YNAB You Need A Budget

[baggywrinkle]

I am nobody special, an eccentric neo-luddite with libertarian leanings. I am also a debt-slave in the beast system. No even a serf, but chattel or property.
My indebtedness is currently $94980.00 in total. Even after it is paid, we will continue to tithe to the beast for the rest of our days. The beast may
take my sweat equity by court order on a whim through eminent domain. This was not always so. My immigrant ancestors were wealthy yeoman farmers.
One of them purchased 500 acres from the government at $2.54 per acre in gold. What would that be worth today if it were still in the family?

Yet today I am wealthy. We just obtained three baby goats, just two weeks old. My wife is happy, and I am happy.

Wealth may be defined as forward sustainability. If you stopped working today how long could you survive? Wealth may also be defined as sovereignty.
Where ever you are dependent on another that dependency may be used to own you. To illustrate this point answer this question. In America we have guns
and we have food. Do the guns protect the food or does the food protect the guns. I would submit that the food protects the guns. If you have food the bad
guys cannot starve you out.

When you are in debt you are owned. You are no longer free. You no longer have rights, they become priveleges which may be revoked.

It is with this backround that we do what we do.

More later if you wish.





"[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging.

By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living.

They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges.

They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability.

After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor or to this fraud which we will call "Social Insurance."

Col Edward House

[Maggie Magpie]

I've also read the book, "The Creature from Jekyll Island" which also explains some of the aspects of the history of the Federal Reserve and how it came to be, and have watched Chris Martenson's videos "The Crash Course". Anyways, I get that the current money system is not working. I'm resigned to my life as a slave to the beast since I own an SSN and participate in the current system. My motivation is to increase my health, increase my "wealth", and decrease my dependency on any food production system in case of an environmental emergency (category 8 earthquakes are popular, I hear). If I could even do a fraction of what you do, I'd be happy. If this is a 12 step program, I'm at step 1....

Anyways, I'm enjoying reading about the concept of true wealth you discuss. We have certainly been desensitized and brainwashed by the current system. However, since the roller coaster ride is already at the top of the giant hill, we can only do what we can do. I live in a city and do not have facilities for goats or other livestock. However, I could certainly store other food stuffs. For right now I'm only a curious voyeur.

Debt pay off through simpler living, learning where my true happy place is (my family life, of course), and getting back to basics is all I can digest at this point.

Thanks for starting this thread. I hope some other food-storage folks hop in.

[maryea]

"the borrower is a slave to the lender" Proverbs 22:7, The Bible

[baggywrinkle]

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Timothy 6:10


There is a better way, but I cannot do it alone. I need your help. We need to work together, each in their own heart, in their own family neighborhood city county state and nation. We must change the paradigm, and thus change the world. It starts at home. It starts at step one. Crawl before
you walk. Walk before you run.

We believe that the problems that come from conventional money can be resolved with open money systems.
- where conventional money is scarce and expensive, the new money is sufficient and free.=
- where conventional money is created by central banks, new money is issued by us, as promises to redeem - our money is our word.
- and where conventional money flows erratically in and out of our communities, creating dependencies that are harmful to the economy, society and nature, the new complementary money re-circulates, enabling business and trade.

So let's fix the money problem and for the rest of the problems that we face in our world, let's see what follows.

Just imagine ...

- imagine having enough money, sufficient to meet all our needs.==
- imagine a society and economy operating without any of the familiar monetary problems of poverty, exploitation, homelessness, unemployment, fear and stress.
- imagine a world where everyone can have work and pay, work and play.
- imagine clean air, water, and food - enough for all.
- imagine human society living in balance with the environment.

Too good to be true? Or maybe not? Maybe worth checking out?

http://www.themoneyfix.org/content/video-money-fix

We started to wake up in spring of 2006. Originally we were concerned about "the big crash" and prepared accordingly. Literally the end of the world
as we know it. All of our efforts were aimed at October of 2008. We watched it come and we watched it go. It is still going. I convinced my brother
to pull his 401K out of the market on September 29th. The market crashed as predicted on October 7th. I saved him forty thousand dollars. But doomsday
didn't come. Not that I am disappointed.

I started listening to Katherine Austin Fitts talk about something called financial permaculture. Hers is a more moderate voice and she brings a feminine
perspective to sustainability. She advocates "the slow burn", her nomenclature for the boiled frog scenario. We are the frog. In financial permaculture you
work to make your local community stronger by shopping local. Who is your banker? Is your money going to wall street or is it staying on main street? Who
is your farmer. If you live in an apartment you can shop the farmers market or join a CSA. You can grow tomatoes on your balcony and lettuce on your
window sill. Or even have a bee hive on your apartment building roof. I love the idea of edible landscaping. We are blessed with a plum tree and we make
jam which we eat and barter.

Voluntary simplicity. I'm writing this by kerosene lamp light. Don't laugh, my electric bill is 23 dollars a month in a three bedroom house. We didn't make
more, we needed less. Direct TV sends us letters begging us to come back. We haven't watched a television in three years. All our media comes from the
internet. Our long distance bill went from 29 dollars a month to 29 dollars a year by moving to skype.

We studied the great depression, the customs of the LDS Church, and the Amish and have adapted what we can to our own lifestyle. The Amish custom
of "holding the line" with technology makes great sense when you know why they do it. Why is it that Amish farmers can move into an area of failed English
dairy farmers, rip out the plumbing and electricity and thrive? What is their secret? Or should I say, what do they know that we have forgotten? Could it be
hidden in the Amish proverb; "It isn't the high cost of living, it's the cost of living high?"

