Celebrating the Disasters of Our Lives

I love the news. It allows me to track the anniversary of every horrific event ever to strike the world over the lifespan of an average generation X-er.

So what are we celebrating now?

We're celebrating the anniversary of the collapse of the financial system, September 14. We just finished celebrating September 11, and I'm sure we'll find another disaster to celebrate within the next week or so. It reminds me of when we used to make up holidays as an excuse to go to the bar, eat chocolate or order pizza. "It's National River Birch Day!"

Maybe like me, you're watching the discussion of President Obama's speech. You're hearing about the fact that "Wall Street," that mysterious financial entity that lives in a world only vaguely parallel to ours, hasn't learned "its" lesson yet. Maybe you saw the blip on adding more regulations, or loosening up credit restrictions so that businesses and people can start spending money again. Maybe, like me, you see the demagogues, the pundits, the talking heads point their fingers and shake their heads like a gag from The Colbert Report. Republicans did it. Democrats did it. The communists in China are responsible. It's a plot for reparations. It's a plot to socialize us. But it all comes down to a group of people saying that we need to spend more money.

Why do we need to spend more money? There seems to be the most odd tension between realizing that being frugal has its own reward and a desire to consume what we can't really afford. Isn't that what credit is? Being able to buy what you can't afford to pay for all at once?

People are learning to cook again. Walmart tells us that we can eat breakfast at home and save money. No, really? Restaurants that serve over-priced pub food are now pushing value meals like McDonald's. The idea of "game night" has becoming a selling point for shops. People are actually (I mean, really!) looking in fliers, newspapers, coupon books and advertisements and going to (shock!) different stores for different items. Smaller grocery chains are learning what they can't make up in economy of scale in selling Pepsi, they can actually compensate through service and local produce that doesn't rot before you get it out of the Big Box Store. We start looking at ways to stretch what we have rather than just toss it out and start over.

I'm "funemployed." I don't know who coined that term. I saw it online. I can't pretend that I'm suffering. I'm not. I was (and am) lucky that for now, at least, I have the money I need to pay my health insurance, buy food, keep a roof over my head, pay utilities and my auto insurance. It may be that things get grim for me before they get better. I lost my credit score years ago in my own conspicuous consumption cycle. I don't have credit cards. I don't have a mortgage. My car, thankfully, is paid off and though a death trap, it's a fuel-efficient death trap. So I put my in applications, cross my fingers and figure out new ways to stretch the time that I now have available so I don't talk to my cats that often. I promised myself not to worry until they started talking back.

So it's back to fundamentals for me. Ordering pizza is a luxury. Comparison shopping not only fills the time but gives me the satisfaction of knowing that I am getting the best value I can. I test generics for flavor. I hit the sales at the various pet stores so my cats aren't being fed Ramen noodles and using an empty litter box. I eat my vegetables. I have more fun chatting with the people at the laundromat than the drunken queens at the bar. Buying a book is cheaper than buying a video game. I've figured out 1,700 recipes to use eggs that are on sale for 88 cents a dozen. I've figured out ways to make leftovers into a new gourmet dish by baking it with something else. I buy the manager's specials. I haven't bought any new clothes since January, but who needs to when everything is now a trend from the 80s? Do I really need harem pants?

The best comment I heard today in the analysis is that companies are going to have to adjust to the fact that people aren't as likely to finance their lives with 200 not-so-easy payments. It's viewed as a problem. Is it really a problem? Does sweating the payments on a room-sized flat screen TV equal the sense of security that you have from knowing you have a buffer for when things go wrong? We stopped leasing and trading cars, a practice I actually never quite understood in the first place (feel free to explain it to me). Does actually owning something not feel better than renting it?

They say frugal is the new black. It's an odd metaphor to compare a perspective on finances to a fashion trend. If the "new black" gets us to stop wasting, start living within our means, sacrificing the convenience of one-stop shopping to the joy of small businesses and relearning "a penny saved is a penny earned," how is this a problem? Okay, for some industries this is going to hurt. But maybe the "new black" will allow us to stay in the black for the long term and luxuries will become special rather than commodities.