Good Time To Check Your Risk Tolerance Again?
I should really stop looking at CNN.com and CNBC.com, but nobody will stop talking about it so here I am talking about it too. Moo. 
If you watch your portfolio closely and are feeling nervous and/or scared, then perhaps this is a good time to self-reflect and ask yourself if you are as risk tolerant as you thought you were.
Many financial experts like to give out a simple “risk questionnaire” to figure out your risk tolerance, and then guide you into an asset allocation afterwards. The problem is, it is really easy for people to say “I’m not scared!” and then tell themselves they don’t need to save as much. The more you save, the less risk you need to take. Back when stocks were booming, so many people had 80%+ in stocks, and even some retirees had 60-70% in stocks.
Back in 2006, I tried out a bunch of these risk surveys and remarked that
I think it’s really hard for people to gauge how they would react to losing 30% of their assets in a year unless they had actually experienced it.
I still don’t think we have experienced true fear yet, but maybe now is a better time to take the survey questions again? These samples are taken from the Sharebuilder website’s PortfolioBuilder application.
Sample Question 1
Well, the year-to-date total return of the S&P 500 is only about -12% as of the end of today. It was about -15% yesterday.
Sample Question 2
The recent bouncing around puts this question in a new light, eh?
Sample Question 3
Even now, we are nowhere near dropping 25% in 3 months. Are you sure what you would do?
The Zen of Giving Away Your Stuff
Here’s something marketers don’t want you to know: Stuff cannot and will not ever make you happy. In fact, stuff can make your life more complicated and miserable than you can possibly imagine.
I learned this lesson a really hard way. I nearly lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.
I say nearly because we didn’t know what happened to our house and everything in it until more than one month after the storm hit and broke the levees in New Orleans. We didn’t know if we’d lost everything in a flood or if our house was even standing.
To our surprise, my husband and I mourned very few of our possessions during that time. The flat-screen TV? Nope, not a thought about it. The fancy stand mixer in the kitchen I thought I couldn’t live without? Nope. Didn’t care about that either.
All we wanted were our photo albums, the quilt my mother-in-law made out of my wedding dress, the bird feeder my late grandfather had made for us, and Squeaky, the semi-ferile yard cat who flat-out refused to get in the carrier when it was time to evacuate.
Realizing we didn’t care about all the other stuff we owned was profound. It wasn’t what we expected. And it caused us to seriously rethink our relationship with stuff.
We had never spent a lot of money shopping. Big-ticket items were few and far between, but I admit that I used to fill the void left by my crappy job with knick knacks and furniture. My husband would buy lots of books and CDs. All those little purchases added up to a lot of stuff over time.
Then, in a time of disaster, to realize we didn’t care about the little things that we bought to make us happy was profound. Especially because it turned out that none of our stuff was ruined, and we had to lug it all from our house in New Orleans to our new house in the Midwest. It’s no fun to lug hundreds of heavy moving boxes full of stuff you no longer care about onto and off of a moving truck.
That moment we knew we had to change, and our realizations about stuff turned into action.
We began to simply get rid of our stuff. For free. Yes, some of it has sold on eBay and Amazon, but most of it has gone to families who needed or wanted it more than us through our local freecycling group. We’ve given away a full-size bed, lamps, clothes, garden tools, and computers, just to start. We’ve also donated myriad items to the local Salvation Army. We’ve given things to friends who truly appreciated them more more than we did.
Our goal is to get to the point that we only have what we truly need, plus a few objects that give us a significant amount of joy, rather than dusty boxes and shelves filled to the brim with a lot of things that we thought would make us happy, but that have since lost their luster.
We still have a lot of boxes of stuff to give away, but with every item that goes out the door, we feel more free, like a great burden has been lifted off of us.
Giving away your possessions changes your relationship with material goods. When it’s gone, you realize that you don’t miss it. This has a cascading effect. It’s good for the spirit and good for the pocketbook.
You no longer want that must-have whatsit, because you can see that you don’t really need it. Or, that you won’t be interested after a month or two. You also become aware of the stories you tell yourself in order to rationalize a purchase, or to rationalize keeping something that is no longer useful to you. We are very tricky, telling ourselves we need things we never or rarely use.
