Apparently I am frugal enough for the state!!!

[nvmommyx6]

Hubby and I watch the news every morning, and of course, it is always depressing, sad, crap news!! Well, hubby works for the state and the state happens to be meeting constantly on budget issues (what state isn't!!) looking at pay cuts, only for the little guy's of course! So, hubby is sweating a pay cut and possible insurance issues as well.
He tells me often of the extremely unfrugal habits of the state workers, wasting materials, buying unnecessary parts, materials etc. paying extra to have all state vehicles brought from other cities (who need them) back to this hub before legislature meets so they are accounted for (like they are not accounted for where they were at!!) Just general wasting of moneys and tax payers dollars that they spend so carelessly!
So, hubby turns to me this morning and says, " you know, they aught to have you and your FV friends start doing the states budgets, at least then we would not have this problem in this country that we do right now"!!!!
That made me feel incredible, and I totally agree with him! If this country had intelligent people running it, and frugal minded people working on it and the states' budgets, we would not have the mess we have right now!!

[Spikey1341]

Hear, hear!!! I work for the Fed Gov't and I know we could do some good here!

[HomeschoolMom]

AMEN!!! I'm Canadian but the same goes for us too! The spending is absolutely ridiculous.

Here's an example: The govt. has a special office just to send out business forms, so I called yesterday to have some remittance forms (for my business) sent to me. "Oh, we don't send those forms." "Well, you're the forms office, aren't you?" "Yes, but we don't send those forms out, you have to call this number instead." 2 offices, 2 people, excess 1-800 minutes, for 1 form! And they'll only send me 1 at a time and they don't take photocopies!!

If they sent me 12 forms once a year they'd save paper on envelopes and postage, and phone time for their employees. Of course, that would be common sense.

Sense isn't that common in government circles.

[Spirit Deer]

If they'd put the forms on a website so you could download your own, they'd save the cost of the stamps, paper, envelopes, and staff to deal with that whole thing.

Yeah, my husband works for the state and sees lots of waste, too.

[rainbowgc]

Yes, I agree government doesn't get it. Here they are always scaring the public by saying they have to cut police, library and school services, yada, yada, yada. Why they never have to cut the more obscure departments is beyond me. I guess it is the threaten factor.

[Gardengal18]

It's mostly the woman of the house that RUNS the show and sets the budget in their household and we ladies do pretty well at it! (God forbid, if I left the budget up to DH we would have plenty of useless "toys" that get taken out every now and then, but no roof over our heads more than likely.) It's probably about time for a woman to run the Country. I doubt we would have the problems that we currently have.

[frugalbabe]

Your dh is 100% right on! My dh works for a government subcontractor, the waste is absolutely overwhelming, I mean easily in the millions. And I swear the governent encourages them right on! Dh says if they ran their jobs the way I run our home it would look very different...I'd love to get a chance at that!

[ravenmaniac]

Great post. I agree totally.

[mommy4ever]

the waste is everywhere though, not just at government levels.

My MIL works at Wal-Mart. The stuff they throw out is unbelievable. Any returns, if supposedly defective, are thrown out. No one checks ot see if it was really buyers remorse, no one thinks to send it for repairs. It's garbage.

That happens at so many stores. That drives costs up for the consumer.

At schools, I have a teacher here, that won't teach the kids to recycle paper, it's too much work. Huh?

The average business uses disposable cups rather than have real cups and mugs that can be reused.

Our city is watering trees.... IN THE RAIN. Not just a drizzle, it had been raining for 3 days and the trucks were out watering....WTH?

I look at hte neighbors, they throwout furniture all the time, not recycle or donate, but throw out. The volume of garbage going out of a vast majority of homes in the area is disgusting. I have 3 bags per pick up, 1.5 of those are diapers as I have 4 in diapers 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. I have some recycling too. But the family next door of 4, has about 10 bags every week. I have no idea.

We will be entering a stage of recovery from the mass consumerism we've (we as in population in general, no one in specific) been living it. There'll be hard times, but there are growing pains and I think in the end we'll all be better off.

[Spirit Deer]

I think too, there will be a painful adjustment period, especially difficult for those who have never lived any other way but wastefully. Those of us who have always been frugal will do the best because we all figured out long ago you can't just throw money away hand over fist and understand the concept of being more financially conservative.

[The Muse]

I agree! The private sector is no better.

Last week, my boss told me I had to fly to Munich for a 1 hour meeting. In what universe does that make any sort of business sense? I flatly refused, but now I'm stressed that I should've just shut up and gone. Don't want to be labeled a troublemaker, but come on!

[heartofmine]

I give your dh a big old AMEN!!! It is ridiculous how much is wasted by our government.

[peanut]

We've been amazed by the amount of waste produced by our neighbor's too. DH and I always prided ourselves on how little garbage we threw out. We recycled and reused/repurposed whatever we could. I think the most garbage we throw out is 4 grocery bags a week...and that's a heavy use week. Normally it's a bag every 3 days. Even when the girls were home it was under 10 bags a week...a LOT under.

But we have these huge bins in our back alleys and someone is filling them up every week! There are four on our alley for 14 houses, and every week they are overflowing when the garbage guys come to take it away.

As for frugality and the state...well, the same could be said for the provinces and federal government in Canada. They seem to have this cavalier approach to finances. My dad worked government for years. His department was given a set budget. The game was if you had any money leftover at the end of the budget year, you quick spent it on something, so your budget wouldn't be reduced for the following year. Huh? Not exactly what I call responsible financial management.

[craftypam]

ALOT of the problem is they are not spending their own money; even though some wouldn't care; like some people we all know.

[phoeny_moonstar]

I agree the government frivously spends tax payers money.