It may be hard to imagine now, surveying Mack Daddy's vast Yertle-the-Turtle-style empire, but coming up, especially in my twenties, Mack really didn't have a whole lot of Benjamins.

Not a lot of paper. Not a lot of the colourful stuff you trade in for goods and services and incidental stuff like food.

Some days, I didn't even have any change.

In a way I think I have less fear of a recession because for ten years I lived on a few coins, some pocket lint, and an old life saver.

I've used slugs to get on the subway. I've had the grocery guy on the corner "front" me a bag of groceries, so I wouldn't starve to death.

I know how to live on a dollar a day. The secret is Ramen noodles. In my neighbourhood, they used to sell four for a dollar. So you choke one down for breakfast, another for lunch, then for dinner-- two packages!

After a while you get pretty sick of Ramen noodles. But you're alive.

"All the trials of youth, dear boy," as Montague H. Withnail says in the movie Withnail and I ( a paean to youthful brokeness).

Especially for us "artistic" types. My friend Lily, a singer, said when she was coming up her and a bunch of other musicians were living in a house on nothing, they had no food, only green tea, for two weeks, until finally her brother said: "That's it! I've had it with this type of life! I'm getting a job!"

So, she told me, he got a job, and then got an advance or something because he made a stew with some meat in it and everyone in the house pounced on it, even though some were "vegetarians."

"Wow what kind of job did he get?" I was picturing lay school, a bank...

"No, I think he got a job at a nearby coffee shop."

So her brother's decision to "sell out" and become a barista or whatever saved the lives of eight musicians.

That's poor. When you've been through that, you can face a recession-- even one as daunting as this one-- with a certain insouciance.

If you're resourceful, a hustler, you'll get through.

I hate getting on this bandwagon, but I do have one tip. Just one. "Poverty is a great teacher," they say. It certainly taught me to cook. Because cooking is SO much cheaper than any kind of eating out, no matter how cheap a food you try to get, e.g. falafels, etc. All those little sums add up fast.

Buy a smallish Tupperware container. Make yourself dinner. It's fun, easy, and you have a lot of quality control over the ingredients. Make enough so you have some left over. Put it in the Tupperware: voila, lunch the next day.

Lunch should always be leftovers from last night's dinner. That is the way God intended lunch to be. Maybe put in a sandwich, but usually just reheated.

And if there's a Chinatown in your city, shop for your groceries there. The Chinese have been thinking, and caring, about food and frugality, for thousands of years. It takes a little while to figure out how to navigate, but in the end I think you'll find everything is cheaper and also fresher than most regular grocery stores.

(E.g. they have fish swimming around in tanks, yuo buy it, they kill it: what could be fresher than that?)

Good luck. And hang on tight. Stay strong. We will pull through this, believe that.