Christmas gifts in times of crisis. Christmas shopping in bad times or how to spend your money when economy crisis goes on ?

Above all is the rule to spend only what you can afford in cash. Get Christmas gifts only if you are totally free from ANY debts, mortgages and professional problems. Purchase Christmas gifts only if your job is absolutely secure for months and years to come.

No loving person, partner, family member or friend ever will expect any money oriented, material Christmas gift from you in such times of global economy crisis. To remain a strong and debt free friend for others and strong business partner for others is far more valuable than any gift money ever can buy!

Let's assume you have a really stable, solid job or work and are lucky like me. How to invest your available reserves ? How to spend money and what for to spend your available money ?

Serious Christmas shopping considerations for these special times of crisis

Christmas gifts are gifts of love, hence all year long you have millions of small and large occasions to prove true love to all around you. There is absolutely NO need to spend limited money for gifts, for gadgets, toys, games and other luxury items. This now is even more important when hundreds of Millions worldwide fear to loose their homes, to loose their jobs or fear bankruptcy of their family business.

Hence for your family the most valuable now should be just some extra value time one to one and to show together with your family that your love is beyond material gifts within your family.

Let's assume you have all bills paid, all credit card are balanced to zero or plus amounts. All suppliers and all amenities, rent, and other repeated bills are paid on time. After all bills paid - if you still have a few thousand dollars cash available, then consider one or several of below:

• If you have a small family business that is secure and running well, invest in any improvements that would be needed anyway but a few months later. Repair of facilities, replacement of worn parts or equipment.
• If your family business involves having spare parts, components on stock, etc replenish your stock for a few weeks more than usual. Example if you are plumber or carpentar, you need some pipes, tools, saw blades, screws, wood, etc. Experience will show you how much per months. Instead of ordering months by months, take your limited amount and buy a few weeks more stock needed anyway. Later I explain you why !
• Whatever you do as a small or smallest family business - there are machinery, components, tools, parts, material that you normally need anyway. Some would be needed in 2 or 3 months - but if you have the cash and customers for coming months secured, then get all your replacements just for a few weeks or months longer period and / or a few weeks / months earlier. Keep available funds flowing. Of course you always keep at least a few thousand $ cash emergency reserve. But anything above the emergency fund you keep cash at home, get all money flowing toward those products or parts you need anyway for sure.
• If you know to need 100kg rice or potato, sugar or other food for your small restaurant, get a few weeks more stock of everything you need for sure.
• If you know to need a particular continuing education, vocational training, professional skills workshops, seminars, etc you need to maintain contact with global and national progress in your field of work, do that course or workshop NOW rather than in a few weeks or months ... provided you have that cash amount available NOW!
• If you have no business at all, go get one, create at least a part time small business as a second income, bake Christmas cookies, make Christmas decoration, repair bicycles in your neighborhood, fix broken machinery, etc. If even that is too much, then you still have one Christmas gift for your employer to give. Your employer who supported you during the years you have been too weak to be your own boss. Tell him that you wave any wage increase until global crisis is over. be even ready to have your salary cut if your current wage is above 4000 or so $ per months for a full time job. Be ready to reduce your lifestyle before your employer goes bankrupt and you get fired without any wage and without any future at all.

Why you should invest in larger quantities of equipment or supplies

Always provided that you have the cash here and now and need that extra purchase anyway - a few weeks sooner or a few months later, if you buy NOW, today from your regular long time suppliers, then you can signal to them that your business is sound and you remain a strong and healthy business partner, loyal to him for his past excellency in quality of products or services. By letting your available cash flow toward those who supply you, who help you or cooperate with you - you signal loyalty, you signal strength and you signal your own commitment to keep working and growing. To receive your order a few weeks or even months earlier or to receive order for several weeks or even a few months of supply beyond your normal habits, you provide financing to those who in their turn need to invest into raw materials needed to provide or produce what you need. For every of your suppliers it may make a huge difference to get your order today and thus be freed of doubts growing every day and week of this global crisis. The sooner a supplier gets his new orders and the clearer the signals of orders are, the easier he may make his own decisions to continue his business or to close down and move on in his life. A few weeks waiting too much may leave you without one or several of your urgently needed reliable suppliers. Set signals NOW. Be loyal to those who helped you to build up your own existence, your own freelance job or family business.

Decisions you make this very hour are vital for centuries to come to all planet!

Every single manufacturer or supplier has to make vital decisions these very hours and days.

Every single order more or less, every shrinking of orders or extension of orders may have a vital impact on his decisions to move on with existing business or to close down and start a totally new job / business or move to another country or region within same country!

In some countries it is a many decade tradition to get supply on a 30 days net, 60 days net or even 90 days net or more. Means you order and receive goods today and pay net amount 30, 60, 90 or more days later. For long that practice was welcome by many dealers. It is a free credit line - credit at the expense of your suppliers. Someone always has to pay for any and every credit !

In times of crisis more than ever before and as a general rule - such credit lines are bad habit! Get used to order only what you can pay in cash. Order and pay your oder on delivery or within very few days even if your supplier allows a 30-90 beyond payment schedule. Learn to get money flowing parallel to the flow of value you receive. You receive fresh bread for today's breakfast -. hence you pay as you receive your bread. The same minute. You reserve your apartment, hence you always pay at least one months ahead - each month.

Example:
1998 I rented an ashram building. I knew that the single mother of 2 daughters / intense care unite nurse is working hard to get by in her life. I had funds and thus I paid for one year all in advance without having to do so.l This amount helped her and was free for me. Of course I might have earned a few percent interest rate to keep that amount months after months in a savings account. Banks however need no money, HUMANS need money to pay their bills,. Instead of leaving a few thousand dollars on your savings account, give it to your landlord for a several months advance payment of your rent ... that may help him to pay all the repair, roof maintenance, etc.

