Time for Shopping?

OK - so we've been hearing bad economic news quite a bit lately. My household hasn't been affected too much lately, but I think that we would be prepared to tighten our belts, if we had to. We lived quite well when Richard wasn't working, and our income was more than cut in half.

I think that when there is a bad economic situation, the goal is not to just spend less, but to spend money meaningfully. The Christmas shopping season is fast approaching, so there will be a lot of incentives to run into the malls, and WalMarts and other big box retailers. I think that we need to ask ourselves where the money will go once we spend it in the store. It would be preferable to have our money circulate a few times around the community. In many cases, that doesn't happen. In WalMart, for example, money it taken out of the stores on a daily basis to go to the headquarters in Arkansas. A big chunk of that money goes to the manufactures overseas who make most of the products in WalMart.

Some of you might call me a hypocrite, since I like to shop at Target. Many of the products at Target are also manufactured overseas. Since I live in Minneapolis, I recognize that the money I spend at Target will stay in the community a little longer. Of course, for those of you who don't live in the Minneapolis area, you don't get that benefit.

I'm going to try to lift up a few resources to making this Advent and Christmas a little more meaningful and a little more economical. First, a friend posted this video that I found very profound. Enjoy.

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/