This is a Great Time to be a Consumer… with Cash

–>While shopping for some gifts on a budget, my daughter came across incredible deals at a high-end store.  She came home with two gorgeous messenger bags orginally priced at $75, marked down, and down again, then then unloaded for $10 each.

–>Several regional auto dealers are offering a BOGO –Buy One, Get One free.  This is a sales strategy I’m used to seeing for bread.  Or frozen dinners.  But on automobiles?!

–>Using online discounters and sticking with local Innkeepers we priced out a weeklong tropical vacation near the equator for less than it would have cost us for a few days at Disney World.

–>Mortgage rates are at an all-time low…and banks are willing to refinance existing mortgages for a simple, flat fee versus high fees and a new round of unnecessary paperwork.

–>I read the other day of a real estate agent in Florida who is filling chartered buses with future snow birds and taking them on tours of gated communities where the houses started at $250K a few years ago, sold for $150K last year, and are now being snatched up for $50K today by people looking for a second home – and who were prudent enough to stay out of the speculators’ pricing wars.

–>If you are remodeling, landscaping, or want any repair work done, contractors are available to come out and provide a bid on a same-day basis, and will tell you they can start the job in a few days, rather than in a few weeks/months.

–>Stocks and other investments that even the naysayers agree are solid, dependable brands that will rebound are selling for low single-digit multiples of their earnings per share.

–>My wife’s desktop computer died in the midst of the tax season  & we had to replace it, fast. The new one has 3X the RAM, 5X the memory, all the bells and whistles… and cost only a few hundred bucks – less than the monitor alone would have cost just a couple years ago.

Everything is on sale.  Everything.

Of course, if you have no cash flow, it does not matter.  But if you are consumer with cash, this can be a very happy time for you.

I’m just sayin’….

Happiness and the Economy

In early December, the American Psychological Association reported that 80% of Americans feel stressed by the economy, 60% feel angry about it, and 52% are having trouble sleeping (see CNN article, here).

Yikes! Sleep-deprived, angry, stressed out… these are not descriptors normally associated with happiness, are they?!  The sad thing about this reality is how many people believe they can’t do anything about their mood.  They truly believe that the current chaos is MAKING them crazy.  They say, “I can’t sleep at night because I’m too worried,” without understanding that worry is a choice.  They are choosing to spend all their energy focused on what could/might go wrong, and they find evidence to support their belief every time they open the paper or turn on the news.

You don’t have to be a victim.

You can handle a lot, when you’re not stretched so thin you’re about to break.  Take action to reduce your normal stressors as much as possible so that you have the capacity to deal with the ocean of negative emotion that seems to washing up to your doorstep.

To Reduce Stress:

Take care of yourself, which includes healthy eating, sleeping, exercising, and maintaining structure in your daily activities.

Connect with friends and other people who you enjoy and who understand you. Getting together with others doesn’t make troubles disappear, but you’ll be surprised how much easier they are to live with when you know everyone is dealing with the same stuff. You are not alone.

Focus on what you CAN do now to make life better, rather than on what’s not possible right now.

Reach out to other people in need; it’s satisfying and puts your own problems in perspective.

Take a break. Most of us can juggle a lot of balls… but not all the time!  Don’t deceive yourself into putting in more hours at work or believing that you can’t enjoy your weekend time.  Even the lightest burden feels like a ton when you carry it 24 hours a day.

Count your blessings: find one thing every day — no matter how small — for which you are grateful.

Just as you can make yourself crazy… you can also make yourself calm and enjoy moments of happiness in the midst of a crazy time.

Now, take a deep breathe.  Ahhhhh.  Feels good, right?  Do it again, then go back to work with a teensy bit of calm…