Month: February 2023

Wealth

I have been thinking a lot about money the last few days. Today a friend posted on Facebook about wealth, and a picture of someone she recognized as being wealthy even though to a lot of people in this world, they wouldn’t have thought that. I have learned as I have gotten older that money isn’t what life is all about, and that wealth doesn’t always bring the ease and leisure that we might have hoped. In fact, wealth has very little to do with money, and everything to do with life and your perspective about life.

My husband and I have never made a lot of money when you look at the national averages and what they consider wealthy, middle class, and lower class incomes. But over the years I have had the opportunity to learn how to manage what we do have so that it will stretch as far as we need it to. Because my husband is a general contractor, we don’t get paid like a lot of working people. We get paid by the job or at certain intervals during the job, and when the job is finished, the money stops coming. This means that I have had to learn how to make the money stretch until the next job is at least partially finished so we can get a payment. Sometimes that’s just weeks away from the last job, sometimes it’s six or more months away, and we really never know because, in his industry, you don’t have a job until you’re on the job working.

I used to struggle, watching everyone else around me going on vacation, or buying their kids cool electronics or new cell phone. But we had goals, and we didn’t let those feelings of jealousy or envy take hold. We stuck to our goals, and continue to do so. Sometimes that means we live differently than others, but I have found happiness and peace as we have maintained a lifestyle of living debt free and paying for everything when we purchase it rather than getting a loan or putting it on a credit card to pay over time. This approach to our finances has allowed us to have peace of mind. Sometimes we are stretched thin, but we don’t owe anyone anything so we know we’ll be ok in the long run.

I have also learned that managing the money we have is key to that peace. So many people in this world pay for things on credit, or think that somehow if they don’t pay that the companies they owe money to will have to somehow work with them to help them pay it off, or forgive the debt somehow. That’s a lot of somehows! But they aren’t in business to give people free stuff, that’s not how a business works, and if we agree to use their service then we agree to pay for that service. It works the same with college debt, car loans, anything you buy on credit is now your responsibility to pay for. That’s how it works. We need to be aware enough of our finances that we can make wise decisions as to how to spend what we have, spend less than we have, and keep a little bit for a rainy day, because rainy days come way more than we might like to admit.

Lastly, gratitude plays a huge part, more so than money, in how happy and content we are with what we have. When we can be grateful for the job we have, the food we eat, the home we live in, the ability to do what we do, grateful for everything in life, then we recognize what real wealth is. Peace of mind and peace of conscience can’t be bought, they have to be worked for, planned for, and sacrificed for. But when you have those things, you realize how wealthy you really are.

Learner

I can’t remember if I posted here, but I am in the process of writing a new book. This one will be different than the others I have written. When will it be done? I don’t know. I work on it in spurts when I have time. Sometimes there isn’t much of that. But, I am enjoying the process. Tonight I thought I would share an excerpt from one of the chapters. This chapter is about learning, even if it’s not something you’re interested in, because you never know when that knowledge might come in handy.

My husband is kind of a jack of all trades so to speak, and another of his favorite things to do is to work on vehicles.  He enjoys fixing cars and rebuilding engines.  Again, I took an interest in his interest, simply so that I could understand better what he was doing and have an intelligent conversation with him about vehicle repairs and maintenance.  This has come in handy many times over the years when I hear noises or have funny things happen with my car.  I can describe to him what is going on so he can then fix the problem. 

Recently however, I was very grateful for the things I had learned over the years about cars.  My husband’s mother was in the hospital and he and I and his brothers were traveling back and forth between our homes and the hospital, which is about 75 miles from our homes.  I had been at the hospital all day with my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law had been in for a few hours just before my husband came.  He and I left about the same time and within about 10 minutes of leaving the hospital I received a text from my sister-in-law saying my brother-in-law was broken down at a gas station near the highway entrance.  She wanted me to stop and possibly give him a ride home if need be.  I had several of my kids in the car and all their gear, and was worried about fitting him and his dogs into my car for the long ride home.  But I said I would stop and see what we could possibly do, thinking I didn’t know much about cars.  I called my husband who was at the hospital and he recommend he turn the car off and then turn it back on to see if that would fix it.  Otherwise, he had no good ideas for me without actually being there to look at it.

