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In Biden's America, 1 in 6 U.S. households can't afford their energy bills-
[pjmedia.com]

SpikeTalon 10 Sep 7
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God blessed me with a childhood of abject poverty. (My father deserted my mom and their 4 kids, leaving her with bad credit and not much work experience). He gave me a Mom who knew how to pinch a penny until it screamed. We learned the difference between needs and wants and didn’t spend much time thinking about the latter. We seldom missed a meal and ate a lot of roadkill deer meat along with things we grew in our gardens. We learned the value of working hard and contributing to the family. When I left home, I worked for $1/hour as an electrician apprentice to put myself through college only being homeless for very short periods of time (like Christmas break at Berea College when I slept in a sleeping bag with 4 or 5 layers of clothes waking myself hourly to ensure I didn’t freeze in my sleep) My mother sent me care packages consisting of envelopes with soup powder to which I only needed to add water (I had a mailbox at the college) and I ate a cup of soup every day over the break except Christmas Day at which time I ate two cups. I found lots of day labor odd jobs paying as much as $5 or even $6 per hour to help make ends meet too.

This experience taught me the need to plan for the worst and always find a way to set aside a little for when times would inevitably get even worse. With this in my rear view mirror, God has prepared me to get by on next to nothing. Not everybody has been blessed with this type of experience, so I have had many opportunities to help others get through those “impossible” situations when they arise.

Even during the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, people in our neighborhood looked like they were in a transe and just needed a little helping hand to pull together and start the recovery. Our family was able to assess and prioritize the needs and ignore the wants in order to prioritize the vector for the neighborhood. Our house ended up being the center for communication and necessary supplies for our neighborhood until people could pick up the ball and care for themselves. We didn’t have looting (most of us are trained gun owners) and the recovery efforts were much more organized and efficient than those offered by government. By the time utilities were restored to our neighborhood (less than 2 months), we were accustomed with living without them and making great strides toward cleanup, recovery of pre-disaster life, etc… Most neighbors could fend for themselves with little help.

If you can’t provide necessities for yourself, your family and some neighbors without the “help” of the government, you might want to make a plan and start working toward the ability to do so now. Start with learning the difference between needs and wants and how to say “No” to wants for a while. Expect the government to be a hinderance in most cases and add that into your calculations. Most of all recognize that your true help comes from God and ask Him for the help you need. You’ll be pleased to see Him supply abundantly just when you need it most. Don’t forget to thank Him!

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Last January I moved from a studio apartment to a house outside of town. I had to enter the LEAP program to heat it. I know all about this.

Inflation is hurting many people and it looks unlikely that the economy will get better soon. So sorry you're being pinched.

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Perhaps we should see their definition of "affordabillity" before we pass judgment on that. Just thinking out loud here: perhaps if a family forgoes on things like cable tv and internet access - or spending money on fast food and snacks in the household - or limiting kids extracurricular activities like soccer, gymnastics, baseball, basketball, etc to sending them outside to play and make up their own games etc. Or start their own B-Ball games or Baseball games, or ...etc.
I'm thinking about my own childhood. There were very few families who had money to spend for those things. We had one car most of the time and sometimes we didn't have a car at all. We (boys) ran shirtless and barefoot all summer long - we all (girls and boys) wore handmedowns. We would walk to the store to get bread, milk, lunch meat or ground beef and peanut butter...etc. There was no sodapop in the house, no potato chips. Maybe once or twice all summer we would all sit around the front porch and yard eating watermelon. Oh and no boxed dry cereals - no cheerios, no raisin bran, no sugar coated cereals - it was usually oatmeal or malt-o-meal or cream of wheat with a little milk and a sprinkle of sugar for breakfast. Oh and maybe a slice of toast.
We paid our own rent and bought our own food and paid our own utility bills and we had a telephone and we never received "gov't assistance"
I am always skeptical when I hear that phrase "most households can't afford" this that or the other. Yet today most households have cable and internet service - they have almost as many cellular phones are there are people in the household - including children - they often eat at McDs or at Burger King or Dairy Queen...etc. They often buy pizza too.
The thing is that when it comes to cost of living and household expenses few if any "households" even consider the monies spent on extraneous and unnecessary things. There is a problem with regard to people who can even or will even consider that many things they take for granted - as though they were entitlements are really just "discretionary spending".
"Can't afford" - always gets my attention. I always want (yet never get) a realistic, objective showing of that which are necessities and those which are NOT.

