Americans Buy More Stuff They Don’t Need Than Ever Before - WSJ

The Wall Street Journal's number of the week is: $1.2 trillion: How much Americans spend annually on goods and services they don’t absolutely need.
Number of the Week: Americans Buy More Stuff They Don’t Need - Real Time Economics - WSJ.
How much does the U.S. economy depend on purchases of goods and services people don’t absolutely need? Too much, it would seem. People advocating a frugal lifestyle have been abused and even threatened by people who think trying to live without consuming excessively is detrimental to society.
We need to look closely at ourselves. Big business has coined the term Consumers. People using that description never seem to consider that it is actually derogatory and demeaning. I take offence at being called a "consumer". I am a customer, a buyer. I want and expect the businesses to see me as a valued customer, not a business metric with the derogatory tag Consumer.
Link Courtesy of The Everyday Minimalist

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

I have read about this apartment before, and seen photos, but this video really showcases the brilliance of this apartment.

Lessons Learned from Renting a Market Stall

Why a market stall and not a garage sale?

 Today was the culmination of several weeks of planning. We wanted to simplify our lives and reduce the amount of excess baggage we own. We decided to either hold a garage sale (or yard sale) or book a stall at a local weekly market at Evandale in Tasmania. We chose the market stall because on a typical day a lot more people pass through the marketthan ever visit a garage sale.
The Evandale market in summer caters to a lot of tourists looking for souvenirs. They have more money to spend, but are not interested in buying second-hand home wares. In winter the market caters to local shopping for local produce and bargains. The number of stalls drops, and so does the number of visitors. However the results can be quite worthwhile.

We booked a stall and one table by phone and were told to arrive at 7am. We had a large folding table of our own, and a station-wagon loaded with sales goods, lunch and snacks and two Vacuum flasks.

Getting there early

At 7am it was pre-dawn, foggy and -3 degrees Celsius. We were allocated a stall at the back of the markets under a large tree. We set up the two tables and spread an array of items ranging from curtains and tablecloths to a Philips Skype phone, a Palm Zire 31 and a Pentax Optio S40 4 mega-pixel digital camera.

As we set out a display of items we realized we were being "snowed on" with a constant shower of ice crystals and frozen cobwebs dropping from the tree above us. We were constantly brushing clusters of snowflakes off the tables and sale items. Early sales where brisk, but within 30 minutes my feet were so cold I was beginning to lose feeling in my toes. My wife was feeling the cold as well, but we worked at putting price labels on everything and trying to group similar items together.

By 10:30am the temperature had risen above zero and the ice began to melt. dew and melting ice gradually gave us a fair imitation of rain. With the rain came a constant stream of frozen leaves falling from the tree. within 15 minutes the constant rain forced us to cover our tables and find a patch of sun to warm up in and wait. Thirty minutes later the "rain" began to abate. We dried everything off and went back to work. Unfortunately many of the things we were trying to sell were now wet. We battled on.

The flow of buyers seems to go in three stages. Very early came other stallholders and bargain hunters not afraid of the cold. A few hours later come the bulk of the visitors, typically looking for fruit and veg, bargains and a day out with friends or family. Lastly, in the last hour comes the next wave of bargain hunters, well heeled, better dressed, cashed up and looking to benefit from desperate stall holders trying to unload things they do not want to take home at any price. By 1:30PM the market was closed, and we packed up the left-overs and went home. The next day most of the unsold items went to charity.

A successful effort

We sold most of what we took. Others were not having a good day, but our purpose was to unload unwanted possessions, not maximize profits. Nothing we sold would have been a suitable candidate for sale on e-bay. We raised over 575$ and our costs were time, effort and $27 for the rental of the stall and one table.

Lessons learned:

• Be prepared to argue for a more suitable spot, sunny in Winter, shady in Summer.
• Bring plenty of change, and plastic bags and wrapping material
• Keep like items together, don't scatter things randomly.
• Bring or hire enough tables
• Don't put things on the ground unless they are large. We stood pictures along the front of the tables ans sold all but two.
• Price things. People will often walk past check the price and then come back later when they cannot find anything better.
• Avoid loading everything onto the tables at once, as things sold, we filled the gaps, shifted things around and kept the tables full.
• Make things browse-able. Books, CDs DVDs should be at a convenient height and in boxes or trays that allows then to be flipped through.

Tags: Market, Selling, Simplifying

Lipitor, Memory Loss, and Why I Created Escape to Simplicity.

In 2010 I discovered that something had been done to me that almost destroyed my ability to function as a normal human being. It was not malicious, it was a prescribed medication that ruined my short-term memory. I would forget things almost instantly. I would hang up from a phone call, and forget who had called, or what their message was. Long term memory was fine, just the immediate things disappeared.
It cost me a job. It cost me my business. It took away my ability to enjoy movies and television. How much fun is a crime show when you forget what the crime was?

I will writte about this at length elsewhere.  but the net result was major changes in how I lived. Then I discovered my memory was being stolen by Lipitor, a Cholesterol Medication produced byPfizer. I stopped taking it, and within weeks almost all symptoms disappeared. Now I look back and wonder what MIGHT have been, if I had not suffered this debilitating symptom for the last three years?
It has made me re-think what is important to me. I have discovered that the work ethic I developed over the last 40 years is not right for me now. My work in the technology and security industries have consumed my life to a degree I now see as unhealthy. I am going to change. My priorities are a subject of considerable meditation, ans still subject to change.

I don't have a plan, but I do have a purpose

My purpose is to change my life, lifestyle and source of income to allow me to do what matters to me, when and where I want to do them.
It will require me to do a number of things.

• Simplify my life, and eliminate the unnecessary
• Change my sources of income to something portable and controllable
• Establish a pattern of putting the important before the urgent

As I go down this path I will make may changes, and much of that will be documented here. As the plan is developed, I will share some of it, but not all. Only what seems of interest to others will be put here.

Please join me with comments and suggestions

Please let me know if you have faced a similar issue, and what changes it has made in your life. I would REALLY love to hear your opinion.
Enjoy! - Phil S.


Copyright (c) 2011 by Philip A. Stephens