How to survive the depression

BY DWIGHT HOBBES

Find yourself a bit more impressed by the depression than you ever expected?  (Not President Barack Obama and all the king’s men can dress this up enough to look like a recession.)  Hanging on to your job by a gnat’s hair?  Altogether lost your job?  (Lot of that going around, these days.) It’s pretty new territory for you to worry—I mean, seriously worry—about money.

Two words for you.  Join the club: Lots of folks out here been dealing with hard times long before you.  Here’s some help, broken down into categories. Clip it and put the bad boy on your refrigerator: Here’s tested methods to keep from starving (if “starving” sounds melodramatic, save this article and read it later, when you’re truly in this mess).

Food shelves and Soup Kitchens.  There’s two food shelves in my neighborhood and I hit ‘em both.  Every month.  The premise at one of these places is to tide you over a few days with some staples.  If you know what you’re doing, you can stretch it considerably farther than a few days.  Here’s how.  One, make a list of what you need before you walk in the door.  There’s nothing dumber than getting back to the house and realizing you forgot something important.  Be sure and put rice on your list.  And beans.  You can make several reasonably tasty meals out of rice and something else.  Beans, of course, are a natural companion to rice, especially with some good seasoning.  Which, by the by, you might be able to pick up at the foodshelf.  Rule of thumb, don’t be scared or embarassed to ask if they have this or that in particular. 

The worst they can tell you is, “No.”  At best, you’ll get what you need.  Also, if your foodshelf gives out milk, call ahead and find out on what day so you don’t wind up coming down the day before or after it’s all been handed out.  You want to be there bright-eyed and bushy tailed on delivery day.  Most of them also have tables on top of tables of bread for the taking and, frequently, pastries.  Good brands, too.

By the way, at most pantries, you can get clothes, too.  And some of it ain’t half bad.  You just gotta look ’em over real good.

Soup kitchens can be dicey because basically they’re tramp camps where all kinds of people you don’t need to be around show up for a free meal.  The men and women can be rowdy as hell and there’s no way of telling just plain jerks from the clinically insane.  Go, hit the food line, take your tray to a table, reach in your little paper or plastic bag and pull out a bowl.  Put your food in the bowl.  Put the lid over the bowl.  Then make a beeline for the door.  Get the hell out.  Maybe come back ten minutes to closing when they start dishing out seconds.  Take the stuff home, put it in the fridge.  Maybe add some rice to it.
Note: You’re going to see signs at soup kitchens that say you can’t take the food out.  Do it anyway.  Nobody watches and they really don’t care.  It’s just a law that they have to have that sign up.

Using these two resources will help you spread your food budget.  Which you need to stop spending exclusively at the big name supermarkets.  There’s one franchise in particular a surprising number of folk don’t know about. It’s cheap as hell and while you may not want to shop there exclusively, you’re stupid if you buy milk or eggs anywhere else.

Resources.  The idea here is to put some change in your pocket and, importantly, cut down on how much money you waste on stuff you don’t need. Recyling works.  You’ve seen guys who rummage in garbage cans every other week at apartment buildings, collecting cans in great big giant bags.  I don’t know how much they get for them at the collection center, but it’s enough that they keep coming back, rummaging through folk’s garbage.  No, I’m not saying, “You, too, can be a champion dumpster-diver.” 

But it only makes sense to toss your empty soda or beer cans in a bag in the corner until the bag’s full.  Then go cash ‘em in.  Whatever you walk away with is more than you had before.

What the hell do you need cable TV for?  Most of the programming there is just as bad as broadcast for which you don’t have to pay a dime.  You want entertainment on the tube?  That’s reasonable.  Fine, go to a thrift store, buy a DVD player and get movies out of the library.  For free—as long you return them on time.  Like plays?  Dance companies? Plenty venues will let you usher for a show in exchange for being able, once the curtain goes up, to sit down and have a nice time at the theater.

Cell phones are not umbilical chords.  You can live without one.  Yeah, I know, that’s sacrilege, but, think:  Is your cell a necessity or is it a luxury?  There ain’t a job in this world where the same business can’t be conducted over a landline that’ll cost you may 20, 30 bucks once instead of pumping money into it every month.

This essay has been a public service announcement.