Rule #3, Don't Specialize!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. 

Specialization is for insects.


-Robert A. Heinlein

Falling Down

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OK! The first of my 5 Rules; #1.a, One point Two and 2.1 aren't all that much fun, in part because they go against everything we were raised to believe it means to be an American, namely, do the right thing so you can buy more stuff than the Jones. I say stuff is an addiction and competing with the Jones for stuff is the root of unhappiness - why do you think the slang for addiction is "Jones"?  [I don't know if thats the reason or not but it fits my purpose perfectly!]

My first two rules, Don't Buy and Don't Borrow eliminate the need to pay interest to buy unending piles of worthless stuff so you don't blow a gasket like Douglas did in Falling Down. Now you can start getting to the fun part: reducing and diversifying your income. This is really the best part of living on the edge. For many years I struggled and sweated through my cheap dress shirts trying to make a little more money, first working for someone else on salary, then in my own business. Every time I succeeded in making more money I got a bigger mortgage, ran up more CC bills, bought (and replaced and replaced) ever more throwaway stuff. All the while I thought I was doing what I wanted but I was mostly just paying the Stupid Tax that keep the Bread and Circus Show on the air.

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Just one word...

Mr. McGuire was right, plastics were the future, but they'll be past soon enough. What's the word now?

 Telecommuting. I'm no guru and I have no crystal ball but that's my prediction anyway. I have a diversified income but my primary tool (most years) is a computer and internet connection. If you do any portion of your daily grind on a computer you can probably find a way to make a living anywhere you can get a connection. I can't express how convinced I am that one day not to distant, the current model of "driving till you qualify" for the size home you desire, then driving back in to work everyday will be untenable for a variety of reasons.

Telecommuting is great for rules 1 and 2 too, because it eliminates a wide variety of stuff from your debit column, from commute expenses (you know, like a car and gas) to clothes, to restaurant meals, to child care. Seriously you can save a ton of money by not having a "Job". It also allows you to design everything about your work life, from hours to t-stat setting to choice of Muzak - I'm listening to Dan Tyminski on some-guy-from-Japan's music list on Last.fm just now.  And as you can see, my office looks like a bordello, which is very soothing.

But best of all telecommuting puts you in charge of your time, get your work done by 6a? Cool, do something else!

And that's the key to making enough cash to keep the tax man away and buy a soda pop here and there, you need to diversify your income. Jobs - and job categories - are increasingly transient, very few people retire with a company pension any more. The last thing you should do is put all your eggs in one basket - the corporation don't do they?

I can't tell you what will work for you. Because we choose to live in the country, in addition to graphics we raise calves, do some odd jobs - carpentry, general farm labor (GASP! and a white man too!), wrenching, upholstery, sewing, sell some vegetable starts and excess produce, some hay once in a while (though I hate selling off fertility) and we're always casting around for something new - that we we like to do.

Another advantage of telecommuting is disconnecting income from cost of living. IOW, I can live in SW MO, with an extremely low cost of living, yet do work for clients in and at rates a shade below what I'd get in the Bay Area of CA - which I do (sometimes).

The flip side of that is if I can work from the Ozarks, someone else can work from Bangladesh and undercut me as well, I've tried eLance.com and Freelancer.com and I have gotten some work but it's tough. But the cat's out of the bag on that one. Whether you live in LA; Gutwater, Missouri and your job can be done over a cable it will be done from a cheaper place one day. You might want to think about that. My best advice is to get yourself a good rep (if you do freelance like me) or make yourself valuable in a way someone in Chindia can't before your job goes that way without you.


Working at the edge of the rich world takes a little bit of courage if you've been a company man your whole life. But this isn't your fathers world anymore and playing their game doesn't always pan out. Homo evolved to be the King of Adaptation, it's time to take advantage of your genes.

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Rule 2. Don't borrow trouble...

I just found out the first true credit card was introduced the year after I was born. Funny, I thought all along I was born with a minimum payment due. The Rich World runs on credit, interest is the dues you pay to play the game.

Previously:5 Rules, Rule #1, Rule #1b-recycle

Diners Club was actually first the first "Charge Card" to allow purchase at multiple businesses (resturants) in '50, but charges were due at the end of the month. Previously, retailers (department stores gas stations) would offer their own card. AmEx and Bankamericard (now Visa) were the first to take us down the road of revolving credit cards and the Minimum Payment Devil!

My goal in living on the edge has 3 facets; first, enjoy a small country life, second, use stuff the rich world sorta dribbles out the side of it's mouth so I need less money, and third, have a personal economy and infrastructure not totally dependent on BAU. Let me tell you about me and BAU...

discoverpa.blogspot.com

My first bit of credit was for a new refrigerator. We'd used hand me downs and even an old Coke ice box and block ice but I was ready to make the leap into BAU. My Dad co-signed for me, he said, "I'll sign for you, if you're sure you want me to – you'll never be out of debt again you know."

