Rethinking Lifestyle

Resilience is a strange word and when you look it up in the dictionary it is described as springing back or resuming original form after stretching. Another meaning is readily recovering after a setback, and that is what I want to write about today.

Recently I was in my bank paying my credit card bill. The teller asked if I wanted to pay it all and I said of course, doesn’t everyone, and she replied no, you’d be surprised how many people do not. Anyway we got talking and she related a story of a man who had come into the bank and withdrawn every penny from his account to buy himself a toy (a motorbike). What would happen to this man, or his family for that matter, if he lost his job or had an accident? He had left himself with nothing in reserve.

According to Statistics Canada the average Canadian owes $22,081 with the highest group being people around 45 years old with debts of almost $30,000 – and that does not include mortgages. It is unclear whether that is per person, including children, or adults only, but whatever the case it’s a lot. That would be personal loans, credit card debt, payments on appliances, snow machines, boats, and car payments. Many people have no debts at all so those that do must owe much more than these averages. On top of all this personal debt, all levels of government – your RM, the Province and the Feds – are borrowing like crazy, thinking that they might as well take advantage of the current low interest rates. The Bank of Canada keeps warning that interest rates are certain to go up sooner or later: remember it is from your taxes that the paying back must eventually come.

The fact is, on a personal level as well as courtesy of the various levels of government, we are enjoying a standard of living that our current incomes cannot provide or justify. Gone, it seems, are the days when people lived within their means. Today everyone seems to want instant gratification even if they haven’t got the money.

We hear that more and more people are using food banks, yet we are not even in a recession with high unemployment. Coming back to that word ‘resilience’, how would you manage if you lost your job? Have you got the resilience to recover from a setback like that? Have you got at least 3 or 4 months cash in reserve in a savings account as your rainy-day fund? Can you pay your mortgage or rent as well as all those other payments and feed your family whilst you search for a new job?

One of the things that SETI (that’s South Eastman Transition Initiative) does is to promote self-sufficiency. Rather than rely on food banks or welfare during the hard times, we promote growing a garden, making your own bread, pizza etc etc. I cringe in the supermarket when I see people carrying out those tasteless cakes covered in synthetic icing when it is so much nicer and cheaper to make a real cake at home. Or is it that the cake-buying generation really does not know how to make a cake?

If you, dear reader, are an environmentally conscious person and would like to share your views by writing an occasional piece for this column please let us know at SETI (South Eastman Transition Initiative).