"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."--Rahm Emanuel
Don't worry. The above is the first time I have, and the only time I will, open a blog post with a quote from a left wing terrorist! And this post is not a manifesto regarding the use of tragic current events to further one's own political ends. No, the crises that I'm focusing on today are personal and specifically financial in nature.
How can a crisis go to waste. you may ask? After all, for most people a crisis is something that happens, and must simply be survived. Your bread winner loses his/her job. The car needs a transmission. The power goes out for 36 hours. These things can and do happen through no fault of your own, and present major challenges that have to be overcome to the best of your ability; it can feel at the time as though anything beyond mere survival is asking too much. Furnace broken? You'll just have to fork over that $450 and live on old Rice-a-Roni and tuna fish for a week until the next paycheck comes. Sink exploded while you were gone for the day? Wow, that's no fun--not only do you have to buy new cabinets and flooring and possibly even appliances, but your kitchen is going to be virtually unusable for at least a week. Better dig through your paper recycling for a couple of those credit card offers. Maybe you can find some Burger King coupons while you're at it.
...or.
What if you had done some advance preparation in case something like this happened? What if you had, for example, two weeks' worth of good food on hand, waiting for the need to arise? Including some foods that were easy to prepare by some means other than the stove (like the microwave or even the grill?) What if you had an emergency fund of $1,000 set aside for such a time as this? That might not cover a transmission or a destroyed kitchen, but it would certainly help.
The above advice is very sound to avoid wasting in a crisis, something that would probably make an excellent blog post in the future. But that's not the focus I've got today. Today we're discussing how not to waste the crisis itself. What do I mean by that?
I'm going to explain by giving some examples. Here are two situations we've encountered as a family that have definitely qualified as crises, but which, in the end, have actually left us financially stronger and more resilient than we were before.
So, with tears in my eyes, I buckled down and tried to save some money. I'd canned tomatoes and green beans galore that summer, there were carrots as big as my forearm (no joke), there were heads of cabbage, and there were turnips. Oh, the turnips. The only bad news was that the potatoes hadn't fared well that year. We had a heatilator fireplace that helped warm the house and took some of the strain off the furnace, and we had a freezer full of beef from a cow that went down at the dairy where Ben's family worked. And I'd been stockpiling pintos and rice at the grocery store.
So I learned that we could go a month or more without spending a single dime on food. I remember after the one real snowstorm that winter we got two paychecks in a row, so when we'd paid the student loan bills and the phone bill and the electric bill too, and filled up Ben's gas tank, there was enough left over to buy some flour. That was a big deal. And one day we had some friends come visit and eat dinner; we supplied the beef tenderloin roast (Down dairy cows are delicious, folks), and they brought ingredients to make their famous sour cream and chive mashed potatoes, and when they left they said we could keep the rest of the bag of spuds.
More tears.
Anyway, our income tax return finally came and the dry spell broke. But I never forgot that winter, all those beef stews with carrots and turnips and beans. And rather than simply saying, "thank God that's over," I chose to change our lifestyle to make sure the winter would never be that hard again. We changed our potato growing practices, for one thing, and I started stocking up more over the summer to save stores for winter: more flour on hand, more varieties of beans, more chocolate chips. Ultimately this winter's experience led to my continuing practice of spending only $10/week on groceries from the beginning of January to the end of March. It lets us save up some money, and at the same time it helps us to be mindful year round of what we're spending and what's really necessary.
Between the normal expenses of moving and the interruption in Ben's employment that came along with it, this summer has been very financially trying. But even more it has been uncomfortably full. There has been major prioritizing of our time and money: Should we install the hot water heater this weekend, or put a roof on the shed? Should we install a downstairs toilet so we don't have to haul buckets upstairs to flush, or build a hay rack for the oxen so they waste less of the grass that Ben laboriously cut with his scythe? (Spoiler alert--plumbing, so far, always loses.) But in that process I've learned quite a bit that may well be useful when we finally move to our permanent homestead in New Hampshire. Like: I can live without water supply, but not without drains. (I did go without a kitchen drain for a few weeks, just keeping a bucket in the cupboard under the sink and emptying it outside whenever it got about 2/3rds full.) It is possible to cook in a kitchen that's totally torn apart; I followed my one stretch of countertop around the kitchen for three days while Ben installed the laminate floor. (Not, of course, without tears.) There was no extra money for eating out, so we made do.
