WHAT IF?
Playing the game of “What if?” can start to seem pretty real when the scenarios play out in the daily news. Here’s our current scenario – Financial Freeze: an economic downturn that hits hard, causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain, especially with winter heating bills creeping up.
So – let’s talk about the potential of a financial down turn – the likes of what we saw in Alberta in the mid 1980’s. That’s still pretty fresh in my mind because that was when we lost our house. Actually, to be more precise – we didn’t lose it like so many others did at the time. We sold it in the 11th hour, for barely more than than what we owed on it – which was considerably more than what we paid for it six years prior. We owed more on it than we paid in 1979, because nearly a year after Dan was laid off from his job, and after a plan to go into business with our brother in law didn’t work out, with Dan looking for work and taking every side job he could find to bring in cash – we finally couldn’t make the mortgage payments anymore. So we didn’t. Interest multiplied, and what we owed added up.
We hadn’t seen this coming; a year before, it seemed Dan’s job was secure and he enjoyed it. Life was comfortable. We had three wonderful kids, had been fixing up our home as we could afford it, and were finding our way in the world. I picked up a few side jobs to bring additional money in; things were tight, but alright. And then suddenly, nothing looked the same; it was complicated and uncertain. We didn’t have much, or (thankfully), owe much at the time so the stress was mostly from not knowing what to do. At length we decided Dan needed to go back to school, which meant leaving our little house in Calmar and moving back into the city – temporarily we hoped. We put the house up for sale, and made plans to move as soon as possible. Dan got a part time job driving for Edmonton Transit that would work well around his class schedule at NAIT, we applied for subsidized housing in the city. We desperately didn’t want the complications involved with losing the house to the bank, and prayed earnestly for a buyer as we moved ahead with our plans. We did our best to live the gospel – being active in our church, faithful that God was in the details and trying to do all we could to meet our financial obligations. It was a trial – the biggest we’d had up to that point, and though we felt we were being tested, we never felt abandoned.
Two weeks before our scheduled move, a buyer came forward – making an offer slightly more than what we currently owed. The interest we had been paying on our mortgage was 10,5% A good rate at the time, almost half of what Dan’s dad locked into for five years. Not surprisingly he lost his house before those five years were up. By the time all the details were settled and additional fees were taken care of, we walked away with $42 more than what we paid the bank. We considered that no small miracle, and basked in the goodness of God for months afterward (and to this day) as we reflected on how much worse it could have been. We did our best to DO OUR BEST, and we knew that God knew it. He is our loving Heavenly Father, and He knew the desires of our hearts. He told us that “I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” [D&C 82:10] We trusted Him. It seemed that while we went through those two years leading up to our leaving Calmar we’d been protected from being able to see the bigger picture. We’d been so involved in the micro picture of day-to-day life without employment and getting through one week at a time, that we didn’t have time to be scared, and to truly FEEL the ramifications of how life defining this time was to become for us. It became a life lesson that altered many things we did from that time forward. It was a tender mercy to us that we didn’t know the end from the beginning, or the fine print in-between – so we simply walked by faith.
Flash forward to this week February 5-11, 2024 – in the Preparedness Group I am part of “We’re All in This Together“, we are living with the hypothetical, but very plausible challenge of a Financial Freeze – a veritable “storm of economic struggle causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain.” Huh. Imagine that.
We moved into Edmonton April 1, 1985. 1712 17 avenue, a townhouse in a subsidized small housing complex across the street from the elementary school our two older children would attend. Dan started working for ETS a few weeks before. We planted a vegetable garden in Dan’s mom’s backyard – within walking distance. Dan started school in September, our fourth baby (another son) was born in October. I’m not going to say things were easy (they weren’t) – but they were comfortable. We did our best to do our best. We made friends, we worked hard, we paid our tithing, our bills and avoided debt. We enjoyed good health, we obeyed the sabbath – there were times Dan had to work on Sundays, but he never did school work on Sundays. We put what little money we could manage away. In our second year, Dan had to let his job go and we took out a student loan. He started applying for jobs in January 1987 – hoping to walk out of class and into a job at the end of the term. It didn’t happen that way. It took till the end of the summer before he found employment in his chosen field. Immediately, we began looking for a house to buy. During the time we struggled with our loss, and re-entry into the work force, many other Albertans were doing the same thing. Many had walked away from their houses – letting them go because they simply couldn’t make the payments anymore. Using the money we saved to make the necessary small down payment, we moved into a small affordable house that sold for considerably less than the sellers had paid for it, but they were moving on to another house, and needed the sale. Generally with real estate, if you sell low you buy low, if you sell high, you buy high. They sold low, and we benefitted. We moved in on the Halloween weekend of that year; the weather was in our favour – staying mild till we were completely moved in. Funny how you remember stupid little details like that. We were very grateful and received plenty of help from ward members in the move. It was a happy day to be in our own home again.
Reviewing the Rule of Three – the big one in this scenario for me is definitely SHELTER.
In our society, it is too easy to take some things for granted – like shelter. And yet, a conservative estimate of people without homes in Edmonton is currently well over 3000 – according to an article in the Edmonton Journal January 12, 2024. In a winter city! It is difficult to try to imagine what that might FEEL like, unless one truly has experienced it. I am so grateful not to have experienced it.
