Tough Places

Just a little complaining...

I belong to a Budget Homemaking group through Yahoo. I love this group. I think they have the best ideas, and usually ideas that cut expenses are ecologically sound. There are a lot of great women on the group. But then, there's the... others.

You know the type. Unresourceful. Provincial. When the going gets tough, they whine and put it on their high interest credit card. One person was asking for tips on living on the less than one thousand dollars a month that her husband makes. Someone suggested she, um, get a job. I mean, there's a point where you just need more money.

The $%&# seriously hit the fan. The person who said it was called judgmental and uncompassionate. I recently was called this when I suggested that someone move. They said that there are no jobs in Michigan and that the only job her husband could get was working part time at Wal-Mart.

I told her: been there done that. Not at Wal-Mart, but I've lived in some pretty dismal job markets. I educated myself so I was more hireable and eventually moved to another area that was both cheaper and had more jobs. I told her she should move to Yakima. There seem to be lots of jobs here. My husband can't keep good employees at $10 an hour.

So that's when I became the less than compassionate one in her eyes. Because she, of course, doesn't think she should get a job, or that her husband should get a second job. She doesn't want to leave Trailer Park, Michigan, and she's not interested in school either.

She blames the government. After all, a completely uneducated man working part time at an entry level job for decades on end should be able to support a large family in style, buy a nice home and have two car payments. If he can't, it's a government problem.

Fine, you're trapped okay? I pity you and I think the government should just cut you a fat check because you are too unresourceful and unwilling to adapt to survive in any economy, much less our current one. Is that what you want to hear? Vote Democrat. They have a whole political party set up for that philosophy.

I didn't say that. I gracefully bowed out of the discussion. The mods soon closed the topic anyway, but not without a dig at 'judgmental people'. That would be me, for suggesting that earning more money is the answer to not having enough money. (btw, I don't think the Republicans are much better, so please don't be offended)

We've all been in these tough places. You just figure it out. And, believe me, it's easy to figure out how to move to another state than how you're going to pay $750 in rent from a $600 monthly income. Once you're settled or just no longer in financial crisis mode, you should be thinking, how can I make sure this never happens again. For my family, this meant finding ways to beef up dh's resume, even if he is 100% happy with his current job. Learning Spanish, taking irrigation classes, becoming more hireable in the field he loves. And I'm taking college classes so if something happened to him or his job, we could pull a family switcheroo and I could be the breadwinner for a while.

Resourceful people almost always make it, regardless of the economy. Unresourceful people almost never make it, regardless of the economy.