![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2013\/01\/Darling-Lets-Get-Deeply-Into-Debt.jpg\" "\\"Darling-Lets-Get-Deeply-Into-Debt\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI kind of feel like an asshat this morning. The post I meant to write yesterday is not the post I actually wrote yesterday. The post was meant to say this: budgeting sucks, but I\u2019m glad I have to do it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure what I wrote was this: Wah Wah WE\u2019RE SO POOR someone give me money wah wah I can\u2019t afford food for my kids POOR ME LIFE TOTALLY SUCKS TRIPLE WAH!<\/p>\n
Ahem. Allow me to try again.<\/p>\n
My mother-in-law was raised by a woman who had lived through the Depression. She doesn\u2019t throw anything <\/em>away. She washes her ziploc bags and re-uses them, for crap\u2019s sake. She is as frugal as the day is long, and I used to think she was bizarre for it. Maybe a little obsessive-compulsive. Certainly her excessive thrift was unnecessary, thought I. After all, my in-laws aren\u2019t poor. They have a nice house, a nice car. They\u2019re comfortably middle-class. I literally<\/em> could not understand why she saved everything. I thought maybe she was a bit of a hoarder, or that growing up with a Depression-era mom had irreparably scarred her. Like, it had broken her brain\u2019s \u201cit\u2019s time to throw this shriveled bell pepper away\u201d button.<\/p>\nThat old maxim \u201ca penny saved is a penny earned\u201d has never meant anything to me. It\u2019s just been words. My dad tried to raise us with a sense of thrift and an understanding of the value of saving things, but he was fighting against a cultural tide. I\u2019ve never forgotten the day he sat all four of us down and asked us, one by one, if we would cross the street to pick up a penny we saw lying in the road. We\u00a0 all said no. He continued on, asking about a nickle, a dime, a quarter, a dollar, five dollars. Only my youngest brother said he\u2019d pick up the quarter. The rest of us said we\u2019d cross for a fiver. Except I think I said, \u201cmaybe. It depends on how much money I had at the time.\u201d None of us understood why he was so upset afterward.<\/p>\n
Everyone\u2019s freaking out about our national debt right now. So am I, theoretically. Except that\u2019s just it: it\u2019s all theoretical. Who can fathom even one<\/em> trillion dollars? What does that even mean? My generation and the next were raised with excessive excess. We had everything we could want. And if we didn\u2019t, if the money ran dry, there\u2019s always the government. Foodstamps are more than adequate to cover groceries. I know, because we were on them in Vegas. We got more money per month three years ago with four of us than I spend on a month\u2019s worth of groceries for the six of us now. Welfare isn\u2019t just a little help; it doesn\u2019t require that its recipients pinch and save and learn the value of a dollar. On the contrary, I only learned the value of a dollar once we stopped receiving foodstamps.<\/p>\nThe national spending problem isn\u2019t Obama\u2019s fault. It\u2019s not the fault of the Democrats or the Republicans. It\u2019s our fault. It\u2019s a direct result of our wasteful, consumer-driven culture. It\u2019s the fault of every single one of us who have been way too comfortable for way too long. It\u2019s my fault. The generations before us, the ones coming out of the depression, tried to craft a system that would keep us from having to suffer as they did. I think it worked too well, because we got used to it. We got comfortable. We forgot the value of a dollar and the virtue of thrift. And then we went wild, spending ourselves and our descendents into debt we can\u2019t even comprehend. Not just nationally, but personally as well. Who else is facing massive student loans that will take a lifetime to pay off? I know we are. Who else has mountains of medical debt that you can\u2019t quite get out from under? I know we do.<\/p>\n
The economy is starting to pinch all of us, and it will only pinch harder in the coming years. And I am grateful for it. Does it suck? Yes. Sure, it sucks. But it is only because of our exhorbitant debt, the tax hikes, and the rising food prices that I, Calah, one insignificant housewife in a swamp, have learned that there is a certain satisfaction in making two meals out of three ingredients, long forgotten in the back of a pantry. I\u2019ve learned that there is pride, even, in making my own mopping solution, washing my towels with vinegar and baking soda, foregoing paper towels and learning the importance of turning the lights off and unplugging appliances.<\/p>\n
The thing is, my in-laws didn\u2019t fall into a comfortable middle-class existence. They never made enough money for that. They have a nice house and a nice car and savings in the bank only <\/em>because <\/em>my mother-in-law pinched and scraped and saved everything. She increased their income by being frugal, rather than frittering it all away in waste and excess, the way I\u2019ve done in years past. Truly, truly I am grateful for these hard times, because they are forcing me to grow in virtue. I haven\u2019t quite gotten to washing out my ziploc bags, but I know at least that I will not raise daughters who throw chicken carcasses away and then write \u201cchicken broth\u201d on their shopping lists. I know that my sons will not just call a repairman for the slightest leak without first taking the whole damn sink apart trying to fix it. I know that the work I do to tighten our budget and trim the excess is not only a necessary reaction, but that it is an investment in our future.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s no accident that the locavore movement, the \u201creduce, reuse, recycle\u201d campaign, and the growing popularity of DIY blogs are all happening now. It\u2019s no accident that young mommy bloggers all over the internet are turning Goodwill castoffs into baby headbands and cute shirts<\/a>, making their own laundry soap<\/a>, and washing their hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar<\/a>. It\u2019s no accident that before my husband and I bought Christmas gifts, we first sat down with what we have and said, \u201cwhat can we make?\u201d My generation is learning the hard way that there is a cost to everything, and thank God for it. May we learn graciously and gratefully, and may we pass these lessons on so this dark moment of debt and doubt becomes a catalyst for change and a reminder to our descendents of the bleak underbelly of a culture consumed with consumerism.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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I kind of feel like an asshat this morning. The post I meant to write yesterday is not the post I actually wrote yesterday. The post was meant to say this: budgeting sucks, but I\u2019m glad I have to do it. I\u2019m pretty sure what I wrote was this: Wah Wah WE\u2019RE SO POOR someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":1370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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The post was meant to say\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2013\/01\/why-i-our-national-debt.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Barefoot and Pregnant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-15T19:23:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-10-10T15:53:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2013\/01\/Darling-Lets-Get-Deeply-Into-Debt1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"298\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"198\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2013\/01\/why-i-our-national-debt.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2013\/01\/why-i-our-national-debt.html\",\"name\":\"Why I ♥ Our National Debt\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-01-15T19:23:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-10-10T15:53:51+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757\"},\"description\":\"I kind of feel like an asshat this morning. 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