I’m a techie guy but I am not an early adopter of new technology- and, as a result, I’ve saved thousands over the years. I recently bought a 24″ LCD monitor for $250. A year ago the equivalent product was over $500. My new digital camera was $150; I couldn’t have touched its feature set a year ago for under $300. I’m pretty glad I did not buy the second gen iPhone for $300 a year ago now that I can buy it for $100…You get the idea.

There is almost always a buying option that delivers the same features and capabilities at half the price. Buying a 3 year old car coming off a lease is a great example. With less than 36000 miles this is practically a new car. Housing is another example- very often the same house in a neighborhood perceived as being less posh but actually no different in amenities and quality of life can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I really don’t think there is an exception to this rule. In our society we are trained by marketing to buy based on desire and status and this results in recessions like the one we’re experiencing right now. When we want something so bad that we mortgage our lives to get it we are likely to eventually crash and burn. When we collectively mortgage our society to get things we don’t need, society will eventually crash and burn.

For most people, by the time we hit our forties we pretty much have everything we need. We’ve been accumulating both necessities and luxuries for over twenty years. It’s now time to look at what we have and what we want and make adjustments. Get of rid of things you don’t need. If there are things you always wanted to pursue like learning new skills or traveling, then look at what you spend your time on and adjust so you find the time you need to follow those pursuits. Downsize anything you can and put the dollars you save to working improving your life.

It’s not rocket science. When I moved to a less expensive but nicer apartment I realized a lot of things. I wanted to go to NY more often to see art and enjoy the city. With the money I save on rent and utilities I can add a NY trip in six more times a year- or travel for a month! This is an incredible improvement in my lifestyle without spending any more money.

Our healthcare situation is crazy, to put it mildly. This was graphically apparent to me after spending an afternoon in an Emergency Ward a few months ago. I had a funny feeling in my chest and a friend I was with insisted on taking me to the hospital- fortunately it turned out to only be a pulled muscle from increasing my weights during a workout the day before.

During my six hours I sat on a gurney in a hallway, had two blood tests, an x-ray and an EKG. I ate a bad sandwich. I had to stay though the doctors did not think anything was seriously wrong, however they have to verify with two blood tests six hours apart.

A few weeks later I received the bill for services. I have health insurance so I only owed around $50. Without it the bill would have been over $3000. This is for very minimal but required services.

Healthcare is not a business, it is a right

In most cases those of us who pay health insurance premiums are paying for those who cannot afford to pay for services which they need- healthcare is not and should not be viewed as a business (with the exception of optional treatments like cosmetic surgery). The fact that we have a private insurance industry with extremely highly paid executives is simply wrong. My local health insurer has over 15 executives whose compensation packages are over $1 million/year. This is for a region with a population of around 1.2 million. Technically they are a not for profit organization unless you happen to be management- in which case it is very profitable.

Pharma companies, medical equipment companies and others who profit from Americans being sick or injured have fought every effort to create a national health system, AKA ’single payer’. They own the US Congress on both sides of the aisle. There is not even a discussion of single payer going on amongst the lawmakers.

Private health insurance may actually increase the likelihood of disease

Ever wonder why insurers don’t cover more preventive care programs? They don’t because they know the average person in their system will stay with them for only eighteen months because of job and plan changes. As a result there is no incentive whatsoever to prevent diseases that won’t appear within that eighteen month window. Perversely this situation means our private healthcare system may actually increase our likelihood of getting diseases and chronic conditions as we age- because we don’t have access to preventive care.

This subject needs to be brought up every time you have an opportunity to approach your congresspersons. It is simply unacceptable that this prosperous country has one of the worst and most costly healthcare systems in the western world. The only reason for this is outright corporate greed.

We went to the market this morning because Saturdays are getting incredibly crowded. We were surprised by how many people were there including the full range of vendors, though our favorite egg people weren’t there- we’ll see them on Saturday.

Shopping this way not only saves money and provides entertainment, it alerts you to what’s available locally and when. It’s still early but local asparagus is nearly over. There’s still plenty from New Jersey (The Garden State) which seems pretty local to me but Boo disagrees- she thinks there is a difference. 300 hundred miles of trucking I guess.

This past year we went almost every week, even in the dead of winter. The stalls morph into tents with propane heaters blasting and everyone has a chill somewhere. The local produce is things like cabbage, potatoes, apples-things that store well. You can still get nearly anything else from far off places. At least we’re thinking about the carbon cost when we pick up fruit from South America.

The food business in America amazes me. For low artificially low prices we can get virtually anything, anytime. When I was in Paris a few years ago we arrived early on a Saturday at the apartment we rented in Marais. Though lagged we wanted to wander and the first place we found was a weekly street market. I’d always heard about the quality of French fresh food but this was totally amazing. Perfect rows of glistening shrimp lovingly packed in ice, table after table of beautiful fruit and vegetables with literally dozens of varieties of each type. It was a cook’s paradise though I certainly was not planning on spending time cooking in the food capital of the Western world!

That night we had our first French meal in a restaurant in Place de Vosges, the amazing medieval plaza that fills an entire block. The highlight was incredible asparagus served with a lemony hollandaise. They were very thick and a pale green and melted in your mouth like no vegetable I’d eaten before. When Carol (my ex and still friend) bit into her order the expression on her face was priceless. Perhaps we’ll achieve that degree of subtlety and appreciation for our food in a few hundred years- though it may have taken a planetary crisis to force us down that path.

Here in Rochester we have very capable Democratic mayor who can be dead wrong on occasion and a questionably capable county executive (Republican) whose prior experience was as a local newscaster. The mayor was a chief of police. The county is going through a scandal involving contractor pay-offs to county employees that may very well go to the top of several county agencies. Meanwhile we have a very large federally funded downtown project that attempts to combine a downtown community college campus, a transit center and a performing arts center. Federal funding has been found for the college and transit center; the arts center is not funded and probably won’t get built. Despite that fact that this is located in the center of the City of Rochester, this is a county project.

The Renaissance Square project, as it has been named, more familiarly Ren Square, has been brewing for 6 years with no visible physical progress. A major architect was hired (Moshe Saftie) and he came up with an impressive plan while running through a major chunk of the planning budget. He was fired and a consortium of local architects butchered his plan and somehow managed to glom a nineteenth century facade on the thing, an architectural curse that Rochester specializes in.

I used to think this whole thing was questionable but with $4/gallon gas on the horizon again, improving the public transportation experience is important, the college campus is an important project, making access to our excellent Monroe Community College a lot easier and the arts center is off the radar. We need to build the thing now.

Except more politicians have come forward including a Democratic Representative who is lobbying for a high speed rail line to pass through Rochester and somehow she believes that we have a choice of a new train station or a new bus station but not both, in spite of the fact that they have nothing, zero, zippo to do with each other. People ride the buses to work and school, people ride trains to get to other cities.

Now the mayor has joined the Representative in trying to kill the transit station right when the need for better public transit is critical.

I could go on and on without betraying any partisan stance (I’m a Democrat) because all of these politicians are acting deplorably, ignorantly and without thought of what is best for the community. This seems to be the case with politicians everywhere from the local school board to the Senate leadership. They are not competent people in general. I’m giving the President a pass because I think he is truly trying to herd these cats in the best interests of us. It must drive him crazy.