Recession Barometers

I get stuck in a rut every day digging through all the bad news of the day, so I think I need to write a bit of uplifting stuff so here it goes...

I know that some people use the Dow Jones Industrial Average, unemployment statistics, the latest GDP numbers and other such statistics to gauge the depths of a recession. I use some different methods to do the same thing.

The grocery store line
If you wait for an excess of 30 minutes in a grocery store line, the economy is doing real well.

Traffic
If you can drive down North Ave. and hit most of the traffic lights green, that means traffic is light, because no one has any money to be driving around.

Home "for sale" signs
If you see more than 4 realtor signs per block, the economy is on the decline.

More cars than pickups on the road
As more of the drillers pack up, the less pick-up trucks that are about town. Plus cars are less expensive than trucks.

So I look forward to...
standing in line for an hour at a grocery store...
or hitting every light red on North Ave...
or getting caught listening to my neighbor complaining about something...
or just getting stuck behind a big smokey diesel truck...

Not everything in a recession is bad either....
We are healthier because we can't afford eating out, alcohol, tobacco.
We spend more time at home with our families.
We break the "credit card" lifestyle.
Many entrepreneurs and inventors start up during bad economic times.
We relearn what is truly important in our lives.

I know it is not the season, but here's a little Christmas story...
About a decade ago, Pam (my wife) and I were working, and failing, at trying to stay ahead of all the bills and trying to get Christmas gifts for the kids. So that year we got some very small priced gifts (dollar store kinda stuff) for the kids, didn't really decorate anything, and Pam made a Christmas tree out of construction paper that we taped to the wall. The ornaments were all construction paper. To be quite honest we were really depressed we could not do better for the kids. But you know what, it is one Christmas that we all remember as being one of the happier Christmas' we have had.