Of course he was right, I ran 'em up then paid 'em off with every house we sold. We'd swear them off and be good till the next time the car broke or school clothes time or whatever excuse seemed handy. We got in over our heads many times but I don't think we ever missed a payment.

Anyway, we're out of the interest business for good now. Long story short:

After the recession started our one card (that we used for cash flow - calf money isn't a regular thing) jacked my rate from 7% to 16% for no reason (except that the law was about to change preventing them for raising rates for no reason)

Then a few months later I got sick and wound up in the hospital, I wasn't sure how that would turn out so we skipped a payment - they jacked my rate to 29.9%

As soon as I saw that statement I decided I just wasn't going to pay - [expletive deleted] 'em!

6 Months later I offered them 20% to give up and they took it.

That makes me feel bad, not that they're crooks but that I knew they were crooks and still wound up in a place where I broke my word. It's too bad for them too. Now, just a few months later, I have 2 pretty good new clients, the calf market is up and the calves I was raising to pay off that card would have made a big dent in the balance, but they could not see past jacking me to ridiculous rates, late fees, and then over limit fees. Had they worked with me they would not only have made their their money back with interest but more in the future. Oh well, $20k is no great loss to them and in the end "they" finally broke us of our habit and now we're learning to get some cash savings built like we should have done years ago. 

But there are other ways to save for the future more in line with living on the edge. An unexpected offshoot of raising calves is they are as good as money in the bank, in fact, their return is much better than bank interest. Basically we put in some time and maybe $100 dollars and stick 'em out on the grass where they can gain weight. We don't need to sell them at any particular point (as long as we have grass), the bigger they are, the more they're worth (albeit with diminishing returns) and we can sell them 48 weeks of the year and have cash in a couple of days.

The same goes for storing hay, raising a pig, keeping chickens, growing and preserving food from the garden - even cutting firewood and unless you are really lucky those are all lots more fun than your office job. After all, there is nothing magical about money, it's just a store of value. Whether it's a gold coin, FRNs or 1s and 0s on some hard drive somewhere, it's only worth what someone else will give you in trade.


For someone trying to live in the margin, the reason to not borrow is pretty obvious; every dollar you borrow comes with a Business As Usual tax in the form of interest - if you're trying to escape BAU, why support it by paying the tax?

Rule #1.b Recycle

Crimes Against Furniture

Not recycling where you return things to be reused by "them", this is the kind where you reuse things. The classic is the spool table which I think should be the photo beside the definition of recycling, come to think of it, in this case it is.

Previously: 5 Rules, Rule #1

Obviously you aren't obligated to have a spool table to qualify as someone living on the edge, (which from now on I'm just going to call "Edgy") Here are a couple of Edgy examples from around the house:

Reupholstered $15 chair

Piano - free for hauling, table - homemade (but not free)

Working chute: hiway barriers panels, salvaged gate - even the headgate was a rescue.

I have any number of other examples, like the heated greenhouse benches and the soon to be unveiled Hen House from the Edge - in fact our entire house qualifies! It was rundown and inefficient with a roof beginning to fail, a porch roof that already had and the mechanical (and 1 outlet/room electrical) systems virtually kaput when we bought it - that's major recycling!

Nine by 9 Photography

The point here is there are basically two ways to spend your life, ride the BAU-go-round and specialize in one or two things so you can make enough money to pay other specialists (or little Chinese girls) to do/make everything you can't - or - spend your life learning to do things yourself. There is a pile of rich world stuff just laying along the edge no one wants to touch... 

Not yet anyway...

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Rule #1, don't buy junk.

Buying stuff is necessary, but buying stuff that barely makes it through the trip home is crazy.

Mixing Machine

25 or more years ago, Susan wanted to make bread. "Cool!" I said, I can buy a tool - mixers, miter gauges, mattocks, they are all the same if you are a true tool fool like me.

So at the next opportunity (this in was pre credit card days) I bought an expensive (for us) mixing machine. On a consumer cost scale of 1-5 it was probably a 3 and that was expensive for a carpenter.

She smoked it on the first double batch.


Use it once...

This was the early '80s when there was still a blurry line between sturdy and cheap. That line was quickly fading as plastics and "engineering" made everything better - or at least cheaper. I think that's the corner we've worked ourselves into, everyone wants a deal, the low price always, and that's smart but it has created the throw away society.

We waste about the same amount of food as we did in the 60's and only twice as much as we did 100 years ago. But we waste 100 times the amount of "product"!

Containers and packaging made up the largest portion of MSW generated: 31 percent, or about 77 million tons. The second largest portion came from nondurable goods, which amounted to about 24 percent, or about 59 million tons.*

What is really sad is that in addition to the 24% of the waste stream comprised of "non-durable goods" another 18% is "Durable Goods"!

