NY TIMES– She had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people.

Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. Working as a project manager with an investment management firm in Davis, Calif., and making about $40,000 a year, she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.”

So one day she stepped off.

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.

Today, three years after Ms. Strobel and Mr. Smith began downsizing, they live in Portland, Ore., in a spare, 400-square-foot studio with a nice-sized kitchen. Mr. Smith is completing a doctorate in physiology; Ms. Strobel happily works from home as a Web designer and freelance writer. She owns four plates, three pairs of shoes and two pots. With Mr. Smith in his final weeks of school, Ms. Strobel’s income of about $24,000 a year covers their bills. They are still car-free but have bikes. One other thing they no longer have: $30,000 of debt.

Ms. Strobel’s mother is impressed. Now the couple have money to travel and to contribute to the education funds of nieces and nephews. And because their debt is paid off, Ms. Strobel works fewer hours, giving her time to be outdoors, and to volunteer, which she does about four hours a week for a nonprofit outreach program called Living Yoga.

“The idea that you need to go bigger to be happy is false,” she says. “I really believe that the acquisition of material goods doesn’t bring about happiness.”

While Ms. Strobel and her husband overhauled their spending habits before the recession, legions of other consumers have since had to reconsider their own lifestyles, bringing a major shift in the nation’s consumption patterns.

“We’re moving from a conspicuous consumption — which is ‘buy without regard’ — to a calculated consumption,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at the NPD Group, the retailing research and consulting firm.

Amid weak job and housing markets, consumers are saving more and spending less than they have in decades, and industry professionals expect that trend to continue. Consumers saved 6.4 percent of their after-tax income in June, according to a new government report. Before the recession, the rate was 1 to 2 percent for many years. In June, consumer spending and personal incomes were essentially flat compared with May, suggesting that the American economy, as dependent as it is on shoppers opening their wallets and purses, isn’t likely to rebound anytime soon.

On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

If consumers end up sticking with their newfound spending habits, some tactics that retailers and marketers began deploying during the recession could become lasting business strategies. Among those strategies are proffering merchandise that makes being at home more entertaining and trying to make consumers feel special by giving them access to exclusive events and more personal customer service.

While the current round of stinginess may simply be a response to the economic downturn, some analysts say consumers may also be permanently adjusting their spending based on what they’ve discovered about what truly makes them happy or fulfilled.

Read full article about Consumers Finding Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness.

© COPYRIGHT NY TIMES, 2010

Photo by flickr user epSos.de

FOX NEWS– A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a California ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that the Proposition 8 ballot initiative was unconstitutional, but a pending appeal of the landmark ruling could prevent gay weddings from resuming in the state any time soon.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaugh Walker, one of three openly gay federal judges in the country, gave opponents of the controversial Proposition 8 ballot a major victory.

Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread. “Our courts are supposed to protect our Constitutional rights,” lead plaintiff Kris Perry said as Sandy Stier, her partner of 10 years, stood at her side. “Today, they did.”

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume. That’s because the judge said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge ordered both sides to submit written arguments by Aug. 6 on the issue. Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

California voters passed the ban as Proposition 8 in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” the judge wrote in a 136-page ruling that laid out in precise detail why the ban does not pass constitutional muster.

The judge found that the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution’s due process and equal protection clauses. “Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the judge ruled.

Read full article about Overturning Prop 8. 

© COPYRIGHT FOX NEWS, 2010

Photo by flickr user Elsie esq.

Hundreds of protestors from more than 30 cities gathered on Sunday in solidarity to participate in “International Sakineh Mohammedie Ashtiani Day.” Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43 year old mother of two, was recently sentenced to death by stoning for adultery by an Iranian court.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted of having an ‘illicit relationship’ with two men in 2006. In addition to receiving 99 lashes for her charge, she was also sentenced to death by stoning.

Under Iranian sharia law, “the sentenced individual is buried up to the neck, and those attending the public execution are called upon to throw stones.”

Ashtiani’s controversial death sentence spurred outrage from human rights groups worldwide who have condemned the practice as inhumane and barbaric, causing the Iranian authorities to delay the execution until further notice.  Organizers from yesterday’s rallies said that they hoped to “intensify the international support [for Ashtiani’s case].”

Apart from China, Iran has the highest execution rate in the world. Last year they executed 388 people – mostly by hanging.

Written by Abby Martin, Reported by KPFA

CBS– After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California’s medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the “Wal-Marting” of weed.

The Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four production plants where pot would be grown, packaged and processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.

The move, and fledgling efforts in other California cities to sanction cannabis cultivation for the first time, has some marijuana advocates worried that regulations intended to bring order to the outlaw industry and new revenues to cash-strapped local governments could drive small “mom and pop” growers out of business. They complain that industrial-scale gardens would harm the environment, reduce quality and leave consumers with fewer strains from which to choose.

“Nobody wants to see the McDonald’s-ization of cannabis,” Dan Scully, one of the 400 “patient-growers” who supply Oakland’s largest retail medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, grumbled after a City Council committee gave the blueprint preliminary approval last week. “I would compare it to how a small business feels about shutting down its business and going to work at Wal-Mart. Who would be attracted to that?”

The proposal’s supporters, including entrepreneurs more disposed to neckties than tie-dye, counter that unregulated growers working in covert warehouses or houses are tax scofflaws more likely to wreak environmental havoc, be motivated purely by profit and produce inferior products.

“The large-scale grow facilities that are being proposed with this ordinance will create hundreds of jobs for the city,” said Ryan Indigo Warman, who teaches pot-growing techniques at iGrow, a hydroponics store whose owners plan to apply for one of the four permits. “The ordinance is good for Oakland, and anyone who says otherwise is only protecting their own interests.”

Study: Marijuana Prices to Crater If Legalized.

Read full article about the Wal-Martization of Marijuana.

© COPYRIGHT CBS NEWS, 2010

Photo by KayVee.INC

ALTERNET– The days of quietly retiring with a nest egg built up from years of savings from a long career on the verge of disappearing. For tens of millions of Americans, facing rising costs, shrinking incomes and growing debts they already have disappeared.

“One out of three working Americans does not have retirement savings beyond Social Security, and about 35% of those over 65 rely almost totally on Social Security alone,” Dallas Salisbury, president of the Alliance for Investor Education and the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), explained to AlterNet.

“Of the remaining two-thirds of working Americans that have some retirement savings,  27 percent report less than $1,000, 16 percent between $1,000 and $9,999, 11 percent between $10,000 and $24,999, 12 percent between $25,000-$49,999, and 36 percent $50,000 or more.” Perhaps the most shocking number is that half of Americans have $2,000 or less saved for retirement. 

Crunch the numbers and you end up with a retirement myth, rather than a money-maker.  We face a colder economic reality: Not only are there no astronomical retirement returns coming down the financial pike, but what nuts and nest-eggs families have set aside for their futures have been mostly sucked dry. 

“Individuals need to follow the advice of the ages,” said Salisbury. “Spend less than you earn by 25 percent, and save for your future. This keeps your lifestyle from getting ahead of your income.”

While saving 1/4 of our shrinking incomes sounds nigh on impossible in this economic climate, many are watching their savings getting squandered by bad fund managers. One retirement Ponzi scheme starting to worry the Senate Special Committee on Aging, according to an aide who asked not to be named, are target-date funds, a financial instrument . They’re basically mutual funds that try to play equities and stocks in their early years before settling into more conservative investments like cash and fixed-income before maturing, so as not to give their investors heart attacks on the date of their retirement.

Read full article about Americans Having Nothing to Bank on for Retirement.

© COPYRIGHT ALTERNET, 2010

Photo by flickr user Bugsyho