Yes we have cut costs. Yes we store food, barter, and grow as much as we are able. But it is a truth that we are not prepared if our neighbor is not prepared.
Community and family are core Amish values. If a slum in Brazil can do it, then so can we:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YLFKr7 ... r_embedded

[Maggie Magpie]

Thank you so much for sharing some of your story. I'm going to research some of the information you mention. I watched about half of The Money Fix and will listen to the rest tomorrow. I'm fascinated by what motivated you to begin this voyage. It's as if we are all victims to our governmental captures and have developed some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. There is so much for me to learn and re-learn. My parents are wonderful examples of people who live simply, appreciate nature, and know where true happiness lies. They never ever had any debt (not even a mortgage), lived humbly, and never "wanted" for a thing. Shame on me for not picking up where they left off (so to speak). However, I'm open to learn more, and maybe part of this is due to my having come from the age of the 'gestetner", the "onion skin", and the manual typewriter. It would be a challenge for me to start purchasing kerosene in bulk at this point. However, as you say.....crawl before you walk. I guess I'm still wrapped in swaddling clothes! When I was single, I got rid of any access to TV for about 2 years and never missed it.....I probably should have kept going.... Somehow....and I can't remember what or why, but somehow television slipped back into my life; and nowadays, I can't live without my cell phone either......where did we gain all this dependency on "access".....access to what? Where did "silence" go?

You mention the LDS church and the Amish a lot.....while I can understand your respect for the Amish way of life, who or how did you get pointed in this direction? What do you do for heating (warmth) or air-conditioning in the summer?

.....I have a million questions.....you've given me a lot of places to go research, so again, thank you.

[baggywrinkle]

Come for a walk with me. We're going to change the paradigm and think outside the box.
Can you imagine yourself living in 90 square feet? Storage sheds from Home Depot are larger than this.

Meet Jay Shaffer of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. When Jay lived in Iowa City, the city would not
permit him to live in his tinyhouse on a lot. So he purchased a traditional home and rented it out, parking
his tinyhouse in the back yard where he lived through an Iowa winter. His heating cost was $120 dollars for the
YEAR

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/ ... g_2705.jpg

You can only keep so much stuff in 90 square feet. Instant simplicity.

Many factors moved us in this direction. Two in particular I will speak about here. The decay of core values in America
is factor one. We have drawn a philosophical line in the sand. Factor two was the home we live in. Four acres in the Pacific
Northwest. Winter hurricanes would knock the power out for days at a time. Though wired for a generator this high technology
is fragile and not sustainable. Old ways of doing things saved the day. We save the generator to run the electric water pump,
yet have an old fashioned hand pump as backup that will always work. Using the generator to run lights was insanity.
Solar is very expensive. Kerosene and propane wins hands down and for pennies a day. Kerosene is good enough for gross motor
tasks such as navigating or dressing. Propane lighting for reading or knitting. For critical tasks such as using a knife we have
baseball caps with led lighting embedded in the bill that light up the world right where you need it.

The first summer we lived here the brush threatened to engulf the house. My little suburban lawn mower was a joke. Upgrading
to a garden tractor and commercial grade brush mower was not much better. The brush hides the rocks...
Several years of research and I reinvented the wheel. A tool as old as mankind saved the day; the scythe. Effective, rock proof
and it runs on oatmeal and coffee. Then we evolved past even the hand tools. I no longer mow my lawn. I let the goats and chickens
do it for me. We just fenced our little two acre overgrown pasture. The three goat babies will join the landscaping crew this summer to
clear the pasture. The ground is rough and strewn with boulders. No tractor is going here. These days I'm thinking of a team of oxen
to pull stumps and do some logging with. They can go anywhere you can walk and pull large heavy weights at the same time.

We heat with propane and kerosene, and use a swamp cooler the four days each summer that are uncomfortable. With our woodlot
we could just as easily heat with wood.

http://www.endtimesreport.com/

[Maggie Magpie]

My uncle is a retired engineer by trade. He introduced us to the "end times report" website years ago when we were in a deeper sleep (as you call it). I'd totally forgotten about it until you just now posted it. We always thought him to be eccentric.....until lately. I am not familiar with a swamp cooler, however, my husband is very familiar with them. He says swamp coolers don't work well where we live due to the humidity but that your area would be perfect.

Have you ever researched the concept of the Kibbutz system?

Re the "little houses", have you ever considered a yurt?

I'm enjoying reading your posts and looking up some of the names and references.

[Maggie Magpie]

OK....I just finished watching the Money Fix. Well done! I've also looked up the Fourth Corner Exchange website. Fascinating! I'm going to keep an eye on this.....well worth the 79 minutes to watch that video.

[WairereRose]

Come for a walk with me. We're going to change the paradigm and think outside the box.
Can you imagine yourself living in 90 square feet? Storage sheds from Home Depot are larger than this.

Meet Jay Shaffer of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. When Jay lived in Iowa City, the city would not
permit him to live in his tinyhouse on a lot. So he purchased a traditional home and rented it out, parking
his tinyhouse in the back yard where he lived through an Iowa winter. His heating cost was $120 dollars for the
YEAR

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/ ... g_2705.jpg

You can only keep so much stuff in 90 square feet. Instant simplicity.

So true. The last couple of moves I've experienced this with being in very small accommodation. I've just moved again and have more 'space' but it's still small enough that I can vacuum the entire place without ever unplugging the vacuum cleaner to move it to another power point (or using an extension lead). Small enough to keep clean easily which I absolutely love.