In the Market for Less

I got many a reply to my last post. See below. Most replies were sent to me via email, but every single one of them was affirmative: Everyone agrees that times are hard, tightening the belt is needed. Our family has always been quite frugal, eliminating many things other family's consider necessary. We have gone without a TV for months at a time before, because we could not afford even basic cable. We have eaten what we refer to as "the WIC diet". Meaning, I have actually looked up the requirements for infants on the state agency, Women, Infant, and Children, and eaten the kinds of foods they cover, so that I know my children are getting all their nutrients, but I am shopping like I am on welfare - even though I am not.

Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

We cancelled our away vacation to Maine this year. Instead, we packed lunches and hiked at various local state parks every day that it wasn't raining. We only ate at diners twice. Diners are cheap. Very cheap and most make excellent Reuben's. We camped in our own backyard and pretended it was the great New England wilderness. We have only driven away from our immediate area for vacation twice in our whole lives, and we always had to travel with others, so that someone else was paying for half of it.

I have attempted to work in the recent past, but I have CFIDS, so when I am tired, I can't move. That happens very quickly. This includes even writing. It sucks a little, but what can you do? Life is life.

And I don't mind my own personal cheapness. I am proud that I can do this and with a strange burst of adrenaline. "See how well I can feed all of you on cheese and Cheerios! You will be amazed!" And I get the job done. Or rather, God does. Just like He did with the loaves and the fishes. I wonder if that was a Friday...

So, we are tightening our crazy cheap belts a little more than usual, and attempting to aim ourselves towards our goal of selling our big and beautiful home for a smaller, beautiful one. Because wherever we go, we always think our life is beautiful. Except for that apartment complex way back when...with all the ladybugs and mice. We called it Plague Place. That was a long time ago though. We have already purchased two nice homes after much savings and work. We can do it again. And that is something I promised never to say once we had settled into our present house. "We can do it all over again."

But we will.

So many people emailed me and said words like, "I wish we could downsize, but we don't have anything to downsize to." I have two sets of pals who live with their parents. The husbands lost jobs and living in the Northeast is just too expensive to do on their own. One set doesn't see any future wisdom in moving out, and the other is purchasing a very nice manufactured home in a community with a pool and miniature golf course, because the husband has lost his job twice in several years.

Others said, "I don't blame you. If my husband could swallow his pride before we lose this house, we would be moving into a nice manufactured home, too. I would totally do it. But I fear we will just lose the house instead."

And what's funny, is that there are those who did not comment, but I have heard them say before that people who are struggling with their mortgages today are doing so because they got these huge interest rate or interest only loans. None of my friends did that. Neither did we. We acted very wisely and even greatly, greatly improved our credit which had been ruined by mountains of medical bills from one the world's rarest neurological diseases. We simply moved into an area that we could not afford, an area all our "wisest friends and family" insisted was the best thing for us. This is our stupid move. Though I do not doubt God brought us here. It's all too much of a mystery for me to personally decipher. We simply are not uber rich. Neither are any of my friends who suffer as we do, and none of them are one of those high risk mortgage people.

Things happen. Credit ratings do not effect entry into eternal destiny. So, we move on. All of us. And I have a strong sense that by the time we have made our actual move, several of my readers will have done the same thing. I don't say all of this, or share our personal story, because I somehow need approval or need for everyone to know our plans. It is simply that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that many are doing the same thing, and they need lots of encouragement, because their cheapness bone does not run as deeply as mine. They need to read the story of others before they can create their own. As the Catholic writer, Matthew Kelly, might say...we are simply inventing a better version of ourselves.

An even more frugal version. We are in the market for much less material, thus offering us much more freedom. It's like the scene in The Mission where Robert DeNiro (Jesuit Priest) finally drops his old load of mercinary armor over the edge of the falls in South America. He joins the mission and finds his true life purpose - which wasn't ever truly created for "having it all".

Anyone who tells you that you can have it all is selling something, and it isn't going to amount to anything. No one gets to have it all. Sometimes, like we who never assumed everything would ever be ours, gets to learn again and again that only God Himself can truly sustain us - no matter the size our house, the rating of our schools, the quality of our parishes. The rest is all vanity, and mostly, a huge waste of time. To chase it will only spin you closer to a tired heart and an early death.