The Power of Less

This is 100% lifted from consumerist, but when I read this the other day, I was amazed at how many things Susan and I have done from this book.  Take a few minutes and read through the free ebook and see if you can pick out a new resolution or two.

Author of the upcoming book The Power of Less Leo Babauta offers a companion ebook that's free to download now. Thriving on Less—Simplifying in a Tough Economy tells you how to do just that.
The 27-page PDF describes advice garnered from Babauta's own journey from clutter, debt, and scarcity to a simpler, frugal lifestyle that focuses on the essentials and cuts away the extras. Like Babauta's popular Zen Habits blog, this book offers calm, peaceful straight talk that makes the super-busy and overwhelmed think "I want to live like that." Looks like a great preview of what's to come in his print volume, which gets released in four days. Think Babauta's approach is possible in today's world or too idealistic? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Free Ebook: Thriving on Less - Simplifying in a Tough Economy

Christmas 2008

Christmas this year was beautiful.  We really had a good time.  For the first time in several year, we didn't host it at our house, so things were more relaxed (for us) than normal.

The classic shot by the tree on Christmas morning (Yes, Jessica, there is a Christmas tree!)

We tried to be very deliberate with Zoe this year to not make Christmas all about the presents.  Leading up to Christmas, whenever we got a chance to talk to her about it, we were very careful to say that it was all about Jesus' birthday and that she was going to get to see Pop Pop and Uncle Joe and Ashley and the rest of the family.

 Zoe- enjoying her visit

When she saw the gifts in the morning that we were going to take down to Lewes, she went through each one.  "This is for Mama, and this is for Jonas, and this is for Pop Pop, and this one is for Zoe!"  Once we got to my brothers house, instead of watching her open all of her presents, we had her hand things out to everyone as they opened their gifts one at a time.

Zoe still had another surprise for me though.  One of the first gifts she opened was a little Thomas the Tank Engine toy. Instead of rushing to get through the rest of her presents, she was just as happy as could be with that Thomas.  All she wanted to do from that moment on was play with that Thomas.  At one point I literally had to hide Thomas so I could trick her into opening more presents but then I thought to myself, why am I trying to force gifts on her when clearly she's 100% content with what she has? When it was all said and done, she probably only opened half of them, but she didn't care.  She had her Thomas!

 

Uncle Joe and Ashley got Jonas his very first Star Wars shirt!

 

The hat I knitted for Jonas

Pop Pop and Jonas (between naps)

Hope everyone else had a great holiday as well!

2012

This was posted on the Jesus Manifesto website (which apparently is down) a few weeks back.  I thought it was a pretty worth read, so I wanted to post it here.

2012

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2008/11/28/2012/

My dad passed away in 2005 at the age of 84. He belonged to the so-called “Greatest Generation”, those who came of age during the Second World War and the Depression. Both events influenced father, and although my dad was deeply affected by his military service during the war, it was the Great Depression that had a more enduring impact on his life. My dad became a pharmacist, a career his father encouraged him to pursue, because, you see, pharmacists had work during the Great Depression.

Now and again my dad and I would talk about the Crash of 1929 and the economic catastrophe that followed. He always believed that the fundamental element of economic behavior that led to the Depression had not changed: greed. Even in the 1980s and 90s he argued there would be another “day of reckoning”, a correction to balance the gross excesses of Wall Street. The recent stock sell off, collapse of the housing market, tanking of retirement accounts, unemployment spike and demise of banking institutions like Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and Bear Sterns are indications that the “day of reckoning” may be at hand. Indeed, Wall Street’s market sorcery ofcollateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and other forms of witchcraft seem to have placed a curse the economy that the handsome prince from Illinois may not be able to reverse.

As I write this, Citibank has announced the layoff of 50,000 plus employees, and the CEOs of the Big Three automakers have flown to Washington in their private jets, hat in hand, begging for taxpayer billions to keep their Lincoln Navigator and Chevy Suburban assembly lines running. The government’s total bailout money (taxed, printed and ripped off from future generations) is now trillions of dollars and counting. This largess is added, of course, to the already obese, but vastlyunder calculated, national debt of 10 trillion dollars.

