Needs Versus Wants - Are You Ready if Things Get Hard?

 

 In my article about what a Christian woman's role is in a marriage, I touched on the issue of budgeting and understanding what is a necessity and what is a luxury. We have become a nation where there seems to be little distinction between the two. This is an indication that life has gotten too easy for us. There is too much expendable income and access to everything is just too easy. If you can't find something in a store you can find it online and have it sent right to your door. And don't worry, you won't have to wait long to get it. In a large urban centre you may even get it the same day. We are spoiled rotten.

In less than 100 years we have gone from the Great Depression of the 1930's to great depression when somebody can't get something that they want right now. We are willing to borrow money in order to buy what amounts to an expensive toy, or even just to finance our lifestyle of picking up a $5 coffee or two every day, and this finance rate is set at 19.99% on our credit cards. But we're okay as long as we make the minimum payments. Augh! The financial illiteracy of people drives me nuts!

I am no financial guru. I have made plenty of financial mistakes in my life, but I have also lived in sufficiency (though never plenty) and in complete destitution. I'll tell you that when you have literally no money, you quickly learn what is necessary and what is not. That being said, there are many things that people spend their money on that my family has never fallen into, and a few things that my kids are dabbling in. The aforementioned daily coffees, streaming services, online music services; these are all luxuries.

The necessities of life need to be determined, and these should always be the priority. Along with that should be a plan to cover surprise and emergency expenses. In Canada, we are fortunate that a broken bone won't bankrupt us, due to our socialized healthcare system; that cannot necessarily be said about our American neighbours. I am no expert on American healthcare, but I have heard of things like that happening, and it should be a warning to everyone to try to save money to cover a surprise expense, medical or otherwise.

In our current economic climate, I understand that this is more difficult than it used to be. My wife and I went grocery shopping yesterday for our two month stock up trip. I am flabbergasted again and again at the costs of food nowadays. I am grateful that I am living under the provisional hand of God right now; this has given me confidence even as I spend so much to feed and house my family. I honestly don't know how I could make ends meet in this climate if I was still working and earning to provide for my family, but the vast majority of people aren't living like this. I know that my current circumstance cannot last, but I am trusting that God has it all in His hand. If I happen to be wrong, then I am destined for financial ruin - again, but that is my burden to bear if my faith happens to be ill-placed, which I don't believe it is.

What really tends to get people in trouble though, is debt. I have been through enough difficulties and I have been burned by the banks enough times that I never want to go into debt again, be that credit card debt, loans or a mortgage. I don't know how I will own property again in the future if I never want to have debt again, but that is a problem for God and His plan; my responsibility is to obey Him and trust that His plan is good. But that doesn't mean that I am not required to manage my finances well.

When people are struggling under their financial burdens, they need to examine what it is that they are paying for and consider what value it adds and whether or not it is even necessary. In many cases, I suspect that there are a lot of things that people are carrying the costs for that they think are necessary, but which are actually luxury items. We have just become so accustomed to having them that we no longer consider them luxuries. I have witnessed this mindset in too many people around me. When these luxuries create such a burden on our finances that we are falling behind every month just in our living expenses and debt becomes the only option to sustain it, then something needs to be addressed, because that is obviously not sustainable in the long run.

I have already mentioned coffee shop coffees and streaming services as common expenses that people think they cannot live without. How about considering how often you eat out or order food in instead of cooking food at home? Prices for groceries have risen quite a bit over the last few years in particular, and I haven't actually calculated this recently, but quite a few years ago I had calculated that my wife and I were feeding our family with home cooked meals for about $10 per day! Per day!! Man that was cheap! This was probably 10 to 15 years ago, so a lot has changed, but at that time it would cost about $40-$50 to take my family of five to a fast-food joint. I just recalled that during that time we heard that the average monthly household grocery budget for a family of four was $1500, and my wife and I were gobsmacked. That would have fed us for four to five months. I just did a very quick calculation and I would posit that it now costs about $30-$35 per day to feed my family of five. That's a big jump in around 15 years, but going to a restaurant for one meal will run me around $100 or more - to feed my family for just a few hours.

Recently my wife and I went to a restaurant for some dessert because we had to kill about an hour in the middle of a day of errands in the 'big city'. That dessert consisted of a piece of pie, a brownie dessert, a cup of tea and a small glass of milk - the bill was almost $40. I just about fell out of my chair when I saw it.  Yet I know of families that will eat out or order food in a couple of times a week, because, you know, it's too hard to cook! I have no sympathy for these people when they have financial difficulties, though I have been known to offer to look at people's finances to help them find things they can cut; I have never yet had the offer accepted. 

