use torn up cotton sheets or torn soft men's undershirts, cut into squares.
They did knit a lot in those days and today you can still buy yarn cheap on ebay or in thrift stores. My mother used to unravel knit clothing to get the yarn. (She didn't really NEED to, but it was a habit left over from the Great Depression.) Quilts were a way of making do. You cut up old clothing into squares and stitched them together. You could use old cloth flour sacks stitched together for the backing and inside, for warmth, an old blanket. I'm not a quilter but it would make a great winter project.
I'm really buckling down to get my debt (one credit card and car loan) paid off. I need some inspiration.
Please share lessons older relatives have shared from living through the Great Depression, including food/recipes.
Thanks!
I think Mr. Money Mustache and The Frugalwoods can teach you a lot about this stuff:
Both of these blogger households:
--Practically never eat out (as in, a few times a year).
--Learned to cut their own hair.
--Share one vehicle between a married couple, bought with cash used.
--Ride bikes as much as they can, even in the snow.
--Shop for groceries very carefully.
--Shopped very carefully for their homes and took out mortgages for far less than what they qualified for.
--Don't spend money on entertainment and generally de-emphasize or completely shun watching TV & movies in favor of going out to local free festivals, being in nature, going to the library, etc.
--They generally don't buy many things and the things they do buy they try to buy first before they consider buying new (clothes, furniture, cars, etc.)
Todd Tressider talks about how the first rule of building wealth is to get deeply motivated. External motivations like getting rich to brag to other people or so you can buy a lot of stuff generally don't work in the long run and leave people feeling hollow in the rare instances when they do work. Internal motivators such as valuing the environment, wanting to leave money to charity, or wanting the flexibility to be able to walk away from the 9-5 grind tend to be much more motivating in the long run:
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 10-24-2015 at 06:16 PM..
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