shopping

SHOPPING

The care package of canned storage food spices arrived!  Very much needed, and appreciated.  Favored minion status dangling provocatively.

Extra post today, link to a picture of yours truly.  Scroll down below this one.

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We’ve talked of consuming, ad naseum.  So let’s talk about shopping.  We are all consumers, few of us producers in the true sense.  But you can be a much better shopper.  From my point of view out in the semi-boonies, smart shopping is shopping on a monthly basis for a few items, b-monthly for many and for a lucky view, just yearly.  I’m not talking about shopping for Alpha Strategy items ( buy years and years worth of consumables to avoid inflation and planned quality cuts ), which you should, sure, and is smart, yes, but shopping to try to minimize the infrastructure needed to shop.  I know most of you won’t give up your cars.  Forget that for the last five years almost ALL global petroleum production growth was in the US ( thanks, minion, for heads up on Jeffer’s new blog article.  www.AmericanEnergyCrisis.Blogspot.com ) and that was fracking oil and $52 a barrel oil is now WAY below production costs and if it continues ( and if secret FedGov bail-outs aren’t ongoing as I suspect sustained the industry this whole time ) the fracking industry is done and with that your costs of driving a vehicle are going to go WAY up sooner or later.  You invested in a car to keep a job and keep a better house in the burbs.  Okay, I got ya.  No hating here.  BUT.  If you start shopping smarter and practice it, then if you ever do need to drive a lot less, you are not as in a frightful of a place as you would normally be.

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And you will need to practice.  When I lived in Carson City, the Wal-Mart was five miles down the road, and treacherous non-bike friendly roads they were.  So I planned ahead shopping a month at a time.  But, since a Safeway grocer and a discontinued item discount store, as well as a dollar store, were all literally just across the street, I wasn’t as well trained as I thought to go long periods of time between shopping.  When I moved here, I thought I had planned everything, but it still took some very expensive trips into town on dwindling savings to learn otherwise.  Nowadays, I can go two months between grocery stores.  And bike parts are good for a year ( I slowly but surely built up all needed items, whereas before I waited until an item broke and went to the bike shop-in my defense, it was a geared bike which I couldn’t do most repairs on anyway ). 

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A lot of items I anticipate needing.  If, for instance, a backpack or propane stove or jacket breaks or gives out, I have one waiting already.  I don’t want to make an extra trip into town for anything.  At all.  This is just me, going Bicycle Only.  But if you did the same, you accomplish many and varied positive things.  Such as bulk buying, Alpha Strategy buying, stopping impulse buying, improve your budgeting, and one or two other positive attributes I always give to my ideas, on par with World Peace.  This is what far rural dwellers do, habitually, but I think it behooves suburbanites to do likewise.  Once gasoline, or insurance, or unemployment make car trips far more problematic than normal,  you will rejoice at this choice.

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