From the archives: Money Habits and Promises

First posted April 2006

LRJohnson's Savings Blog posted about Habits, Habits (original link goes somewhere else now). She points out:

"I did not start buying oatmeal at the same time that I stopped buying pre-made cartons of juice. Powdered milk came into my life at a different time than the concept of having a max price I’d pay for an item. (For me that’s an In My Head Price Book.) I didn’t start putting leftovers in salsa tub Tupperware at the same time I decided to buy generic or store brand for everything. TVP and bulghur and beans entered my life at different times. But all of these thrifty skills and habits accumulated, over the years, to become a low grocery bill. I incorporate a new habit every now and then, and add it to the routine."

And so on.

The Squirrels can identify with this. We have often had people ask exactly how we have managed to stay out of debt, have Mama Squirrel stay home with the Squirrelings, etc.; and it is often difficult to answer; or, to be more exact, any honest answer makes it sound more difficult than it has been. At the time we got married, we agreed to keep a running journal of our joint budget and expenses for the year, and to stick as close as possible to the amounts we had agreed on for things like clothes and groceries. We also treated Mama Squirrel's rather paltry wages as extra money but not something to be counted on--which was a good thing, because the Squirrelings started coming along very soon after that. 

Like LRJohnson, we acquired different habits of saving at different times--or changed them as we went along. There are things we do better now than we did fifteen twenty-five years ago--those are the habits we've learned. Some things we figured out ourselves or from reading; I think some of the rest are ideas we picked up from watching what our parents and other relatives did. We might not have acted on them until we got married, but they were absorbed!

Some of the habits don't seem money-related; they just involve taking care of things so that they don't have to be replaced as fast or cleaned as often. (We rarely eat meals or have drinks in the car; we don't wear shoes in the house.) We buy store brand groceries, eat leftovers, pass down clothes, go to yard sales, and use/wear/drive things until they won't work/fit/run anymore. (And we try to replace parts before tossing things--that's getting harder to do all the time, though. Most things now are made to be tossed, not fixed, and the parts cost more than the original gizmo.) There are other things we stopped doing...at one time I attempted to keep Mr. Fixit's work socks darned, but his workboots kept putting so many holes into them that I gave up. And anyway, he no longer wears workboots.

But there's one other factor that comes into it for us. Along with habits, we needed faithfulness--and we had to be committed to that from the start. Before we knew each other, and even during the year that we dated, we each had different spending patterns than we did post-wedding. We went out for more meals (and fancier ones), we bought more new clothes, we just seemed to go through more cash in general. But somehow, along with the promises we made to be faithful to each other in other ways, we both came into marriage with a feeling of "this money we have now takes care of both of us--so we have to be responsible to each other with it." No spending sprees, no "I worked for this so I should have more of it", no demands for things that the budget wouldn't allow (brand new furniture or vacation cruises), no tossing the toothpaste tube before we'd squished the last squish. I don't know that we ever even sat down and spelled all that out (definitely not the toothpaste part); it was just understood. We also knew that we weren't accountable only to each other: we were responsible to God for what he'd entrusted us with.

And that--as much as frugal habits--is what's kept us solvent.

The Bird in the Tree, by Elizabeth Goudge (Book review)

The Bird in the Tree, by Elizabeth Goudge

I'm reading the Damerosehay trilogy out of sequence; my review of the second book, The Herb of Grace (Pilgrim's Inn)  is here.

It's a slow-moving novel, full of descriptions and decisions, but without much action.  My guess after reading the second book was that you could more or less skip the first one, and I still think the first one might turn you off from reading the second, which would be too bad.  But it does have its own strong points.

This is the storyline: twenty years ago, in 1918, Lucilla Eliot bought a house by the sea, and began raising her orphaned grandson David.  For the past two years she has also cared for the three children of her son George, because George’s wife Nadine left him in India and went into the antiques business. (Lucilla can't figure out how selling Chippendale chairs means "living one's own life" more than, say, taking care of one's own house and children.) Now David confesses to his grandmother that he loves Nadine (she is only a few years older than David) and that they plan to marry.  Nadine arrives, supposedly to visit the children but really to face the music with Lucilla, and the three of them sit down for a “Talking To.”

Of course Grandmother is bossy and moralistic. Of course she should stay out of their business; technically, David and Nadine aren't doing anything wrong (Nadine and George are already divorced).  The trouble is, Lucilla's right. This relationship is going to mess not only with the already-messed-up kids, but with the whole extended family and even the ownership of the house. She also knows this from experience: she had the chance to run off with somebody years ago too, but realized at the last minute how that would affect her husband and children.