While many of the experts who helped get us into this mess are busy explaining their mistakes and lack of foresight, others have been warning us and continue to warn us that the present economic situation is bad and could get a whole lot worse. In a recent appearance in Singapore former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker made the following admission: “I have been around for a while. I have seen a lot of crises but I have never seen anything quite like this one.” He added, “This crisis is an exception. I don’t think we can escape damage to the real economy.” Noted economist Nouriel Roubini has cautioned that we’re entering into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and respected trend watcher Gerald Celente is predicting that America will be a much different and poorer place in 2012. (To view his sobering interview with FOX Business click here).

“The world ain’t going to be saved by nobody’s scheme. It’s fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans get you into things, but you got to work your way out.” Will Rogers

America is at a precipice. The question now is not whether there will be a severe recession, but whether the experts hatching schemes and overheating the printing presses in Washington will be able to prevent a full scale economic depression that rivals the collapse of the 1930s. I’m an optimistic person by nature, but I’m not optimistic that our leaders will be able to guide us out of this mess without real hardship. For those of us who proclaim our allegiance to the Kingdom of God this means we have our work cut out for us.

In light of all this, here are some ideas for faithful action…

For the Church:

1. It’s time to get utterly serious about intentional Christian community. We are going to need each other more than ever in the next few years. Get with brothers and sisters of faith now and pray for wisdom. There are many models for Christian community; new monasticism is just one. Pray, pick one and act.

2. Get ready to take care of the homeless. You or your neighbors may be counted among them.

3. Don’t forget the poor in other countries, this recession is global. Whatever economic disaster hits here will be much, much worse overseas.

4. The Church must remain a testimony of hope among the hopeless. Throw a ceili dance, invite neighbors, share your joy in Christ.

For individuals:

1. Learn practical skills. People who can fix things, build stuff, facilitate healing, teach, grow food, hunt and fish will be in demand. Liberal arts majors take note!

2. Entertain yourselves without technology. Learn a musical instrument. Write poetry. Learn to draw. Start a weekly Scrabble game. Go for a walk.

3. Get out of debt. Get out of debt. Get out of debt.

4. Pray.

The prophets of economic doom and gloom may be wrong. I am certainly willing to eat crow if my concerns prove false (provided the crow is cooked in a savory Thai curry and I can put it on my VISA). Nevertheless, if the present economic trajectory continues unabated, 2012 may produce a much starker and harsher America. My gut tells me that our luxurious, American-built-SUV-of consumption-excess is going to turn into a pumpkin at Midnight and the clock just struck 11:55.

Author Bio:: Cathasaigh is a member of Missio Dei, along with his wife and two boys.

50,000 Shoes

Here's a great stocking stuffer, if you're still looking for a few more things to give this Christmas.

This is an organization that is trying to collect donations to buy 50,000 shoes for people that can't afford shoes.  Its such a simple thing and it only costs $5 to buy 2 pair of shoes.  Seems simple and easy enough, so check it out

http://www.50000shoes.com/

I Am Busy!

So you may have been worried, but rest assured, Susan and I are still alive.  Between finals for VLI, all out craziness insanity at work, computer problems (I lost my laptop and my work computer), and just general busyness, I haven't had time to keep up with the blog.

I've got a lot of things I want to say so hopefully I'll be able to get them out at some point.

How Much is That Bailout - Part 2

In case you're more of a visual person, heres a graphical representation of what I just said.  Click on the picture to get a larger image.  Its amazing!

How Much is That Bailout

I saw this the other day on Lew Rockwell and I thought I would share.

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Think to the video I showed you yesterday.  It would cost $10 billion dollars to solve the world's water crisis once and for all.  Think about it, 0.2% of what our government has committed to try and save our excessive lifestyles could wipe out the third world's number one cause of death.  I don't know what to do about it, but when I think of it, I literally get nauseous.  

The Advent Conspiracy

Barb showed us this video last night in kinship and I just had to laugh because these people hit on just about everything I said in my Christmas Revolution post.  The only difference is that they do it in a fancy multi-media kind of way and I have to try and deal with printed words.

Watch the video and check out their website, they're both great!

