What are you doing to protect yourself against inflation?

[toypusher]

Hi Kerry,

We do use forescent's but they are those long ones on the ceiling, just not the lamps. I will take a second look at them though. I'm all for saving energy and $$.

You can even get 3-ways now. We use them in all of our 3-way lamps and the lighting is good.

[Fenlason]

Great thread Mike

Most of ours is not recent.. but we live in a passive solar underground home... that is paid for. We have no kids and make more than we spend. We don't have cable tv.. and no cell phone. No furnace. No need for cooling. We don't have much for bills.

Not eating much of anything out of a box or can... it is hard to stock up much on food. We don't currently have a garden but would like to think about that again. That would be more of a food quality issue vs primarily a financial one though.

I did change vehicles a couple of years ago.. almost doubling my mileage. Our jobs are close by so nessisary driving is minimal.

glenn

[CAJUN LADY]

Great thread Mike

Most of ours is not recent.. but we live in a passive solar underground home... that is paid for. We have no kids and make more than we spend. We don't have cable tv.. and no cell phone. No furnace. No need for cooling. We don't have much for bills.

Not eating much of anything out of a box or can... it is hard to stock up much on food. We don't currently have a garden but would like to think about that again. That would be more of a food quality issue vs primarily a financial one though.

I did change vehicles a couple of years ago.. almost doubling my mileage. Our jobs are close by so nessisary driving is minimal.

glenn

Glenn:
What is a 'passive solar underground home'? Did you build it and is it completely underground...meaning is the roof dirt? I've seen those before and thought they were so cool. Do you have pictures you could share?

[Fenlason]

Hello Becca:

Yes we built it ourselves [still building it]. Sorry no pictures.

It is dome shaped. It sort of looks like a cartoon igloo, except the side opposite the entrance "tunnel" is cut off, so that side is flat. It is built into the top side of a hill. The south side is the cut off side of the igloo. It is all glass. The house is two stories. There is dirt on the roof. At the very top where it is the thinnest there is 2 feet.

We enter onto the top floor.. which is level with the driveway on that side. [there are retaining walls to hold back the dirt on the "roof"]

Upstairs is the Living spaces... kitchen, living, and dining rooms. Downstairs which opens to ground level on the south side.. is the bedroom, bathroom, laundry, and gym.

Every room has as much if not more light than a typical home, with the exception of a storage room under that entrance tunnel.

The house is quiet, quite storm proof. and easy to heat, and cool. In the summer the bedroom never gets above 70. With the structure of the house being made of concrete and steel. It has a lot of thermal mass. Without sufficient thermal mass passive solar houses overheat when the sun is shining and then cool of quickly once it is gone.

With good sunshine I can go several days in the middle of a Maine winter.. with no supplemental heat.

glenn

[swissarmygirl]

Wow Glenn, that's very impressive!
We still want pictures though!

[elmo]

Hey Glenn...if you got some pictures you can email them to me and I can post them up for you!!

[CAJUN LADY]

Ditto...pretty impressive Glenn.

[asianflava]

Nice car! what was wrong with it? you definately did the right thing hanging on to it. I had a 88 CRX, and a 90 4dr civic... loved and miss both of 'em.

Thanks!

After I swapped the engine for a twin cam Japanese engine, I drove it around for a year. Then one day I lost the clutch. I had to drive it with no clutch. Driving wasn't the hard part, having to stop and start in gear was. It kind of got back burnered after that. With our move now eminent, I had to get it running because they will only move cars that are running.

[Fenlason]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

[swissarmygirl]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

I've heard that you can get a decent one, fairly inexpensive these days.

[Miriam C.]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

Hey Glen if you can operate a puter you can operate a camera. You can also get Wally World/or others, to put them on a disc.

[Fenlason]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

I've heard that you can get a decent one, fairly inexpensive these days.

Yes I just have NO IDEA what to get.. then there is the learning how to use it.. if it is compatable with my computor and operating system.. and so on...

[Fenlason]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

Hey Glen if you can operate a puter you can operate a camera. You can also get Wally World/or others, to put them on a disc.

I am so -so with my computor.. remember how slow I was to figure out even the quote thing

[Miriam C.]

Thankyou Lisa and Becca.
Elmo it is not a matter of figuring out how to post them.. I don't have any digital pictures.

We have been talking of getting a camera.. but I don't know anything about them at all..

glenn

Hey Glen if you can operate a puter you can operate a camera. You can also get Wally World/or others, to put them on a disc.

I am so -so with my computor.. remember how slow I was to figure out even the quote thing

Well if no one tells you how---how ya gonna know. Digital camera's are as complicated or as simple as you want. The guys at the stores will give you information. That is unless you go to Wally World.

[caseydog]

Inflation is spiraling out of control thanks to all the dollars that Bernanke is pumping into the system.

And I suspect before it's all over, we will have ended up with a nasty case of Stagnant Economic Growth as well as nasty inflation (some even think we will end up with hyper-inflation).

I'm curious to hear what you guys are doing to protect yourself against inflation. Are you stocking up your food pantry at yesterday's prices? Are you buying gold so that your savings account keeps up with the inflation? Are you planning on a more frugal car so you don't have to buy as much gas?

Mike...

P.S. And last but not least, do you think our fiat system is at risk, and do you think we will see implementation of the Amero?

Well, I'm not convinced that current inflation is caused by the rate cuts from the Fed. Fuel prices are affecting everything from gas in our cars, to products on the store shelves. I think oil prices are more of a culprit than the Fed's actions. The Bush Administration's weak dollar policy hasn't helped, either. It was supposed to increase exports, which it has to some degree, but it also makes consumer prices higher (at least in the short term) and consumers are the engines of our consumption economy.

I don't know how much good the rate cuts will do, BTW. People are paying more for necessities, like gasoline and food. They aren't buying more of the stuff that keeps the economy going. Our economy went from agrarian, to industrial, to service, and finally to consumption over the last century or so. For a consumption-based economy to prosper, consumers have to have disposable income to spend -- or at least have a good supply of credit.

For years, folks have been pulling equity out of their homes to buy more stuff. Well, that excess equity is gone, in a lot of places. Low interest rates on Home Equity loans don't help if you no longer have the equity to borrow against. Credit cards are getting close to being maxed out, too, for a record number of people. Our economy has been floated pretty extensively on credit cards. A credit card crisis may be the next financial "crisis" after the mortgage crisis that has still not come to an end.

Not to mention, real income for most Americans has been stagnant for decades, when adjusted for inflation. Only the very wealthy are making big gains in income these days. They can only consume so much -- the rest is surplus that sits in bank accounts and investment portfolios and accumulates more wealth for them.

My own plan right now is to pay off debt as quickly as possible, and cut back on my consumption, primarily on things like gasoline. It's not a good thing for the economy as a whole for me to cut back on consumption and focus on paying off debt, but it is good for me. It's a catch 22 -- the economy needs me to go out and spend, spend, spend, but I am tired of that merry-go-round, and want to get off. I'm kind of tired of working my ass off to give my money to big corporations so that their executives can take home millions of dollars while laying other workers off.

Anyway, I'm not too worried about runaway inflation due to Fed policy. I do expect the oil market to get tighter, and keep prices going up more often than down. So, I see inflation being in our future for some time, but not runaway inflation. Of course, a major world event, like the US invading Iran upsetting the oil markets, could throw a wild card on the table.

I think we have tough times coming, as we "pay the piper" for our living large on borrowed money, but runaway inflation is not one of my worries.



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