We all have our heroes that we look up to in admiration, particularly when times get tough. And this blog really is about how to deal with tough times. So when you get to know more about people you admire, and find out that they, also, had tough times in their life, you gain a deeper appreciation of them as people.

This happened the other day for me, with one person whom I have always admired, and that is the comedian, Bill Maher. I’ve always admired Bill because of his backbone. He was willing to take a stand and stick with it through all the trials that came his way. When it comes down to it, it takes guts to maintain your principals and integrity when the rats just keep getting bigger. And that’s what Bill did. He stuck with it.

I was first intrigued with Bill when I heard him because he doesn’t hold anything back. He tells it like it is. He is able to reveal what is really going on in America and actually make people laugh, even as much of a tragedy that it is. So of course I’m revealing my own take on things here and have no regrets about it: I despise what the corporations are doing to my country. But even more despicable is how the general populous is reacting to it. By voting for these creatures that are hoping to occupy the highest office in the land, the White House, they are admitting that they suck up to anyone who is willing to simply tell them the lies they want to hear. And those lies are that all it takes is money and everybody and everything will be ok.

What does Bill Maher have to do with this? Well, if you’re living on $1000 a month, or anything close to it, you can relate to the latest article written by him. His article is entitled “The Great Thing About Having Been Poor”. In it he describes how he survived from day to day in the early years of his career as a comedian. What’s really the best part of the article, however, is his description of how he still lives a relatively frugal lifestyle. I mean that surely he’s not living on $1000 a month only, but relative to people that have made the big time, he’s living fairly lean. Living cheap may not be accurate, but he’s not spending everything he makes.

It’s a good read, and it’s admirable that he was able to donate that much to the Democratic cause, but the real thing I got out of the article was this: To see someone point out like this, that the ability to be without money, is a revelation. It is inspiring.

I do also hope that more people are encouraged to donate as a result of this example. Thanks Bill.

Hal

If you’re like me, you understand the concept of saving and how vital it is to your financial well-being; but still, you love to splurge on your favorite clothes, eat out with friends, and travel as much as your paychecks allow.

One trick is to not make your savings easily accessible. Saving has to become a habit and habits (positive ones) take discipline. As you begin your journey of saving you may not have the discipline to remember that the extra money you’ve put aside is actually for emergencies only. Chances are, if it’s easily accessible, you may be more prone to dipping into it for the wrong reasons. Choose a separate bank from where you have your checking account and don’t get an ATM card for your convenience. Remember savings isn’t for immediate convenience but instead to set you up for financial freedom over time.

Once you have automatic transfers happening to that separate bank account, you won’t miss them.

Another trick is to make a list of things you can do without. This may seem insurmountable at first, but as you let the idea develop over the next few days, you will come up with some pretty creative ideas. Maybe it’s that three dollar coffee or mocha every morning. Even something smell like that adds up over time.

Give some thought to planning and researching purchases. Give it some time before you come to a decision. After some time, ask yourself if you still really want whatever it is that you want. Of all the saving money tips, this one is probably the most valuable.

Consider creating a budget. It’s easier said than done, right? Still, you have to be determined that you want to save and take control over your finances. First, plan to set up an emergency fund of something like $1000. That way if something comes up, like when you need to get the car fixed, then you have a backup plan. Then plan your days, weeks, and months. What will you eat during the week? How much do you plan to spend this month? First set aside money for your mandatory bills, and then incorporate how much money you will save each paycheck. One thing that has proven beneficial to me in the past, is to have a certain amount from my paychecks, directly deposited into my savings account. By doing this, I don’t have the chance to touch or misuse it.

Look at some of my most recent posts, and see if you could live on a certain amount, like say $2000 a month. See if there are some ways you can do some repairs for less money by doing it yourself. Once you can begin this process of becoming more independent, you will start to feel the freedom from being controlled by the system that has you spending every dime you make.

Til next time,

Hal

Is it really possible to live on $1000 a month? Yes, it is entirely possible. The question is: Is it possible to be happy if you are living on $1000 a month? The answer to this question depends on how you go about it. And this opens up another entire set of considerations, mostly centering on the question of what you want to do with your life in the first place. For an artist, as an example, the prime commodity is time and enough money to acquire the tools of his trade, and a lot of inspiration, and happiness can be achieved.

