What do you need?

"One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our needs from our greed's." Don Robinson

I grew up poor. I don't bring that up for a poor me moment, in fact being poor at a early age probably did me more good than harm. Over the period of my youth I had friends that had parents that were well off. Not Rockefeller's but much better off than my Mom. I began to notice something as I grew older. I had been trained by circumstance not to expect much in the way of worldly things but my better heeled friends viewed much of what they got as entitlement. In high school I had as much as three jobs at once. I bought my own clothes and I bought my own car. I was fifteen and too young to drive but it was parked out front and I washed it almost every day. My better heeled friends had allowances. Their mothers bought their clothes and when they turned sixteen, their fathers bought their cars. Newer cars than mine.

Why do I bring this up. We are going through a terrible economic time in our country. In my lifetime I have never seen it this bad. Many of you might not notice it as much, especially if you are employed by a large employer. Your paycheck keeps coming in. But then, many of you have been slapped in the face by it. I don't know of a small business owner that hasn't been effected and I know a lot of them. We had a fellow stop and knock on our office door yesterday. He is a certified plumber from California that has lost his job and his house and is in Arizona so that his wife and children can live with her parents while he stays with a friend and looks for work. Any kind of work, he says. He'll do anything, he says.

As a small business owner, my wife and I have had a very hard time lately. I'm happy to report we are still in business and the lights are still on but I've tightened the belt beyond the last hole.

So I go through all that to come to this; Remember a couple years ago when we were all fat and sassy? Remember what our priorities were then? It was important to have a better car, a better house, a better position. More bragging rights. There's nothing like being poor to get your head right. What is really important? What do you really need? Your find out you can do without a lot of stuff. A lot of baggage. Carol and I had breakfast this morning at home instead of eating out and she said something and whatever it was we laughed our heads off. We should be crying but we have something better than a new house and a fat bank account, we have each other. We have health, we have a wonderful daughter here and another in Illinois. Carol bought some clothes the other day and immediately felt guilty about it, but boy did she love those clothes. And better yet they were on sale! You can't beat a good sale. Remember when you didn't look for the sales? You really didn't care that much. You stopped at whichever gas station that was close? That was when you had something you really don't need to live an important life. Excess money.