Friday Oatmeal

We're all, well, many of us anyway, a little too undisciplined with our spending. I know I am. And the fact is that it generally isn't the big expenditures which break our budgets. It's the nickel and dime stuff which leave us with $12.87 and payday three days off.

So in resolving to try and spend more wisely, on Fridays I am eating oatmeal for breakfast until I've eaten all the Quaker Oats I have. I'm trying to be old school Catholic anyhow and go meatless on Fridays as it is. This should help.

What brought this on was the big box of instant oatmeal which I bought at a warehouse store back in July. It was on sale, I liked the various flavors offered, and I should eat more oatmeal anyway, right? Good source of fiber or roughage or something, my doctor tells me. 

So there's 52 servings of instant oatmeal which I had to have back in July, and four of them have been consumed. Two of those were by my son and daughter in law respectively when they were in for Christmas. And that's not including the 8 count box of pumpkin spice flavor I bought in October because, pumpkin spice, right? So there's 52-4+8, or, wait, getting my calculator, 56 packets of instant oatmeal in a box on the fridge.

I'm going to eat them, two at a time, for my Friday breakfasts until they're gone. Then I will not buy that much oatmeal at once ever again. 

Unless it's a good price.

And it's the fruit and cream flavors.

And until the next time I lose my self discipline.

But up till then, it's not happening.

Budget Woes

Nothing stirs up the crowd like budget talk. All right, that's facetious, but it's something which ought to draw more attention than it does. Especially as we are facing troubling deficits on the federal level for well into the future.

President Barack Obama has proposed many and varied cuts in areas one would wonder why there should be any government involvement at all. He has proposed cuts of $5 million in grants which would have gone to worsted wool manufacturers; why were they supported by Washington in the first place? Monies which would have paid for a 'water musical festival' are on the block; such things should never be considered by government. And these are surely only the tips of the icebergs.

It is as though the feds are trying to surgically refine the budget. That may or may not be possible; entrenched bureaucracies may be the hardest to dethrone even if they are mundane, repetitive, or outdated. For example, a bigger ticket budget item slated for a cut is the C-17 cargo plane. Even the Department of Defense, not exactly known for its spending acumen, said in 2007 that it didn't want any more them. It had enough. But due to political pressures Congress still insisted it order more and kept in budget money for them. The President is suggesting to cut them from the 2011 budget and beyond to the tune of a $2.5 billion savings over ten years. But will the lawmakers actually do it?

There's really only way to cut spending efficiently: across the board and at every level. Go to each and every agency and say: you lose ten percent next year. Period. Find a way to do it. Will it be tough? Tough. Do it. Everyone has inefficiencies, redundancies, and outmoded practices which if eliminated ought to save a bit of cash.

Like that will happen. There's no reason that, after more than 200 years, Congress will begin acting wisely anytime soon.