Facing the crisis, or how we go camping

There are two ways how to spend your spare time: either to lay on a beach, arrogantly wait for a waiter, pay snobbishly with a golden credit card, or you can have an adventure – pack thoroughly bags, drag the backpacks with a great strain to the finish strictly abiding the transport schedule – it does not wait.

The current situation is obviously not suitable for the first vacations option. Get ready for a severe lingering winter.

Camping trip is not a scary thing if we hike with a decent entourage and are well prepared. We will go altogether – there is no other alternative; but it is possible to prepare better. Let us consider psychological training and financial crisis survival skills.

Stop worrying about of things that do not concern you much. The dollar exchange rate is fluctuating, so what? Were you really ready to buy a lot? Do you know those who bought it at right time? Keep in mind: we go to the taiga. Is there any point in having dollars in a forest? You want to sell them but only sellers surround you? What about national exchange rate?

Buckwheat. How much of it do you need? Take five kilograms for a family of four people. Why stock up on it for a year? I love the meal too but it gets boring over the time. Every food has a worthy substitute. Do not respond to feverish bubbles of unscrupulous hucksters. If you occasionally have a chance to buy a certain grocery that you expect to be not available to purchase later – take two times more than usual and keep calm. We live in a market economy anyway. Every product will inevitably leak through a dam of artificial deficit and will appear eventually in sufficient volume. Take care not about stocking up on essential food for the future but keeping the price for a meal the same not narrowing your diet. Excessive purveyance is a straight way to massive costs overruns.

Clothes are important to keep looking good and suitable according for current and future weather conditions. Why take five t-shorts for the price of four, ten pairs of jeans for the price of seven and three rabbit fur coats of the same color and second-rate style that does not even fit you. Think of how long you will wear them! Remember about the backpacks – we will tug it on our backs for a few years. Stop and think, do not buy unnecessary clothes

Devices are critical for a daily routine. Try to refrain from a pointless chase for high-tech gadgetry for a while. Why you think that now it is the best time to buy a new smart phone with doubled memory capacity and extra inches? The one you have is not even a year-old. Come on, it still works well. Agree? Great! Consider probable increases in expenses for mobile communications: not because of raise of tariffs but due to more compliant will be shared between each other. It is our nature to be gloomy whiners.

Household appliances help us every day. An old refrigerator and a washing machine work? Keep them for a few more years. A scratched door and a cracked handle is not the reasons to change all goods you have, even considering probability of price increase. Will you have food to store in a freezer after six months?

Jewelry. It is mythical way to keep savings, the fruits of your labors. You can survive without them in a forest. Be ready for a raise of crime rate – do not bury treasure at home. Believe me, they are more creative in hunting than you are in hiding.

Furniture is not best investment too. However, if it is offered for old prices and with a discount – you may make a purchase. Then you will sleep on a new sofa half-starved and the old one will occupy half of your garage’s space. You can even replace all chairs for new ones, but store the ones you have with care: they can be useful in a country house, which you do not have to sell, hopefully.

Cars. Nothing strange in their offers of “the low exchange rate and old prices”. The second half of the business season year starts. The first one contributed 65% of the yearly profit. Not to buy is unbearable? Then bargain to lower prices and do not choose top trim level. Advanced options are the most profitable income of car dealers.

Medicine can be bought in groups. If you know a retired apothecary or a doctor consult with them every time you are going to visit a drugstore: they can advise you on what works similarly but costs unprecedentedly less. Do not forget to ask if they need anything – save some money on your purchases and make happy those who are in necessity more than you are: provide essential medicine for them. You are together in the trip!

Tutoring. Yes, you are a famous veteran teacher and no doubts deserve the deepest respect. Are there pupils, enrollees or students in your block? Find a delicate way to offer your service to them. It is not a right time to behave affectedly.

Savings. I am not going to give advice on it – you will not stick to it anyway. The most important is not to keep money at home. A money reserve for a week should be enough to live through breakdowns of ATM services and queues in banks, if so happens. Do not fall for high interest rate deposits – later you will be sick of searching for these financial institutions. Look for interest rates that are slightly higher than average and store money in a few different banks.

Health. One should be well-prepared to bear a complicated hiking tour. Take up strengthening your health. Give up on bad and fat food, limit alcohol intakes. Substitute ready-to-cook food to homemade ones. Prepare to reduce quality of daily consumption – check contents on labels. You need to be strong enough to go far and for long.

Did you understand the analogies with camping? Act accordingly. Weight every move according to the final goal – go through harsh time as a tourist that goes camping. Discomfort of the trip’s temporary limitations will be offset by the decent return to an ordinary life. And then we will leap up and rush to create a new economic collapse, consoling ourselves that this is inevitable.

Author: Oleg Braginsky
Translation: Nikita Gusev and Temir Barakov
Source: Banki.ru