Lots of throwaway stuff gets recycled, but the price paid for junk never gets refunded.


I try to buy stuff that can be fixed...

I took that plastic mixer back and bought the largest kitchen aide consumer model available. We still have it. It did need repair one time, Susan's brother in law took it apart and replaced a gear and guess what, it was the only plastic part in the machine.

I'm not really sure there are many products that can be fixed any more, especially the household variety. Parts for the kitchen aide blender we bought 15 years ago are no longer available, the unit looks the same as it has for 50 years but the working parts are new and improved - all plastic in other words. But it's worth a look around if you use something often, it seems sweet to buy 3 cheap somethings for the price of one good thing until you turn around and all 3 are broken.

I buy old stuff...

This too is becoming more difficult as the stuff Gram bought 30 years ago gets tossed out with her doilies after she passes. When I was shopping for a good sturdy sewing machine for a Christmas present, I asked a repair guy's opinion and he told me the best machine I could buy - by far, was any model made before about 1965.

The other problem is many times useable old stuff gets bid up by dealers who resell it as "antique". This really hurts, I'd like to find a useable corn sheller for example but they go for so much as "primitives" I wind up twisting cobs by hand...


Buy one good thing...

Finally, I try to buy the best if I possibly can and forego the other 2 things. I'd rather buy a used Honda small engine anything than a new whatever with a brigs; a Lie-Nelson plane is a wonderful thing if you are a tool fool...

*Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2008 (PDF) (12 pp, 1.22MB)

Silk Purses

Living on the edge of modern ag has kind of become the subtext here at the blog. I'm a Junker/Cobbler/repurposing aficionado at heart and enjoy the functionality of a well turned out Sow's Ear Faux Silk Purse.

But beyond the simple satisfaction of a successful kludge, my overall goal is to negotiate my life to a simpler and lower energy level, whether as a preemptive move in the face of lower fossil energy availability or just as an escape from the brass ring grabbing contest, the plan is the same. Hopefully a side benefit is leaving a place and a way for my kids and grandkids to adopt if they want or need.

About three years ago, after racking my brain repeatedly distilling my thoughts on "powering down" to bumper sticker sized morsels for posting on message boards,  I came up with my Five Rules. I use these to judge how/what/where to spend my time and meager resources and to what extent I'm successful.

Here are Pops' 5 Rules for Living on the Edge of the Rich World:

• Don't buy
• Don't borrow
• Don't specialize 
• Don't starve
• Don't be dependent 

I want to talk about these one at a time so I'll start with the firstest and hardest, Don't Buy - or the longer version, Quit buying worthless stuff and learn to live on less.

If I add together what the SS Administration says I've made in my life to what I've made selling the houses we've lived in and fixed up over the years, it comes to over a million bucks (inflation adjusted it's more like about $756.38 but whatever). Boone Pickens says the first billion is the hardest! Point being, I don't want to come off like some monk sleeping on the floor in a lotus position and eating air. I was up there in the 80th percentile a few times and by golly I tried to spend it before it stagnated and I caused the downfall of the entire economy.

But hey, buying stuff is the American Way. The self evident, god given right to pursue stuff was in the opening line in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. And even though "property" was replaced by "happiness" in the final item, we all knew what they were talking about and so we all became the undisputed champions of stuff consumption. As a good American, I've made myself happy by buying every kind of stuff from candy bars to bass boats.

We left California for the Ozarks for a couple of reasons, first and foremost, it was clear the run in home prices was way overdue for a fall. I learned at the time the typical cycle since WWII was 7 years peak to peak - in '04, prices had not peaked for 20 years - that's 2-0 years! When I read the execs at the big home builder Incs were selling off their stock in their own companies to "diversify", well...

Real estate prices, or any price really, makes no difference if you aren't buying or selling. The thing is, as we sat and watched the "value" of our house double over about 3 years we had that pile of airball equity staring us in the face. But it was only accessible 2 ways, borrow against it (and inevitably find ourselves underwater) or sell and move to a lower valued area.

I was almost 50 and chained to the merry go round. I had a huge nut to crack each month and any little blip in the economy (oh, I don't know, RE bubble, credit bubble, commodity bubble) would cause my little free lance graphics business to go poof! The same old roundy round, chasing a buck just gets old. And most importantly Susan, my wife, and Miss, my daughter, were ready to abandon the coast - finally!

Anyway, when it came time to jump the shark, the first step was deciding we could get by without buying so much stuff. Turns out, buying stuff  is a hard habit to break and is what keeps most people working 50 hour weeks. We've been here almost 6 years now and we still get to jonesing for stuff from time to time. Stuff seems to multiply spontaneously (though of course this is illusion), and as it does there is an equal and opposite decrease in wallet mass.

But stuff is like food, you need to have some to survive, the key is deciding what and how much.

After chores post more...