WHAT YOU SPEND IS CRITICAL TO SURVIVAL IN A HARD ECONOMY

Ok, here's the deal:  It's all about spending.  Think of it this way, and it will make more sense to you. What got the government into so much trouble with their budget?  Simple.  They spend far more than they make, and they spend money on a things that almost any nation will call extravagant.  What if the government spent half as much money as they now spend?  If they cut military spending and social programs in half, they'd be back in the red . . . and they're not about to do that.  If they trimmed the size of government, they'd be far better off.  We wouldn't, but they would.  Cuts in social programs leaves many people hanging by a string, a cuts in military spending leaves us more vulnerable to terrorists and other foreign threats.

Remember Pogo, the comic strip character?  He's credited with saying, "I have met the enemy, and he is us."  We are our own worst enemies, that's for sure.  We do that at the government level, and we do it to ourselves at the private level.  Did you ever sit down a figure out what you could do with your family budget if you had to go into a crisis mode?  I'm talking simple survival here, just hanging on, should the need arise.  Nobody wants to do that, but it can be done.  We all have choices to make each week or month with what we spend, and those choices determine how well we live.  If you cut out everything except what you need to stay afloat,  you'd be surprised at what you come up with.

If it's any help, here's my cut first list:

1) Get rid of car payments altogether
2) Cut back drastically on driving to save gas
3) No new clothes
4) No recreational budget
5) No vacations or travel except what's absolutely necessary
6) Shop carefully for food, get what you need, not what you want
7) Drop all insurances unless required by law or what's absolutely necessary
8) Minimize your utility bills (unplug everything you're not using, etc.)
9) Get medical attention only when it's a must
10) Rid yourself of the parasites (demanding family members included)

Doing that would save me over two thousand dollars a month, cut my budget by a third.  Not enough? If I absolutely had to, I could cut the budget in half.  Like everyone else, I don't want to . . . but it could be done.  Hard times would require doing hard things to survive.