Previously I mentioned the Great Depression. This was a time of intense difficulties for almost everybody. People lost their homes due to a lack of work and income and food lines were a fact of life. At that time people still knew how to plant gardens and largely fend for themselves in repairing clothing and fixing things that broke, but these are fast becoming long-lost skills. I expect there to be a sudden and soon-coming correction in the financial markets of North America, and we will find ourselves thrust back into a new Great Depression, but because people have become so reliant on their grocery store for all of their food, there will be mass starvation when the stores no longer get their shipments. I have recently heard that modern logistical systems and the reliance on electricity and gasoline have lead to most grocery stores holding only three days worth of food on their shelves or in their on-site warehouses. If there was a calamity of some kind, there would be no more food in the stores in three days. Add to that the tendency of people to hoard things when there is a hint of troubled times and that food will last hours in the stores, not days. How much food do you have in your house? How long would you last? What is your money going to?

We need to get our financial houses in order and make a list of priorities. If you are carrying a lot of debt, you need to pay it off or off-load it. What I mean by off-loading it is to get rid of unnecessary items with their payments in order to free up available money. Do you have a vacation property with a mortgage? How often do you get there? Would you be better off if you sold that property, paid off the mortgage, used whatever is left to clear up some other debts and released yourself of some payments to boot? What about car payments? Have you been someone who thinks that they need a new car every few years, which means that you haven't actually owned any vehicle free and clear, ever? 

I used to have a friend who would buy a brand new truck every five years or so, and I asked him about this. He liked driving a new truck, and his justification for having never ending payments in order to feed his vanity was that his vehicles were never off warranty, so he never had repair bills. I countered his position by arguing that by me buying good, used vehicles and doing the repairs on them myself, I was far ahead of him financially. My used vehicles would cost me 30% or less of what he was paying for his new ones, I would drive my vehicles longer than he would, my payments came to an end and I actually owned my vehicles free and clear for a time, whereas his payments would never end and he never truly owned his vehicles. Both of us are mechanically inclined, in fact, he used to be employed as a mechanic, so the repairs were never really a big issue to either of us, and regular maintenance will often catch problems before they get to be serious. He just wanted to drive new trucks. In his case, he has always been able to comfortably afford the payments, but the money that he has sunk into what he has driven blows my mind, and he has nothing to show for it in the end except that his vanity has been stroked. If things go south and he can't make his payments, he will lose his truck. It's that simple.

We had this conversation in the context that I had just bought a new-to-me truck for my business. My previous truck had really been too small for the growing needs of my business and it had suddenly developed a repair issue that I wasn't sure was worth the investment. I had been looking at what for me was a fair sum of money in my bank account for several months, but something had been gnawing at me that God had provided that sum for a reason that I was not yet aware of, so I left it untouched. When my old truck acted up, I prayed about it and understood that God wanted me to use that money to get a different truck. There was no where near enough money for a new truck, and I was averse to the debt that option would have saddled me with. I had been looking to upgrade my truck for about two years already by this point due to the capability issues that I was having, but everything I found was abused garbage wrapped up in a massive price tag. When I started looking for a replacement truck at this time, it took me maybe a few hours to find the truck that I would end up buying. It was a heavier truck that still offered a comfortable ride. It had been well taken care of and even had a bigger cab which suited my family better than my old truck; and I negotiated a deal that meant that I could pay for it in cash, which meant that I carried no new debt. What a blessing that was! And guess what; nine years later, give or take, I'm still driving that used truck. It's still reliable, I still like driving it, and I have had no major repairs on it. If I can keep the body from rusting out, I would happily drive this truck for another decade; and I have never had a payment on it. Now that is freedom; a freedom that my friend has never known. I have never owned a brand new vehicle. My newest car was one year old and I soon regretted the financial burden that it placed on me. Owning that car delayed me being able to buy my first house because of the size of the payments that I was making on it. Someday I would love to own a vehicle that nobody else has driven except for me, but I have no intention of going into that much debt for vanity.

There are other things that people spend their money on which are luxuries but that have become so commonplace in their lives that they can't see how they can 'live' without them. These are things like manicures, pedicures, hair treatments, sports nights, bar nights and even alcohol in the home. I don't want this article to seem like I am saying that everybody should live an ascetic life, which is to say that a person should give up all comforts in their life. God gave us life that we can enjoy it and that is an important part of our mental health. What I want to say is that when the luxuries of life become such a drain on our finances as to negatively affect our access to the necessities of life, then there needs to be some retrospection and examination of what is really important.

