An Empty Wallet is the Mother of Invention: Food Part 2-Stockpile
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"...trappings of aristocracy...the very things they are forced to sell when the money runs out...and it always runs out."
-Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The pawn shop owns my soul. Well, maybe not quite but it feels like it. I have pawned thousands of dollars worth of my posessions for hundreds of dollars worth of cash, which I have frittered away on such trivialities as rent, gas and phone bills. If you have not had the demoralizing experience of pawning a treasured posession to pay for something which, in the long run is meaningless; it goes a little something like this: You approach the entrance and ring a buzzer. The proprietor gives you a few seconds of scrutiny through the bars on the door and if he decides that you aren't there to rob him; the door is unlocked and you are granted entrance. Usually, there are four or five shady characters skulking around, not making eye contact with anyone like they are in a porn shop, which they no doubt just came from, because there's one right next door. You approach the counter with the beloved item and place it before the man at the register who is now a judge, father and god all rolled into one questionable, greasy package. You paid $2000 for the item you are pawning and feel confident that you can get $500, which is what you need to pay your the traffic ticket that you got for not having the car insurance that you can't afford.
The Pawn Nazi at the counter says, "I veel geef you von hundred dollars."
You say, "I need five."
He says, "Nein! Von hundred."
You query, "Three?"
"Von hundred."
"Two fifty?"
"Von hundred. You vill take it or leef it."
You sigh, take the one hundred and shuffle towards the door, which you wait for to be unlocked with a loud buzz that draws everyone's attention to the schmuck who just got dorsally violated for a hundred bucks. You step out into the strip mall parking lot knowing you can't pay your ticket or the finance charge that will be due the pawn shop in a month and you know that that jackass just paid $100 for a $2000 item that he will sell in his shop for $2500.
From having this experience over and over and over again I have learned a few things. I have finally figured out that, until I write a best-selling teen novel about vampires or wizards, I'm gonna be broke from time to time. I have realized that I can anticipate when that time is fast approaching and I have learned that before that time arrives, when I still have a few ducats...
A critical practice that we need to relearn from our ancestors in order to survive a post-petroleum world is to lay in, put up, stash and cache. While I have temporarily traded a root cellar for metal shelving and a buy-in-bulk grocery store; the theory is the same. We in the developed world have become so used to zipping down to Safeway for a gallon of milk when we need it that we don't think to ask ourselves, "what if there is no Safeway?" Our's is a consumer society and no longer a producing one. We buy what we want, when we want and don't think about a leaner future and that spells trouble.
So, what do we do? My perennial answer is that we first begin to think about what we need to do to survive in more desperate times, and then begin to practice in some small way. Like I have said before, I am a broke-arse. So, my stockpile consists of broke-arse staples like Top Ramen, single-ply toilet paper and bulk bags of rice. However, it will soon include seed from this year's garden that will produce next year's. It will consist of sourdough starter kept on hand to make bread. And it will consist of home-grown yeast that I use to make the beer that I can't live without.
Learning to stockpile is one of those basic abilities that we need to develop in order to become self-reliant and self-reliance is going to be the name of the game in the not so distant future. We've got to stop thinking so much about items that are non-essential, luxuries (which is just about everything in our homes) and begin to consider what is absolutely neccessary and ask ourselves if we have enough of those things to see us through.
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Hah! Thanks for the comment. I was confused initially by your questions until I saw that you are interested in finance. What I wrote was a semi-fictional narrative. I was trying to be clever.
In response to your first question: What I was trying to get at with my story was that we have to make choices when money is tight. Insuranced is only neccessary when you get caught not having. A ticket is in the system. So, the next time ya get pulled over, not only do you not have insurance, but you get a bench warrant for the ticket you didn't pay and you get to spend the night in the pokey. So, the ticket has priority. Of course, you pay the ticket and you still can't get the insurance.
As to the second question: I am a musician, therefore, most of the things I have pawned are music gear. The $2000 item I pawned was my Selmer Mark VI alto saxophone, which broke my heart to loose.
I was trying to convey the demoralizing experience of having to pawn things that you love to pay bills only to never get ahead of the bills. I was speaking to the vicious cycle of being poor and staying poor trying to play the game of consumerism. Being poor is expensive is what I was trying to say, I guess.
As a postscript, when I pawned the $2000 sax, I was working 40-50 hours a week for $15 an hour. I actually put it in pawn to buy my wife a Christmas present. I wasn't smoking rock or anything.
Thanks again for commenting. I don't get enough.
Cheers.
I'd like to continue the dialogue, but I'm not sure if you meant this to be a discussion venue. Nor do I want to come off as antagonistic; that said, it is my style to be blunt -- painfully so sometimes, and I have some thoughts about your thoughts.
I didn't realize it was semi-fictional...and this leads me to believe that this is more of a journal for you than a discussion forum. Let me know -- I'll check back here regardless for a bit. I LOVED your garden post - right on Brother.
No, by all means, I'm interested in a discussion. I am a college student and I have a Senior Capstone project (kind of a miniature Master's project) and the topic is going to be related to energy issues. I am using these posts as a way to research my topic, clarify my thoughts, practice writing and have discourse with others. Comments are a big part of what I want to get out of Hubbing.
Thanks,
Adam
Well, I don't know which parts of the original post are fiction, semi- or otherwise. Hopefully the part about "having this experience over and over again" in reference to selling your soul to the "pawn-nazi" was fiction. Putting aside the nazi reference, which in my opinion is neither funny nor clever, it strikes me as odd that you'd have an experience like this "over and over."