The way you can tell that this is a 1940 Elizabeth Goudge book and not a 2013 anybody-else book is that David and Nadine actually listen to the sermon, and end the story by trying to straighten things out. (Some issues aren't really resolved until the next book.)  David goes off to Europe for awhile (that doesn't sound too safe in 1938, but whatever).  Nadine takes a boat to India to make up with George. Grandmother is still stuck with the kids.

It's not big news to say that self-denial is not a popular concept in 2013. "Sticking things out" comes way behind "what I want right now" and "love is something you can't fight."  It's too bad that this book, flowery and dated as it is, isn't likely to have a lot of attraction for those young enough to get the most out of its message...but I guess we middle-aged ones can use a reminder now and then too.

Thankful Alphabet: Another O

O is for out, out, out at Domestic Fashionista. I can't think of a better reason to declutter.

Thankful Alphabet: M

M is for Marriage and My Mechanical Mate who Messes with Meters

A book about falling in love

The best book I've read so far this year isn't on my Bookstack Challenge List, but it was on the shelf, so I guess it counts. I'd seen it recommended in one of Terry W. Glaspey's books, and had been meaning to read it for awhile--and one night I just picked it up and started in.

The book is A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, published in 1977. The plot of the story is no secret (just read the back of the book): Van (the husband) meets Davy (the wife); they go sailing; they become Christians; Davy dies; and life goes on.

Oh, and the middle of all that they go to Oxford and become friends with C.S. Lewis.

This is a book about falling in love: intensely, desperately, "intoxicatingly" (to quote Terry Glaspey). With another human being, and with Christ. Van and Davy don't do anything by halves. At the beginning of their relationship, they set up rules that most of us would find extreme: they will do nothing apart, they will have no separate interests or activities that would interfere with or change their love. In their view, that includes having children, since children might cause an imbalance in their two-ness. They are more interested in pursuing both outdoor and intellectual adventures--together, of course.

However, this isn't a brief "Love Story"; the Vanaukens' marriage lasts for about eighteen years, and they become Christians in their thirties. When they start to consider Christianity, naturally they turn to books: the whole Christian literary canon, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot's later poems, Chesterton, Sayers, Newman, the medieval writers. But, interestingly, it's Christians rather than books that help convince them that Christianity might be true. The Christians they meet at Oxford are intelligent, joyful, and not very "Puritan"; they drink wine, spend evenings (often at the Vanaukens' flat) discussing everything in creation, and sing liturgical goodnights to each other at unholy hours. This is community; this is a kind of magic circle that's all the more magical because of the realization that it's both temporary and eternal. Most of the people involved will leave Oxford for whatever comes next; but at the same time there are bonds being formed that will last the rest of this lifetime and into the next. In the same way that Van and Davy first fall in love with each other, the two of them fall in uncontested, unswerving love with Christ; and one of the only points of friction between them is that Davy seems to take her new relationship with the Lord even more seriously than Van does, if that's possible.

One might ask if this love story with Christ is just as much about falling in love with England, Oxford, and stimulating friends, including Lewis, as it is about God. Does that make it less true? Obviously not, because the real test comes when the Vanaukens return to the U.S. (Van gets a college teaching position). Although they are disappointed by mainstream churches and miss England a lot (they drink a lot of tea and find the houses way too warm), God begins to build a growing circle of believers and seekers around them. This part of the story sounds much like the beginnings of L'Abri: a student has questions and comes over to talk; then she brings a friend...I found this fascinating because it proves you don't have to live in the Alps to reach out to people, or even hang a "Knock for Christian inquiry" sign on your door. If God's writing the story, He opens the door at the right time, or at least provides the right person to knock.

All too soon, the partnership comes to an end with Davy's illness and death at the age of forty. In some ways, I found this less interesting (or at least less surprising) than the first part of the story, although it continues to show the Vanaukens' devotion both to each other and to the Lord. (At one point, Van coaxes Davy out of a coma by talking to her for hours on end.) The last part of the book focuses on the period afterwards, especially on Van's continuing correspondence and friendship with C.S. Lewis, through the time of Lewis's marriage and then his death.

Would I want a marriage as intense as the Vanaukens'? Not if it meant forgoing our children--but they made that decision long before they became Christians. (Did they ever reconsider their choice?) Still, there's much to learn from them about love that serves the other person's needs and pushes aside a lot of the small daily irritations, just for the sake of the relationship. The detailed discussions on faith (including C.S. Lewis's letters to Van) are worth reading and re-reading; we are privileged to observe great minds sharpening themselves on each other. Sheldon Vanauken's descriptions of that time at Oxford are so good that we can almost feel like we were there, on one of those unforgettable winter nights with bells ringing out all around.