There are things I wish had been different this year. I wish we could have sold a few more of the 11 pigs our sow birthed the day after we moved her in; nine little pigs is too many for the amount of space we can devote to them, and since someone in the sky has seemingly promised that it will rain every day for months the pigs are considering the merits of growing gills. We're staying ahead of abject porcine misery, but just barely; if we ever raise this many pigs again it will be with either easily moveable pig tractors or with an available barn where they can wait out the worst of the mud seasons.
On the other hand, I feel there are also things that we did well and that I'm glad to have under my belt. I canned an awful lot of tomatoes and plenty of green beans and two batches of pickled beets. I grew a very fine crop of potatoes. I even have a few pounds of turnips in the garden (for the first time in years). We harvested a large crop of field corn and a reasonable crop of sweet corn (this last despite the local starlings' taste for tender young corn shoots). And again, all this in spite of moving right at the beginning of the garden season, and having a partially functional kitchen all summer. So this crisis has taught me that one needn't interrupt one's survivalism due to mere factors of an inconvenient move or lack of indoor plumbing; with proper prioritizing it can be done.
So if you ever look at your lifestyle, your family's needs and wants, and start to feel vulnerable, there are things you can do. Start socking away money and food; maybe invest in a cheap charcoal grill and some charcoal in case your kitchen or stove goes kaput. And when you're in the crisis, with a little bit of a buffer between yourself and utter ruin, don't just panic or feel miserable or even thankful that you thought ahead and froze some chicken thighs just in case; look around at what you're doing without, and decide which of those things can be done without part of the time, and which can be eliminated from your budget altogether. Also remember to think about the things you wish you had prepared for (I'm going to start trying to keep an extra jug of dish soap for emergencies), so that when things are better and you're rebuilding your stockpiles you'll do it with better information and be even more resilient the next time around.
Don't worry. The above is the first time I have, and the only time I will, open a blog post with a quote from a left wing terrorist! And this post is not a manifesto regarding the use of tragic current events to further one's own political ends. No, the crises that I'm focusing on today are personal and specifically financial in nature.
How can a crisis go to waste. you may ask? After all, for most people a crisis is something that happens, and must simply be survived. Your bread winner loses his/her job. The car needs a transmission. The power goes out for 36 hours. These things can and do happen through no fault of your own, and present major challenges that have to be overcome to the best of your ability; it can feel at the time as though anything beyond mere survival is asking too much. Furnace broken? You'll just have to fork over that $450 and live on old Rice-a-Roni and tuna fish for a week until the next paycheck comes. Sink exploded while you were gone for the day? Wow, that's no fun--not only do you have to buy new cabinets and flooring and possibly even appliances, but your kitchen is going to be virtually unusable for at least a week. Better dig through your paper recycling for a couple of those credit card offers. Maybe you can find some Burger King coupons while you're at it.
...or.
What if you had done some advance preparation in case something like this happened? What if you had, for example, two weeks' worth of good food on hand, waiting for the need to arise? Including some foods that were easy to prepare by some means other than the stove (like the microwave or even the grill?) What if you had an emergency fund of $1,000 set aside for such a time as this? That might not cover a transmission or a destroyed kitchen, but it would certainly help.
The above advice is very sound to avoid wasting in a crisis, something that would probably make an excellent blog post in the future. But that's not the focus I've got today. Today we're discussing how not to waste the crisis itself. What do I mean by that?
I'm going to explain by giving some examples. Here are two situations we've encountered as a family that have definitely qualified as crises, but which, in the end, have actually left us financially stronger and more resilient than we were before.
Example 1: Interrupted Employment
As I've described in a previous post, my husband worked a few years at a fine Syracuse landscaping service. It was a very good job in a lot of ways: his supervisors loved him, they gave him all the hours they could muster in the summer, he got regular pay raises and he got to be outside a lot. The downside came right around Thanksgiving each year, when the fall cleanups ended. He had a plow route, but if it didn't snow much the paychecks became very sparse. Our fist winter was by far the worst; it was a drier than average winter, and by January the bank account was overdrawn. And because he had the landscaping job waiting for him in the spring, he was unable to satisfy the Unemployment people that he was "looking" for work. In the four months of the off season I think he got 5 paychecks. It was not pretty.So, with tears in my eyes, I buckled down and tried to save some money. I'd canned tomatoes and green beans galore that summer, there were carrots as big as my forearm (no joke), there were heads of cabbage, and there were turnips. Oh, the turnips. The only bad news was that the potatoes hadn't fared well that year. We had a heatilator fireplace that helped warm the house and took some of the strain off the furnace, and we had a freezer full of beef from a cow that went down at the dairy where Ben's family worked. And I'd been stockpiling pintos and rice at the grocery store.
