Note: The Middle Space essay above is the Intro to this one
I wonder sometimes how others live. Are other people’s faucets a little dirty, stained from life and hard water like mine? Is anyone else out there opening her microwave with a fork because the handle fell off, not yesterday but years ago? I look around sometimes and feel like I must be the only one this far behind. The only one approaching 50 with $0 in my savings account. Oh, it was building up for a brief moment until our house needed things that couldn’t wait any longer. The driveway we’d put off for years became undriveable, demanded paving ($7,000) and our windows were literally crumbling in their frames ($10,000). So we used up the savings we had managed to cobble together (which quite frankly wasn’t really going to save us anyway) and got a 7 year loan for what remains and that is why our savings is $0 now and it’s not like I’m in my 20’s here. It should be a lot more right? Right. A lot in my life should be a lot more. But here I am. I work as hard as anyone but staying just ahead of expenses feels forever like an uphill climb. It feels like how I’d only previously assumed that people who spent recklessly and didn’t work hard might feel. A lot of times, it feels like failure. Do others feel this?
I wonder what would happen if every once in a while, we all just said out loud where we are in life so we could get a sense of what is typical and so others wouldn’t feel so lost or assume that everyone else had it all figured out. And what if we also were all just honest about the things that break our hearts and scare the hell out of us?
I wonder what would happen if every once in a while, we all just said out loud where we are in life so we could get a sense of what is typical and so others wouldn’t feel so lost or assume that everyone else had it all figured out. And what if we also were all just honest about the things that break our hearts and scare the hell out of us?
Ok, I’ll start. What if I told people:
- That I cannot foresee saving enough money to live comfortably in retirement so thinking about the future scares me.
- That our roof has leaked for 5 years despite the roofer’s best attempts to make it stop and once we find the source of the leak, our next battle will be to pay for the 5 years of damage that’s been caused.
- That this year I’m in a delicate dance with finances trying to figure out how to fit a $5000 dental implant and a $2000 root canal into a budget that is already tapped. That I waited 2 months with a buzzing tooth for a root canal because that’s when insurance would pay half. That my multi-step dental implant process will span three years because the money needed to cover it will take that long to accrue.
- That we paid off nearly $30K in credit card debt a few years ago and so with every new unexpected expense, debt nips at our heels and threatens all the hard work we’ve put in.
- That our car is 16 years old and that it was 9 years old when we bought it because that’s what we could afford.
- That planning what to do during vacation weeks is always tinged with disappointment that it can’t be something more.
- That whenever anyone asks if I have any interesting vacations planned, what I hear is “do you have $5K - $10K in disposable income to spend solely on fun this year?” And I don’t. Well, I did last year but that involved a 6 - month payment plan and cashing in three weeks of vacation time which quite honestly, was a once in a lifetime type of sacrifice.
- That I often wonder how one income people with kids put food on the table
- That I love my home and my town, and I chose this partner, this house, and this career. But that everything is so hard all the time with money with us.
- That I’m not sure I’ll ever get paid to do what I love or have the chance to live my dreams.
- That I have what I need but I don’t typically get to do what I want.
- That it makes me sad that my appearance will likely never again be what I want it to be (weight, hair, skin, you name it).
- That money is the thing that makes me feel like a failure no matter how hard I work or how closely we follow our budget.
- That it hurts.
- That it seems like many others don’t have stress around money and maybe that’s the way life is with two incomes or just maybe they are in debt but either way, other people’s lives are not my business.
- That I don’t want anyone else’s money or life, but I would like to feel less shame about sharing that my finances are not carefree, not in the past, not now and not for the foreseeable rest of my life.
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