The necessities of life are few; food, shelter and clothing, an none of these need to be extravagant. In different parts of the world there are different levels of criticality to these different items. In the north where I live, in summer the type of shelter and clothing needs are minimal and food can be grown or otherwise raised easily, while all three of these things are crucial for your very survival when winter arrives. Whereas in more southern locations where food can be grown year round and shelter can be very minimal, it is much easier to survive on much less, even shelter can become an almost optional requirement, or it can at least be much more basic in it's form. When planning for the needs of an individual or a family, these three needs must be first on the list of priorities. In addition, in the cold north, electricity and or a source of heat need to follow immediately after as a major priority. Water is needed by all people everywhere, but there is usually little cost to this. Once your basic needs are met, then you can start looking at the extras which will include communication and transportation. None of the things that I have listed need to be high end items. These can all be acquired at reasonable costs at levels that will suffice in survival. We are not yet in a survival situation, so there is the option of upgrading to things that we like in the things that we need, but we may face a time when the basics are all that we will be able to scrounge up, so just have that buried somewhere in your mindset.

If you are struggling in your finances or even just carrying more debt than you care to, I want to encourage you to stop and examine your finances. You should be critical about what expenses are truly a necessity and what is a luxury. You can set budgets to purchase things that you now pay a monthly fee for. For example, since we do not pay for a streaming service for videos or music, that means that I am buying the physical copies of movies, TV series or CD's that I want to own; and I do own them. I will not lose the ability to use them if a streaming service goes down and even if all communications go down, I can still sit and watch my DVD's and Bluray's as well as listen to my CD's. It's old fashioned, but old fashioned has worked for decades and will continue to work for decades more. Cancel your subscription service and use that money to buy the things that you want to watch or listen to, even if you have to save for a few months to do so. Don't sacrifice ownership for convenience. Whatever you own cannot be taken from you except by force, but convenience has become king in our modern sophisticated world. Somehow renting the use of something has become the norm over ownership due to convenience, and the abuse of that convenience can be mind-blowing to someone like me.

For example, I just perused an article today that told of a talk that Kamala Harris (yes, her) just gave on AI. Don't ask me why anybody wants to hear her talk about anything, but in her rambling speech, she talked about how she was watching the Oscars at home and she had a craving for Doritos. Apparently they didn't have any in the house and the red carpet coverage was about to start, so she ordered Doritos delivered to her house via Door Dash. To me, that is the peak of self-absorbed behaviour fed by the apparatus of convenience. Really, if you just can't go without your Doritos, how long does it take to drive to the nearest convenience store and buy yourself a bag? Did she really need to have it delivered? How much extra did that cost? I'm sure she can afford it, but why?

If you read that and you thought that her actions were reasonable, you should probably stop and examine your own spending habits right now. You are in for a world of hurt when things go belly up, and they will, the Bible assures us of that.

We are warned of this in Revelation 6:5-6, which tells us of the opening of the third seal of Revelation. This is early in the Tribulation period that is to come, so it may not be far into the future at this point in time. These verses read, "When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.” A denarius was approximately one day's wages for a working man, and a quart of grain will provide enough flour for a loaf of bread. A man will work for a whole day just to be able to purchase enough grain to provide a single loaf of bread to his family for that day. He could buy three quarts of barley which would make the bread stretch farther, but the nutritional value of barley is less than that of bread, so while a stomach will get a little fuller, the calories and nutrition provided will be less.

This is a picture of extreme inflation and its affects on the cost of food. We are already getting just a little glimpse into what that looks like, but what we are seeing now is just a glimpse; it can get a lot worse than what it is now, and according to what we just looked at, it will. There is the matter that the oil and the wine will not be affected by this inflation. My take on this is that those who struggle to meet the daily needs of their own survival now will suffer greatly, but those who are already wealthy will not take notice of the difficulties. The struggle for bread for the working class will become like a leg iron while the wealthy will still enjoy their luxuries of oil and wine, with little regard for the costs of necessities.

I want to encourage anybody who is reading this to consider making changes to your lifestyle now in order to prepare for lean times. Learn how to cook at home. Learn how to grow food and raise animals for meat.  Learn how to repair things yourself. Buy what you need to improve your self-sustainability now while it is still easy to do so. We currently live in a world where information is literally at your fingertips. Grab that information off the internet and save it someplace for reference later, when you may not have access to it so easily anymore. 

I don't want to write something that seems like a doom and gloom article, but I do want you to be ready. Will we be seeing this type of calamity in our lifetime? I cannot guarantee that. Only God knows for sure how things will play out, but we are supposed to watch and observe as Jesus warns us in the parable of the fig tree in Matthew 24, and what I am seeing is concerning. This warning comes after He has told us about the difficulties to come just prior to His return to earth. If we do not see it in this generation, you would at least be preparing your children and their children for what is to come potentially in their generation, and they will have more time to become more adept at these things, improving their chances of survival, and maybe even allowing them to thrive in a time of struggle. We are warned for a reason; let's make sure that we are ready.

Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section below.