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If you were looking for oddities, you came to the right place. I'm an unschooling mom and writer living on the Canadian prairies.
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wild (but not uncultivated) musings of a Canadian unschool momHome | Archives | contact Big Decisions9:23 PM - May. 1, 2007 - Add to the Wildness
Given the volatile situation at my husband's workplace - long story, not a super-wonderful sweetheart of a company - we made a decision not to continue with our home renovations. We talked about it a lot, and decided that if his job is still livable after July (contract negotiations), or in a year from now, then we'll continue with our plans - when we're debt free. Right now, there's no telling how the summer may go. And we're so close. By God's grace alone, our debt load is a tenth of what most of the other employees' is. We can't claim a lot of wisdom and prudence - we've lived to our paycheque, and we've enjoyed it. It's been nice not to worry about how much the groceries cost or whether we can afford the $5 to rent a movie. God provided us with 25 acres for $25,000. He provided us with a really great used F-350 truck for nearly half what they were going for at the time. He provided us with a tractor and tillage equipment. Our job, then, is not to take that for granted so much. What we did, originally, was consolidate our bank loans and mortgage, plus apply for an extension to cover the cost of the very-necessary renos. Let me just say right now, we did not roll any credit card debt into our mortgage, nor would I ever recommend someone jeopardize their home equity in that way unless the only other option was bankruptcy. The reason I'm being so emphatic about this is because we've watched others do the "rotating credit card" trick to try and keep ahead of a debt load they can't manage (paying off each card with another and never getting free of it). It's even worse when it becomes part of your mortgage payment, because the debt becomes invisible, and it's far too easy to start over with the cards again. We try to avoid the credit card, and when we do use it, we pay it off, at a sacrifice if necessary. If there's one thing in the financial world that's the devil's handiwork, it's easy credit. So, here's our long-term hopeful plan: 1) Become actual homeowners. 2) Save every penny, if we must, to purchase a listeroid electrical generator. These things are more common in India. It's a generator that can run on biodiesel and is capable of powering your house, if you don't run the furnace and hang your laundry to dry. Its cost, here in Canada, would amount to a year and a half of electrical bills. To run a place like ours, which is a farm, we would need two - but they would still pay for themselves within three years. 3) Become more proficient and efficient, starting this year, at storing and canning our own food - including the purchase of some beef cattle, and maybe some chickens. 4) Whatever we must do to provide for our family, we'll try to extend it into a product or service to the local community - that's the whole deal with our market garden. We'd be putting in the time anyway, but doing it for others helps to provide for our financial costs. ...And that's about it. Our major expenses are fuel (which we're solving through biodiesel production, hopefully year-round as of this coming winter), electricity and food. These are all necessities, but that doesn't mean we can't change the amount spent on them. I hope that thought encourages someone out there. I guess it's my version of a libertarian philosophy.... A person should be free to do what they feel is best for their family. In North America's culture of debt - and it really is inevitable, given housing costs, never mind everything else - we become enslaved to our jobs in order to achieve basic survival. When that survival becomes a reality, there are a host of other voices out there telling us what else we "need." But when a man's conscience gets bent out of shape by his employment situation, he's trapped. A man needs to be free to serve his God, not just his debt load. It could be as simple as wanting to be more available to church and community, instead of being at an employer's constant beck and call. Or it could be as dire as the employer's business or workplace ethics. Whatever the reason, there's a lot of motivation out there for working actively towards debt reduction, even if elimination isn't an immediate possibility. ----------------- Addendum: Spazzerific's euphonium arrangement is up at Faith Roots as of tonight.
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