Right now Alberta is again going through a “storm of economic challenge causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain“, and again people are struggling with housing. It seems the more things change, the more things stay the same. Some very dear friends who were renting a house in Edmonton, were recently given the unexpected news that due to his mortgage coming due, and the increased rate, their landlord had decided to sell the house they were living in. Suddenly they were scouring the market looking for anything affordable. Quite literally, in the few weeks they had – they could find nothing to accommodate them at a price they could afford. My friend told me “In all the efforts of trying to be prepared for an emergency, we hadn’t considered being houseless.” It was a sobering reality for me to listen to. Fortunately for them, a relative had an older small house empty, in a small town seven hours away. They packed up their belongings, left their jobs and their local family members and moved into it, to try to formulate a plan of what to do next. What. to. do. next?
This scenario is REAL for a lot of people. Without jobs in a very small town – with zero employment potential, how long can one continue to pay rent? – even if it is lower than in the city? And in the city with inadequate employment at best, how does one pay rent?
I’m not pretending to have any answers – the problem of affordable housing in our province (and country) is dismal, and we as a people need to start considering alternative ways to adjust. One such way may be multi generational family homes. Its a departure from what our society has become accustomed to in the last fifty or more years, but we see examples of three generation living situations around us all the time, mostly among newcomers to Canada. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from them. Perhaps we may need to.
For nearly eight years, my elderly mother has lived in our home, and yes there have been plenty of adjustments – on all parts. But all in all, it has been a good thing and we’re happy to be able to provide a safe home for her, for as long as that is possible.
In the year 2000, we owned a bookstore. We had just recently – after four years without a wage, putting every dime back into it and in paying off a bank loan – turned a corner and I began drawing a small wage from it. One year before then, we bought a house that we hoped we’d stay in till we died. With no expectation that it was coming – Dan got laid off. His position was dissolved and we suddenly found ourselves on strangely familiar ground. We truly believed he would eventually retire from that job. It took a few days to process it enough to be able to call our family together and tell them our news. Our oldest son was 22, our youngest was 10.
We had recently taken measures to follow prophetic counsel to “get out of debt”. We worked to pay off remaining credit cards and any other obligations we had. We had adjusted our spending to stay within our means, promising each other above all – that we would avoid future debt. I recall it had been important to us at the time, and we had felt an urgency to do so. Imagine our relief (and gratitude) that we had obeyed that counsel, as here we sat in the living room telling much bigger our kids what was going on.
Some of them asked fair questions: What does this mean? What is it going to look like?
We were happy to say “Except for this house, we owe no money. We have no credit card debt. If we did, we would be in SERIOUS trouble. If we’re careful, we should be able to ride this out in a way that won’t feel much different from our current day to day living, for as long as it takes Dad to find a job again.” I cannot verbalize how reassuring that was to be able to say that to our children. I cannot tell you how relieved we were to have taken the steps necessary to be able to say them. “The most important thing in our life at this time” we told them, “is THIS HOUSE! We cannot. lose. this house. Every effort will be dedicated to keeping this house safe.”
We knew first hand what it was like to lose a house, and we were determined to not go through that twice. It was clear to us, if we did lose the house – we would likely never recover from it. That was October. It’s a full time job looking for a full time job, and it went on a lot longer than we expected it to. Who knew? I recall saying aloud to whoever was near enough to hear – several time during those months “Who could have guessed this would go on as long as it has? There is no doubt in my mind, that if we had had credit card debt, we would have lost this house.”
The years that followed were difficult years – mostly emotionally. Dan was older and getting back into his profession proved harder than we expected. He had ‘specialized’ for too long, and his field of expertise was too specific, not currently marketable. It became evident that his career as he knew it, was over; he began looking elsewhere and finally took a temporary retail job to re-enter the workforce. The pay was inadequate, but our resources were running low and any money was money. In retrospect, it was the most difficult trial of our life together up till that point, and repercussions went on for years. We continued to be grateful for prophetic counsel to get out of debt. We were grateful for our commitment to follow that counsel – which ultimately saved us much unnecessary grief. It was hard enough without the extra pain that could have accompanied consumer debt. We were grateful for the promises that come with paying tithing. We learned empathy in a way that we never could have learned any other way. We felt we had been resourceful, but we learned to be more resourceful. Our kids – most of them being old enough to remember – came out of that time with a healthy respect for the dangers of credit card debt.
Truth is – as hard as those years were, I am glad for them, and would gladly re-do them for the lessons we learned, particularly for the lessons our kids learned – life lessons that they were able to learn from an arm’s length. Close enough, but not too close. I used to tell them “Don’t remake our mistakes. Make your own. Otherwise, you’re wasting them, and what a waste of time that would be.” If we would all follow the wise counsel of prophets, and learn from the experience of others, we might save ourselves grief that doesn’t need to be.
With the Rule of 3 in mind, specifically SHELTER –
consider the circumstances of the many people without houses right now. In any season that’s a tragedy, but in winter in a city like ours its unthinkable. There are things we can do to ease the burdens of others; agencies we can serve with and donate to.
Ask yourself:
“Have I done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad? and made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.
Has anyone’s burden been lighter today because I was willing to share?
Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?
When they needed my helped was I there?”
– Will L. Thompson
What is your plan to prepare yourself against any possibility of losing SHELTER for your family?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Warmly,
Cindy Suelzle