Hang on to your hats, Boys and Girls! Don't let the whirlwinds and tornadoes blow you away!
In these times one has to adjust to basic survival. Today, the question is not: Can I keep up my house payments? But actually, if you are going into foreclosure, "How do I keep myself and my family from living on the streets?"
This seems to be the most pressing question of all. In my strategy of life I usually chose not to ever have a mortgage and that if I couldn't pay cash for land to build a house or something like that I wouldn't own land or a house. I learned this strategy from my parents and grandparents who lived through the great depression and survived it well. I always believed it was better to rent or even share rent with a lot of people in a house or if I was young enough, stay with my parents into between jobs or rental units somewhere in the United States.
So, once again, if ever, one needs to think like this. Do I have a relative or friend whose house is paid for that is big enough to house both me and my family? Does this relative live close enough to where I could make enough money for utilities and food?
Many of you have already had to think like this when you lost your homes to foreclosure in the last few years. Though I know these changes are psychologically difficult to bear and many of you including me have lost relatives to all the changes already.(Especially the old timers that absolutely would rather die than face another Great Depression). So you can see what they thought of 1929 to 1945 or 50.
So, in these times there are options still like I chose. I bought land for $8000 in the forest on Mt. Shasta. There was no electricity unless I brought or bought a generator or solar cells or used one of my cars or trucks to generate an extra 12 volt battery. I did this in 1980 and spent with my family 6 months to 1 year at a time from 1980 until 1985 there. Since we paid cash for the land and bought the material and built the house ourselves, everything was paid for. Since most of the time our vehicles were paid for, only for a short time while living there did we have even car payments. By buying bulk food,we bought organic food in bulk with 25 to 50 gallon drums of organic peanut butter, 25 pounds of organic rice and about 20 pounds of organic potatoes and ten pounds of Carob powder for making chocolate(carob milk) by mixing the carob powder and milk. We bought 25 pounds of organic powdered milk and another 25 pounds of various kinds of pasta. These were our staples. Since we were lacto ovo vegetarians we also ate cheese and bread and olives and all kinds of canned goods as well. This was our basic list we ordered from a local health food store or food co-op. That co-op later became Pine Grove and later still Berryvale in the little City of Mt. Shasta. Since our land was about 30 miles from the city of Mt. Shasta and ten miles from the nearest small town of McCloud we had quite a drive for anything. So, we home schooled our kids and when the snows got above 3 foot deep(they often went to 7 feet deep around our A-frame) we carried our food in on a toboggan and pulled it on Cross country skis. We had a mountain spring that ran year around on our 2 1/2 acres of land at 4000 feet, so we had water for cooking, bathing and watering an organic garden and cherry trees and of course flushing our toilet, as we had a septic tank as well. Since we chose to live fairly primitively, we had an outdoor fire at night and when we wanted to bathe ourselves and the children and didn't want to go into town for that, we put a large piece of tin roof we salvaged from a hanger that burnt down at a nearby airport. On top of that large piece of tin, we put a tin washtub full of water. Underneath the bonfire burned until the water was hot enough and we bucketed it into our house with 5 gallon plastic buckets. Our huge old fashioned clawfoot stand alone bathtub we then bought for about 100 dollars was large enough to fit all three kids 5 to 8 in 1980 or two adults, if we wished.It sat next to our custom built(by my father) wood stove which heated our A-Frame Cabin. This was how we had a great time surviving 1980 to 1985 at which time we moved to the coast and bought a new business, and put the kids in a good public school in an affluent area and I got a job also as a CDF fire lookout which had at that time great medical benefits for the whole family which was the main reason I took the job. It also was a seasonal job (6 months a year) which allowed us to go to India, Nepal and Thailand for 4 of those months from December 1985 until April 1986. This was a once in a lifetime experience for all of us, including our kids who were ages 10 to 14 at the time.
So, as you can see, hard times don't have to be that hard. You just have to be intelligent enough to be innovative. By the way, during all these times other people were having a hard time and we helped all those that we could. Sometimes we let them park a camper or motorhome on our land for a while until they could get back on their feet and stuff like that.
All down through history people helped travelers because travelers were the local newspaper since there wasn't any. By helping people you feel are safe you learn things about their jobs and travel all over the world. This in turn helps you to make better decisions in your own life ongoing. This is how the world got to where it is now!
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