I think the most basic rule of finance is mundanely simple: Don't live beyond your means. If you spend more than you've got, you're in debt. There are people willing to capitalize on that debt ("pawn-nazis") for a reason: a lot of people either don't learn or don't follow the basic rule. Money coming in must be greater than or equal to expenses...period.
Without walking in your shoes, I can't know how you got yourself into such a pickle the first time, not to mention all of the other times. But if you're working 40-50 hours a week for $15 an hour and own a car, the only reasonable conclusion from where I sit is that you chose not to purchase insurance (emphasis on the word "chose" is appropriate, I think).
Beginning financial independence by using wise financial decisions is easy. But once a few bad decisions are made, it becomes extremely difficult to self-correct. If, for example, you have a job which requires a car, but for whatever reason don't have the funds to insure the car, then you risk either driving uninsured to work or looking for work that does not require a car.
I live in the real world, so I know that both of those options suck gorilla balls. But making the wise initial decision -- purchasing insurance -- would avoid both options.
Your statement about insurance only being necessary if you get caught reflects, in my opinion, a very grave error in judgment and a severely limited perspective. Getting stopped by the police is the least of your concerns...and sitting in jail for the night is a close second. What if you were to kill someone without insurance? You'd be bankrupted for life. This leads me to what I perceive as the second basic rule of finance: Insurance (health, dental, auto, life, AD&D, etc). are not for the small expenses (dr visits, traffic tickets, etc). rather, they are for the BIG and often DEVASTATING financial liabilities that are sometimes incurred. For example, I don't have dental insurance to cover my $220.00 cleanings twice a year -- I have dental insurance to cover the $2200.00 crown I need. I don't have health insurance to cover a doctor visit, I have health insurance so that giving birth to my child doesn't bankrupt me for life.
I just re-read this post and realized with horror that I am lecturing you. Forgive me as this was not my intention -- I have my own students to lecture on these matters. I can't help but try, however, to communicate these messages to you.
Back to your post -- since you indicated that one of your goals here is to clarify your thoughts and learn to discuss -- I will tell you that the main intent of your post is unclear. Only when I asked for clarification did you reveal that your intent was to demonstrate that being poor is expensive...but you are not poor. If you make $15.00/hour you are far from wealthy, but it strikes me as odd that you would consider yourself poor.
Here's a basic exercise that I ask my students to engage in during the first few weeks of classes:
In a regular notebook, write down on the first line your income for that month. Then keep track of every single expense--groceries, booze, concerts, insurance, gas, christmas presents for your wife, etc. Then at the end of the month, add up your expenses. Then subtract your expenses from your income. 99% of people I encounter spend more than they have.
Here's where it gets interesting -- take a look (a good look) at your expenses. How many of them are discretionary (i.e., unnecessary for day-to-day survival)? Most people will list insurances and health expenses (dental cleanings are the most common culprit) as discretionary, but list things like booze, concerts, camping, and restaurants as necessary expenses.
And here's where being poor starts to suck -- to get out of this mess, you have to cut expenses in such a way that you aren't ADDING to your liabilities. Letting insurances lapse and not going to the dentist or doctor reliably ADD TO LIABILITY.
Oh fuck -- I'm lecturing again. I really can't help it -- my passion for this stuff has bled into the cyber oblivion.
So I'll close with a question -- what is the point of the original post here?
Not finance.
I apologize; best of luck to you!
I got your pawn-nazi reference - like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld!
Shniznit - although your advice is financially sound, it only works for people who actually have any money. Being unemployed, I have first hand experience in being poor and having to make tough financial choices. If I only have $50, I'm going to spend that on food, not on a month's worth of car insurance. Yes, should the worst happen, I would be screwed, but I'd be a lot more screwed if I didn't eat for a couple weeks. I'm not some irresponsible a-hole, just somebody who has fallen on hard times and has to choose between feeding myself or feeding the insurance industry. Even when I was working and making $16/hr, between rent, utilities, gas for the car, car payment, car/health/vision/dental insurance and food, money was tight. Here in California, $16/hr doesn't go very far, and I would definitely consider that poor.
Hi DaltonPark,
There's a lot about finance that is counterintuitive -- I was trying to open a dialogue to that effect but I think I came on too strong...due to a genuine passion about this stuff. There's a lot about the original post that confused me (and still confuses me) -- but I'm sure that there are nuances to Bulkdive's story, much the same as there are nuances to every story.
Bulkdive, I'm sorry to see that your posts have waned...I hope that you keep them up.
Peace.
The original post was part of a short series of post. They are meant to be read as a series; the overall theme of which is: living close to the poverty line can have benefits in a potential world of the future that looks different than the world we live in today. Poverty can breed creativity in devloping solutions for everyday survival and by cultivating that creativity we can mitigate some of the hardships that come with not having great wealth.
No offense taken. I guess my aim with the pawn shop narrative was a little off.
Shniznit 11 months ago
Two questions.
1. Assuming that you got the $500.00 for the item, why would you pay the ticket rather than pay for six months of insurance so that you can avoid future tickets?
2. If you are really in a position like this, why do you have $2,000.00 items to pawn?
No hostility is intended with either of these questions. I'm very interested in finance and financial choices, and I stumbled upon this post and am intrigued.