As I write this, Vance and the boys are chopping wood. It's beautiful outside. I'm not sure if I've ever shared this before, but the entire front of our house is a window. It's meant to be a passive solar system that warms the house during the winter and a large solar curtain comes down over it to cool the house in the summer. This window ranks in the top 10 reasons we bought this house.
While the boys were chopping wood I made dinner and looked out at the beautiful sunshine and listened to the news that in just less than 24 hours we might have two feet of snow in our front yard (hence, the reason for the wood chopping). It's hard to believe that the mild, beautiful and sunshiny weather could change so drastically in such a short period of time.
It made me think of the economy and the state of our nation. This whole week I have been thinking how our economy doesn't seem as bad as they (the media) say it is. Vance and I tried to go out to dinner a few weeks ago on a Friday night. We hit five different places before we found somewhere the wait wasn't at least an hour and fifteen minutes long. Some of the places we couldn't even find a parking spot. These were medium to high end restaurants where you pay at least $15 per plate. This is evidence enough to me to think that things aren't that bad. Then, of course, there was the stock market rally this week of over 500 points.
Like today's weather, I think this is just the calm before the storm and I was very impressed to get prepared. Because fuel is low, groceries are reasonable and there are a lot of sales going on right now if you need something to wear or something for your house. However, fuel is back on the rise and I don't have a lot of confidence in what Washington is doing to "fix" the economy. In fact, I think it's going to backfire.
There are two things that are definite: fuel is going to get worse than it was last summer and everything else will rise because of it. Put that together with the way our government is printing money and we have a recipe for the "perfect storm".
My plan is to buy in bulk groceries that are essential, mainly canned goods and large (50lb.) bags of beans and rice. Last year Sam's started putting limits on how much of these items you could buy. There's nothing you can do about gas prices or produce. You have to buy these things when you have to buy them. But, putting as much as possible away in your savings now and buying things that will keep and cost much less now than later seems to be a VERY good idea.
Proverbs has A LOT to say about these things. I don't want to be doom and gloom, but I do want to be wise.
Just thought I would share this with you so you could be thinking about it (if you weren't already).
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