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Learning to Live Again Part 3 in a 8 part series
Analysis of
Today's Financial Outlook Most Americans are so used to living in debt that we actually expect to carry debt with us to the grave. We must as a society learn to live again. This means credit and debt free for the most part. Credit debt is the largest debt that most families carry This includes that mortgage and credit accounts that most of us owe and most of us live paycheck to paycheck or month to month with little savings and little security. Today, no one's job is 100% secure. Regardless of industry or your chosen career path you and your job is at risk. Assume for a moment, the worst...the loss of your job. You will not just run out and get a 'new' job in today's market. Regardless of your skills this means major life changes for you and your family. It could result in the loss of your families home, a move to an unfamiliar location or worse. There is no one to come in and hand you a non-existent job. Today if you do nothing else, you need to assume the worst and figure out a 'plan' to protect you and your family. Know how you manage life should you lose your job or income due to layoffs, shutdowns or illness. Questions you need to ask yourself include how do I pay the bills? How do I feed us and how do I pay the taxes and the other bills we have. Most people don't think in these terms. They do not plan for tomorrow or else they assume that bad things won't happen to them. The time to act on this is now. BEFORE something even more negative or drastic happens to our economy and before it affects you to the point of not being able to survive. There are no quick and easy answers to getting out of debt and changing the way we live. We did not get here overnight and fixing this is not going to happen overnight. It is not going to be comfortable for you or your family to change the way you are used to living and as a parent it's not going to be easy. You will have to give up some of those things you think you can't live without. Your children will hate you from time to time and most likely cutting back will cause a lot of stress and strife in your household. On the other hand. There are many good things to come to those who think ahead and act in preparation. You will accomplish a lot
just by getting out of debt. You will To accomplish our goals of getting financially free not only must you get out of debt but you must have a plan to STAY out of debt To learn some basics on getting and staying out of debt, along with some realistic things you can set in motion to achieve as much of a truly independent lifestyle as you can and to see how our family is doing just this click here. Ok for the sake of argument lets assume you're average. Define average you say? ok.... 30 years old and married with 2 children. One in elementary school and the other is a toddler. You live in an average neighborhood. Need a 3 bedroom apartment, house or homestead and buy groceries at the cheapest local grocery store..... Which is most likely your local WALMART. Your community is changing now. Jobs are disappearing faster than they are being created and you're currently looking a way out of the day to day routine you now call your life. You like most people are reasonably happy. Your marriage is good but strained by financial limitations. You wish you had more time with your children. If you are working most likely you drive 30 minutes or more each way to work. Your paycheck is not covering expenses the way it used too. After all in the last 5 years most prices on the necessities like housing - have doubled and in some cases like milk, gasoline and feed for the animals has tripled. MY ANSWER USED TO BE GET ANOTHER JOB. BUT.... Now days there are no other jobs. They all went somewhere overseas. After all, it is a NEW WORLD with a global economy and it's cheaper to pay someone else now to do what we used to do. We'll guess what? There are few new jobs being created and they to come with the same set of problems that the rest of the jobs in the world do today. They don't have any money either! So what do we do? Do you expect someone to come in and hand you a non-existent good paying job that will cover your bills and allow you to put away money for retirement? Let me tell you it just ain't gonna happen! In our town the best you can do is Walmart and starting pay there is only slightly above our minimum wage of $6.50 per hour and you're allowed no more than 32 hours per week in a working week. Assuming you're married with children you get to keep about 90% of your pay. You don't pay federal taxes cause you don't make enough money. We can not reverse the cycle we are in, but we can complete the journey and try to right some of the mistakes we as a society have made. When we moved into our 20 acre homestead, we did so when this area was without zoning laws. There was no community development board and no covenant or restrictions on our property. I found out that later one was put in place restricting outdoor bathroom facilities, livestock ownership, and where to place your house, and how many bushes you must have in the front of your home and the requirement for a 'sidewalk'. The size of your house was even specified in the new covenant along with the required maintenance and placement of those bushes I mentioned earlier, in your yard. This new covenant restricts the usage of the property and prohibits any commercial signage in your yard, as well as your ability to make a living from home. It forbids any part of the property from commercial use. My farm now sits at the edge of approximately 1000 new homes ranging in price from $130,000 to $500,000. My little 20 acre farm is now worth about a quarter of a million dollars retail value. The tax value alone is right at $200,000. In a community with no jobs. The single 2 largest employers are a single mill that is currently laying people off, and Walmart. So how do we learn to live again? We return back to what we used to know. What is familiar and time tested. "Homesteading"........ and getting back to the basics of living.
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