Having fewer possessions shows you how much upkeep owning lots of things requires, from space to store it, to money to pay the Visa bill you ran up buying it, to maintenance and insurance costs on big stuff like extra cars or boats. When a box of stuff leaves my house, I am relieved because I no longer have to find a place for it, dust it, and I am no longer responsible for its well being.
You can live more comfortably in a smaller space when you have less stuff. And smaller spaces come with lower bills.
It’s also much more relaxing to live in a house filled with few objects you really enjoy than with a lot of things you only kind-of like. Physical de-cluttering leads to mental de-cluttering.
You start to truly understand that once you get to a certain level of comfort economically and physically, owning more doesn’t appreciably improve your happiness in the long or short-term. In fact, once you have shelter and some basics, you can live a comfortable and happy life without all the extra stuff. I didn’t fully understand this until I thought I had lost everything.
Stuff for the sake of owning stuff is worthless. It saps your energy and your pocketbook.
Why give it away? It feels good to share what you have with others. And if you are serious about unloading years worth of purchases, it’s a lot faster and easier to give it away than it is to sell it.
This is how we’ve made peace with our stuff, and made a lot more room for Squeaky, who has had a serious change of heart when it comes time to get in the cat carrier.
Image courtesy of euart
Another Free Schick Razor Sample (Men’s)
About as straightforward as it gets: SchickSamples.com.
Thanks YP, I missed this one.
Things You Never Thought To Do at the Library
The library is an awesome, low cost place to hang out. But once you’ve read all the books, taken all the classes and surfed everything on the web, what else is there? Try these suggestions to make the most of your tax dollars.
Find a date – Forget online dating websites. Choose your next date based on his/her reading preferences. Hang out in the law library or by the medical journals. But be careful - avoid meeting people in the self-help section.
Play games – Play I Spy with young kids. Spy a blue book, or a book by Judy Blume and let the kids go find it. For older kids, you can misfile a book in the fiction section and see how long it takes them to find it. If you really want to mix things up, hide a book in the non-fiction section and teach your kids about the Dewey Decimal System. Please remember where you hid the book and return it to its proper location before you leave. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone getting into trouble.
Use the bathroom – Really, the facilities are meticulously clean and the paper is free. The lighting is flattering as well, so do your primping here before you head out to the book stacks.
Perform social experiments – Test the patrons’ power of observation. Read a book upside down and see if anyone notices. Walk around with a book balanced on your head and time how long it takes before you are thrown out of the building. Write down your findings and you could be published in a psychology journal and have your very own writing on the shelf of the library.
Hold a book signing – Remember that manuscript you self-published that you knew would be a best seller? Dust off your hardcovers and give away a few copies. Libraries love local authors and they might even loan you the pen.
Hide out – Are you wanted for unpaid parking tickets? Do you owe money to that well-connected guy down the street? Is your wife mad because you forget to pick up milk on your way home? Hide out at the library! Who would think to look for you there? Create a little tent for yourself out of books (large, heavy hardcovers work best). Crawl in and no one will ever find you.
Lip synch – It’s not fair. The library stocks lots of music CDs in every genre. But you have to be quiet in a library and they make you listen to your tunes with those ridiculous looking headphones. But you can still rock out! Grab your hairbrush and mouth the words to your favorite song. If you’re a classical music fan, play air keyboard on the tabletop instead.
Once you’re done taking advantage of all the fun the library has to offer, load up on free coffee and cookies and find a comfy chair in a secluded corner. Drift off and dream about all the fun you can have tomorrow. You didn’t even touch the magazine racks yet.
Image courtesy of brungrrl
Free Schick Intuition Razor Giveaway
Here is another offer for a free Schick Intuition Plus razor, targeted at the ladies (though I don’t see why a guy can’t use it). First 70,000, so enter today. Via SD. We’ve gotten one of these free before, and Mrs. MMB reports that this is a very nice razor.
Enter the Countdown to Wedding Bliss Giveaway, brought to you by iVillage and Schick® Intuition®, and get on the road to your happily-ever-after. Be among the first 70,000 iVillage members to respond and you can get a *FREE Schick® Intuition Plus® razor. Make it a beautiful beginning–enter today!
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. Open only to legal U.S. residents who are 18 or older. Limit one Schick razor per person, per household of the physical address above. Offer expires 12/31/2008 or while supplies last.
I just got another two free razors in the mail within the last week, so at least some of them definitely do come.
