Rocky Roads 7. B. Money
For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 1 Timothy 6:10, the Apostle Paul
I've never coveted great wealth. I believe everyone dreams of what hey might do if some great windfall befell them, as unlikely as that scenario is. I can tell you that if I ever won a lottery my first priority would be to repay some outstanding school loans my family has. It is extremely unlikely that I'd win a lottery, since I've never even bought a ticket. In fact, I don't gamble. I've never even set foot in one of the many casinos in Louisiana. I look at money as a tool necessary to get along in modern society. And all I've ever really desired was to make enough money for my family to live comfortably.
When I was an undergraduate and graduate student, I was very fiscally conservative. I actually had managed to save the better part of ten thousand dollars by the time I graduated with my Ph. D. My goal was to use this money for a down payment on a house eventually. The money was locked up in accounts that could only be accessed once a year, without incurring a large penalty. So that money was functionally unavailable to me for everyday expenses. But it was earning interest at a relatively high rate.
After Valerie and I married, we did use that $10,000 dollars as a down payment on a house. Occasionally, we'd have a month where things were tight, due to repair needed on the house. In the main things were quite comfortable. In early 1982, we bought a second car (I was still driving the 1973 Celica, and would continue to do so until 1992.) We bought a Chevy Cavalier station wagon, that would be Valerie's car. This was in anticipation of the birth of our first child later that spring. This would be the last new car we bought. Since then, we've looked for quality used cars. We saved money wherever possible. After the warranty expired on the Chevy, I did all the maintenance on the car (as I had been doing on my Toyota for years.) I could handle, brake jobs, valve jobs, replacing bearings, tune-ups, etc. The only thing I didn't do was work on automatic transmissions. Unfortunately, my health conditions no longer allow me to do more than minimal maintenance jobs on our vehicles. Anything major and it needs to go to the mechanic. I do know our mechanic listens to me, since whenever I've told him what my suspicions were, they were right.
Eventually by 1986, it became apparent that I needed to find a new job. The projects I had been hired to do had been discontinued, and I was being used for my knowledge of construction, for projects that held no interest for me. Worse, I was getting no credit for the things I was doing. I started sending out resumes. In 1987 two or three colleges showed a great deal of interest. One was Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. I had I think three phone interviews with them, but the salary offered was not enough for a family of four to exist on in the state of New York. The others were in Louisiana. One was in northwest Louisiana and one in southwest Louisiana. I flew down for an interview at the university in southwest Louisiana, and was pleasantly surprised by the town. I had expected something like Freeport, Texas, where I had been offered a transfer within Dow. I turned that down, since after looking at the area, I realized that I didn't particularly like the area, and I knew Valerie would absolutely hate it. This town was nice, and looked to be a great place to raise a family. I was offered the job, at a salary $13,000 less per year than I was making at Dow. But taking a look at our finances, it seemed possible. Valerie and I talked over on the phone that night and decided I should accept the offer. It was mid July, and classes started the third week in August. I found an apartment we could move into, and arranged for us to rent it, before returning to Michigan. That gave me just enough time to tender a letter of resignation, sell off many of my woodworking and other tools (no place to store them in an apartment), and start packing up stuff. The plan was that I'd go down to Louisiana, while Valerie stayed in Michigan, and tried to sell the house. I drove my Toyota Celica to Louisiana and started teaching. A few days after I had left, a series of harassing obscene phone calls were aimed at Valerie. The police were little help saying that their hands were more or less tied, until some overt act had been done. Valerie' father contacted me, and told me he'd aid us in moving (the University offer didn't have moving expenses included) by helping to pay for a commercial moving van. He wanted Valerie and his granddaughters away from any possible threat. (Our original plan was that we'd rent a moving truck and move ourselves.) I flew back up to Michigan, helped Valerie arrange the last details of trying to get the house sold or rented with our realtor, and the last details of getting everything packed in the moving van. We spent our last night in the house sleeping on sleeping bags on the floor. We then packed our few things not gone in our '85 Ford LTD II station wagon (the Cavalier had been totaled the year before by another driver running a red light.), and headed out on the trip to Louisiana. The trip took two and a half days. It took us about a week to get everything arranged in the apartment, and to store the things that weren't going to fit. We stayed there two years. The last straw was when I had pneumonia (again) and the manager insisted over my vehement protests on having the pest control company spray for bugs. I ended up having to go sit outside with the door wide open to let the apartment air out on a rather cold spring day. That night Valerie and I decided to find a house to rent. We also around that time managed to sell our house in Michigan to some of the people renting the house. Unfortunately, just as we had left, an 87% complete nuclear power plant was shut down, resulting in a third of the population of Midland moving away. Quite simply there was a housing glut. We only managed to reclaim $7,000 of the original $10,000 we had put down as a down payment. It was better than being an absentee landlord, though. I was losing money on that proposition as well, due to that housing glut. The only blessing was that I could claim that loss on our income taxes. Even the $7,000 we managed to reclaim, quickly ended up being consumed by various medical expenses. We finely did reach a sort of equilibrium, but things were often tight. There were several times I remember going out to the backyard and digging up some worms and going fishing towards the end of the month. The reason was not recreation, but food. We'd be one or two days short of dinners at the end of the month prior to the next paycheck. Bluegill dinners were the result. My salary has increased over the years, and we are much more comfortable now.
Our biggest problem has been medical bills. At last count, we've had ten major hospitalizations in twenty years in our family. That means we haven't been able to pay one off, before the next one occurred most of the time. I actually did catch up in early 2001. We owed the hospitals and doctors nothing. But that disastrous year of 2002, essentially (followed by another hospitalization for me in 2003) bankrupted us. It took another couple years before every single one of our resources were depleted, but it happened. So Valerie and I are starting over. We can live without credit (a good thing to be able to do). All it takes is careful budgeting.
If you are wondering, if a friend asks for a loan, I'll give it to them, if I can afford it. What do I mean by "afford?" To me that means that I can live without that money, even if it is never repaid. To some of you that may seem as if I'd never loan anyone anything. That's definitely not true. But the real truth is that I don't have large amounts of cash to loan. A few dollars here and there is not a problem, though.
So to me money is a tool. I guess a lot of people would say I've been unlucky in financial matters. But I've still got a well paying job, and am able to support my family. Those are the important things to me. I'll do just about any job necessary, if it's to support my family. I've been responsible in case I die as well (no, I'm not being morbid). I've purchased enough life insurance in case I die that Valerie would be supported until the end of her life.
Some might think I'd be in favor of socialized medicine plans. I'm not sure I would be. I've got friends in Canada and the UK who live in countries with such plans. But they often have long waits to get services. If I'd had to wait for those service in 2002, I'd probably not be here.
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