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There are many sayings that home is where your heart is, there is no place like home. I feel that the home is where you feel love, where you feel refuge and safe.
We are living in a complicated time where many people are struggling to stay in their home because the cost of living today has gotten out of balance.
This post is going to be different than I normally post but I feel necessary.
I spent the entire month of August 2024 working on a budget only to find that we have a very serious problem for the middle class folks in the United States. Many people that are retired are now having to come out of retirement and go back to work. Young adults are struggling to get to where they can leave home and start out on their own.
We can no longer count on what we were taught how to live on a balanced budget. It is taking everything we have to not go into debt and some people have said they are charging their groceries because they do not have the money for food. This is very serious to put groceries on a credit card and not have the means to pay that off in full when the next bill comes in.
I understand living off little income. Our beginning military pay in 1967 was $102.30 per "Month".
Rent was $30.00, we had a car payment but I cannot remember what that was. We purchased groceries by the month not weekly and I can say that we ate a lot of Kraft Mac and cheese. We kept moving places to live because we were trying to get closer to the base so we did not have to drive so far to get to the base. The closer to the base the higher the rent so we lived "very" small.
We were happy when we lived on $102.30 per month, it was very tight but we made it and thankfully we did not have to pay for medical being in the military. Our first born was free other than my meals. Had I known that I would have brought sandwiches. That is right, during that time at our military hospital, I did get a bill for my meals.
This cost of everything is very serious today, especially for people with fixed income. Here in the United States our medical is extremely expensive. Even with insurance, the out of pocket expense is insane. The cost of medicine is often not affordable if we have just one medication that is expensive.
We pay for the Medicare, they take the payment out of our social security check. We pay for the supplemental insurance because Medicare alone we would have to pay 20 percent of what could be an extremely high bill.
Even with insurance, we pay co pays each time we go to the doctor, the beginning of each year we start over having to pay our deductibles before our insurance will kick in to pay so we have to save for that. Then there are some things that are not covered. We have to make sure our doctors will take our insurance or we could be stuck with a whopping bill.
One trip by ambulance to the hospital could break our budget because of the expensive bill that comes in to pay from being transported. We know because we had to pay for two rescue bills for Madge.
Let's say that we get past the co-pays and deductibles, it is the darn insurance payments themselves that are completely out of control.
I thought Charles and I had done all the right things, actually we did. We paid off our mortgage, paid off our cars, paid off the credit card each month so there is no debt at all. Unfortunately, here in the United States living a middle class life, this is still not enough to afford to live for many people.
The problem is the cost of insurance , food and medical, for Charles and I, our home is not the problem.
We washed our windows inside and out last weekend. We try to keep our house maintained the best we can. We put on the new roof last year on the house and carport and we do not need anymore storm damage to our home.
Charles is wearing a mosquito net hat while washing the windows outside. I had the cooler option of washing the inside of the windows, we do not need any sickness from West Nile Virus or such as that that will only make more expenses so we are taking safety precautions to prevent more expense.
I do not know what else to do but pray as we do each day. We are concerned for our family and friends that are coming out of retirement and going back to work because it was too expensive on retirement and some of them don't know how much longer they can physically keep working.
I am concerned for the young people trying to get a start living on their own. I have done the math for that as well.
Charles has been ready to retire but we are very concerned that if he does retire that he will have to do as others are doing and return. Retirement used to be a wonderful thing and is for many people. I suppose that if we had a pension that would help us, employers have moved away from pensions now.
They say that social security was never made to live off of but to only supplement to live off what you have saved. With the high cost of everything it has been difficult for people to save and that savings can be depleted in no time.
When we paid off our house, we were hit with the realization that Homeowners insurance is expensive. This insurance had always been included with our house payment. Then there is the yearly bill of property taxes. There is expensive auto insurance, add that to the medical insurances I discussed above and it makes it seem as if we need to rent an apartment, have no internet, no phone, no utility bills, like in the past but there is a major problem. Rent today is insane! So the country is out of balance! not my budget.
I have talked to many of you dear sweet blog friends over the years and many of you live in countries that have free medical. I love how your country takes care of your citizens. You just don't know the importance of this until you don't have it. Even if you are in good health here in the United States, the cost of insurance should you have a health emergency is expensive.
