You, too, can weather the economic storm

With cur­rent eco­nomic down­turns and fis­cal crises on the minds of most work­ing peo­ple, there are a few sub­tle steps you can take when times get really tight. In our soci­ety, it’s not a secret that goods and ser­vices once thought to be a lux­ury have become a cur­rent stan­dard of our lifestyle. Can we sur­vive liv­ing within a new means with­out sac­ri­fic­ing our hap­pi­ness? We most cer­tainly can, and can pos­si­bly even increase our hap­pi­ness.

Devalu­ing the Boob Tube

There was a day, when you may not have had cable or satel­lite tele­vi­sion. Now you rely on this lux­ury as the main form of enter­tain­ment in your home. Have you for­got­ten you could be just as happy play­ing a game of cards with friends and fam­ily or by dust­ing off those old board games? Stage a fun scav­enger hunt or a mys­tery for your fam­ily to solve (think fun, not sus­pense). Many have for­got­ten the joy of read­ing a book. If you still want to get a fix for real­ity, cre­ate your own show with that miniDV you bought a few years back and haven’t used!

Sav­ing the Planet While Sav­ing Money

When I was a kid, you could drink water from a hose in the back­yard or even the kitchen sink, but for years peo­ple have been brain­washed into believ­ing that bot­tled water is really bet­ter for them. Now I don’t want to start an eco-rant about plas­tic bot­tles, but it does bear men­tion­ing that peo­ple do not think about the ben­e­fits of slight impu­ri­ties in our water. Germs can actu­ally be ben­e­fi­cial in help­ing us keep and build a stronger immune sys­tem. If you’re like me, you can always fill an old milk jug with water and keep it in the refrig­er­a­tor; the illu­sion of cold water may help you believe that it’s bet­ter just because it’s colder! Speak­ing of tem­per­a­ture, grow­ing up it was like a hol­i­day at my house when dad turned on the air con­di­tioner. Now we do it when the tem­per­a­ture gets up around 75 degrees. Today too many peo­ple go from heat­ing to cool­ing with the chang­ing sea­sons and neglect to open their win­dows to let fresh air indoors.

Reduc­ing Trips to Increase Cash

Gone are the days of the gas-guzzlers. Of course com­mut­ing is a big deal with the high cost of petro­leum in the world mar­ket. Some com­mon sense could be plan­ning your daily route to include other activ­i­ties and stops so you aren’t mak­ing need­less trips. Let’s say that tomor­row you have to go to the office and the gro­cery store, oh and pick up a gift for the Jones’ anniver­sary. That used to be three sep­a­rate trips before the gas prices went com­pletely hay­wire. Now it’s basi­cally head­ing into the office and on the ride home pick up that DVD boxed set for the Jones’ before your trip to the gro­cery store, finally you’re head­ing to your doorstep with your hands full and a feel­ing that you may have saved a few bucks. Instead of dri­ving down the block to grab that candy bar you’ve been crav­ing, take a walk or ride a bike. This of course has a two-pronged set of results, you’re sav­ing some money on gas and burn­ing a cou­ple calo­ries to help burn off that candy bar you just picked up.

Tech­ni­cally Speaking

So what about our tech­ni­cal devices, can we save money while keep­ing our home office run­ning smoothly? A lot of my friends have beefed up home offices, from the lap­top to mul­ti­ple dis­plays to print­ers and backup dri­ves, and don’t for­get that desk lamp. I try to fol­low sim­ple logic in my home office, if I’m on the com­puter, I should be doing some­thing pro­duc­tive that leads to profit. When I’m not, the Pow­er­mac is asleep and mon­i­tors are not only off, but unplugged along with my printer. A few years ago I started read­ing up on how to live more green and I was aston­ished to learn that even if my devices were turned off, they were still draw­ing a slight cur­rent. Now day-to-day or week-to-week these tricks may not appear to put a dent in costs, but if worked up on the yearly bud­get it can make a difference.

Home Office Can Be Less Taxing

In addi­tion to these changes, take advan­tage of tax write-offs that can net in a slightly bet­ter return at tax time. If you check your work email or have to get those copy changes to your PM, you can write off a por­tion of your broad­band or even some of that elec­tri­cal bill. You just have to remem­ber not to get greedy about it, or your friendly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice may pay you a visit. Other log­i­cal write-offs can come in form of print­ing sup­plies, and that new Mac­Book or what­not you’ve had your eye on.

With that said, this is still a very small tip of the ice­berg. I’m hop­ing to open a dia­log for peo­ple to share ideas so that we all might live a lit­tle bet­ter. Be sure to com­ment and see what oth­ers may have shared.