It’s kind of a financially depressing time…

It seems like the last few days have been filled with nothing but terrible financial and economic news. And honestly, I don’t understand all of it. I’ve read the articles, but I just don’t have a real grasp of the details of how this happened and why, and I don’t even really think that the enormity of the problem has hit me.

See, I’m really sort of a small-time finances kind of gal…I’m in my groove when I’m figuring out whether a $.55/2 coupon on a item that’s on sale 3 for $5 is a better deal than the off brand, but when it comes to larger financial matters, I’m not really all that great.

(fortunately my husband does better with large stuff than with small stuff, so we’ve managed to not make disastrous large decisions most of the time!).

At any rate, the financial problems in the news the last few days definitely fall into the big-time finances category and not into the small-time category, but I’ve been thinking about how now is as good a time as ever to focus on the small stuff.

We can’t control what’s happening in the stock market or housing market, we can’t control how banks loan money, and we can’t control what the government decides to do about it, but we can do a lot to control things on a smaller scale.

We can…

• use less electricity
• spend less on groceries
• plan menus, so as to avoid eating out
• avoid wasting food
• pack lunches
• reuse stuff instead of buying new stuff
• cook/make food ourselves
• learn to bake

…and a million other things that I haven’t gotten to post about yet!

Obviously, these things won’t make up for a $10,000 loss in your mutual funds, but since you can’t do anything about that, you might as well focus on something that you CAN do.

And if our worst nightmares come true and we end up in another Great Depression, these sorts of skills and habits will be more necessary and beneficial than ever.