Economization

There are times that I feel like Lucy Ricardo, but unfortunately it's never while I'm looking in the mirror.  Usually it's when I am sneaking shopping bags into the apartment, so as not to unnecessarily alarm my husband.  Last week it was when the Visa bill arrived in the mail and I remembered that I had become Suddenly Patriotic and single handedly gave our economy a huge boost, via Saks Fifth Avenue. In a way, I had no choice. I work near Saks and I have a lunch hour. Plus, they were having a sale. I don't need a burning bush to tell me what to do next.

This led to my husband and me having a conversation that I may or may not have passed out twelve seconds into, but not before hearing words like "budget" "recession" and "careful with discretionary spending".  Personally, I see no need for that kind of language between adults, but whatever.  Apparently, the economy is in bad shape and I am on a budget.  But not on a budget with numbers and balancing, but more of a spending freeze type of thing, where my credit cards and I are having a trial separation.  And I am totally on board and not just because I would have agreed to anything to make the conversation end.

I remind my husband that I am from the former Soviet Union, where people made a turnip stretch all winter during the war. Of course that was a few decades before I was born, but what am I, a historian now?  The point is that I am of good strong Russian stock that can withstand hardship and do it with bravery and a stiff upper lip (as soon as I get it Botoxed).  The only glitch is that the next morning I realize that I am totally out of my kazillion dollar an ounce perfume and momentarily feel like Anastasia when she faced the Bolsheviks.  

Then to make matters worse, I talk to a friend of mine who's one of those financial types and I'm not even sure what her job is.  My strong preference is for people around me to have job titles that I understand, like "doctor", "teacher," "prostitute", but she doesn't seem to care about my preferences.  She's a financial something or other and she tells me that she read a book, called The Financial Apocalypse which she suggests that I not read because it will give me nightmares, but which she will summarize for me, because that's relaxing. 

So, according to her, the book predicted many of the things that we've already seen, like major banks closing and the Fannie and Freddie collapse and that the other fun thing that the book predicts is that the United States government will default on its loans and that our currency will be worthless. Not worth less.  Worth nothing.  For some reason, this alarms me, so I ask her what the book suggests we do, because I am now convinced that The Book knows everything and will lead us out of the darkness and will probably get me a bottle of that perfume.  And she says that we need to buy gold bars which sounds good in theory, but I'm thinking that it's going to be really, really hard to justify to my husband, what with the spending freeze and all.  Can you imagine if he notices that I'm stockpiling gold in the closet?   But then it hits me, and this is where Warren Buffet may want to pay attention--if our currency is going to be worthless, shouldn't we all be charging the gold bars on our credit cards, because when the economy totally collapses, no one will care about credit card debt, but we'll have gold.  And with the gold, we'll be able to get perfume!  And that's the real silver lining.