So the answer to the question “Is it possible to be happy if you are living on $1000 a month?” really depends on find a “labor of love”. If you have already found something that you just absolutely love doing and that doesn’t cost very much money, then the only thing between you and nirvana is finding a situation where your expenses are low enough that you don’t need some kind of grunt work job to pay the bills.

This labor of love has to be a pretty powerful force in your life, by the way. Maybe it’s a cause of some kind, like trying to educate people about global warming. Maybe it’s an effort to stop child abuse. Maybe it’s just reading books. Maybe it is playing music. But whatever it is, it is a good idea to start spending what time you have doing that thing, just to make sure that’s what you want to do.

And here’s another thing. Once you do decide that you like doing this thing, and you start to gain some proficiency at it, it becomes easier and more enjoyable. That’s when you can start to say, O.K., yes this is really what I want to do with my time, what would it take to provide my basic necessities of life so that I can proceed to do it. Then you naturally might think of ways of living cheap so that you aren’t married to some job just so you can go buy more stuff. Then you start thinking, let’s see, I can get this apartment in Mexico for $125 a month, and let’s see, groceries are going to be $145 a month, or whatever other expenses it takes to make the provisions for this type of life style.

I have a friend that lives in Mexico in the winter months and pays $62 a week for a bungalow and is just happy as can be because he’s able to do the reading he wants to do and go on hiking trips once or twice a week. This is just what he likes to do.

And as far as eating goes, once you change to a more simple diet, you find that your life is much more simplified as well. The whole concept of eating to live, rather than living to eat, might seem a little awkward at first, but once it takes hold, you will find you don’t really want to go back to the way things were before. I find myself rarely interested in going out to restaurants, but rather in desire of having a simple meal at home and getting on to one of my favorite activities, like playing music.

So long story short, it is entirely to be happy while living cheap and even living on $1000 a month or less. It’s just how you go about it.
If you’re interested in learning more ways of saving money and getting away from a complicated lifestyle, sign up for my free, Saving Money Tips report, just over to the right on this page.

Til next time,

Hal

Change your oil often

The question comes up: How often should I change my oil. Oils are better these days than they were 30 years ago, so you don’t really need to change it every 3000 miles like you used to. It used to be a rule of thumb that every 3000 miles or every 3 months, whichever came first, was the time to change the oil. The reason for this was that the oil would break down and form sludge if left longer than that amount of time in the crankcase. And sludge is an engine killer.
These days, the oil used in engines is much more resilient. It’s recommended now that for new cars that the oil be changed every 7500 miles.
But for older cars, over 5 years old that is, it’s still recommended to change it more often, more like 4000 or 5000 miles. The reason is that older cars, even with the newer, synthetic oils, will have a little more breakdown of oil into sludge. And even if you don’t drive the car the prescribed distance within a year, it’s still recommended to change the oil because oil has a shelf life.
It is true what they say, changing your oil is the best investment you can make for your car. With all this talk about living with less money, living on $1000 a month, and cheap car repair, prevention is still the best way to keep things working smoothly.
And if you’re trying to live cheap, chances are you probably have an older car. And if you look carefully, you can find some really cool deals on cars that get good mileage. I got my 1992 Toyota Corolla for only $1500, and under good conditions it can get up to 40 miles per gallon. But this is going to require one to pay close attention to details like prevention, and this includes changing the oil on a regular basis.

