Your Playbook for Tough Times: Living Large on Small Change, for the Short Term or the Long Haul
By Donna Freedman; Word Matters Press; $9.49; 124 pages
What it's about: Award-winning personal finance writer Donna Freedman, an Alaskan for decades and a longtime Anchorage Daily News reporter, provides realistic tactics, actionable advice and a sense of ownership and hope in her new book. It's aimed at three groups of people:
• Those already living on the margin
• Those who see tough times coming (layoffs, illness)
• Those who want to live lean to realize a dream (entrepreneurship, early retirement, etc.)
"Playbook" is full of solid advice, resources and encouragement. Readers will learn specific tactics to slash the cost of housing, health care, shopping, utilities, clothing and entertainment.
They'll learn how to conduct a "financial fire drill" to get control of their money, find short-term help during crises, and build savings (even on the tightest of budgets) for emergencies and retirement.
Whether you've landed in a difficult situation or were born into one, this book gives consumers the tools they need to rewrite their financial lives.
Excerpt: The Financial Fire Drill: Food, shelter, clothing and utilities are needs. The rest is just a series of wants.
Sound stark? It is. There's not a whole lot of margin when times are tight or when you've got a bold dream like retiring early or starting your own business.
But the needs/wants binary isn't a form of punishment. It's the basis of intentional living, i.e., choosing where your money will (and won't) be going.
It's also an integral part of what I call the "financial fire drill," a kind of extreme budget makeover. The idea isn't that you won't pay your bills, but rather that you'll find ways to cut the number of bills you have to pay.
The financial fire drill is about smart use of available funds. It's also pretty simple:
• On paper, build a baseline budget — the absolute minimum you need to survive.
• Pretend that your household lost some or all of its income.
• Subtract the baseline from the income that remains (including unemployment, if that's an option). If the answer is a negative number, time to take another look at those wants and needs.
Obviously if you've already lost a lot (or all) of your income, then you need a baseline budget more than ever. This should include basic shelter, food, clothing, utilities, debt service and entertainment.
Note: "Basic" means exactly that. Figure out on paper how little you could get away with spending — without jeopardizing health or safety or turning into a deadbeat.
For example, you'd nix meals out in favor of food cooked at home, but would make sure those meals were nutritious and tasty as well as cheap. Living solely on ramen and oatmeal wouldn't do you much good.
You'd cut the cable in favor of Hulu and/or Netflix, or at least drop down to a basic package. Although cutting television entirely has its charms — I haven't had a TV since 2005 — going cold turkey is not for everyone (especially shut-ins).
While you'd keep making essential payments (e.g., child support) in full, you would stop paying extra on a mortgage, student loan or consumer debt. Hobbies, nights out and the kids' extracurricular activities would be cut to a minimum; some of these things could be halted altogether, at least for a while.
Finally, you should make it your business to know the price of nearby rentals and the cost of moving, should that become necessary.
Alaska Bush Mother
By La Vaughn Kemnow; Mountain West Publishing; $28.95; 124 pages
What it's about: True happenings experienced by a girl who in 1956 marries against her better judgment. Three years and three babies later, she finds herself on an Alaska homestead, in a makeshift, poorly insulated cabin in primitive surroundings. Her husband spends most of his time visiting other homesteaders and repairing their farm machinery — for which he is not paid.
Meanwhile, back at the homestead, the "housewife" carries water; cuts and carries firewood; stuffs paper in cracks in the walls to keep the cold out; scrubs clothes and bedding on an old-fashioned washboard; takes care of all the babies' needs and accidents and illnesses; has close and scary encounters with moose and bear … and a few humans.
This young woman has to use every bit of her intelligence and ingenuity to keep her brood from freezing to death … and fed.
The incessant workload leads to fatigue. Dealing with frightening situations by herself ushers in deepening depression and despair. Yet somehow she finds the will to keep going for the sake of her children.
Excerpt: I had been alone in the homestead cabin with the children for weeks. It was an extraordinarily cold winter, even for Interior Alaska. To see the thermometer just outside, I peered through the tiny spot I had melted with my hand through the thick frost on the inside of the window pane.
The temperature was unbelievably low, but was later substantiated by people living on other homesteads in the Clearwater area. It had been hovering around 60 degrees below zero for about six weeks …
Although it was more than nine years later that an official temperature of minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Alaska, at least three Clearwater area homesteaders reported 80, 81 and 82 below zero, in December 1961 …
Aside from the possibility of freezing to death, my situation was far from ideal. My great-grandparents were pioneer homesteaders on the Oregon coast, and I was used to hard work, innovation and making do with what I had. My idea of marriage, as it was in my pioneer family, was that husband and wife would make solid plans, and work together with mutual respect to accomplish their goals and solve any difficulties. It didn't work out that way for us. Where he had been attentive and thoughtful before, on the night of our marriage he suddenly changed. His needs and wants were more important; he got what he wanted in less than a minute; then he was sound asleep.
From that time on, he spent most of his time with his men friends and his parents. And that was the way it was to be … I had advocated for a winter's supply of wood to be obtained before cold weather set in. To him that wasn't a priority. As efficient as the stove was, it could not keep us warm.
My feet felt numb; three toes on my left foot had frozen even though I slept only a few feet from the fire, fully clothed, wearing layer upon layer of pants, shirts, and three pairs of thick wool socks topped with sheepskin boot pacs; military surplus sheepskin flight pants; a hooded woolen parka; and two wool headscarves — and covered with several quilts.
Fortunately, the children fared better. The small room they slept in had been built by my parents and was insulated — sides, top and bottom — with moss.
There were piles of unread magazines, piles of clothing in need of mending, piles of laundry that needed washing. But I was too cold, too tired. My fingers were so numb I couldn't have threaded a needle. Washing clothes — or bathing children, other than a quick swipe of faces, hands, and bottoms when necessary — was not an option when everything inside the cabin was frozen. I did not recognize the anger that lay hidden deep inside me — only the depression that permeated my being. I was barely functioning — but I had to keep going.