Self-Sufficiency and Resilience – Plans upon Returning to Australia

  Back in January of this year I wrote a post about Self Sufficiency, Independence and Lifestyle Planning . In it, I explained how I wanted to become less reliant on the current industrial system and to take more control of my own life. I’ve achieved a lot since then, but knowing that we were moving back to Australia [...]

The End of Retirement

A while back, I wrote about the coming en masse Boomer (1943-1960) retirement and how it is likely to affect the economy. Today, after reading the post and comments about The Grey Tsunami over at Down To Earth, I’d like to take that thought process one step further. I’ve previously discussed how populations in industrialised nations are ageing. As an [...]

A tribute to The Automatic Earth

The Automatic Earth is very different to most financial sites, because, quite frankly, most financial sites are about exploiting the misery of others for personal gain. We are trying to help ordinary people rescue what they’ve worked hard for all their lives from the grip of the system, so that ordinary people get to keep [...]

Eating Locally this Spring

Photo by: Down to Earth Spring has sprung in our garden. The tomato plants are taking over their world (they seem to be much bigger this year), the apples and oranges are maturing, the beets are ready to harvest and the squash are poking up from the earth. I love this time of year. New [...]

On Building Lifeboats #2

On my last post On Building Lifeboats, there was a comment that I wanted to address, and then my reply became so long I figured I’d just make a new post. More gloom and doom. Sorry, but I just don’t buy it. And I don’t think the way to convince people that change is needed [...]

On Building Lifeboats

Power went out at work yesterday and the computer servers are still down today. I’m not sure how many people have been affected by this. It’s certainly hundreds, maybe thousands. There has been so much lost productivity this year due to such events. I don’t bother complaining about how the systems seem to be becoming [...]

What’s your Walk Score?

I’ve lived in quite a few different places in my life. Some places I’ve loved living, and some I couldn’t wait to get away from. The same goes when visiting cities here in the US. I’ve been to a lot of them, but only a few are memorable and enjoyable to visit. What I found interesting was [...]

Short-Term Emergency Preparedness Kit: What to include

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post called Are You Prepared? Short Term Planning. I provided some questions to think about in preparation for any disasters which might occur in your area, whether they be a common house fire or a natural disaster such as earthquake, tornado, hurricane/cyclone, flood or bushfire/wildfire. I also provided [...]

Beware the perils of caffeine withdrawal

I may have discovered the culprit for yesterday’s horrible relapse…..caffeine withdrawal. For some reason I thought I’d go off coffee cold turkey to help get over this illness. Turns out, that was probably a bad idea. By last night I was nauseous, light-headed, deeply fatigued and my head was pounding with a killer headache. It [...]

Are You Prepared? Short Term Planning

There have been many severe natural disasters in recent months. We’ve witnessed the utter destruction of the horrific earthquake in Haiti and then just this weekend a massive earthquake occurs off the coast of Chile, spurring fears of Tsunamis all across the Pacific Rim. Hawaii woke residents with sirens, alerting them to the waves. A [...]