Affordable

 

As the season is here when people are expected to spend more on food, fashion, travel, hotels, dining out, entertainment, toys, health care, gifts, adult beverages than expected; the price tags is being double checked. If you are a governmental worker who is not being paid, can you credit card afford it?

No matter how we pinch pennies (they are gone now) at the holiday season we splurge at the end of the year to make others happy with frivolous gifts and stroke our ego with philanthropy without caring of the budget until the next year. Does anyone save a Christmas Fund to prepare for our grand display of emotional gratitude?

Throughout the year the talking heads have been fussing about the administration’s fluctuating tariffs on everything from aluminum to soya beans and watching the prices rise at the Tummy Temple. Some manufacturers, distributors and retailers have tried to swallow the increase, but sooner or later the tariff or tax or fee will be passed onto the customer. I don’t keep the numbers, but from what I hear the milk from those burping/farting cows who are causing all the climate change is soaring with the price of their slaughter by 30%. No more 25¢ hamburgers.

Since I don’t drive, I don’t note the numbers at the pump, but from whatever price increase there is will affect everyone from delivery to family visits to pick up the shoes or groceries or that trip to take the kids to their soccer game practice. I hear on the news that our nation makes more oil and gas, so I’d assume the prices are going down? I can only guess that the price of automobiles has gone down (or to be purchased before the price hike with the steel tariffs, no matter where they are manufactured) for it seems everyone in the neighborhood bought a new car.

The pricing for housing seemed (for a while) to be reasonable and affordable. Back in college, my two-room apartment was $100 a month that was affordable for two college students to pay with part-time jobs. Now that you’ve picked you jaw up off the floor, that was in the late half of the last century. My house was in a neighborhood of middle-class single families with similar plots of land and reasonable prices. As the population grew, the sprawl of housing went into the counties and each new subdivision raised the prices. Commuting became a pain-in-the-arse and couples started moving back into town, but the decades old facades did not suite their new century lifestyle, so old houses were torn down and new ‘mega-monster mansions’ were constructed (with the additional cost of tariffed building materials and high wages for builders who show up or not due to deportation). The few of us old timers living in the shadows of these three-rise reconstructions (renovations) watch the property tax soar with the realtor law… “Location, location, location”. Is it affordable to continue to live in the same building that is still structurally sound and secure, even though selling it would increase the income by 10x (except from taxes), but would have to move somewhere else. Can’t afford to live here, but can’t afford to move.

I can’t relate to the cost of children, but I know they are expensive. Perhaps you have an income where procreating more than you and your partner replacement the joy of more little people is affordable. If not, if you have to find employment to earn a salary to pay for the shelter, transportation, clothing (our society frowns on nudity) and someone has to take care of the offspring while you are away at work. If family members volunteer to become a daycare center with home schooling, but these little tikes require so much attention and medical care and without a proper education, limited opportunity for a career and they will never move out. It all comes with a cost.

What’s ‘affordable’ to you may not be ‘affordable’ to me and what is ‘affordable’ to me at this time, may not be ‘affordable’ to me tomorrow. I was lucky enough to have a steady salary for years that somehow covered the cost of life for two people and a critter crewe and all the projects and adventures some of the time scraping by and other times juggling the dollars.

As the sun comes up, I have a firm grip on what is affordable. I don’t impulse shop unless there are dollars in the bank to pay for it. I’ve satisfied most of my dopamine desires so few items attract my attention or the want to add to my collection.

My celebration of the seasons will be slim-pickens. There will be no Christmas Hallmark card mailings (does anyone do that anymore?) or even send personal emails for most are now gone. There are no decorations of lighting or music or wrapping paper or tree. There will be a Thanksgiving meal-for-one but it will be limited to a slice of turkey w/ gravy on rice and cranberry sauce. No baked goods or leftovers. I’ve already got a slice of cake and some ice cream for a birthday meal. There will be the purchase of an apple pie to be delivered to the fire station on Christmas and an extra load of good treats for my critter crewe neighbors. Perhaps a bottle of pop for the end of the year? Perhaps a gift to myself but it has to fit in the budget that will hopefully reach the goal of $50k by the beginning of next year.

Affordability is all about the economy stupid.