Pointing towards Reincarnation

The notion of a soul reincarnating goes a long way towards explaining this:

Mind - Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds - NYTimes.com

The Old New England Motto

Use it up

Make it last

Make it do, or

Do without.

I am NOT big on doing without, but I have learned a lot about the other three over the years. Some of this was because I was being a good doobie, but more of it, let's be honest, was because I can't stand wasting money, or because money was so tight that I hadn't a penny to spare.

My mother's mother was famous for her money saving ways. She steered her family through the Great Depression so that my mother doesn't really remember any privation. Of course, Grandma made all of Mom's clothes and did all the cooking. Grandpa had a vegetable garden in suburban New Jersey. (The reason it's called the Garden State is that there were so many back yard gardens.) My mother still uses her tea bags twice, and cuts the ends off almost used tubes of skin cream so she can get the last bit that gravity won't feed out the tube mouth, even when it rests at the bottom for quite a while. You'd be surprised how much gunk is still in there!

I am my grandmother's granddaughter.

One summer when I was in college, I dropped out of summer school and got a job waitressing on Cape Cod. The first place I worked was a brand new, high end restaurant. The good news was that they were willing to take on someone with no experience. The bad news was that there was so little business that tips were almost nil. And servers wages, by law in Massachusetts, were less than minimum wage -- $1.32/hour, when minimum was $2.75. So 30 hours garnered me $39.60/week, before taxes, which left me about $36/week after taxes, plus whatever tips. My weekly rent in a shared house was $20. That left me $16 for food, gas and entertainment. And I only got paid for the first week at the end of the second week, which meant that for the first 2 weeks, I survived on those meager tips.

I remember going to the grocery store with last night's tips, and deciding what I could buy that day for food. One day I bought a pound of coffee. That was it! But I could get away with coffee in the morning and the meal they fed us at the restaurant. I really hate black coffee, so the next day, I went back and bought a pound of sugar. The day after that, I bought bread and eggs.

I've carried that lesson throughout my life. I want to share what I'm doing, and have done, and what I'm learning, as we all journey to energy and food independence. My idea here is that small savings add up over time, and over many families. The challenge, as always, is to spend only what I have to, without feeling deprived.