So I learned that we could go a month or more without spending a single dime on food. I remember after the one real snowstorm that winter we got two paychecks in a row, so when we'd paid the student loan bills and the phone bill and the electric bill too, and filled up Ben's gas tank, there was enough left over to buy some flour. That was a big deal. And one day we had some friends come visit and eat dinner; we supplied the beef tenderloin roast (Down dairy cows are delicious, folks), and they brought ingredients to make their famous sour cream and chive mashed potatoes, and when they left they said we could keep the rest of the bag of spuds.
More tears.
Anyway, our income tax return finally came and the dry spell broke. But I never forgot that winter, all those beef stews with carrots and turnips and beans. And rather than simply saying, "thank God that's over," I chose to change our lifestyle to make sure the winter would never be that hard again. We changed our potato growing practices, for one thing, and I started stocking up more over the summer to save stores for winter: more flour on hand, more varieties of beans, more chocolate chips. Ultimately this winter's experience led to my continuing practice of spending only $10/week on groceries from the beginning of January to the end of March. It lets us save up some money, and at the same time it helps us to be mindful year round of what we're spending and what's really necessary.
Example 2: Moving Unexpectedly
Again, this circumstance has been mentioned previously, but I want to focus on how our unexpected move into our heretofore investment property in Central Square has improved our resilience and fiscal habits.Between the normal expenses of moving and the interruption in Ben's employment that came along with it, this summer has been very financially trying. But even more it has been uncomfortably full. There has been major prioritizing of our time and money: Should we install the hot water heater this weekend, or put a roof on the shed? Should we install a downstairs toilet so we don't have to haul buckets upstairs to flush, or build a hay rack for the oxen so they waste less of the grass that Ben laboriously cut with his scythe? (Spoiler alert--plumbing, so far, always loses.) But in that process I've learned quite a bit that may well be useful when we finally move to our permanent homestead in New Hampshire. Like: I can live without water supply, but not without drains. (I did go without a kitchen drain for a few weeks, just keeping a bucket in the cupboard under the sink and emptying it outside whenever it got about 2/3rds full.) It is possible to cook in a kitchen that's totally torn apart; I followed my one stretch of countertop around the kitchen for three days while Ben installed the laminate floor. (Not, of course, without tears.) There was no extra money for eating out, so we made do.
There are things I wish had been different this year. I wish we could have sold a few more of the 11 pigs our sow birthed the day after we moved her in; nine little pigs is too many for the amount of space we can devote to them, and since someone in the sky has seemingly promised that it will rain every day for months the pigs are considering the merits of growing gills. We're staying ahead of abject porcine misery, but just barely; if we ever raise this many pigs again it will be with either easily moveable pig tractors or with an available barn where they can wait out the worst of the mud seasons.
On the other hand, I feel there are also things that we did well and that I'm glad to have under my belt. I canned an awful lot of tomatoes and plenty of green beans and two batches of pickled beets. I grew a very fine crop of potatoes. I even have a few pounds of turnips in the garden (for the first time in years). We harvested a large crop of field corn and a reasonable crop of sweet corn (this last despite the local starlings' taste for tender young corn shoots). And again, all this in spite of moving right at the beginning of the garden season, and having a partially functional kitchen all summer. So this crisis has taught me that one needn't interrupt one's survivalism due to mere factors of an inconvenient move or lack of indoor plumbing; with proper prioritizing it can be done.
So if you ever look at your lifestyle, your family's needs and wants, and start to feel vulnerable, there are things you can do. Start socking away money and food; maybe invest in a cheap charcoal grill and some charcoal in case your kitchen or stove goes kaput. And when you're in the crisis, with a little bit of a buffer between yourself and utter ruin, don't just panic or feel miserable or even thankful that you thought ahead and froze some chicken thighs just in case; look around at what you're doing without, and decide which of those things can be done without part of the time, and which can be eliminated from your budget altogether. Also remember to think about the things you wish you had prepared for (I'm going to start trying to keep an extra jug of dish soap for emergencies), so that when things are better and you're rebuilding your stockpiles you'll do it with better information and be even more resilient the next time around.
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