After reading a little note from NYSEG about saving money by being more frugal with energy usage and several articles in the Post about preparing for a possible recession I thought that it might be time to review what my grandparents and parents taught me about frugality. Their hands-on training came from lives modified by the constraints of the Great Depression and World War II. They passed it on to me.
The following is a piece that I wrote 15 years ago and, with a few tweaks, I could have written it this morning.
My sure-fire cure for occasional insomnia is to dip into my college economic text. Mr. Samuelson’s discourse on what makes the economic world go round sends me, after only a few paragraphs, into blissful, escapist sleep. Yet, the truth of this dismal science that is based on the concept of supply and demand, is something that has particular applicability to my growing concern about purchasing power and its effect on us all.
Personally, I’ve been trying to calculate the point at which the cost of taking the bus to work would be cheaper than driving my tiny car that is supposed to get 40 miles to the gallon. At the rate that the price of gasoline is increasing, the economy of taking the bus is within striking distance if I include the cost of wear and tear on my vehicle in the calculation.
I don’t know what I will do about eggs, though. Right now, as the price of eggs increases, one wonders if they were produced by golden chickens. The explanation for this increase is attributed to, as most price increases are of late, rising fuel costs and the diversion of feed corn into biofuels. I guess I will have to adopt my grandmother’s depression era solution by limiting myself to recipes that call for no more than two eggs.
The worrisome economic state of a possible recession has brought back memories of another time not too far removed from when I was a student with that economics text under my arm.
It reminds me of the time when we were part of a group of young couples, some with college degrees, some not. We all worked hard and practiced the thrift that we had come to learn at our parents’ knees, deferring gratification, saving money, being what we considered to be responsible adults. When we, now as “empty nesters” or senior citizens, chat, we note how much the distribution of wealth has changed, how expectations for the accumulation of wealth have risen, how deferred anything is a foreign concept. The use of credit, the drop in savings, the multinational nature of corporations, the cost of fuel, a growing Asian economy and something called a sense of entitlement have changed how we approach responsible economic life … or so it would seem.
When we first moved to Marcellus, I joined a group of women who met once a month to learn about a wide variety of topics. Home Bureau was established first for the wives of farmers to spread information through a method called learn and return. It had, by the 1960’s become, at least in the western suburbs, or what were becoming suburbs, a rationale for social and educational activities for a wider circle of women.
We attacked all kinds of topics from wine tastings that turned out to be hysterically funny, to how to determine the best buy when you purchased a dozen eggs or how to turn a pedestrian chuck roast into both stew meat and rib eye steaks. We exchanged ideas about how to make your own cleaning solutions, build compost bins and save money on fabric purchases. We were careful with everything from fuel use to growing and canning our own vegetables. It was a different time. We defined our successes in different ways, expecting to live lives that were, by today’s standards, extremely frugal.
Pressures are different today. Young families aren’t focused on the same kind of thrift that we were. The accumulation of what are considered the necessities today rather than the security of savings seems to be the norm. I say “seem” since I am not young and my sensibilities were grown in a different era. I don’t know what it means to have to provide my children with cell phones, subscribe to all of the cable channels, provide high speed computer access, call waiting and so forth. My gosh, I still have a rotary dial phone in my bedroom and I have yet to either eat or serve a good steak at any social gathering. Today young mothers don’t attend meetings where they are taught about re-cutting a chuck roast or making your own catsup (which I never did … there is a limit).
I wonder though, if the fuel situation, the excessive cost of the war in Iraq and China’s impact on the world’s resources, will have a dampening effect on supply and demand of the young families and the not so young families that I know.
I am also remembering something that makes me worry. Once, during the Reagan administration, while I was employed by a large human service agency, I was sent to speak to the families of the air traffic controllers who had lost their jobs after an unsuccessful strike. These were families that, by most standards, had been quite comfortable financially. Now, without incomes, they had few resources on which to call. The kinds of knowledge that I had accumulated that fell under the rubric of thrift, were outside their experience. What I had to share was so elemental for me, that it seemed almost bizarre to stand in front of those frightened people as an “expert”. I wasn’t there to tell them how to apply for public assistance, I was there to tell them about things like home gardens, farmer’s markets, thrift stores, how to shop with coupons, how to find medical care without health insurance, using the library and such.
The ripple effect of rising prices, the inevitable cutbacks that accompany increased costs, especially those that affect petroleum prices and all of the things that are affected by petroleum prices, and the resulting drop in consumer demands can have a dramatic effect on the larger economy. Accumulating those necessities of which I spoke earlier underpins jobs and salaries that affect the jobs and salaries of others. When we are forced to curtail spending, we negatively affect the economic security of others, who are ultimately linked to our jobs and salaries. Mr. Samuelson didn’t write a witty, literate book, but right now, his explanation of the role of supply and demand is as cogent and as applicable as ever, generating the possibility of a waking nightmare for a lot more than myself.
