Insane Money

Remember the shockingly-blonde, spiky-haired television fitness guru Susan Powter who used to shout STOP THE INSANITY! into the camera when telling people to quit overeating and lying on the couch all day killing themselves with bad habits. Her voice and those words are firmly in my head as I think about what I want to get across in this column.

Everybody knows somebody right now, probably many somebodies, who are struggling to make ends meet in this difficult financial time. Parents (and others) are losing jobs, falling behind on mortgage payments, wondering how to put a meal on the table and keep the house from going back to the bank. It's a very stressful, day-to-day existence in those households.

It's stressful too for institutions and agencies. Schools are having to reduce the number of employees under the pressure of the balanced budget and reduced revenues, and that means fewer adults to help care for and teach our children. The county and other local governments have to leave road and other projects undone, or half done, and that means things like road repairs and other infrastructure projects may or may not get done anytime soon. 

Still, in the face of an economy that is changing life in fundamental ways at so many levels of our communities, some people haven't figured out that it must also mean a change in the way we live. People cannot expect to maintain the lifestyle they had a year ago, or five years ago, when the finances aren't available. What used to be a given in many houses is now a luxury, or even an impossibility. Two weeks ago I had to make the difficult decision to cancel the Gobles Class of 2009 trip to Cedar Point. Not enough of our graduates could afford the $55 ticket, so less than half of the class signed up to go. We couldn't afford the bus. Simple as that. The senior class has taken that trip every year in a tradition that goes back before I arrived in town in 1995.

After students were told that our Cedar Point trip was cancelled I was contacted by one very generous parent who was willing to pay the $350 needed for the bus. I declined. Mostly it was because I want people to understand that we can't go on trying to provide what we've always provided because we don't have the money to do so. That $350 wasn't going to help the students who couldn't afford to go to Cedar Point, it was only going to help the people who had already paid their $55. I just don't think it's the right message to send right now.

This year it cost a minimum of $650 for a senior boy to go to prom, pay for only the most basic graduation materials, attend grad bash, and pay for the other costs and fees associated with the last three months of school. Minimum. In 2008 the Grad Bash Committee spent almost $15,000 on a one-day event. We can't continue to do that, (I don't think it should have been done in the first place), because the next class steps up thinking "we have to keep up with what has happened already, or let's outdo the one last year." When schools are letting teachers go, those priorities are insane. It's time to scale back, to redefine priorities, to think differently about what money is worth, and what it can and cannot buy.

Money is just another form of energy. So is creativity and ingenuity. So is hard work. My mother-in-law remembers fondly when students in Gobles had more of the good things that money can't buy. Instead of a $10,000 prom with girls wearing $400 dresses, the classes worked together to put on a fun prom at the school that cost almost nothing, and everybody could afford to go. The senior class packed a picnic and headed to the beach for a day for the class trip. Again, everybody could afford to go. Sure, they needed to put more work into it, but they didn't spend the day missing out on anything. My grandmother told me that during The Great Depression her family spent time playing cards together for fun and being grateful for what they did have.

I think we need to learn these lessons of the past, and let go of our crazy mentality that more and more money and more things are what a perfect childhood requires. Right now we should turn to creativity, ingenuity, and elbow grease to make memories, and not the checkbook.  

Note: This blog post is from a series originally published as personal essays written for the Van Buren County Advertiser from 2008-2014 by Corey Harbaugh under the title It's All Good. The It's All Good columns were written to feature and celebrate life in and around Gobles, Michigan.