Sunday, July 19, 2009

Thing 44: The Economy

As the economy has tanked, I feel quite fortunate to have had parents who have taught be about saving, how money works and so on. Also helps that I was raised by parents who were raised by parents who lived through the Depression and have no trouble reusing plastic bags. I knew husband had great potential beyond boyfriend status when one of our first dates I handed him the Happenings book and said "I don't care what we do tonight, but it's got to come out of the book." He laughed with me and many of our future date destinations were from this coupon book.

What's interesting to me is the push back schools are now getting on providing economic education. Certainly its important, but as classes like FACS (a place certainly appropriate for home economics education (saving, budgeting, etc.) become less available because of required courses, where do we squeeze in this info. Students take economics in 9th grade, but will they remember all that they need when it comes time to saying "no" to credit card offers in college? Perhaps, as with many things, this type of education is best done at home with some reinforcing at school. This websites provided in this thing are great for that. I can see making things like the Lee LeFavor video available, having a brief discussion in class and then having a homework assignment in Moodle. The types of economic exploratory activities here go way beyond the classic stock game and certainly would have more impact on students.

What are your cost saving tips?
This summer, we've spent some time on Craig'slist looking for items for the house and for many of our needs, we don't need to have new things. Husband and I are both ok with gently used. For us as we look at the costs of some things, it's an easy choice. My pal Bonnie is also a fantastic garage saler. She's on the hunt for us as well. Regarding other tips, I love coupons, should print off more than we do, try to plan meals around the Sunday grocery ads, Husband bikes to work at least three days a week, so on and so forth. Most of these tips are things we've been doing forever and so when the recession hit, we didn't have to make too many changes in our lifestyle, these things were already a habit. A new habit we hope to acquire in the new house is baking our own bread!

1 comment:

J. Michael Andresen said...

My mother was a huge proponent of the Happenings Book. With four kids, she typically bought two copies so we could go places twice in a year. I have fond memories of paging through it late in the season, when a good number of coupons had already been torn out, looking for the best remaining restaurant savings.