Lifted this off of Intent Blog.Sound advice I feel.
Sharing this excerpt;

In 2009 and beyond, we are entering an era of a new kind of frugality and prudence. Financially we must be prepared to be on our own and ready to voluntarily assist one another. Within the next few years the availability of many of our society's structures and systems that we now take for granted are likely to crumble.

Lao Tzu states in Tao Te Ching (in Verse 46):

"There is no greater vice than giving in to greed,
No greater calamity than not knowing contentment,
No greater imputation than succumbing to covetousness.
Therefore, know and be content with what is enough.
Then you will always have enough."

Those who cling to the notion of external causation or external authority will continue to depend on, and thus expect from, and push blame on, the government. While those who are willing to look within and develop their inner resourcefulness will grow and evolve in quantum leaps throughout the whole breakdown of the societal structure and infrastructure. The expansion of the inter-net will give way to the evolution of the inner-net which requires no external electricity but the internal light of awareness.

Lao Tzu states elsewhere (in Verse 44):

"The more excessive is your attachment,
The greater is your suffering.
The more excessive is your possession,
The heavier is your loss.
To know what is enough is to be free from disgrace.
To know when to stop is to be free from danger.
Those who practice this will long endure."

Like any academic discipline today, economics has become a highly specialised field, which the general public has difficulties comprehending because of its sheer complexity - its specialised language, use of complex mathematics, and enormity of statistical data. The talks on economy sometimes give an impression that economics is basically all about manipulating insubstantial numbers and figures.

However, in its basic essence, economics is "the science of who gets what, when, how, how much, for how long, and at what price." (W J Murray) The real substance of economics is the creation of wealth, the conversion of wealth into exchangeable asset, and the exchange of valued and valuated asset. In short, real value creation, production, and exchange. The numbers and figures do not mean anything unless they are attached to and backed up by real value (wealth/asset).
We simply need to return to the basics. That is, create wealth and produce value and live within our means. And develop the wisdom to know what is enough.

Wishing you all a Wondrous New Year of further growth and evolution!

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura, a distinguished ATCA and Holistic Quantum Relativity (HQR) group contributor; Founder and Chairman of Vision-In-Action, based in New York; an ordained Buddhist Priest and Scholar; and Transhumanist Philosopher. He is Japanese-American.
https://www.intentblog.com/archives/2009/01/golden_age_know.html