You have to pay your bills. When all is said and done, all the whooping, hollering, and whining, certain essentials must be paid for. Your rent or mortgage. Your necessary utilities – gas, electric, and water. Insurance. Fuel or other expenses necessary to travel to work. Food. Necessary medicine (Insulin for your diabetes – necessary. Rogaine for your vanity – not so much.) Emergency expenses related to the above.
Everything else is a luxury. It is optional. It is in the column of “Controllable costs.”
It is called living within your means. It’s called being responsible. It’s called being an adult. To not do so is irresponsible and childish. I’ve done it as a private citizen, and as a business owner. When I have failed at it, I have suffered the consequences, including a bankruptcy.
My second marriage could be a parable for this. I married a much younger woman who just could not grasp this simple reality. She wanted new furniture. I told her “We can’t afford it.”
“We can’t afford NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT to!”
So I sat down with her. I took out the bills, my checks, explained we had one income, and went over the budget. We were living hand to mouth with maybe $50 left over at the end of the month. Best financing we could get? $125 a month. Where’s the other $75 going to come from, Samantha?
So, out came the usual feel-good boilerplate of “finding a way.” Okay. Cut cable? Nope, what would she do all day? (Clean the house, hmmm?) Phone? How would I talk to my mother! Entertainment? We need to date as a couple even if we are married! Second job for me? I’ll never see you! Job for her? WHAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!
All left after that was the essentials. And she insisted that we could “juggle bills” and somehow that money would appear through this juggling.
(I’m going to indulge in a short ADD moment here – this will actually work for about 3 or 4 months, until you’re far enough behind on things that you get utility shutoffs, eviction notices, and repo men lurking about)
Fortunately for me, I stuck to my guns. Fortunately I had a buddy tip me off that Samantha told HIS wife she’d get a job just long enough to get the stuff then quit, and I refused to put my name on it. Fortunately I put my furniture in storage, because after I did the same thing on the van “We can’t afford NOOOOOOOOT to” buy, and she turned into a seething ball of resentment and moved out because her gratification wasn’t instant; I had my furniture, and my car when she was getting hers repossessed. And getting evicted.
This is the fundamental reality. Sooner or later, the bill has to be paid.
If the bill isn’t paid, the water gets shut off.
Sooner or later you have the guy from the water company standing on your porch. And no matter how heart-wrenching your sob-story is the response will be the same, to wit: “Damn, buddy, that’s hard. Sooooo… tell you what. I need that in cash, so I will do my disconnects and connects on this block and be back in 45 minutes. Will you have it by then? Because if not, I’m going to have to shut you off.” If you get that much.
And breath can be held, and feet stomped, and howls of “YOU BIG MEANIE!” can shake the heavens, but you’ll be a no-water sad sack in 45 minutes.
Grow up.
I’ve been a service provider. I have been the guy writing the checks, and that’s the cold reality – I have to pay my employees. If you don’t pay your bill, when I hand out the IOUs on payday, I’m going to have people – at best – saying “Dude – you rock to work for … but … There’s a guy who is going to be on my doorstep telling me he needs cash when I get home … sorry…” I have suppliers, vendors, my own rent and utilities and all will tell me the same thing. Make all the “Laws” you want about me not shutting people off. Tell that to my empty and boarded up building, with the notice of a bankruptcy auction tacked on it.
It is that simple. No, it is not EASY. But it is SIMPLE.
Live within your means.
If you have a thousand dollars and spend a thousand and one dollars, you have a deficit. Every day, month, year you do that it gets worse and worse. The key is only spending – tops – a thousand dollars. If you have to take the light-bulb out of your bathroom and pee in the dark to save that dollar, it is what you have to do. If you have to skip that morning coffee one day, it is what you have to do.
At least, that is what a responsible adult does. You pay what you absolutely, positively, have to pay to keep a roof over your head, food in your belly, and the water flowing. All – ALL – else is gravy. And gravy is a la carte, no matter how fervently you wish it otherwise.
You don’t steal from your kid’s piggy bank. You don’t raid their college funds. You don’t lie, cheat, and steal. The very first thing you do is trim expenses. The very first thing. Does this feed me and mine? No. Do I lose my house? No. Do I lose my life, my means of earning a living? No.
