This morning, I read yet another article on “I saved $23,000 by not buying stuff I didn’t need like movie tickets and new clothing and going out to eat.”  Okay.  I’m happy for you, oh childless one.  Generally speaking, the clickbait stories on people getting out of debt by not spending money are about people without children.  Go a bit deeper into the austerity movement, say, into Dave Ramsey territory, and you’ll find stories of people with children.

Some of my friends don’t like Dave Ramsey, because they aren’t religious, and he is.  Some of them just don’t believe the stories they read, though.  When they read about somebody paying off $200,000 of debt in three years, they just can’t believe that that would apply to them.  For the most part, they are right.  To pay off $200,000 in debt over three years, generally speaking, they sold something big like a house or a condo which was gifted to them, or they have a really high income, like they are receiving rent from that house or condo which was gifted to them.

For the most part, getting out of debt is a good thing.  Dmitry Orlov describes the iron triangle of house-car-job as the chains which keep people enslaved to soul-sucking cubicle slavery.  What is it that we need?  Dmitry rightfully points out, 80% of people on Earth don’t own a vehicle.  In 2014, there were 1.2 billion vehicles on the planet, and 7.1 billion people.  Think about those numbers for a bit.  I need a vehicle, because I have kids in upper-middle-class suburbia, which is deliberately designed, at least according to James Howard Kunstler, to require a vehicle to get to the grocery store, to a job, to the doctor’s office, because nothing is within walking distance.  I can’t grow my own food because I don’t have enough land to do so, plus city livestock ordinances.  I can’t grow my own fuel because I don’t have enough land to do so, plus no harvesting firewood from the city-owned greenbelts and parks.

There are plenty of people in the survival/prepper communities who implore people like me to grow my own something.  I do grow things.  I grow apples, quince, cherries, plums, pears, Asian pears, aronia berries, tayberries, blackberries, blueberries, kiwi, and other things.  However, this particular location can NEVER be self-sustainable, not even if the population reduced by 90% and I was in the favor of the local warlord.  I can make it better than the typical mortgage debt slave with a perfectly manicured lawn, it is true.  I have paid off my mortgage, my car loans, and my student debts.  I no longer have over $250,000 in debt.  Yes, I did do it by sitting on my butt at home and buying as little as reasonably possible.  There was self-sacrifice involved.  Meanwhile, friends move, and rent, and get another mortgage.  I don’t tell them I’m mortgage free.  They wouldn’t understand.

My kids get teased for their clothes at school.  They play hard in them, and rip the knees over time.  I don’t get around to replacing them, or sewing patches on the knees.  My kids get called poor.  How much greater does the adult level of teasing occur?  In order to do the austerity measures required to get out of debt, you can’t go out to coffee with your friends.  You can’t go do expensive events with your friends.  When you don’t spend money, you lose your previous friends who do.  When everybody in the neighborhood it seems has enrolled their children in Chinese, swim team, basketball, girl scouts, piano, play practice, dance, and horseback riding (and I’m talking ONE family with two children here), and I haven’t because those things cost more money in fees and gas and time than I’m willing to pay, is it any surprise when my kids just don’t play with their kids after school?  How could they possibly?

What is it that we need?  Maslow’s Hierarchy doesn’t include cars.  You need food, a warm bed to sleep in (you don’t need to own it), functional clothing, clean water, and a community to provide the other incidentals like medical care and friendship and insurance when bad things happen, and bad things always happen eventually.  When you start with a family culture of self-imposed austerity, there is sufficient cushion when bad things happen.  When you don’t have a $2000 monthly mortgage payment, a $600 monthly car payment, and a $250 monthly student loan payment, you have more cushion when you lose your job or get long-term disabled by a broken leg or cancer and can’t work for a time.  Yet, the financial cushion comes with a cost to your social cushion.  Not spending money includes charity.  Is that worth it?  Well, if your friends are leeches, who drop off when they don’t receive monetary gifts from you, then yes, it is worth it.  Be alone for a bit until you can find friends who aren’t financial leeches.

All of this makes me ponder whether there are spiritual leeches.  Spirits who require more maintenance costs than you are willing to give.  Heh.  I can think of a few deities which fall into this category so easily, demanding way more of me than they would give in return, with unfair terms which I just need to walk away from.  Go find the ones who aren’t spiritual leeches, whose negotiated terms are fair.