I was reading a story about how to eat cheaply during the recession, one of those stories that says you can keep living your same lifestyle if you make a few simple adjustments and cut out a few luxuries. One of their suggestions was to order the hamburger at high-end restaurants instead of the daily special. Then they rated the hamburgers at eight posh restaurants. They thought the $26 hamburger was the best, but the $18 hamburger was a close second. They couldn’t choke down the $14 burger, which was apparently loathsome. So you can see how the savings would mount up. If you simply cut back to eating $26 hamburgers instead of what you regularly order, you can breeze through this economic downturn. The magazine was full of tips like that, not just about food.

“Clean the pool yourself” was a big one. Buy a brand-new diesel car for better mileage. Send Chip to Princeton instead of Yale. Rent out your third home. Host cocktail parties instead of dinners. Put the cheap vodka in the expensive bottle. Take vacations in poor, Third World countries like Iceland.

I know a lot of my friends have cut back on luxuries. My friend Marty has cut back on house payments, car payments, college-loan payments. Who needs them? And besides, not paying your bills is a good way to stretch a dollar.