Top savings tips

Watching the global financial system slide into bankruptcy has, frankly, given me the irrits. What the crap were they thinking?

So it all started with some bright sparks who thought it would be a good idea to lend money to people who had more chance of winning lotto (modest odds of one in 55 mill) than making the repayments. Remember that acronym that was being thrown around at the start of this whole mess, NINJA? Stands for No Income, No Job (and) No Assets. Heck darn, sounds to me like a pretty reasonable set of borrowing criteria. And you know what's even worse? The phrase was coined by HCL Finance AS A NAME FOR ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS.

Anyhoo, since we're all going to spend the next five years watching a lot of tv (as part of the growing unemployed) and selling our organs to fund the increasing cost of living, I thought I'd share this list of helpful tips for cash-strapped times:

1. If you're a wine drinker, switch from bottled to cask wine. If you already drink cask wine, have a good hard look at your self then get that cask flowing again.

2. Don't throw anything out, you never know when you'll need it (or it'll be fashionable) again. As one survivor of the Great Depression said: "I don't ever want to throw anything away. My old coats, dresses and pant suits hang in the closet". Happily, pant suits are in again this year.

3. Cross your legs until you get to work; get your employer to pay for the toilet paper.

4. Don't have too many children. Most families during the Great Depression seemed to have had at least nine kids, which is obviously too many and they suffered proportionately for it. If you have kids already, consider selling them. If you don't, consider having some in order to sell.

5. Encourage all your friends to become Jehova's witnesses; save on birthday presents.

6. Steal things off the visually impaired.

As you can see, the slope from monetary bankruptcy to moral bankruptcy has a steep gradient. For something lighter, tomorrow let's do 'Capitalism to Communism: Is There a Better Way?'