The $10,000 Question

A randomish gift from my mother-in-law came sometime in April. It's a magazine called Geez. There is an apprehensive excitement that I experience when someone gives me something to read, be it a book, an article or in this case a subscription. If it's from my Grandma Sherwood, I know it will be a good read, she has an eye for my taste. If it's from anyone else, I'm not so sure. Hit and miss.

Boy oh boy was this a hit.

I'll leave it up to you to check out the website and find out what Geez is all about. For now, I'd like to respond to a few things I read in the magazine that affected me greatly.

Geez sets up their issues with a particular theme, this one being asceticism. More with less (or less with less, as they aptly put it). After reading through several articles on the subject, this one hit the nail on the head for me. I really like how the guy just puts it straight. Plus I've always been a fan of the whole balance idea ("its all about balance..."), and after reading all the radical ideals set out in the rest of the issue, I find his view refreshing. The style is cool too. It conforms well to what editor Will Braun says about the writing in the mag: "It's like sitting around and talking about faith," he says, "but you're doing it on Saturday night, over drinks. Not on Sunday morning. You're having a good time talking about meaningful and deeply important matters with some chuckles in between."

Speaking of Will Braun, he writes a really challenging essay smack dab in the middle of the issue. He discusses in four parts the cultural shift of doing with less (read part four here). But he doesn't stop at presenting challenges without solutions, like a lot of contemporary liberal writing (and much of the rest of Geez, and Harpers for that matter). He doesn't even stop after giving us a solution. He goes all the way, and sticks his neck out.

The fifth part of his essay discusses his personal goal: to be among the 5 billion poorest people on earth. I'd like to know what his reference is for this, but he says that in order to drop from the 1 billion richest down to the join the 5 billion rest, your yearly income has to be around $10,000 (Canadian, I'm guessing). His reasoning? The 1 billion richest people apparently amass at least 60% of the world's income. So in order to join the majority (and leave the minority of richness behind) he has decided to cut his income down, try to reach $10,000, and hopefully go even beyond that.

(Note: I found this website which calculates your ranking based on 2003 World Bank numbers. However, trial and error for the 1 billionth richest spot required an income of $2306. So I don't know where Will Braun got his info, but whatever.)

Other things jumped out at me while I paged through the articles, like makeaffluencehistory.org and articles about getting rid of your car, and several anti air travel advocates. The ascetic argument cannot refer to cash alone, eco-friendliness is of course a concern. But for me, it's not so clear cut. The environment comes second in this whole "less with less" thing for me. I guess I'm partially humanist in my thinking, plus I tend to be a little skeptical of extreme environmentalist claims. Being an engineer doesn't help.... we think we can fix (and in my case, treat) any environmental problem with enough ingenuity and money.

Basically, this issue of the magazine has had a profound impact on how I think about money and how to go about the rest of my life as an affluent person. I've always been resistant to the social pressure - now that I have a job, it's time to buy a house, fill it with kids, and get a better car... and a second car.... and a big screen TV.... and a cottage on a lake in the Muskokas. So I've decided to see what I can do about cutting into my income. This is a long term project, my friends. It doesn't mean going out and getting a job that pays less... that would be silly. Being an engineer myself, and Rose heading into teaching, our gross income will get pretty ridiculous pretty fast. If we could bring our spending as low as say $20,000 a year, that's a fair chunk of extra money. So where does all that cash go? It starts with paying down the debt we owe, but my hope is that it continues throughout our lives. How little can we live with? Do we need to buy a house? If we do, hopefully the mortgage will be less than what we pay in rent right now (is that even possible??). It means my dream of owning an Acura TSX might have to be downgraded to dreaming of owning a Honda Fit (still dreaming, probably). It means that once the debt paying is done, the excess monies will have to go somewhere. How about here? Or here? Or here? Should be fun.

I feel that it's the big things we North Americans like to spend our money on that set us apart from the rest of the world. Those are the things I'd like to tackle. So next time you catch me buying a case of beer, don't bug me about how that 35 bucks could feed someone for a month. How about the $300, 000 average price for a home in Canada? That's a lot of months.