Occasionally I'll start blog posts and never finish them. For some reason, be it an idea that comes to me on another topic or the call of unfinished laundry, I'm just not feeling it. This has been happening a lot more often lately so today I found myself looking at old, unfinished posts. What I found was interesting...
On March 23 of this year, I started this post. It was in response to people's attitude about our financial difficulty. What I wanted to explain was that we were not in a recession, what a recession was, and the state of the economy. This was another one of those "just not feeling it" kind of posts. I thought I knew it all and couldn't voice my feelings that we had battled much worse before, we were not in actual economic chaos, and that the outcries were an overreaction. People were losing their homes and their jobs but only a fraction of what we faced in the Great Depression, and still much less than we faced in the 80s.
I wanted to shake the people who were claiming financial Armageddon and explain that the economy is cyclical, therefore, we will survive and live to tell a brighter story. There was no reason to worry if you were doing everything you should be doing. Responsible people, the ones who lived frugally and did all the right things, many of my dear readers who diligently planned meals and bought a home they could afford, those people would be unscathed.
I feel much differently today. Our future, both as a nation and as individuals, is a little more uncertain now. This may mean many of us will have to pull our belts tighter, and think even more creatively about cutting back. Although Mr. Cents and I have a relatively frugal lifestyle, we've already begun thinking about changes to discretionary spending. We have our regular budget as well as a contingency plan B in case we lose our jobs. We've also been tossing around the idea of drastically downsizing our lifestyle for the past several months and call this the "minimalist budget".
Mr. Cents talked about selling our home and living more simply with our friends in the past. Sadly, instead of supporting our lifestyles, our friends looked at Mr. Cents as though he had two heads and one of them spoke Latin. I find it amusing that now simple living and frugality has become almost trendy, instead of completely alien to our culture. A definite improvement in the times which comes from a dire necessity. Magazine covers now feature headlines like "Getting the most for your money at the grocery store" instead of "How to dress like Paris Hilton". These days, as people realize they need to make real changes to their lifestyles, saving money is in. That change in people's attitudes gives me hope that we will be resilient and overcome our current economic situation. Perhaps the original post wasn't as far off as I thought.
2 comments:
I to am hopeful that the sky is not falling. It's true that for many this is going to be a difficult time. If you have lived beyond your means, you will probably have to pay the consequences. But it can be turned around with a little work and some creativity. What makes me hopeful is the possibility that we will start caring more building strong relationships with each other and less about building masses of material objects.
It's really hard not to panic about finances right now. We love our house but we've talked about selling it and renting again or moving into a townhome or something to save money - but like you said, people act like we're crazy when we broach the idea. I defintely agree with you that people are starting to warm up to the idea of frugality though. Funny to think of it as being trendy! Great blog!
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