Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
ISSN 2161-5543
In This Issue:
1.
Going solar – Groupon Style
2.
Learn how
dangerously low our water supply is
3.
Free homework
help
4.
Winter
Composting
5.
Why do you
prepare – the parting thought
By working faithfully
eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work 12 hours a
day. --Robert Frost
Save Even More at Warehouse Clubs…
I don’t belong to Costco or Sam’s. When I owned my publishing company as was
rather useful for stocking up on office supplies. My error was in taking my former spouse who
could run up 100s of dollars in expenditures faster than the IRS can attach a
bank account. Also, I dislike the annual
fee, which is scheduled to increase this year.
I can usually save just as month with shopping sales at my favorite
outlets.
If you have a large family
or are willing to create a neighborhood co-op deal, it’s worth the effort to
join. You don’t need a membership to
take advantage of Costco’s pharmacy services and if you can risk shopping at
off hours, you can avoid the huge crowds, but then you might miss the free
lunch provided by all of the free samples held throughout the day on weekends
(hint: shop during weekdays to avoid some of the food impulse buys).
In any event, these big box
warehouse guys are smart. For instance,
avoid their ‘power aisle’ which features big ticket items such as mammoth TVs
and such (unless that’s what you’re shopping for). Bigger sizes do not always mean an item is a
bargain. Frequently, you can find the
same item cheaper on sale at your local market, especially for paper goods.
In fact, a good shopper knows
their prices. My Dad would line up all
of the Sunday sales fliers and exam who had the best sales that week and that’s
how he chose which store to patronize.
For the most part, you can
save further by purchasing private label products and Costco’s name brand,
Kirkland, is as good, or better than many national brands. Keep in mind all of these warehouse clubs
have limited selections (Costco stocks about 3,800 items) compared to a typical
supermarket which averages 40,000 different items.
Remove burned
on food or baked-on stains off pans without scrubbing by covering the pan with
water and add a few tablespoons of fabric softener; let stand a couple of hours
and the food should wash right off.
PM’s
Compendium of Useful Resources
Going Solar -
Groupon Style…
It’s not a coupon
purchased over the Internet. However, Daniel Parrella talks with people in his community and helps
bring them together, so they can purchase solar energy for less.
“The logic is very simple,” Parrella said. “By going
in as a group you can switch the power to the homeowners and negotiate
favorable pricing.”
This summer, Parrella left the University of
California at Santa Barbara where he was a sophomore studying political
science, to orchestrate a group purchase of solar systems in Davis. Parrella
signed up more than 150 Davis residents who expressed an interest in installing
solar panels at their homes, and convinced REC Solar, based in San Luis Obispo,
to offer these residents a 20 to 25 percent discount if they purchased a system
over the next three months.
Participants in the deal will pay REC Solar about
$5.45 a watt for their systems, or about $15,000 for an average-sized three
kilowatt system. Parrella said state and federal tax credits and incentives
will reduce that cost to about $10,000. The federal tax credit amounts to 30
percent of the total system cost while the California rebate is 25 cents per
watt.
Parrella’s company, Spearhead Solar, which consists
largely of Parrella and his partner, Chris Duran, 27, a former solar system
salesman, receives a commission from the solar installers on every contract it
signs. The size of the commission is based on the size of the system and ranges
from 15 to 25 cents per watt. A contract for a three-kilowatt system would net
Spearhead Solar about $700.
Learn how
endangered our water supply is overall – from toxins that waste treatment plants don’t remove, to coordinated
attacks on the water supply, to major shortages that won’t be helped by
additional rainfall.
The free report is
called Peak Water: Why Clean, Safe Water Could
Soon Be As Valuable As Oil. Peak Water
delivers 30 information-packed pages filled with research and analysis
| Junior
Achievement Sparks Student Success
Junior
Achievement (JA) empowers young people to own their economic success. Our volunteer-delivered, K-12 programs
foster work-readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills, and
use experiential learning to inspire kids to dream big and reach their
potential.
Junior Achievement
impacts 4 million U.S. students in more than 173,000 classrooms.
With the help of 171,000 volunteers, JA students develop the skills
they need to experience the realities and opportunities of work and
entrepreneurship in the 21st-century global marketplace.
|
Plagued by bad
odors (like a cat box)…Get this new product
Instead of masking
odors, X-O Odor Neutralizer’s all-natural spray binds with scent molecules,
changing their structure to permanently eliminate the odor. Go to KVSupply.com --
Enter the code 11902007 to get a 10% discount.
Free Homework
Help
Sometimes, school work
goes beyond the knowledge level of parents.
Get help for your kids at these free sites.
Cramster.com -
Provides answers from
tutors for children in the ninth grade through college level.
Number2.com - Get practice exams for the SAT, ACT and GRE and track
your progress.
CliffsNotes.com
- Anyone can browse
their library of articles, study guides and book summaries
|
Be wary of leaf and
snow blowers - they make enough noise to damage your hearing. Wear earplugs whenever you’re exposed to
one.
Winter Composting
In colder climates
composting doesn’t work outdoors without some source of heat. An alternative is to bury a few old trash
cans in the ground (remove the bottoms first) about 20” deep or so. Push the cans into the hole about 6”
leaving covers in place to prevent rodent from getting inside. Put sawdust or leaves on top of the waste
and compact it.
When you go to use
the compost, it’s pretty easy to simply grab the can and pull it out…often,
you’ll find some good fishing worms at that point too.
|
The Nanny
State Updates…
State of Chaos
Starting…
All over the United
States, livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The
following is from a recent Associated Press article....
While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn't.
High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people
struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too.
Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs
have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts
add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.
Authorities say today's thieves are sophisticated
compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up
livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals
inside. Investigators suspect it's then a quick trip across state lines to sell
the animals at auction barns.
The reality is that a
lot of Americans are so frustrated right now that even the silliest things will
set them off. For example, one man down in Georgia recently firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.
One of the clearest signs of rising anger and
frustration in America is the Occupy Wall Street movement. These protests are a precursor to the mass
economic riots that are coming to this nation.
“There’s class
warfare, all right,” Mr.(Warren) Buffett
said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”…New York
Times
According to an
article in The New York Times, poor families that lost their homes to foreclosure
were openly mocked during a Halloween party thrown by the law firm of Steven J.
Baum. This particular law firm represents many of the largest mortgage lenders
in the United States....
Photos from this
Halloween party are posted on The New York Times website. To say that they are appalling would be a huge
understatement. The following is how The New York Times described one of the
photos....
In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless
people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck
that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My
source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of
the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.
To many on Wall Street, the OWS protests are
one big joke. In fact, Wall Street executives have been spotted sipping champagne while watching the Occupy Wall Street protests from their balconies.
The Parting Thought – The Washington-Wall Street
Cartel
Why do you
prepare?
The American Ideal is
in jeopardy, that "America's commitment to equality of opportunity is
called into question." Unfortunately, he explained, President Obama is
responding to these challenges by giving in to the temptation of exploiting
fear and envy by embracing petty and trivial rhetoric, avoiding making tough
decisions on spending and the debt, and by attempting to score cheap political
points instead of building consensus:
Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that
were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by
preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.
America is broken—economically, spiritually, morally, and financially. Somewhere, somehow, at some point, we’ve lost our way
Yours for “what is
happening to our freedom”, the Poor Man
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1 comment:
We agree. This is one of the more interesting blogs on the net. Always provides useful resources and thoughtful political insights. Everyone in America needs to be more self reliant and this provides a lot of tools to accomplish this as does its main site.
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