Save Money? "Lentil as Anything" a most unusual Melbourne restaurant,

                                                                            

In Melbourne right now its winter time and the streets are windy and cold. However there is one restaurant that is guaranteed to warm even the coldest heart. The restaurant known as "Lentil as anything" invites all comers to eat there fill of fine vegetarian fare but there are no prices on the menu. Customers are invited to pay as much or as little as they want according to how they feel and there particular circumstances. A donation box is placed near the exit for those customers who feel like making a contribution. It is a remarkable fact that the restaurant continues to thrive and prosper after 12 years and now has 3 branches in the suburbs. The cuisine is multicultural and includes delicious dishes from Africa,India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and China. The restaurant is mainly staffed by enthusiastic volunteers. The clientele is a mainly youthful mixture of students and international backpackers seeing Australia on a shoestring types. The atmosphere is friendly and convivial. Live entertainment is provided by a variety of buskers. The philosophy behind this restaurant is wise. It offers charity to those in need whilst allowing them to keep there dignity intact. In this way it builds a stronger community. I certainly hope that this enterprise continues to thrive and that other folks consider emulating it around the world. You can read more about Lentil as anything by following this link: Lentilasanything

The Road out of Debt.

                                                         The Road Out of Debt!
                

“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.”

                                                                                 

Since the global financial crisis many folks in the blogosphere are relating there experiences with debt and how to escape from it. In the above quote Henry David Thoreau is speaking eloquently from his own experience. As an ambitious and thoughtful young writer he published his first book at his own expense only to find that it did not sell and he was left with a large debt and a pile of unsalable books in the attic. Many an enterprising person if not the whole world has been caught up in the irrational exuberance of the boom years and invested in a property or business enterprise with borrowed money only to find that suddenly the return is not there. It seems that the inevitable consequence if not out and out bankruptcy is a long period of struggle and most drastic austerity for everyone. At the moment some of the hottest words on google search are “thrift”, “frugality” “How to save money” and so on. It seems every one is watching every coin these days. It seems that the economic system has seized up and is just not capable of delivering even sufficient necessities for everyone anymore. Thoreau describes a similar situation in his time “The nation itself, with all its so called improvements, which by the way are all external and superficial is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment , cluttered with furniture and tripped by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the millions in the land, and the only cure for it,  as for them, is in a rigid economy  a stern and more Spartan simplicity of life and an elevation of purpose”  

                                                                            

Many people today are feeling crushed under a mountain of debt and are desperately seeking a way out. In “Walden” Thoreau describes how he lived for 2 years a life style of radical simplicity in a self-built cabin in the woods on squatted land. His cabin is described in loving detail was 15 feet by 10 feet by 8 feet high, about the size of a small shipping container. He baked his own bread, grew his own beans and minded his own business. From his experience he wrote his book “Walden” which although not recognized in his day is now seen as one of the greatest of American classics which continues to inspire millions of people to live a simpler life to this day. It is particularly useful to those of us trying to escape from debt. You can read more of Thoreau;, Walden at this link:

Walden, or life in the woods.

Thrifty Communications.

        

              Save money make free calls through Tango, Heytell and Viber video and free text.

                                                                           

How we make free calls on our new Smart Phone with Tango, Heytell and Viber. We just love our new Samsung Galaxy phone. We can make free calls with Tango, Heytell and Viber. These services make calls through the internet so we need to be at home to use our home Wifi internet or in in a Wifi hot spot the library or a cafe.   



We have told all our friends around the about Tango, Heytell and Viber too. We use our mobile numbers for user ID on these services so its easy to remember. Tango provides free voice and video calls to other phone users who have installed Tango, Viber provides free talk and text. Heytell is walkie Talkie style calls to other Heytell users. Sometimes if one service is busy so we use the other one.