How Come I’m Broke and You’re Not?
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is, “How did you learn so much about finance?” The subtext to the question is usually along the lines of, “I know you aren’t a genius or good with numbers, so how come you have a handle on this stuff and I don’t? How come I’m broke and you’re not?”
It’s true I’m not a genius. A bit of a nerd maybe, but not a genius. I don’t have a formal financial education. I struggled through the two economics classes I was required to take in college and avoided anything to do with math like the plague. Throughout most of my education, I had a serious aversion to numbers. Give me history or literature any day but please, don’t make me learn math. When my advisor suggested an accounting class, I all but ran from the room screaming, “Nooooooo!”
You’d think, with such a less than stellar background, that I would be horrible with finance. The good news is, to be “good at” finance, you don’t have to have a formal background in finance or math. You don’t even have to like math all that much (basic math and some skill at percentages helps, but if you have a calculator you can compensate in a pinch). You do have to learn some things, but most of what you need to learn isn’t that scary or in depth, unless you just want to dive into some obscure concepts and theories for giggles. If that’s you, more power to you, but most of what you need to learn comes from real life.
Exactly how did a math-phobe like me learn so much about finance? The biggest educator that I had was not the school system. It was my family. I was very fortunate to grow up in a family that spent and budgeted wisely and also talked about money around me. I might not have known the exact details of our finances, but I knew there were bills to pay, how they got paid, and that there were long term savings goals that trumped the latest thing that I wanted. My parents never carried any debt other than the mortgage and yet managed to live very nicely because they saved for the things they really wanted. They taught me how to balance a checkbook and showed me how to pay bills. They opened a savings account for me and let me make the deposits and showed me how interest works.
Best of all, they didn’t spoil me or give me everything I wanted. (I say it’s the best now. At the time it frustrated me to no end.) I knew that things had to be earned. They prepared me to be an independent adult who earned and saved her own money to pay for what she needed. After eighteen years of living under their roof, I had a pretty solid grasp of basic personal finance and I knew that my first years on my own were going to be hard. They weren’t going to bail me out and I wasn’t going to be living the lifestyle that I had in their house for quite a while. I was going to have to earn a better lifestyle. It worked. I don’t have everything I want, but I live comfortably and am debt free. I live by the example they set and it has served me well.
The second best finance teacher for me has been books. It hasn’t hurt that I love to read and will read anything I can get my hands on. When I need to know something, I turn to books first. As such, I’ve learned about retirement planning, estate planning, running a business, elder care, insurance and taxes. Each time I’ve had a financial question pop up, I’ve headed off to the library. I’ve found the answers I needed, plus I usually find a tip or idea I didn’t know before. Even now that I don’t have as many financial questions, I still head to the library and scan the shelves seeking a new book or a new point of view. I don’t use everything I learn, but it’s nice to have a lot of information to draw upon when I need it.
Television (much as I hate to admit it) has helped me, too. Channels like CNBC or Bloomberg are good for getting exposure to the markets and how they work. They are also good for learning about current events and their effects on the economy. News on foreign channels such as the BBC gives you a wider perspective than what you get from American channels. Watch enough of these channels and you’ll start to get a better feeling for the ups and downs of world economies and what makes them tick. I also learn from documentaries about debt and economic crises. The best ones are not only informative, but entertaining.
The Internet is also a good teacher, if you are savvy enough to filter out the inaccurate information. The Internet is a great resource for money-saving tips and the latest financial news. You can find information from all over the world quickly and easily, allowing you to see how people in different places handle their finances. It can also be a good resource for learning about financial concepts and interacting with financial experts and authors. Just be sure to double check your source before acting on any information on the Internet.
Voyeuristic interest has not been as important in my financial education, but it certainly is an interesting teacher. I’ll admit to being curious about how other people live and spend their money. If we’re honest, most of us are that way. No, I don’t spy on my neighbors but if the conversation turns to money, I listen to what they say. If they’re talking about how much they have or how in debt they are, I listen to find out how they got there. If they’re giving out stock tips or investment strategies, I listen to see if it’s something I can use. I listen to people who have financial conversations in restaurants or other public places. I also like to read personal blogs, stories on message boards, or stories in magazines and newspapers to find out how real people manage or don’t manage their money. You can learn a lot by paying attention to those around you. Even if they are dissimilar to you, you can learn from their successes and failures and be entertained at the same time.