I have 2 dedicated servers for the Cyberspace Ashram - my host requires a month by month invoice, monthly contracts, monthly billing, NO minimum periods for server contracts!!! I order both servers for a full year in advance and ask for a full year advance payment invoice, without discount and I use to pay in full immediately. My host, like so many others who supply goods of services to us, needs to invest huge amounts into high tech, buildings and salaries. The server he has to buy lasts one or several years. One year advance full pay helps him to plan ahead, to see customers with commitment, feels that his customers appreciate his service and prove loyalty by extending well ahead of schedule for extended periods of time.

Such above examples out of my life also exist in your life! Look at what you need and who supplies you in the coming months or years and who was a loyal supplier to you in past months or years or even all life long. Look at your available funds and use them wisely to set signals toward those who always served you honestly and loyally to meet your own needs.

In times of global crisis it is time to filter useless and trash from worthy and useful products. Dump all trash from your purchasing list, in business, in family or recreation and in your job or small business as well. Focus your limited funds toward real needs. Toward real needs life ! Your job or family business needs to support you and your entire family as well as some charity beyond your own family. Hence use available funds to strengthen your job / business position for even worst days to come. Beyond that - take remaining funds to set signals toward truly useful service providers or goods manufacturers. Help to strengthen those who are a firm part of your own life and family.

Keep money flowing but make sure you always let existing money flow and never credits money. Credits of any kind are soap bubbles. We have and had enough soap bubble life pon this planet for the past thousands of years. Now it may well be time for a total crash that frees all available resources and forces us all to completely review our lives and to restructure our entire way of living and way to do business.

To save in quality oriented investments is the fastest method to completely become obsolete on this entire planet. Invest in quality, increase substantially your own quality of work, quality of products, extend your service hours, extend your own availability to those who need you, your services or your products. Keep prices low, or lower your prices to a truly calculated level. Drop all fantasy prices.l Any wage or hourly "rate" or 30, 50 or more dollars or EURO is soap-bubble dreams, greed, out of reality. There are hundreds of Millions of workers, employees, etc in central Europe or USA who work for less than 10 $ / hour and still never complain. Even as a freelance needing some tools and an old car you can live and prosper with a wage below 25-30 $ / hr.

As an old man I have been working for a very wide variety of companies, organisations as well as for my own businesses. I know that in corporate industry some engineers or technicians sent to field trips are charged with wages of 100-250 US$ or more per hour .... That is besides total mismanagement one of the key reasons why so many industries become obsolete and face bankruptcy these days and months. People forgot how to be happy with bare life and daily bed and food. People started to travel in luxury cars or worst even in oversized cars with drivers or corporate jets. People started to charge night club visits to corporate credit cards and much more ...

Until all soap bubble collapses and most industries are gone. Part of history. Do you remember what life was 5 Billion years ago ? or Hundred Million years ago ? Most likely NOT. Descent of humanity into darkness however is far more than Millions of years, far more than current life cycle of this very planet. Now again is the time to either blow up or destroy an entire planet in our greedy industry and financial markets or to completely and instantly review and reorient our lives.

Christmas gifts are totally obsolete in times of crisis, hunger, war and illness. Hundreds of Millions are extremely suffereing these very hours - while at the very same time the new Hotel Atlantis in Dubai just opened last night - rooms are at 35'000 US$ per ONE night !! In what world are you/we living?

Review your Christmas shopping habits, refocus on true values, support those true values, drop all else to set clear and powerful signals. Look at oil prices having dropped some 66% within approx 2 months. That is people's power. We are consumers and as such decide what business will be closing for producing crap and dangerous health damaging products and what companies have our true eternal wellbeing in their heart and mind each and every hour of their life, for all decisions they make.

There is plenty of work out there - but may be no employer because it is God's plan for each and everyone among us to be free, to be self employed, to be hsi own boss. Hence NOW might be the very best time to learn to live a few steps smaller but on your own.

Some 19 years ago I once lost all - ALL! A typical divorce with a revenging ex-wife plus the help / conincidence of another government's business law. All within a few months until I slept for a few years on the ground, on a small folded rug to make concrete floor softer - inside a simple sleeping bag. Having lost all meant to live from less than 10 US$ per week during many months - in central Europe, in one of the world's more expensive city. All was planned for me to crash ... or to grow even stronger. No furniture, no money left on bank, one chair, one simple working table, shower, ... lots of time, time to find purpose of life, time to review life, time to reorient, time to find God, time to read some of the Yoga Sutras, time to read a few phrases of the Holy Bible and a very few books were all I had besides a strong and healthy body. No insurance, no medicare, etc. But a forest near by to go jogging and thus to stay healthy from God's free nature power of healing, to pray to God, to practice Kriya Yoga and to look out for new job opportunities. As a foreigner in a strange and foreign country. NO work permit for me as foreigner in a strange / foreign country - only permit to work on my own - in my own business! Hence there were plenty of jobs as freelance mobile nurse for heavily handicapped, wheel chair users, people with special needs, etc people no one wanted to help because pay was just a few $ per hour but plenty enough to live a simple life and survive easily ! More jobs as landscaper / gardener for private families with garden or house - simple jobs every farmer son can easily do, to care for nature, gardens, flowers, herbal garden, etc. Years later new other and even better occasion appeared - appeared because I was looking, reaching out, praying, ready to move any place, doing any job, learning whatever needed, earnign thousands of dollars to invest all thousands of dollars into a new future - finally working 6 months 24/7 - 24 hrs per day working duty with shortest breaks while staying on duty.

Review your own options, be ready to do all, to give all and to learn whatever needed to succeed. Learn to make happy and to be useful / helpful for all society and you will have a secure and happy future.

Love and Bliss

hans