I’m now officially on the bandwagon of people writing about people’s struggles with debt.  One straight shooting commentator recently summarized the problem this way: We’re buying things we can’t afford.  But that insight begs the question why?  Here are the most commonly offered answers:

• credit is too widely available 

• financial illiteracy

• ubiquitous internet access makes on-line shopping a continuous temptation 

• a lack of personal discipline more generally

Here are a few additional reasons that are not an important enough part of the debt discussion:

• a lack of meaningful community and an associated spiritual longing 

• partners with different spending habits and different levels of commitment to saving and investing

• increasing expectations that things like a high speed internet connection, eating out weekly, a cell phone, and cable television are necessities of middle class life

In what follows, I zero in on the last two bulleted points.  

No matter how large my blog readership grows, I will not considerable myself successful until I get my wife to read it more regularly.  Maybe the next sentence will help.

I probably don’t tell her it enough, but for a lot of reasons, I love L.  

Like every married couple, we have our issues and our moments. Vague enough? Issues and moments are inevitable when two imperfect people pursue intimacy. Nonetheless, there are some things we’re amazingly in sync about.  For example, our parenting instincts are extremely similar.  We explicitly respect and trust one another’s parenting.  We also share a deep desire to live more simply which a story from last week illustrates.

Last week A and J were camping with friends so we had fun spoiling Marley and practicing being emptynesters.  Thursday night’s plan was to go out to dinner. But after going out to lunch with a colleague at work and then attending an afternoon meeting that was catered, I didn’t feel like going to another restaurant.  Most women (or men) anticipating a nice dinner out would not switch gears too gracefully.  

So it was with some trepidation I suggested an alternative, “Instead of going out to eat, do you want to throw a simple picnic together and bike to Priest Point Park?” Not only did she say “sure” but she meant it.  No big deal.  What a blessing.  After cutting some honeydew, tossing some tortilla chips and sandwiches into a backpack, we were off.  We washed it down with. . . water in water bottles.  

It wasn’t fine dining, but it was a nice experience.  We got a little exercise in and we had an uninterrupted conversation surrounded by towering pines and the Puget Sound.  

The vast majority of personal finance discussions revolve around increasing one’s income and far fewer challenge people to reduce their monthly expenses.  Overtime, the middle class has grown accustomed to eating out and to high speed internet at home, cell phones, and cable television among other things.    

It’s interesting to run the numbers for just those items.  Weekly dinner out for a family of four at an inexpensive restaurant with water, $60 x 4 =$240/month; high speed internet at home, $45/month; family cell phone plan, $100/month?; cable television, $45/month.  That’s approximately $330/month  or $3,960/year and then let’s round up since we’ll need at least $40 to drive to dinner 52 times.  So every household needs approximately $4,000 for what might be referred to as new necessities.    

We are products of our environments.  No man or woman is an island unto themselves, meaning we tend to follow examples set by our family, neighbors, and friends.  It’s difficult to swim upstream and live simply and save when there’s so much momentum for mindless consumption and spending.  

I feel very fortunate to still be swimming upstream with the person I fell in love with 23 years ago.