Living on a close budget is a reality for most people I know, no matter the size of their income.
For most of my adult life my version of living on a close budget doesn't allocate any money to savings, no allowance for vacations, and almost always puts my daughters' expenses ahead of my own. Over the years I have occasionally squirreled some tax returns into savings that always ended up spent on medical costs - except for that one year I took the whole broken family to Disneyland for $1000, and I thought I'd have to be the one who could bust the cycle with a rejuvenating "play together, stay together" effort - and my weird car karma has also afforded some unexpected gains. (This is where a footnote would come in a research paper, because I've owned seven cars in the past thirteen years and all but one met their demise by no fault of my own). But ultimately, I just get by.
For the past year my budget has been exceptionally strained, and in the past several months the demands on it particularly weighty. My medical expenses pooled, my health insurance premium rose, my car needed to be replaced. For me those were pretty basic needs I needed to address with a longer term outlook. I had a whole summer of sticking very close to home with a disabled vehicle and a limited income during which I put a lot of time and energy in to job searches, applications and interviews believing I had no real option other than to refocus my professional energy in a direction that could be more securely financially compensated. I had to pull out of funding extra-curricular activities for my kids. It was soul-crushing and liberating at the same time. For several months I believed I was on the cusp of Huge Change and dreaded the fine details of how I was going to communicate that to my families and young students. But I also got a scope on the massive amount of transferable skill I had amassed on the job in 18 years with a public entity and 10 in a small non-profit, and that was heartening. None of it produced that new, more financially comfortable job and I ultimately decided to re-energize being myself. But that needed a new focal point too. I needed to find a way to give more of what I had to give, and hope that could launch me beyond surviving. I really needed new glasses, new contacts and to get out from under the stress of a broken car - which became no car - and that I could only afford to buy one that would keep me in the cycle of having to replace again in a year or two. (Yes, I thought about being car-free, but even in Portland I just couldn't see my car-free future).
Volunteering one's time with two jobs and two kids and one relatively meager income isn't that easy. I found that as I approached my 40's I needed a lot more rejuvenation time for myself. All the bustle and hustle to survive was more taxing, and adding a regular volunteer commitment to my schedule for my own pure joy just didn't happen. That grief became a stressor for me over the years too. My volunteering time is pretty limited to what I have to do, which is more like bartering. I get a substantial financial aid package for my daughter's high school tuition and in return contribute a substantial amount of time to the school. I really enjoy it, actually. The barter system works well for me. It's profit only goes so far, though, as it keeps you surviving and not always thriving.
Last fall I decided I just need to say yes more often, find more ways to give in manageable ways that I could risk to afford and enjoy. I started pulling books off my shelf for people, blending teas for specific needs, used my GAP rewards to buy clothes for kids in a refugee family, spent another $100 on the refugee family instead of ordering contacts, gave away my homemade garden preserves and herbal remedies, made herbal remedies for Standing Rock out of the donated dollars of customers, said yes to a cat bed my daughter wanted for our cats (it helped that it was half-price with an extra discount), said yes to the big tree my girls chose for the holiday and encouraged a community-giving project in my workplace, gave my experience to people who benefited from it in their new jobs.
You know what happened next? The more I exercised the habit of giving - even small - the more giving seemed to come around to me, and often when I really needed it. When I risked revealing a quiet skill I have to make and sell medicinal remedies and plant medicine to folks that I know, it ended up financing the purchase of new glasses and contacts and giving me the reassurance that I will find a way to afford my higher health care premiums. When my car finally died, people loaned me their vehicles. When my car search was stretching into compromise and stagnation, a great investment came to me. This weekend I started driving a car I risked financing on my tight budget, and for the first time since last June I can plan to drive out of town, when I need or want to. It's a liberation I have needed for many months.
In a way, I got a lot of the things I needed from the elusive job search, without suffering some of the consequence. A lot of the need got strongly salved. A lot of the need produced patience and consideration and human relationship. A lot of the support came from my work family past and present, people whose children I spent and spend time with. That's where giving works - where the heart is.