When we arrived, I asked him to turn it off and then back on.  He had already done that and it hadn’t fixed the issue.  As we sat there, late at night in the cold, I asked my boys for suggestion as they help their dad fairly regularly, but they didn’t have any suggestions either.  I prayed for help and had the distinct impression to disconnect the battery cable and let it set for 2 or 3 minutes and then reconnect it.  My brother-in-law didn’t have any kind of tools and I only had a pair of plyers, but my son was able to get the battery cable off.  We waited for several minutes and then reconnected the cable.  He started the car and it had worked.  We followed him home from Anchorage to make sure he got home safely.  I am so grateful for that inspiration to disconnect the battery cable.  I was confident in my knowledge of how to do so, and grateful my boys were there so they could help if I needed it. 

If you found any grammatical or punctuation errors, please let me know! I have had so many opportunities to learn many different things over the years and I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have gained in a large variety of subjects. Learning should never cease, even when we are old, and the knowledge we gain here is one of the only things we can take with us when we die. So, learn something new everyday!

Offline

I find it interesting that my kids, the rising generation of kids have never lived without the internet, never lived without 24 hour a day access to friends, to information, to everything online. I told my kids one day that I remember when google was invented. They at first didn’t believe me. But then my husband tells them he remembers when color TV’s came out! There is so much of technology that is so new for a huge demographic of people, not that we haven’t adjusted and adapted, but that it really didn’t even exist early in our lives.

I have been thinking lately about how convenient a number of these technologies have made our lives. I love having my banking at my fingertips, especially the older my children get, and transferring money. I love that I don’t really have to worry about paying all the bills, I can have them automatically paid and I just pay the one credit card bill. Some people even run all their bills directly through their bank accounts so they don’t even have to pay those. I like getting the credit card points so I can use those for other things. I also like being able to look up information when I think about it, the world at our fingertips almost.

But, there are a bunch of other things I dislike about all this technology. Way too much time is spent on devices rather than in person. I go out to eat dinner with my husband and watch other people sitting at the same table looking at their devices rather than having a conversation with the person sitting across from them. And the games, oh my goodness, I am shocked by how many adults spend hours a day playing games on their phones. Almost any other use of their time would be more productive. I sat by a class one day in Church and one of the kids was really struggling sitting still. Finally she turned to me and asked what kind of games I had on my phone and if she could play one. I told her I didn’t have games on my phone and she literally did not believe me. She was about 8 years old and her solution to sitting still was playing games on an electronic device.

Schools are going more and more to technology based learning. I don’t mind it so much for college level, in fact I have done quite a number of online courses, both college and continuing education type classes and really enjoy the flexibility of doing them on my schedule, at home. But I think for elementary and middle school, and I even feel that for the majority of high school, those classes should be in person. There are a select few kids in those age ranges that have enough self discipline to get their work done and keep up with the pacing the class may set, but most kids I don’t feel like are equipped to do so. I know just within my own home I have 1 that does really well with online, 1 that can get it done with a little bit of monitoring from me, and 2 that really struggle with the online learning programs. 2020 was not a great school year for those who struggle, and now, we are seeing the results of online schooling and the kids across the board struggled and got behind.

This gets me to my thoughts the last few days. I never used to worry about having a phone when I left the house to go somewhere. I rarely got on my computer and when I did, it was for something specific. Is all this technology necessary that we keep it with us all the time, that we can’t leave home without it, that some even have panic attacks when they are separated from their technologies. The suicide rate among teens and young adults is on the rise, dramatically. I know there are many causes for this, but I feel like technology plays a big part. And again, not that I think all technology is bad, but we start kids off so young, no boundaries in most homes, no rules of engagement so to speak, and expect them to just figure out how to navigate both the internet and real life, the life outside technology without any help. And people are struggling. Our ability to communicate outside technology is declining. Our ability to cope with everyday struggles is declining. People’s ability to work in a field of industry that doesn’t require a desk and a computer is declining. People’s willingness to work, physically work, even their ability to control their bodies in a productive way physically is declining. I watch my kids work for their dad and all the things they do, and watch others, in the same field, who think that’s what they want to do, who are much older and supposedly able, get washed out in a few short months because they’ve never been required to do any physical or manual labor in their lives and they just can’t cut it.

There is a need for technology, I do think it has it’s place, but I don’t think it’s front and center like the world has made it out to be. Am I going to give up my smart phone for a flip phone? Probably not. But just like I got rid of my games because they waste time, I know there are aspects of my phone that are also wasting my time that I could remove. Much of what I do, trying to make money revolves around computers, my website, my Etsy shop, my YouTube channel. But I don’t have to spend my time on there scrolling or mindlessly wasting time either. I am grateful for the opportunity to look at how I spend my time, and how I could better utilize my time. This life has so much to offer that has nothing to do with technology or being online.