I feel that I do not know the road to home anymore. I cannot give advice when I cannot see a solution. I can advise to live frugal, save anything you can, do your best to not add to debt.
We have our little tiny house that we call The Myrtle. Several years ago now, we Converted an old work shed into a tiny house. That is on Madge's property, we built that so we would have a place to stay if we needed to take care of Charles mother, Madge. We never thought that Madge would not be able to live in her home again due to a stroke.
Madge's house needs a lot of work. We have considered fixing that up and living there but once again the home is not the problem, it is all of the other expenses which none are from debt. I know it all sounds a bit crazy and it actually is, but this is real and this has been coming on for many years.
We are now adding up which house would cost less to live in considering electric bill, homeowners insurance, taxes and such as that.
I can tell people how to live the old way, I can show you how to wash laundry by hand to save water and electricity. I can show you how to do most anything the old way, this is how to keep expenses down at home. If we live in a small sensible home then this is not the problem. Charles and I are not in debt so do not worry that we are in trouble at this time, I am thankful that we have a roof over our head. We are at risk for loosing our savings to pay for overpriced everything.
We are a capitalistic country, our economy is based on consumption and the wealthy continue to get wealthy as long as we keep paying these prices which is a trap because we don't have a choice other than grow our on food and to drop our expensive coverages, and then we are left with rolling the dice and hoping that nothing bad happens or else we will be at risk for losing anything we have been able to save and our home. It is a sad situation that I cannot find a solution for. I feel like we are in a great depression but without great depression because the wealthy don't know it.
The cost of living has been increasing for many years now. I ask for those of you that go to the forum to respond in a non political way, you all have always been kind and non political but since I am asking the type of questions I am asking, I just wanted to ask everyone to be respectful so we can talk about this to see how bad things really are. How wide spread is this? What others are doing about these expenses? Are you finding that you are getting in debt to just live? Are your adult children that would like to start living on their own not able to find anything affordable? Are you retired and thinking you might have to return to work or have already returned to work? Or not retiring because of expenses?
Also I know that some of you are living in tents, some of you are living in cars or vans, some of you that are living a nomad life and are finding that expensive. Does that seem to be getting more expensive?
Is this a problem that is just in the United States? Or, is this happening in many countries? I wanted to post this to see if we can pinpoint the real problems and see if we can find some solutions.
For those of you that live with free medical, are there other expenses that are breaking your budget?
I hope you post in the forum so others can see the answers too, but if you are not comfortable using the forum, then you can send me a personal email. I will not be able to respond to all emails but can at lease read your answers and get a sense of how this is affecting or not affecting everyone without using your name.
I have worked on this budget over and over again. I have gotten up during the night to see if I just missed something that might help the budget work. I did finish the budget but I had to reduce our hopes of saving at least a little after Charles retires and honestly just being able to pay the bills.
I have researched the great depression over again, I have worked on the 1940's budget again and never realized that I would find from this 1940 study how bad this is getting, I have seen this getting worse since the financial crisis in 2008 and hoped that people would learn from what happened.
This is unlike anything that I have seen or studied and I feel another reason is because we have so many more expenses today that were not around during the past. I can say that there was no cable television bill, there was outdoor antenna that did "not" have a monthly bill. There was no internet bill. There was telephone but no crazy high cell phone bills just to name a few.
I keep wondering if people are just floating around in growing debt to stay in their home? I hope we can find new ideas and solutions.
*** NOTE, I am popping back in this post to say that within an hour of posting this blog post, the first six posts in the forum have made me start taking notes because even though you may feel that you may not have answers, just explaining your experiences and situations matter. Many people may have no answers but sharing your situations helps to see the scope of this economy. My notes from the early comments read, #1Garden and grow what you can, #2 This seems to be world wide issues, #3 Yes, young people are having problems with affordable housing, #4 Raise your deductibles to lower your bill, #5 Getting lower rent by cooking from scratch for the landlord ( this one reminds me of the past bartering or working out ways to get what you need). #6 Concerns when the small savings runs out, #7 Many are experiencing high food prices.
These are just brief notes to myself and do not scratch the surface of what they are saying and for you to know what is being posted in the forum. You do not have to sign up to read in the forum so please feel free to read the comments, you will learn from others.
Grandma Donna