Til next time,

Hal

Keeping a perspective

If for some reason you came across this blog thinking that it was about totally getting away from the money system, you were possibly misdirected somehow. It is true that this blog is about doing things with less money or no money. However, there are many times when using money in order to get something done or to acquire some material thing, is the most efficient way to use our time.
The real point of this blog is to describe strategies of coping in your life when money is tight or nonexistent, and also to provide ways of using money more efficiently when indeed it becomes more plentiful. The area of focus in your life narrows to what your priorities are, such as a craft that may be a labor of love, like knitting or visual art, and the other areas of your life revolve around this. So the idea of living with less money, living on $1000 a month, for example, is a means to an end. And that end is basically having more time for your craft or whatever it is you like to do. You don’t think the words “live cheap” as much as it becomes a way for you achieve your goals. Cheap car repair happens because it turned out to be the most expedient way for you to get from point A to point B, point B being the freedom of time so that you can do what you want to do. If, by some fortunate set of circumstances you don’t necessarily have to live cheap, then to some degree your life becomes a little easier, but perhaps not as much as you think. Just a little money goes a long way toward making your life better, but when people start to get a lot, they start thinking ever bigger dreams, and more stuff, which then complicates the equation by taking more time to deal with it all, leaving less time for what they really wanted to do in the first place, which was plying their “craft” or “labor of love”. Some things to think about here, as we are headed for the middle of the first month of yet another year.

Til next time,
Hal

From Chapter 1, “Survive with little or No Money”
Money has been around since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before. In the beginning it usually took the form of a precious commodity of some sort that could be carried easily, such as gold or precious stones. But it always represented something of real value. The cultures that formed again after the dark ages that followed the fall of Rome considered agricultural land as the only form of real wealth. Money existed in the form of coins, but most people rarely possessed any of it. Most exchanges of goods and services were simply trades, or barter. When people began to move away from the farm to pre-industrial labor, cash, in the form of coins, became more prevalent. Gold and silver replaced fields of grain or stores of food as the basic definition of wealth. This made way for concentrations of economic power far more extreme than anything in the middle ages.

By the 17th century, banks began to issue paper receipts for gold and silver in their vaults. These receipts could be exchanged like the coins that backed them. There are many sources of information regarding the history of money, and we will leave this for you to research on your own. Needless to say, if you are paying attention to the news (even if you threw out your TV as I suggested earlier) you know of the levels of abstraction and abuse of monetary policy and lending has reached astronomical proportions around the world.

The fact is that our modern day paper and electronic money in and of itself has no value. Money is a tool to achieve what we need or want, but having grand sums in your bank account is not the same as having what you need or want. It seems so obvious a fact, and yet we tend to forget what it means.

Think about how our society is arranged, except completely disregard the money part of it. What you will see is that there are certain people in the world who are allowed to have anything they want, while a great majority are somehow induced to do most of the work, some of whom may actually like doing this work, and some of whom may not like doing this work. You will see little difference between some of the well advanced societies of earliest recorded history, such as the early Egyptians (who had huge monuments built by the toiling of their slaves) and our modern society of the “haves and have-nots” of today. It turns out that archeological research has determined that these “slaves” actually had a form of health insurance. There are certainly advances in technology that have improved our modern life, but many citizens are denied access to these technologies, including health care, to this day. This comparison certainly leads one to question whether our modern life has really advanced much since the time of the early Egyptians.

I left a few things out of my above analogy. The first is that in our present day society, many of those who possess a lot of material sustenance have worked incredibly hard at it and made great sacrifice. Part of our process in adjusting to our new economic situation is going to involve learning to accept that those people who are rich are not necessarily to be despised or hated (although of course, there are some rich people that have turned into pretty unsavory characters). Learning to accept Bill Gates Jr. or Donald Trump as real people who have problems just like you or me may be one of the hardest things to do on your journey toward happiness in life. Second, at least some of the great leaders in historic times had great responsibility, even if they were born into nobility and wealth.

I made the above comparisons to bring us to one of the most the important questions we are faced with when we experience abruptly changing economic situations. That question is: What really matters? What is important for you in the time you have here on planet Earth? And really, once we get all of the unnecessary stuff out of the way (both in our mind and in our physical world) that is distracting us, we can really begin to formulate a vision of what it is we really do want, and how to go about achieving it.