All of these must be answered in the here and now. Sing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!” all you want and orate about the future, but here’s another cold, hard reality – if the here and now isn’t attended to – what future?
You have to delay gratification. You have to attend to the basics. Yes, your education is important, and those continuing studies are towards that degree, which will increase you income … Well, you can delay that semester now, or you can delay it later. Then instead of worrying about enrolling back in school next year, you can be worrying about that, AND finding a new place to live, AND getting utilities turned on, AND paying the deposit for the same because you got yours turned off before, AND paying the past due, AND getting a new car because yours got repossessed, AND getting a new job to pay for all this because you go fired because you couldn’t get to work because your car got repossessed…
Seeing a pattern here?
Yeah, I know. Your brother is on hard times. His wife ran off with the playboy, and now he and his kids are left holding the bag. That bank card, though, says “Insufficient funds” when you try a withdrawal. You can write a check, it will bounce, then his account will get a fee, and you will be assessed a fee, and you’ll both be that much further in the hole.
Whatever the hard luck pathos is, the answer is the same. The money is not there. Aunt Millie’s dog needs medicine. Your best bud from high school is losing his car. You want to buy your daughter a decent birthday present. The account is empty, the checks are rubber, and if your credit card isn’t over the limit, it still has to be paid in the future.
At the end of the day what you want to do, and what you can do are two entirely different things.
In times of crisis, the here and now is going to have to be attended to or there will be no future, and this means hard and brutal choices on rock-bottom bare essentials.
Your kids will bitch because you have no internet, no cable, and they have to wear Wal-Mart clothes instead of Tommy Hilfinger. No more imported rice – buy the generic. Hamburger instead of steak. Regular instead of premium. Coffee from home instead of Starbucks – or better yet, the free coffee at work. Cancel your magazine subscriptions – read them at the library. Vacation is at home this year. If it doesn’t keep body and soul together and a roof over your head, it is no longer in the budget.
If you spend money somewhere, it comes from elsewhere. We know your son is a piano prodigy. By all means, yes, this must be encouraged. Which day is it going to be then, each week, that you, and your spouse, and your son, and your three other kids go hungry?
No mater what “solution” you propose, you have to answer these questions. You cannot brush them aside. They are not trivial, they are everything. If you cannot answer them, you have no solution.
Mature adults conform to reality.
The salestwerp, the loan officer, everyone else will tell you that “You can’t afford to do without what I am peddling.” In that case, THEY have to answer those questions. If they can’t, you hang up the phone, or you walk out of the store. When I was in business, I told people the same thing – and it was a lie.
You have to tell Little Jimmy to cut lawns and deliver papers to take piano lessons, you have to tell your kids to get jobs and buy their own luxuries, you have to tell Aunt Millie that the case of vodka she buys every month would more than pay for Fido’s medicine, you have to tell your BFF that you can’t co-sign on his Beemer, your daughter is going to have to make do with a birthday card and a $10 gift certificate for Claire’s, and if your wife wants new furniture, she needs to get a job.
The well is dry. If you can’t eat it or burn it to keep warm, it’s an extra. Once more, with feeling: Period, end of story.
We are here now as a nation in that situation, and because we haven’t done that. Every time someone has shown up with a hand out, we’ve written a check – uncritically. Study the sex lives of the Bolivian Fruit Fly? Here’s a check. Instead of a brick-box school, we’ve built architectural wonders. New uniforms for the football team, instead of books, when the old uniforms were just fine. A million dollars for this, when renting that for a fraction would do. Grants for “performance art” that can’t support itself because it’s crap, and nobody will pay to see it. Layers of bureaucracy to take money here, transfer it there, transfer it there, account for it on this that and the other form, and offices and limos for “important people in charge of it.” We lay off 50 teachers to save a million bucks, then spend two million redecorating the new superintendents office. Repaving a road instead of patching it as “make work.” We refuse to police social programs for cheats. We hand out hundreds of billions in corporate welfare to corporations that should die of Economic Darwinism. The Chrysler Bailout? This is the second time for them. Lee Iacocca. Look it up.
Seriously. Vacuums in the market get filled. Who misses Enron? IBM and Compaq no longer exist as personal computer makers – did anyone really notice, outside of the industry? Let. Them. Die.
You seriously going to tell me that White House Jesus, and his whole team of smart, creased pants, impeccably edumacated, best and brightest went through the budget, line by line, and could only find a couple hundred million of waste to cut? Seriously? Hell, I could find damn near that in the municipal budget of any major city. Hell, probably more in a lot of cases. We have that much in “Stimulus Funds” to non-existent zip codes in Podunk states. We’ve places where hundreds an thousands in stimulus funds have been spent to “save or create” negative jobs.
I don’t even need to go all Libertarian with the “Is this program Constitutional?” questions The fact that we collect money for welfare, education, and all kinds of other dubiously constitutional programs and a fraction of it actually winds up as “boots on the ground” is outrageous.
We’ve not come anywhere near it. We’ve not tried. We’ve not even gone through the motions. Peter has been robbed to pay Paul. No, worse yet – Paul has been given an IOU. Social Security – raided. Medicare, and Medicaid – raided. Whenever some tax and spender sees two quarters sitting around unspent, they promise someone a dollar.
A trillion dollars. Any idea just how huge a sum that is? It’s so huge it’s no longer a figure, it’s a statistic.
Do you have any idea how many trillion dollars in hock we are? How many IOUs, and markers, and ”I’ll get to you on Friday” we have out there? We’ve pawned our country to the heathen Chinee.
“Well, where can we save?!?!” the spendthrifts wail. Well, number one, treat your country like your household. Like your own business. Hire your National managers with the same care you’d hire a manager for your business.
You have to divide “want” and “need.” How? Well, how about the damn Constitution, for starters? Remember that pesky thing? Article I, Section 8. That is need. All else is want. Once you have done that, start cutting out “want” and prioritize it. Spend smart. Be stingy.
Stingy? What?
Let’s take a real life example. Your morning paper and Starbucks. If you can afford it, great. But do you have any idea how much you’d save by reading your paper online and making your coffee at home?
Well over a thousand dollars.
I can buy an in-town beater for that. Insure it twice over. Fill the tank up once a week for six months. Pay a mortgage payment. Or two. That’s a whole mess of credit hours at most state colleges for in-state tuition.
Coffee. And a newspaper. Just so happens I was at a government office not too long ago, and say three copies of the paper, and two coffee pots. I have installed office furniture. I know a $1500 cubicle when I see one, and also know what a $300 filing cabinet looks like, and a $300 chair. I also know I can get a desk, chair, and filing cabinet for about $300 at Sam’s club. And a 300 naked cubicle. Multiply $1500 savings by the number of employees by the number of offices. You do the math. Better yet, rent the space. No overhead in maintenance.
This is just the top of my head. And yeah “Well, that’s only…” Your Starbucks and Times is only 4 bucks a day, too, and that adds up rather tidily.
So have we done that much? Well, in fact, since this was within the past couple of weeks, I can say with a certainty, “No, we sure as fuck haven’t.”
Ever worked in government or academia? Well, at least State-run academia? I have. And one of the great games is the every fiscal quarter/half year/ year of “Holy shit, we have to spend the rest of the budget!” And it never goes to more services. It goes to crap. Just to spend it, because God Forbid we don’t, we might then get less the next time & then the director’s genitals would become smaller. How the hell is this?
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Why aren’t you angry? And I am not talking pressing your lips together annoyed, I’m talking pitchforks, torches, tar and fathers furious.
How many people don’t get services due to lack of funds? Why is it that most welfare cheats would be white people, but talk of policing it results in cries of “WAAAAAAAAAACIST!”?
I don’t care what your political stripe is, this report is footnoted and cited: http://www.heritage.org/re
This has not been done. At any time. In the past twenty years. Though it is promised each and every election cycle. By EITHER party, and no, I’m not particularly interested in hearing the usual sniveling Republicrat “They did it too” or “She did it first!” It’s crap. It’s criminal. And then people want to raise my taxes?
Rope. Tree. Politician.
Some assembly required.
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