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How Necessity Became the Mother of Invention, by Sandra W.
I’ve always been a “glass is half full…when life hands you lemons you make lemonade…” kind of person. So despite a divided nation after this recent election, geopolitical unrest, and our nation on the brink of financial collapse, I still see the silver lining.
My husband and I purchased a small 900 square foot home, because it was all we could afford. It was near the height of the housing bubble so we bought high. We then spent the next four years, remodeling the one bathroom the tiny kitchen and living room to suit our needs. After investing tens of thousands of dollars of our hard earned money, blood, sweat and tears we were feeling good about our sweat equity. Then the market crashed and I got pregnant. Deciding not to pour any more money into the pit, and deciding to take control of the financial situation we decided to sell our home and purchase a new one. By that time the real estate market seemed to have no bottom and loans were nigh on impossible to secure from lending institutions. We staged the little house perfectly and lived in that staged house for several months, evacuating every time a potential buyer came by, because an extra body in the house made it feel so much smaller. Fortunately we were able to find a larger home that was more suitable for our expanding family and were able to purchase it at a 30% discount, however we finally sold our first home at a significant loss. Investment guidelines for the early 2000s had become: “Buy high and sell LOW.” But not paying two mortgages was nearly “priceless.”
The Tale of Two Mortgages
It was the tale of two mortgages that was the spark that initiated this whole journey. My husband and I carefully assessed our financial situation and eliminated all “non-essential” expenses. Those things included:
-Some expensive vitamins that were being shipped automatically and payments were automatically being submitted to our credit card. This was something we weren’t paying attention to until then.
-A wine club gift that we had gifted to our neighbors. We didn’t read the fine print that after the $60 intro offer, you’d be billed quarterly for $200.
-No non-essential food items. Only buy what’s on the list and only if we really need it.
-The Cable Television – Gasp. horror! What will you do without television? This is the key to us developing our survival plan.
Life Without Television
We did keep Internet, as this was our means for paying bills, e-mail communication, web surfing and phone connectivity. We began to read, a lot. In fact, we can’t wait to crawl in to bed, early, once the kids are sleeping and read the news. The mass media has become such a biased and agenda-driven source of misrepresentation, it is no longer reliable. It has become a vehicle for propaganda. The children absolutely did not miss television. Though we’re not purists, we do have Netflix and Amazon video, so the young one loves the educational shows and the older one loves Mythbusters.
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