The Weirdness of Paid Bills and No Bills

I don't have a lot of bills, which is definitely a good thing, because I don't have a lot of money these days.  I'm only on temporary disability, which doesn't pay out anywhere near permanent disability, and even permanent disability isn't exactly a cash cow.  I know better these days than to overspend my budget, because there's a deep-seated knowledge that there just isn't another source of income that I'll be able to tap if things get bad.

In my younger years I would allow myself to go into debt.  Sometimes it was with credit cards, sometimes with car loans, and sometimes with *gasp* payday loans.  I would put off paying a bill until the next month, not really caring if something got cut off on me, because I knew I could make it up next month.  Or, at least, I thought I could.  I wasn't always right, and I paid for it through the nose.  Payday loans kept going up like a house on fire.  Every payday the amounts got higher.  We eventually got rid of them for good.  To this day I don't think there was much choice at the time, but now when faced with a bad financial situation I figure out something else so maybe the other options were there for me before and I just wasn't savvy enough to realize it.

Unpaid monthly bills were punished with interest at first, and then disconnection and reconnection fees later, unless I chose to just forget about the service.  You can't really do that with utilities, but things like internet and television subscriptions can be lived without, no matter what anyone tells you.  Try living without heat for a month in winter, and see where your priorities shift to.

Becoming satisfied with very little in life was the key for me, to being able to finally get a handle on my finances, despite being more broke than I have ever been in my life.  If I can't afford to pay cash for something, then I simply can't afford it, because monthly loan payments of any kind are out of the question.  For the first time ever, I have exactly four things to pay for:  Rent, hydro, food and internet.  In my case the internet is necessary.  My daughter needs to find a job, and in order to do that you have to be online and have a phone.

We get our phone service free online, so it's a double-feature for us.  It's available to all Canadians, but I'm not sure about the US.  There's probably an equivalent down there.  If you find it necessary to have internet, it's always better if you don't have to pay the second bill of a phone line.  It has its limitations, but there's voice mail that is sent to your e-mail, as well as 911 service and everything.  There's a small download to use the software, but to use the phone program itself is kind of a memory pig, so I never have it on while I'm running other things.  I'm not big on phone calls anyway.  If you're curious, it's www.freephoneline.ca.  They have other services, as well, but it really is free to have their phone line.  I'm not here to advertise for them, though, so I'm not going to promote their paid services.

My point is, we've cut down our bills to almost nothing.  We've learned to live without everything, almost.  If there's something I want to see on TV, it's almost always available for free online, and quite often it's the networks themselves that will stream their shows.  Other sites stream shows, and they pay for the rights through advertising.  It's not illegal, by the way.  I'm not referring to pirating anything.  I'm referring to free services.  The quality isn't always the best, and you have to watch that you're not going over your bandwidth limits with you internet service provider, because streaming uses a lot.  Anything graphic-intensive will do that.  It's kind of like video or computer games when there's water graphics.  If your computer or console has limited memory for graphics, that's the part where it will lag.

Now, when I have money, it seems the first thing I do is take care of the bills, and then figure out where the rest of it will be going.  Maybe I shouldn't be putting food last on the list, and maybe other people wouldn't do that, but I've never really cared about food.  I'll eat generic chicken wieners on regular bread, flavoured with generic ketchup, and it doesn't bother me in the least.  I've gone hungry, and don't care to again, but it taught me another lesson about priorities.  When you've only got a few dollars, you don't spend it on gourmet anything.  You buy the cheapest thing there is, so you get quantity versus quality.  Be a food snob if you want to, but everyone changes their tune when there's nothing left in the cupboard to eat.  A package of 8 name-brand wieners costs the same as 4 packages of 12 of the chicken wieners (48 in total, for those who don't want to do any math, which is 6 times the amount).  Would you rather eat for 2 days, or for 12 days?

I'm sure people look down on people in my situation.  However, there just isn't anything I can do about what I'm going through financially.  I'm disabled, and since I worked for myself at the time it hit me I did not have any medical insurance beyond what is provided by the province to everyone who lives here.  Disability is not covered by OHIP.  I'm more than a little proud of the fact that I manage to make it through, and I know very well that those same people who are silly enough to look down on me would never survive what I've been through.  There's a great deal of strength in that.

I've been a worker for a long time, and when I was laid off quite a few years ago I decide it was time to work for myself.  I figured I had more control over my job that way.  Well, I did have more control over the job, just not my physical well-being.  The job I had when I was laid off had terrible benefits anyway, so there's no reason to bemoan losing it as I wouldn't be any better off now even if I hadn't.  My company wasn't in a position to consider a benefits package, since I was the only full-time person, and my daughter was the only part-time person.  The costs for benefits were prohibitive.  I know, because I looked into it.