Finally I’ve learned just as much from bad examples as I have from good examples. I won’t name names, but quite a few people in my life are terrible money managers. They have gotten themselves into holes and positions that I’m not certain they’ll ever get out of. I’ve watched it happen and learned from it. I’ve seen the aftermath of bad financial planning; the inability to retire, the massive debt, and the children who suffer, all at close range. It’s not something I care to experience for myself, so I study how to avoid it.
Admittedly, some of my education came about through fate. If I hadn’t been born into a financially conscious family, I might not have had the head start that I did. But even if you grew up in a family that didn’t manage money well, I’ll bet you know at least some good examples of money management in your life. Watch them to see what they do and see if it’s something you can emulate. Or ask if they can teach you how they succeeded. Many people are willing to mentor others, even if only informally.
The rest of my financial education is something that anyone can have. Anyone can go to the library or bookstore and trawl the finance and business aisles. When you need to know something about finance, look up the answer yourself; don’t rely on someone else to get the information for you. You’ll learn what you need to know and probably a few other things in the process. Even if you don’t have something specific you need to know, you can still look around and read different ideas and points of view.
Anyone can learn from others, as well. You don’t have to become a stalker to learn from your neighbors, coworkers and friends. Just practice paying attention to what is going on around you and what is being said. Some people are incredibly comfortable talking about the most intimate financial details of their lives. You can listen without divulging your own financial issues. The Internet makes it super easy to be a voyeur into people’s financial lives. People post their details and problems on blogs and message boards for all to see. All you have to do is click around the net and read their stories if you want to know what works and what doesn’t.
If you know some bad examples of money management, watch them and learn what not to do. Learn from their mistakes. If someone is constantly moaning to you about their debt, or how they are being foreclosed upon, pay attention to how that happened and vow not to repeat it in your own life. Bad examples can be just as instructive as good ones.
Going forward, vow to give your children a financial education. If you’ve made mistakes, make sure to communicate those mistakes to your kids so they don’t repeat them. If you’ve had successes, share how those came about. Teach your kids how to work for money and spend it wisely. Teach them about interest, savings, bill paying, mortgages, and other financial skills. Show them where to find the answers to their own questions about money. If you give the gift of a financial education to your kids, not only will they likely be financially responsible adults, but they will likely pass that knowledge along to their own kids.
A financial education doesn’t have to come from school. Sure, you can learn about finance in school, but real life tends to be a better teacher. Learning from the success and failure of others, whether it’s your family, friends, coworkers, or complete strangers is an easy way to learn. It’s also easy to teach yourself what you need to know through books and other resources. Simply having the desire to learn, to know how to manage money, to avoid being taken advantage of, and to understand the concepts your advisors throw at you is the first step. A financial education keeps you from being at the mercy of others for your financial well being. It’s also a gift you can pass on to your kids and future generations.
Image courtesy of m00by
When Markets Collide: Book Review, Model Asset Allocation
The last book I reviewed was Financial Armageddon. Then I saw the title of this book: When Markets Collide. I almost stopped right there, as I was not at all in the mood for yet more doomsday talk.
However, I saw that the author, Mohamed El-Erian, ran the Harvard University Endowment for nearly two years, and is now the co-CEO of the huge bond investment company PIMCO. Throw in the fact that the tagline of this book is “Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change”, and perhaps this would be an insightful book about investing like David Swensen’s Unconventional Success. (Swensen ran the Yale University Endowment.)
Ease of Reading / Target Audience
The first I noticed about this book was that it was very difficult to read. The author tried to write this book for both experienced economic policymakers and the average investor. Not an easy feat. I felt that he came off as one of those guys who is just “too smart” and can’t simplify things for the rest of us. Here is an example of this high-level writing from the book:
The challenge of how to deal with consequential and volatile endogenous liquidity relates to another policy issue that I will discuss in Chapter 7: how to refine the traditional instruments of monetary control and ensure more meaningful and sophisticated supervision on a range of activities, with volatile leverage, that have been enabled by the ongoing structural transformations and yet are outside meaningful oversight.
