Unclench Your Jaw
When the New Year rings in, you tell your spouse this is the year you will finally have a substantial savings account and get some of those debts paid down. The tax returns are projected to be impactful. Your and his hours at work are plentiful, with raises only a couple months away. You can just sense it–this year will be different.
And you weren’t wrong about that.
The flu knocks you out first, meaning your spouse must stay home to care for you, to care for the baby, to make sure the other two kids catch the bus on time. Then the kids get it, meaning trips to urgent care and thanking God for your spouse’s health insurance coverage. Because of how much work you and your spouse missed, taxes this year go towards paying your regular bills on time. Your debts continue to accumulate interest fees. Your jaw hurts. For a moment, your financial goals almost felt unobtainable again, but what are a couple of hiccups? Just a close call.
Spring rolls in with the fury of a tornado, once, twice, and there goes your power for two entire days. Forty-eight hours. At least it’s not too hot outside. But nothing in your fridge and freezer is salvageable. You make your spouse throw everything away when you are not home. You can’t bear to witness the bagging up of $500 of carefully curated on-sale meats and sides going right into the garbage can. A full fridge–gone. A full freezer–gone. But at least a tree didn’t fall on your house or your car or–heaven forbid–your spouse who now starts working six days a week in the hopes that this overtime will make up for your financial losses: past, present, and (you hope not but are beginning to see the pattern) future.
Summer hits with a heat wave, taking your central air with it. How can we fix this? What’s broken? You scramble to change the furnace filter, reset the thermostat, but nothing works. The temperature outside is spiking into the nineties, and you worry for the baby as the house spikes into the eighties. Another scramble to find someone to evaluate the unit. Three hundred more dollars you had only just put back in the savings to offset the food loss from the springtime. You never seem to have emergency expenses. God forbid your children ever feel the frenzy clutching your lungs and making it hard to breathe. You work more hours to make up for it, though you really can’t afford to work more than you already are–childcare for the baby costs nearly half your wages already, so what would the benefit be in going full-time at work and full-time at daycare? The numbers nearly cancel each other out. Unclench your jaw. Breathe. Pay the bills on time.
After this, everything becomes a numbers game. How willing are you to be comfortable with the uncomfortable? To save on electricity, you raise the AC temp to 75. You don’t run the appliances on weekdays from 2pm-7pm because that’s when Consumer’s charges nearly double. The baby goes in cloth diapers, except for nap and bedtime, and those diapers air-dry outside when they’re clean. You start timing showers and being conservative with the bath soaps. You only serve yourself the allotted number of calories you need to survive and portion off the rest to your growing kids. You get shelf stable food from a pantry that doesn’t care what your gross annual income is, only that you need food and so they give it. You stop driving anywhere just for fun, limiting trips to grocery stores for what you can’t get at the pantry–timed for the mornings when most places mark down the prices on their meats.
You watch the value of the savings account add up, only to be taken away from again: a flat tire, a chipped tooth, a sick cat. Now you just dread looking at the bank statement. You dread seeing a two-digit number, a one-digit, or–heaven forbid–red digits.
When you drive past the WIC office on the way to work, you try not to look at it. It’s a dead end. They can’t help you. Because despite it all, you are considered a “high income household.” Meaning, “above the federal poverty threshold.” What you really feel like is a high-stress and above-the-average debt-to-income household. But these determinations are out of your hands.
It’s almost school season again, and the kids will need new clothes, new shoes, new backpacks, supplies, and–oh, your eldest is ready to start driver’s ed. How can you tell her no when all her friends are starting in the fall too? Since when did driver’s ed cost $500 anyway? At least the school still gives out free lunch. Your son is growing like a weed, and nothing keeps him feeling full for very long. You are grateful for that.
Unclench your jaw. Breathe. Pay the bills on time.
Your spouse’s overtime helps, but it’s not enough. It never seems to be enough. After school starts, it’s your daughter’s volleyball season, homecoming, your son’s class parties and book fairs. It’s your husband being passed over for a promotion again because of the color of his skin. It’s the kids wanting to go to the fair, but tickets cost too much. Gas prices are spiking higher, and higher, and the overtime opportunities to make up for it are trickling to a halt. It’s Halloween costumes, candy, and parties. It’s Thanksgiving, then Black Friday, then a couple of birthdays before Christmas. It’s doing your best to make sure your kids don’t feel the pressure cooker that this year has become. It’s the giant fist around your ribs squeezing, squeezing, squeezing–and begging for it to stop. When will it just stop?
Unclench your jaw. Breathe. Pray that you can pay the bills on time.
You hope next year will be better.
