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When we become adults, we must diminish our dependency on other people and take increasing responsibility for ourselves. Soon after, we often take responsibility for our offspring, and eventually, we may take care of our parents. Life is ultimately a revolution of depending and providing.
When we’re in the season of providing, it can feel like a lot of responsibility. And it can get hard.
But we don’t have to abandon all dependency on others, making life unnecessarily more hard by doing everything (& buying everything) ourselves.
It takes a village, after all.
Sometimes it’s simply creating boundaries, like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was receiving too many phone calls from her son’s school.
She reminded the administration that her son had two parents, and to please alternate calls between those two parents in the future. Calls to her office slowed down dramatically.
In the relationship between Ruth and Marty Ginsburg, this sharing of the load was the norm. Their partnership epitomized parents acting as co-champions for their family - each other and their children. This deep collaboration underscored their dynamism in work and life. They also benefited from financial support from family.
And while this kind of shared responsibility within our own households is important, not everyone enjoys the same opportunity. But our village can (& should) extend beyond our kitchens and family tree.
In some hunter-gatherer cultures, it was entirely expected that people from different families would share almost everything. Even gifts were expected to be regifted again and again, often coming back around to the original giver after months or years.
A far cry from our overstuffed basements hoarding our worldly goods.
We can and should use a page from the same book.
I don’t need to own an air mattresses if my friend is always willing to lend one of theirs the rare occasion that we need one. My neighbor doesn’t need to buy a tree trimmer pole when she can just use ours when needed.
Looking to the weeks and months ahead, transitioning into the school year and then, yes, the upcoming holiday season, how can you reach out to depend more on friends and family? And what provision can you provide others?
Maybe it’s collaborating on a dinner swap tradition, or putting out a call for hand-me-down shoes (& soccer cleats) for your sizing-up kid, or borrowing and lending equipment for a family camping trip.
Or maybe you don’t need to buy a roasting pan and extra crock pot to host Thanksgiving this year if a friend already has them stored away unneeded in the basement.
These efforts can save money over and over.
But it’s not only about saving $5 here and $30 there – though those little bits do add up. It’s also about cultivating a culture within your family and your immediate circles of depending on one another.
And that helps us all spend less of our monetary currency, which we must earn and expend continuously, and use more of our social currency, which tends to compound with interest.
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey