I’ve always been grateful for friends and community, but I’ve never been more grateful than I have as of late. I’ve been living through a shitshow for the past several months and have rather naively continued to give the benefit of the doubt, but that is long gone, and I have learned my lesson. Fortunately, my friends have been here to help.
The big pile of money I built up continues to dwindle, and I find myself thrust back into the position of paying close attention to what I spend in order to buy myself time to find a job. I always knew this was a possibility, and I can only hope that it’s counted to me as faith, as I really feel that all of these years of unemployment and learning have been critical to my calling. What’s hard to accept, though, is that the fear of running of out of money is precisely what originally convinced me to save so much in the first place. Now I’m back, and I have to face the tough question: do I trust in money, or do I trust in God?
One thing I have so much more compassion for is just the need to make ends meet. Look, there is no shortage of high-earning dumbasses who think the sky is falling because they don’t have $8k every month to piss away. But my heart really goes out to people who are trying to escape abusive, hostile, or otherwise unhealthy situations, those who maybe have a gap in their employment, or for whom their natural expenses exceed their ability to pay, those nickled and dimed into a state of constant regression, and who simply don’t have an easy way out.
One thing that has made me nervous is just not having access to a facility to work on my car. To be fair, my tools are still at my old place and my old roommate and his wife are cool with me potentially using the garage if I really need, but I went from a place where I could change a friend’s entire powersteering system to a place I can’t even check another friend’s brakes, and it really kills me. It’s a reminder to me – as I speculated years ago – that being capable of working on your car is great, but even this requires a certain up-front capacity, as you can’t even do the work on your car if you don’t have access to the requisite space, which is the reality for a tremendous number of people. If I ever find myself in an apartment complex where somebody is doing car work in a remote parking corner on the sly, I’ll probably go out and offer to the help them.
(More philosophically, modern life is actually quite fragile, and I kind of suspect this is by design, but that’s a conspiracy for another post)
Also, one of my goals is to be able to give friends a month of their expenses if they need. I know that giving is a difficult topic, and nobody really wants to be in need, but people have even given me money lately, which I do appreciate. I still have some serious mileage left, but I count it as provision and I’m grateful. I don’t ever want to return to a poverty spirit when it comes to spending, but I’ve started to see the excesses in my own spending once again, and it dawns on me that it wouldn’t hurt to clean that up permanently, even if for no other reason than to find somebody who needs that for their necessities. Of course, these are difficult topics, and most people have a certain degree of waste in their spending, but if God tells you to give, there’s no point in caring about the details.
Helping doesn’t have to be so dramatic, though. After doing a rather large car project for a friend over the spring, I had the idea that it might be fun to do some sort of car ministry. But the first car I looked at had two issues I couldn’t realistically fix: a worn timing belt and what was likely a plugged up catalytic converter. Nonetheless, simply being able to inspect the belt and do the research to suspect the cat helped that person feel reassured that the shop was not trying to screw them over. Similarly, a friend was quoted an outrageous price to replace a combination switch. Just looking at the car and getting a second perspective helped me figure out the diagnosis was probably correct, but by digging into the cost of parts I was able to find that the estimate was way higher than needed, and with that information, that friend was able to find a shop to do the job for $300 less than the original estimate. It’s gratifying to change things yourself and save friends a ton of money, but sometimes a little perspective or reassurance goes a long way. All of this to say, helping can take on many forms.
I have lived it. I bear witness: sometimes, the more money you have, the more worried you are about it. I laugh at myself from 4 years ago, staring down the barrel of a second year off, fearful. Ha! What a wuss. Gosh, I was so loaded. But can you take the hit when you need to? Those with the least money are sometimes the most generous. If only those with the most were more! (I mean seriously, if you’re relatively young and have $200k, what’s stopping you from giving away $10k? I know there’s a lot of consideration around the specifics, but in general, are you actually hurting?)
Anyway, it’s good to lookout for each other. Far too many people simply inflate their lifestyles the moment they have more money, rather than think about better ways they could use it. The houses and cars become more expensive, the food fancier. A lot of this lifestyle inflation (especially with so-called “health” food) is not inherently bad, but too often it’s just another manifestation of fear, a coping mechanism for the things that money can’t actually solve. Generally speaking, stuff accumulates, all creating a more and more fragile life. But the gravy train tends to switch tracks someday, and it’s amazing to me how even the smallest setback sometimes becomes a crisis for the rich. But imagine a church that really helps each other out and keeps the relative value of things in perspective!
Anyway, I’ve written about most of this stuff before. I think that time is proving a lot of what I’ve said to be right (granted, most of my ideas are borrowed and rehashed from others).
(Also, I’m probably forgetting some things that came to mind when I decided to sit down and type out these ideas. For example, just having friends to hang out with has seriously helped me through my awful living situation, but naturally I tend to write about finances more, given that’s generally what I write about in this blog)