Survive With Little or No Money

Hal Merrill

I’ve talked about a lot of saving money tips, and it seems to never end with how much money can be saved with cars. Especially if you can network with friends on repairs. Saving Money Tips is all about networking. I’ve split wood for my neighbor many times, so when it came time to do a partial re-build on this baby he was glad to help. This time it turned out to be a 1992 Toyota Corolla. I knew with the 1.6 litre engine that this one had good potential for good, efficient gas mileage.
It turns out that the harmonic balance pulley was loose, so I got the car for a little bit of a discount. The asking price was around $2000, but I immediately got a major discount by pointing out the fact that there was something wrong. It helps to be savvy with negotiating!
So we took everything off of the left side of the engine, where the timing belt is located. Replaced the water pump, timing belt, and harmonic balance pulley (a major component)!
I also replaced the rotor, distributor cap and spark plug wires. And the valve cover gasket. It turns out in this case that the distributor cap and wires are all built together as one piece.
Here is a picture of the engine torn apart:

It’s a hemi! All the better for good gas mileage. Hemi means the top of the cylinder is hemispherical, resulting in a more efficient burn of the fuel.

Here’s the engine all put back together:

Little did I know, or even expect, the car gets 45 miles per gallon! Talk about saving money tips – that’s one for sure. Such machines are still on the market, one just has to look, and be a little innovative. This baby runs well and hasn’t used a drop of oil!

Here is a picture of it:

This baby gets 45 miles per gallon, that’s the real blessing here!

For even more saving money tips – Look for my upcoming book “Survive with Little or No Money”. Coming soon.

‘Til next time,

Hal

1989 Mazda 323 still going strong.

I’m still driving it and taking care of it. Probably one of the best saving money tips: Keep up on the maintenance and they will keep on working for you.

In light of the recent  insult with the passage of continued tax cuts for the rich and further encroachment on our first amendment rights, it is becoming increasingly evident that we the people are going to have to start doing a lot of things for ourselves. Jobs are increasingly hard to find, and the real unemployment rate is inching ever closer to 20 percent, regardless of the mainstream media’s insistence that it is half that.

So how do we start doing these things for ourselves? Let me explain. You see, money is a wonderful tool, and if you’re flush at the moment, good on ya. But when you’re low, that’s when this little space opens up so that innovation can start to happen.

There was a time, a few years ago, when I was in Austin, Texas, and I had an event that changed my life. As it happened, I was unemployed and without money, facing a situation perhaps like one you may be facing (or fearing) now. I had no idea where my next meal would be coming from, much less where the rent money was coming from. What is worse, my van ran out of gas in the middle of a crowded street, and with no money I couldn’t do anything about it. This is one of our greatest fears, right?

But something happens when we are in sticky situations where the mind becomes ever so creative. What did I do? I walked to the first gas station that looked like it had real people working in it. This is important, because networking like this requires real people, not corporations or machines. It was one of those little family owned shops with dirty floors and extra used car parts and trash laying around. Something came over me, and I explained to the guy working on a car there that I just happened to be walking by and noticed that his shop could use a little cleaning up and I’d be happy to clean it up for him if he could spare a couple of gallons of gas.

I was actually a little surprised when he agreed, but it was probably because I was dressed well and didn’t look like a bum, and I offered something rather than asking for something. But this was the beginning a long process of learning how to provide services for others while providing for my needs or for my friends needs.

So let’s fast forward to our present situation. This is how things are going to be folks. With the economy going the way it is, we (the people) are going to just start finding ways to help each other out. There’s going to be a lot more comradeship and team effort going on between real people. In fact, there are already many such movements and organizations being developed to this end. One of them is the Portland Hour Exchange, and you can learn more about them here. I envision entire communities built around this way of innovative thinking. Saving money tips is about finding ways to accomplish things without money, and this is the ultimate result of that.

This is going to be a huge phenomenon just out of necessity. We all have skills, and we all have needs, and when these come together, great things can happen. We are going to have to network with each other and provide for each other just like people did in the great depression of the 1930’s. Our elected officials, at least those in Washington D.C., are mostly millionaires and completely out of touch with the average person. Their mantra seems to be “I’ve got mine and you can just drop dead”. The “poor” business people they are speaking up for are actually multibillion dollar corporations.

I’ve alluded to my techniques of trading services for goods and vice versa in earlier posts, and will continue to do so. There are so many saving money tips and ways of innovation that we can’t even begin to list them all here. I will be creating more blog posts soon to help direct people to more resources on this subject.

Hal Merrill
December 11, 2010