Americans learning to live on less in trying times

This is one way for less garbage, consume less ever notice the trash one the highway..anymore?

About time for the greedy wasteful Americans.You could feed a lot of the world with what you waste and spend on your pets.

urnotsosmart wrote:

About time for the greedy wasteful Americans.You could feed a lot of the world with what you waste and spend on your pets.

GOOD! i agree, lets stop buying foreign goods, we really don't need your manufactured junk anyway..but what happens to those countries that sell to us?

Many of us have tried to live this way all our lives through necessity and trying not to be wasteful. It's about time the rest of you caught up with us.

the rampant consumerism was nauseating anyway. humility is making a comeback

skeptic wrote:

the rampant consumerism was nauseating anyway. humility is making a comeback

This comment (and the one before this one) is exactly right! I'm so sick of wanna-be rich Americans buying buying buying all the time. This is all they do - shopping is their life. Now look at them squealing like a bunch of stupid babies. They've looked down their noses at the poor for too long. Now they have been taken down a peg!

Welcome to reality!

I wonder how many rotten spoiled brats are going to start attacking and even killing their parents cuz they didn't get what they wanted!

Stuck in the 3rd world wrote:

Many of us have tried to live this way all our lives through necessity and trying not to be wasteful. It's about time the rest of you caught up with us.

I'm right there with ya: I've been supporting a family with 1 income for the entire of my adult life, and had to live even more frugally than described in this article. Wine with dinner? Starbucks? What the hell are those?

Folks like us are who were underachieving losers last year are now this year's trendsetters. Gee: that provides such a a boost to my underachieving loser ego *heavy sarcasm*

To the rest of society that are just now adopting the tactics and values that so many of us learned from our Depression-era parents and from 1st hand experience: WELCOME TO THE F**KIN' PARTY! GLAD YOU COULD JOIN US!

urnotsosmart wrote:

About time for the greedy wasteful Americans.You could feed a lot of the world with what you waste and spend on your pets.

When are you backward third-worlders going to show some responsiblity and stop breeding children you can't even feed?

Pauli, you are so correct. So is stuck in the third world. So are skeptic and Chrystas. Lets prioritize what we need instead of what we want.

Oh by all means, Pauli, don't have children, have wine with dinner instead! Instead of a sibling for your only child, buy him a bunch of video games ... and a dog that you'll both treat as if it's the little sister you're too sophisticated to have. Yeah, it's that kind of mentality that's gotten us where we are.

I agree with a lot of the folks posting -- rampant consumerism and the shop, shop, shop lifestyle was sickening. Remember a few years ago when Wal-Mart was going to have a tremendous, pre-holiday sale on more junk we don't need, how some people spent several nights in line? There were stampedes, fighting -- all to get cheap junk that we don't NEED. I remember being both scornful and sorry for them

The example of this woman, thinking nothing of buying a $30 wine for an everyday dinner, and now she's "frugal" because she spends $10 on wine for dinner? What the heck? Tell her to talk about frugality when she can't afford ANY wine, not even on the holidays.

I make almost $100k a year and I NEVER have wine with dinner unless it's a special occasion -- and in this era of cheap, good wine, why would I pay $30?? What an idiot.

I have my old tv (15 years), a dvd player and a vcr player, plus a laptop. One of each -- that's it as far as toys. I have no ipod, no portable dvd player, my cell phone is just a phone and I don't have it forever attached to my ear ... and I love my life!

This is what killed America. Too many regulations, taxes, and fees which hiked up prices and forced business to outsource to overseas. We gave up manufacturing for overseas. As for the 15 year old TV, let us know how your box works unless you are connected to cable of some sorts because your TV being 15 years old probably operates on analog and not digital. I hope you are prepared for Feb. 2009. Rampant consumerism I agree but isn't it ironic that we had less people years ago and grocery stores were full of shoppers. We have more people today and less shoppers. I've never bought a 30.00 bottle of anything - if I do want wine it's a 5.99 bottle if that. Starbucks I treat myself to one drink per week. As for pets, I don't have one can't afford it but grew up with them. By the way, don't Thai folks eat dogs? Chinese do. I wish we could do away with the foreign junk that only lasts about 5 years if that anyway. Too much consumerism is not the only thing that drove America to its knees. Remember too much taxation, fees, regulations and government interference in our lives. The government made us too dependent on it and it's time to take America back one bit at a time. I'm one of the few that have lived within its means only buying what I needed and only when it was at a reduced rate. By the way, Walmart is the pretty much one of a few companies that is holding its own and hasn't lost its shirt. Maybe to get back on track to what our founding fathers had in mind is to see America crumble and rebuilt.

Having a hard time in our everyday lives makes us think what we really need to do to cope up in this catastrophe. I have a relative working in California; he told us that the lifestyle of people there differs a lot since it hit by the economic crisis. Hearing the world news, I could imagine how hard it is in the US; even other countries suffer also because of the US difficulty right now.

Kathy you’re right about outsourcing jobs overseas. Most employers there decided to outsource the job because of its low cost; and it has a great impact to US workers.

No TV = More Babies. Just look at the birthrate 9 months after a snow storm. Let americans shop till they drop to keep the population down.

Are material possessions really that important? I guess people forgot to work on their needs before their wants.

It is going be a hellofa hangover after waking up from this decade-long party!!!