Advent Conspiracy - http://www.adventconspiracy.org/

BB's - Now if You Don't Know, Now You Know

Earlier today I was trying to look up the hours for BB's up in Quarryville, which is a difficult task for an Amish grocery store, when I ran across this article about the store.  If you've never heard of it, its simply awesome!  Everything there is so stinking cheap.  Susan and I go up there once a month and can usually get a whole months worth of groceries for around $100.  The whole time Susan and I lived in Baltimore, it was worth it to drive an hour up to Quarryville, PA just because we saved so much money.  Literally this store has saved us thousands of dollars over the past few years.

Read the article and take note of their four part vision.  Its awesome! Seriously, I would want that to be the vision statement for any church that I go to, let alone any store I shop at.

http://www.theslateonline.com/archives/10-28-08/Focus/081028_focus_bbs.html

BB's, Offers Bang-Up Bargains

By Joanna Plasencia

Guest Writer

Nearly 30 years ago Ben S. Beiler, an Amish entrepreneur, founded the first BB’’s Grocery Outlet. Since then the salvage store has been an appreciated supplier of food for the Newburg community, just eight miles from Shippensburg. But what marks this salvage food store from others are the workers and its attention to the community.

The BBs Motto “Bents, Bumps, and Bunches of Bargains” is a part of its four part vision. They also hope to “Bless our community”, “Bless our employees” and “Build a Kingdom of God.”

Emmanuel Kauffman, general manager of BBs’s Newburg branch, and his employees work hard to uphold the store’s values and to ensure the satisfaction of every shopper and worker alike. The employees are made up of Old Order Mennonites and the Amish, the men work in the warehouse and the women at the register.

“Originally it started out as a family store but then we let some Mennonite women work and more would come. We don’t try to discriminate at the store,” said Kauffman.

Traditionally, the Amish believed in limiting themselves from outside influences. However, as the difficulties of farming, finding land and turning a profit are increasing, the Amish oftentimes find themselves debating difficult decisions.

It’s becoming harder to stick to the traditional history of Amish farm life. Kauffman stated that, “we are at a point where we cannot stay outside [of modern culture’s influences].”

All of the land surrounding B.B’s Grocery Outlet is farmed and owned by the Amish. The Amish humbly uphold their tradition except when it is reasonably detrimental to their lifestyles.

For example, their cash registers, ATM and freezer lights are powered by electricity and they recently added the option of paying with debit and credit cards.

The store’s lighting is powered by a combination of gas and sunlight. For this reason their hours of operation run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for most weekdays excluding Wednesdays when they are open until 5 p.m. and Monday and Sunday when they are closed.

BB’s in Newburg has for 12 years helped its community get more bang for its buck. This allows many who are in need of frugality to buy more. One customer said she came to BB’s because, “they have different products from other stores that you can’t get elsewhere.” This is because BB’s deals with suppliers from all over the country, from Maine to Florida and even California.

The life cycle of a product that finds its way to BB’s begins in either a store or warehouse. The shipment box may become damaged or a careless customer may drop the product, denting or damaging the packaging.

Regardless of the circumstances the store will remove it from its selling floor and ship it to a recondition center. There, the center will evaluate the damaged goods and decide whether or not it’s still fit for selling.

BB’s steps in and buys the products that are still useable and sells them to its customers.

In the selling of all its products they uphold its business foundation of, “It needs to be a good deal for both parties before we will do it,” and “Buy a bargain, sell a bargain.”

And nowhere but BB’s can you fill up your cart for just $50. They sell their products at 30 to 70 percent lower than other stores would.

Beverly Turner, 69, has been coming to BBs in Newburg since it opened 21 years ago.

“If you watch what you’re doing you could save a lot of money,” she said. Turner had first heard of the store by word of mouth through her daughter.

Despite the economic benefits, there are still many who are unaware of the store’s value. While the items in the store are salvaged goods, most costumers find that they are willing to sacrifice appearance for the reduced price.

Since starting 30 years ago in Quarryville, Pa., the original BB’s has expanded its chain of stores. The larger Newburg store was built just four years ago and is located at 20 Quigley Road. BBs owns four stores around rural Pennsylvania.

Newburg is the third oldest store, before Schaefferstown and after Morgantown. So far, there are no expectations of adding more stores to the chain.

Unlike many people, the Amish are content just where they are. According to Kauffman, “Ben [S. Beiler] started with, I think, a load of dairy past its expiration date, mostly yogurt. And he brought it home and he sold it to his neighbors.”