What you mentioned above is/was certainly a legit scenario, but taking into consideration the times we now live in and the current shape of our economy, I'm inclined to think there is validity in the claim linked to above, and certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Discretionary spending is a very real thing among many people, and yet for some others they truly do not have the money to buy certain things, and I personally know individuals who would fall under both categories there.

@iThink You raise some good points.

@KeithThroop Thanks - the upshot of all that is that literally next to 0 - zero - none will allow themselves to hear it much less consider the probability that they indulge in "discretionary" spending.
I have always considered television and movies to be somewhat destructive to a civil society in that they offer a very tempting illusion of prosperity and wealth that does NOT exist. As people grew into a habit - and addiction of watching the tube their base tendencies toward "class envy" accelerated into resentment when they realized there just is not enough money in their own households to live in a spacious house, drive a nice car, wear the trendy clothes, hair, nails, dine out, have a maid or other hired help, indulge every whim. There in TV / Movie land is this implied/tacit idea that even "working class people" can go play golf, dine out, take the family to see a movie and buy movie theater snacks...
TV viewers got the idea that that is how "everyone but them" is living. That illusion is still going strong today.
When they claim "we can't afford" to pay that higher price for gasoline or electricity...what they really mean is that "I am entitled to my habitual and current lifestyle" and I am barely getting by as it is. Which is probably true. But then they don't see their own discretionary spending as discretionary.

Yes - I did grow up the way I described in my earlier post. That's how it was. But we all also learned to read, write, spell and punctuate well enough to become self sufficient and productive adults. We learned to respect authority and the law - we learned good manners and we learned most of all that there are NO entitlements.
Oh and one more thing - we learned to distinguish between real life conditions and that "fantasy" of a lifestyle that TV and movies sells.

@iThink As a pastor, I could give many examples of people over the years who have come to me or to our church seeking financial help, claiming they can't make ends meet, but who actually had plenty of money if they just spent it more wisely. Sometimes we sit down with them and help them go over their expenses, demonstrating to them that they do have enough money after all. We also teach them to budget and impress upon them that they need to learn discipline in their spending habits.

To give just one example, some years ago there was a young couple (who were not part of our church) that my wife and I were helping with marriage problems, some of which were due to their difficult finances. They kept asking for help paying various bills, usually their electric bill. I noticed, however, that both of them smoked, which is a very expensive habit. So, one evening I asked each of them how much they smoked, how many packs a week, and we did the math. As it turned out, they had more than enough money to pay their bills, but they chose to spend that money on smoking instead. So, I told them that we would help them pay that month's electric bill if they agreed to quit smoking and to begin paying their own bills. I told them that our church would not subsidize their smoking habit. They just got angry, and we didn't give them any financial help. We had offered the help they really needed, and they didn't want it.

Oh, you mean they should live within THEIR means, like our examples from previous generations?

@KeithThroop at our church, we had the same experience trying to help people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills. We had a food pantry (we bought food cheap to give to those in need) and a “clothes closet” where we gave away donated clothes. I taught financial management classes in the church as well as working in those other two ministries. One time the pastor came to me and asked me to help a young couple with their budget before we would give them any more money to pay utilities and rent, then he referred them to me. I told them I’d help them get tot a point where they would be self sufficient and all I’d need from them is to know how much they currently made (exactly) and what their current debt was and their current expenses. They were unwilling to provide me with that information, because it was an invasion on their privacy and I was supposed to just pay their bills. I told them we weren’t in the business of keeping people dependent upon others to fulfill their responsibilities; we were there to help them become self sufficient themselves. They angrily stomped out.

This is what people mean when they say they daughters help from churches and the churches refused. By the way, we did pay a lot of utility bills for families who were living without utilities, but we didn’t make it a habit. We also paid rent or hotel rooms for people leaving jail and needing a hand up, but we made it clear this was just to get them started.

@Daveclark5 Sound like our churches have very similar perspectives, brother.

@KeithThroop perfect example of what I have been talking about. I would be willing to bet that that young couple also spent plenty money on weed in addition to their tobacco addiction.

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