Still, despite that fact that I'm living at a much lower level of income, I'm actually better off financially.  The bills are getting paid, and I'm not paying for anything that isn't necessary.  There are no interest payments to anyone so I'm not getting double-dipped anymore where I pay for the item, plus I pay interest on it.  It feels really strange, actually, to sit at my computer and know that I have nothing more to worry about for at least another month.  In the case of the hydro bill it's more like two and a half months, since we only get one every two months, and I actually paid it a little early.

Christmas will be lean this year, but we expected that, and it's not going to be anywhere as lean as it was last year.  This year my daughter and I have our own place again, our bills are paid, and we can have a decent dinner with maybe a small gift or two.  Last year we had none of that.  Not having to make a choice between having electricity and having food means a great deal in this world, and I've learned gratitude for that in a big way.  I'm also grateful that I've learned these lessons so that I stop being as idiotic about money as I used to be.  You really never know what can happen from one week to the next.

Many years ago I read that most people are a paycheque away from poverty.  Financial advisors tell us that we need to have three months' expenses saved to protect us in case something happens, like the loss of a job, but there are two problems with that.  One, how many people really believe it's going to happen to them?  Two, if you lose your job it's quite likely it's going to take a lot more than three months these days to find another one.  In my case I was without income for a lot longer than three months.

The best advice I can give to anyone, and the advice I intend to follow myself, is to become financially independent.  I'm not talking about being rich.  I'm referring to not relying on a single source of income that's provided to you by someone other than yourself.  I'm also referring to being as self-sustaining in your lifestyle as possible.  400,000 jobs were lost in Canada in 2008.  Most people don't know how to grow their own vegetables and rely on the utility companies to provide them with power and heat.  If you can learn to exist without utility companies, and learn to grow your own food, you'll be about a hundred steps ahead of the game.

Solar power is completely feasible, even in Canada, for running your entire home.  Radiant in-floor heating that's electrically powered is the most efficient way of heating your home, and it's free when you have solar power.  Tankless water heaters are the most efficient that I know of, they provide instantly heated water, use very little energy, and are available in electrically powered models.  So, that's your heat, your hot water, and your electricity to power every other thing in your home, including all your appliances.  A well provides water, and a septic tank provides water-based waste disposal.  If you live in the city you may have zoning difficulties with some of this stuff, but check into it to see what you can and can't do with your home.  Maybe you'll decide your city is too restrictive, and you'll move out to the country.

A small vegetable garden provides a very large quantity of vegetables.  Most people who have gardens are always giving away the food because they end up getting too much.  Meat is a different issue, that has moral questions involved regarding the humane treatment of animals.  I plan to have chickens in order to have a steady supply of eggs, but I know very well I'll never be able to kill the chickens.  I don't even like chickens, actually.  We had them when I was growing up, and they were more than a little vicious.  Still, I have empathy for every living creature on this planet, including insects, so I'm not going to kill the chickens.  I plan to treat them very well, and provide them with better-than-humane living conditions, as animal cruelty is something I'm dead set against.  I won't even buy from companies if I know they test on animals.

Imagine your life without monthly bills, though.  Imagine the freedom that comes from knowing almost everything you bring in that month will be yours alone.  Sure, property taxes are a necessary evil.  I don't want to live in the dark ages, so paying taxes provides services I will still need.  Roads, for example.  Garbage pickup for anything I can't compost or recycle.  Armed forces to protect the country.  Health care and emergency services.  Those sorts of things are necessary and I'm agreeable when it comes to paying for them.  Property taxes are usually the smallest bill that people pay, though.  If their property taxes are $3,600 a year, that's $300 a month, and people paying taxes that high are likely paying a mortgage that's more like $2,000 a month.  They also likely live in the city.

So, how is it that I seem to think a mortgage isn't a necessity?  Well, in my case I plan to buy property and put up my own steel structure.  I'm not looking for pretty.  I'm looking for something that will withstand nasty weather, is well-insulated, has an arch structure so I can do what I want with the interior and not have to worry about support walls, and that I can pay for with cash.  With all the money I won't be paying to a bank every month, I can add a lot of 'pretty' as I go.  Living in a home you know you could lose with a downturn in the market is terrifying.  Ask anyone who has lived through it.  The recent financial crises throughout the world probably clued a lot of people in to that.  It's time to head back to a world of self-reliance.

In my case I had these truths sneak up and whack me in the back of the head with a two-by-four.  You can't, and shouldn't, count on anyone but yourself.  Not your government, not your family (who may be in a worse situation than yourself, or simply not care what you're going through), not your friends.  If you are caught unawares, the price is very high indeed.  I was lucky in my darkest financial hour, because I had people that did care about me.  My daughter and my ex were there for me in a way I still find amazing, but it doesn't mean I intend to count on that sort of thing again.  It wouldn't be fair to them, and being a grown-up means taking full responsibility for everything that happens to you, even when you have no control over it.

Now all I have to do is live up to my own hype, and keep these promises to myself.