You Cannot Out-Frugal This Economy
Everyday life is too expensive for the average family
Naturally thrifty, and having spent the first half of my childhood in a trailer, I always took pride in my ability to live on very little.
I could write a series of books telling you how to eat well without spending much, turn an affordable house into an inviting home, raise children on a tight budget and all the rest. I’m great at that stuff – I’ve had to be.
So after decades of perfecting this ability, I’m realizing it was all for naught.
No amount of pinching pennies is enough now
If your job does not pay well, you are almost certainly doomed, because too many expenses now are out of your hands.
This wasn’t always true. The old advice to never spend money you can’t afford used to be solid, but not now. I’ve never run into financial issues from blowing money on luxuries – only necessities.
If your car won’t start, you will have to purchase a new battery whether you have enough money in your bank account to cover it or not. You have to be able to get to work, and in most areas that requires a car.
Seven months after I bought my first house, while my daughter was just a toddler, the furnace died and I had to finance the cost of a new one at a high interest rate. If you’re not nodding along and thinking of similar situations you’ve faced, it’s only because you’ve always been paid fairly.
We are so much more vulnerable now
With just a little luck and hard work, your grandparents or (depending on your age) great-grandparents could frugal themselves into financial well-being.
Go back two or three generations and most people knew how to keep themselves warm, fed and clothed without spending a lot of money. That’s not really possible now. We have to spend money for all our needs.
Few of us garden, preserve food, chop firewood or sew. And even if we do know how to do these things, it’s not enough.
Almost none of us has a wood-burning stove and access to firewood. If we do have a fireplace, it’s probably designed more for atmosphere than heat.
Sewing your own clothes will not save you a dime. It’s far cheaper to purchase fast fashion than to pay for fabric.
What if you did manage to get your hands on some land and build some version of a straw bale house or cabin? What if you dug a well and septic tank to get free water and sewer? What if you planted a big garden and a fruit orchard and kept chickens? Or installed solar panels?
I used to dream of that life, but that kind of thing requires having a good amount of money up front, and I never had enough.
Even if you do manage to do something like that, you’re going to be thwarted by things like health insurance. One trip to the emergency room – or needing a cesarean or giving birth to a premature baby – could more than wipe you out.
I grew up in a tiny rural town
I knew people who kept to the old ways longer than most. So I’m one of the few who knows first-hand where we got the adage “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” I have never butchered a chicken myself, but I saw it done as a child and yes, headless chickens do run around like crazy.
I knew many people who kept chickens. I knew a family that raised one pig in their backyard each year. My dad hunts, and when I was a child we ate lots of squirrel and rabbit. He has his own hunting ground now and eats much more venison than beef.
A lot of the older generation couldn’t wait to ditch their countrified ways and did not pass down such knowledge to their children. Instead, they felt relief that their children would be better off than they were.
A friend of mine told me a story about That Time A Cow Got Stuck in the Door. All the neighbors got involved. It’s a great story, but my friend’s mom and aunt don’t like to talk about it. They married well-off men and now their childhood poverty embarasses them.
I was never embarrassed by such stories. Instead, I took pride in my cleverness and resourcefulness. I believed that someday all my careful money management would pay off.
I no longer believe that
That’s because the cost of many unavoidable expenses has now risen so high that only wealthy people can afford them. I’ve seen several families pay more than $10,000 per month for horribly substandard nursing home care. I don’t care how many times you forgo steak in favor of beans – you’ll spend more than you saved on your grocery bill just on the first month’s nursing home bill.
We all hear stories of people whose cancer bankrupted them or whose home insurance turned out not to cover the particular disaster that hit their house. And if you have children and occupy the bottom half of the U.S. financially, you will not be able to save up enough money to pay for even a state school. Your children will have to take out loans that will drag them down for years – carrying on the cycle.
The cost of an average life now exceeds the amount of money available to the average American:
The average house sale in the U.S. is $501,100!
The average new car cost is $48,397.
The average monthly daycare cost for a baby is about $1,284.
Meanwhile, the median U.S. wage is only $59,384. It’s a bit lower where I live in central Illinois — I never had a job that paid that much in my life.
You can find ways to spend less on many of these things – I did. But many things are out of your control and old solutions no longer work.
When my daughter was looking for daycare, the only slot available in her area was eye-wateringly high but she had no alternative. It used to be common for Grandma to take care of the kids after school and in summer for free, but now Grandma also has a job, and her kids probably do not live near enough for her to help with child care in any case. That’s how it is for us. Because my daughter lives a few hours away, I cannot routinely provide daycare help.
Most essentials are marketed and priced for the upper class
While you can still try to make inexpensive choices when buying things like food or clothing, that’s not true for everything.
There is not a budget option anymore in many categories of non-discretionary spending. Scrimp all you want on food. Cut your own hair. Reduce your entertainment budget or eliminate it entirely. None of these moves will be enough.
Almost nobody is bothering to construct affordable housing or make affordable cars. You can find a doctor who caters to the wealthy but unless it’s a charitable clinic, you cannot find medical practices that cater to the poor.
You know you need an emergency fund and to put back money for your kids’ college and for your own retirement, but if it takes everything you have to cover rent on the cheapest place you could find, you’re not saving anything.
We all live in bubbles
If you and everyone you know is making $100,000 or more, you might not have even noticed the fact that this country no longer produces and markets things like houses or automobiles that the bottom half of the country can afford.
Worse, you might assume that anybody who can’t afford the cost of living is blowing their money. Avocado toast and fancy coffees or tattoos and designer sneakers must be the cause. No need to worry – the poors would be fine if they’d make better choices, assume the people whose parents were able to pay for their education and give them a down payment on a house.
Nobody knows how the other half lives, because increasingly, the two Americas never see each other. They live in different places, work in different places, shop in different places and worship in different places. Their children go to different schools and do not get to know each other.
This is why nobody can agree on how good the U.S. economy is: The one you live in is nothing like the other one.
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. My new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules.
You are absolutely correct, as a life long frugal I can attest that it is no longer possible to live in America without a lot of money now. I always bought used cars, paid cash at state auctions, cooked all my food, fixed all my own stuff. We did all are shopping at thrift stores, I replaced the elements in my 30 year old stove 3 times and am still using it. This worked fine for the last 40 years as I always had enough money to meet the unexpected expenses. Now unexpected expenses are routine, sticker shock everytime I open a power or water bill. These normal expenses are now absurdly high. Insurance seems to increase with each bill, I haven’t been to a dr in years and certainly can afford any medication. Tried to get my teeth fixed a few years ago and the estimate was $20000 what the hell, who has 20 grand sitting around for fking dentures. A car battery $200 what, cat food $1.20 a can what, a new pickup truck $80 grand, how is this even possible. We are having hyperinflation but the economist and politicians are trying their best to hide the truth but all you have to do is go to the grocery store once and it’s plainly obvious. My retirement is twice what my working wage was in the eighties and it’s still has about 1/2 of what is required to maintain the same standard of living I had in the 80s and 90s.
The one thing that’s changed is we now have several hundred billionaires that have and are gaming the system and have ruined our currency our government and our standards of living. We should be rioting daily and should shut this country down until regular people are given a chance to live like normal citizens of the richest country in earth. We are in a race to the bottom and most of our citizens are or will be poor shortly by allowing these parasites to drain our lives away. No billionaires allowed ever, anywhere. They need to be taxed out of existence.
Absolutely, and many of my students live in their cars, or come to class hungry. I see it first hand every day in the community college where I teach. Sometimes putting food on the table is more important than class work. I’m grateful my school has a food pantry, but it’s still not enough.