Quick Summary: My Interpretation
The relationships between the economies of the world are changing. Emerging markets, which used to either be debtor nations or those who would only buy the safest thing available (US Treasuries), are growing fast and will start to invest their considerable wealth elsewhere, including equities. The U.S. can’t rely on other countries to buy our debt forever, just as the other countries can’t rely on U.S. consumers to prop up the world’s economy. This is where the “markets collide”. Throw in complicated structured investments like derivatives which nobody perfectly understands, and we are only in the beginning of a very bumpy road ahead.
Model Asset Allocation
So what is a U.S.-based individual investor to do? El-Erian states the three basic steps of portfolio management are: “choosing the right asset allocation, finding the best implementation vehicles, and conducting risk management.” Accordingly, here is his model asset allocation, with midrange percentages.
Equities (49% total)
15% United States
15% Other advanced economies
12% Emerging economies
7% Private
Bonds (14% total)
5% U.S.
9% International
Real Assets (27% total)
6% Real estate
11% Commodities
5% Inflation protected bonds
5% Infrastructure
Special Opportunities
8%
This adds up to 98%, but the way I read the book, the rest should be in cash. As a comparison, here is the asset allocation from Unconventional Success.
El-Erian doesn’t like home-bias and is believes strongly in being “globally-diversified”. You can see that only about 1/3rd of the equity allocation is to U.S. stocks. If an investor does have access to private equity, then you can redistribute that back into the other equities. In my opinion, he cops out in the active manager vs. passive index debate. He simply states that it’s really hard to find a good active manager, but if you can you should go with them. Of course, no further hints are given. 
As for bonds, he believes that bonds are overall a good portfolio diversifier to manage volatility. He also believe in a big portion to international bonds, which he believe are mature enough to be considered right beside domestic bonds. (He was also was an emerging bonds analyst for many years.)
Inflation is another big concern, and thus there is a sizable allocation to real assets - commodities, real estate, inflation-protected bonds, and infrastructure (publicly traded equity and debt securities of utilities, airports, ports, roads, hospitals, etc.). Special Opportunities could mean speculative plays such as distressed debt or long-term, high-concept gambles like carbon credits.
In general, this is pretty different mix from many other model asset allocations I’ve read about.
Summary
This is mainly a macro-economics type of book as opposed to an investment book, but it does give some interesting insights about the future that might influence my personal investing. For example, I agree that activities from non-U.S. countries will be increasingly important and their equities should be a significant part of one’s portfolio. I am not so sure about the rest. I could only give a very superficial review here, so if this perspective sounds interesting and you want more details than I have given, I would read the book.
Financial Lessons from my Creditors
It’s become quite fashionable to attack credit card companies or banks who hold our mortgages, especially with the recent turmoil in the financial market. While talk of increased regulation and pointing the finger of blame may each have their place in how we deal with such situations, both psychologically and fiscally, they can quickly overwhelm and consume us with negativity that breeds further negativity and spreads to parts of our lives we once thought were not connected to finances.
That’s one path. Another path is to look at such pivotal points in our life as turning points, or forks in the road. I’ve always held the belief that life is a school of higher learning, and that we should look for lessons to be learned from our experiences if we truly seek to make the best of a bad situation and grow as people. Here are some lessons I’ve learned from my creditors.
The bank where I have my mortgage
Having a mortgage has taught me to do without. It’s the one payment I know I must make every month. Because of this I’ve had to forgo many luxuries I had previously considered to be necessities. Since my wife and I started living on a single income, and our mortgage payment took the lion’s share of our diminished income, I have learned to be more frugal than I once was.
Credit Card
My credit card company has taught me the importance of starting early down the road of financial success. It’s no secret credit card companies target college freshman. They know that money habits learned early in life tend to continue throughout a person’s life. If they can get college students dependent on credit to maintain their lifestyles, then they’re likely customers for life.
What I learned from this is that the earlier in my life I practiced disciplined savings and investing, the more my money would grow over time. My first job out of college, I enrolled in my company’s 401(k) program and set aside 10% of my income from day one. As a result, my retirement savings is twice that of many of my peers. I don’t say this to brag. What I did doesn’t take a high IQ, or a privileged upbringing. It took awareness, and the discipline to get started.
Uncle Sam
Since 1943, the U.S. Government has known that getting paid first was the surest way to get its tax revenue. I’m talking about the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. This act of congress led to the income tax withholding that we all know and love today - it’s where that large chunk of your paycheck goes every two weeks before you ever see it.
