About six months ago we gave up plastic. Shock. Paralysis. Fear. No bottomless well of credit to cushion the stupid decision, the rash moment, the dinner that started out as a snack and ended up costing over a hundred dollars. We literally never had any cash in our pocket. We were debit card people who saw money as a number downloaded into Quicken or a text in a Blackberry from the bank telling us our balance. In short money had ceased to be money, currency had become a nebulous number that one kept as far away from zero as possible.
We were hopelessly addicted. I had come from a father who loved plastic. Our family culture was one of new cars and dinners out and rented homes. My dad was a salesman described clearly in Rocketman who never gave a thought to the amount of debt we were carrying. His assumption was there would always be more. And really, when you think about it, that has been our assumption as a nation for the last twenty years ... there would always be more.
But then my wife and I realized there would not be more. Times being what they are and with credit card rates skyrocketing we flew in the face of our history and cut up our plastic. All of it. Nada. Not one card survived. Then we freaked. We had to watch our balance now with the thought that if the money ran out we had no resources left because we had closed all of our accounts. Now we had to carry money again.
I studied our currency. Money has a much different feel than plastic. It is paper, crinkled, slightly moldy, and has the smell of pencils or paper left in a briefcase. Coins are heavy and jingle in your pocket. I had to get used to that. I had to get acquainted with money again. The debit card I carried still had a direct relation to my account and I didn't trust myself. So at the grocery story I would hand the stunned clerk CASH. We would do a cash transaction. She gave me my groceries and I gave her money. It was amazing.
In the twenties F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story about how to live on 36,000 dollars a year. He talked of credit as a layaway. But the nub of his essay is coming to terms with the value of money after he and Zelda realized they were broke and tried to cash an old bond in to give them some liquidity. His struggle with budgeting and the amazement that a dollar really is a dollar still holds up today. Our government and ourselves lost site of that with the plastic infusion. There will always be more. Even our President is having to come to terms with there really wont be more.
So we live now within our means. Not because we want too, but because we have too. It is amazing how the prospect of not having money for food will make you watch your pennies. And I do mean pennies. I now know the price of bread, ketchup, jelly, coffee, syrup, half and half, milk, detergent, soap, and how outrageous shampoo and conditioner is. Many days I go around with a very dry head of hair. Also haircuts have taken a hit so I am starting to cycle back to the sixties. JCrew is extremely expensive.
But we do have more of a sense that we are finally living the way we should. Alas, we have found, we are, after all is said and done, hopelessly middleclass.
William Hazelgrove writes in Ernest Hemingway's attic. His latest novel is Rocket Man.
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Source by William Hazelgrove
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