I took a page from the IRS and enrolled in my company’s 401(k) program. In fact, Tax deferred programs like 401(k)s and IRAs are just about the only way you can really pay yourself first as an employee, since that money is tax exempt.
Children
My children. I love my children. You may be wondering why I list them as a creditor. You may be thinking that it is they who should be indebted to me. Well, that’s certainly true in many ways, but I am also indebted to them. I owe them a sound financial upbringing in a stable home environment. It’s largely because of them that my wife and I eschew debt wherever possible. We make financial sacrifices so they won’t have to worry about having food and clothing, or whether we might lose our house some day. Having children who are dependent upon me for every aspect of their little lives has taught me the financial maturity and discipline to do what I know is right, even if it isn’t as exciting as buying that new computer game, iPhone or iPod.
I’m sure each of us has our own lessons, as we each have our own distinct life circumstances. But I think the take away here is that many times when it seems that life has given us hard times, if we can use these times as learning experiences then some good can come out of them.
Image courtesy of doyoubleedlikeme
Credit Report Freeze - Lock
Back away from the Ramen! Eat better without breaking the budget
When I was in college, I was content to open my kitchen cupboard and find it full of Ramen. Every flavor – except shrimp (yuck) – was represented after a trip to the grocery store. Not only did I know where my next meal was coming from, but I had saved money. Never mind that the instant noodles were high in sodium and had no redeeming nutritional value. They filled up this hungry college student.
Many years, several jobs and two children later, the thought of all those instant noodles horrifies me. I ate dreadfully during my younger years, because of my mistaken assumption that I was saving money by eating nutrition-poor food. Yes, processed food prices can be hard to beat, but over time, the habit of eating poorly is likely to cost more in medical bills, weight issues and general health.
I still occasionally slide a frozen pizza into the oven to feed my dear family, but more often than not, I find I can find nutritious food and without breaking our family budget.
Patronize Farmers’ Markets
The boon of spring, summer and fall is the Farmer’s Market. Local farmers bring their wares to a central location and sell it for less than the retail stores. What could be better? Shoppers can count on finding really good quality produce, jams, jellies, honey, salsa and more. Our local market also shares recipes and has a customer reward punch card.
We eat a lot of produce these days, and this is also a great way to eat from the local economy without putting a mile (or too many miles, at least) on the car. We have stayed close to home this summer like many others, and are able to walk to a Farmer’s Market without getting in the car and driving to the farms surrounding our town.
Buy in bulk
My local, fancy grocery store has surprisingly good deals on its bulk food items. Despite its lovely cheeses and designer breads, this store offers a good break on the items it sells out of the bin.
For the uninitiated, stores can offer bulk foods in bins that allow shoppers to fill a bag and tag the item with the bin number. The checkout clerk weighs the item on a scale and charges the price per pound for the item. The concept is designed to offer shoppers a financial break while getting rid of some packaging.
Some of my favorite foods to get from bulk foods are nuts, spices, pasta, oats, beans and dried fruit. Of course, there are several things to ask yourself:
- Is this item actually cheaper than its packaged alternative?
- Is this food that your family will eat by the time it reaches the end of its shelf life?
- Do you have room to store the food until it is eaten?
Use the slow cooker
Even though I work from home, the last thing I want to deal with is cooking dinner at the end of the day. My lifesaver is the slow cooker. Happily, this can also save money.
It helps to be consistent about planning a menu around items that are on sale at my market. If I have shopped well, I can put the meal in the slow cooker at the beginning of my workday so it is ready at dinnertime. I can add a salad and vegetables from the produce I bought earlier that week, and whole-wheat bread I bought at discount at the day-old store.
On the unplanned nights, I find I make unscheduled trips to the store to pick up something quick and convenient. This is usually the night the frozen pizza makes it into the oven.
Bartering with friends/neighbors
One neighbor is an exceptional gardener and another raises chickens. If you’re so lucky as to have talented neighbors like this in your town, why not ask if you could barter some of yours for some of theirs?
Perhaps you make great bread or jam? Did you just pick a flat of berries that you’re willing to share? In our case, our family likes to fish, so can offer salmon, trout and sturgeon to our neighbors to trade. It can take a little negotiation to come to a fair “price,” but it is worth it to just walk down the street and trade for a dozen eggs from chickens you know.
Image courtesy of Adam “Slice” Kuban
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