5 Strategies for Navigating the Financial Squeeze
Photo by Adam Śmigielski
Today I want to share some thoughts about how I’m navigating some financial constriction personally and how it fits into our collective journey inside of capitalism.
Before I tell you some of the things that are helping me right now, I want to be open about my socioeconomic position, because it informs my needs and what I have access to, and also because I believe it’s healthy to bring these often-shadowy things into the light, especially when the Moon is full in the sign of Scorpio (as it is today).
I'm a white-bodied, cisgendered, hetero woman who is married with two kids. I make a life with my spouse Chris, and together we own the home that we live in, partly because of financial help we received from our parents. We’re both self-employed, have graduate degrees, and could (theoretically) be employed by an organization if we needed to be. Our income over the last few years has been a fluctuating blend of revenue from our businesses, state aid, and some sprinkles of family support in particularly tight times. We have more money than many people we share this Earth with, and much less than others.
While we’re so wealthy in many ways, we (like you, perhaps) have also been feeling the effects of having to take time off to care for sick children and family members over the last few years of the Covid pandemic, losing Covid-time provisions like free healthcare, and the fact that it seems like prices for every single thing keep going up and up.
A gentle reminder:
Money is both important and not important.
Money is mostly just zeros and ones inside a computer database, completely useless except for what it represents. And, the effects of having or not having money are very real for people, especially those who don’t have access to enough.
So wherever you are on the financial spectrum, whether you’re feeling great about your socioeconomic position today or have been experiencing financial crisis, we need to remember that money is both necessary inside of the economic system we inhabit and, ultimately, meaningless.
Here's a short overview of five of the strategies that have helped me as I’ve navigated financially tight points in the past, but especially this last year. I hope they’re of service to you in some way today:
1: Understanding this point in capitalism’s history
Before I understood how capitalism began and how it’s designed, I would feel a lot of shame anytime we were having a hard time financially.
Now, I understand that my choices about money are only a part of my experiences with it - that we only have a small set of choices to make in the first place, and that our shame and silence helps to maintain the status quo.
I’ve also taken so much comfort in knowing how many people before me have had to survive and make beautiful lives in the midst of state terror, land enclosures, forced wage labor, and famine. If our ancestors could do it, so can we.
2: Letting go of class ascension
Having been born into a poor family surrounded by capitalist culture, I came to believe that it was part of my purpose in this lifetime to ascend into a higher class than I was raised in. The story I was fed was that here in the United States, we were supposed to get wealthier and wealthier, and that if we didn’t, it was as if all the hard work of our forebears was wasted.
Accepting that I have as much (or less) money as my parents did at this point in their lives - and that this might actually be okay - has helped me feel lighter as I relate to the realities of our financial needs.
3: Working with what I’ve got
While I certainly don’t want to fetishize being poor, I do see a lot of delight in living a frugal lifestyle.
Consider some of the skills that, while trendy now, were just necessities for many of our ancestors: repairing tools or furniture rather than buying new, mending clothing, making herbal tinctures with what you’ve got in your garden, and stretching what’s in the pantry.
It can feel really empowering to use what’s right around you to meet your needs rather than always relying on money, and it can be a healthy way to channel your energy while you wait for that next check, or determine your next step.
4: Fortifying myself where it counts
It’s easy to feel like all of this would be better if I just worked more and made more money, and that is certainly one strategy that you could employ if it’s available to you.
I also have to remember that the way things are set up economically is designed to grind us down, and this isn't going to change anytime soon. Where we have the choice, it’s really important to fortify ourselves in ways that are nourishing, taking seriously the fact that no one in power cares whether we can meet our needs or not.
Alongside good sleep, hydration, and healthy food, one of the things that is most fortifying to me is re-enchantment: seeing this world as an enchanted place. This is an anticapitalist strategy because, as Silvia Federici writes in her book Caliban and the Witch, “The world has to be ‘disenchanted’ in order to be dominated.”
When I feel worried about inflation or our insufficient retirement funds, I try to put myself on the ground among the trees, the sky, and the birds and find strength in the true magic of their existence.
5: Keeping the options wide open
One of the most helpful strategies I've employed over the years has been to regularly identify and list out for my worried mind all of the ways that we can access money and letting go (as much as I can) of the stories that are attached to them. So when we get into a tight spot, we try to get real about what our options are. Can we sell things, cut things out, pick up a gig, look into a job in case this doesn't work out, etc.? It takes some heart-centered openness and creative thinking, but it can be a relief to realize that you do have other options.
A big piece that I've had to unwind in the process of keeping our options open is the belief that I "shouldn't have to struggle."
And while I have seen that the Universe is naturally abundant and that we can do meaningful work and still meet our needs, the belief that I shouldn't ever have to struggle financially keeps me out of reality. It also keeps me out of solidarity with so many other people and living beings who experience struggle throughout their lives.
What seems most important as we navigate the financially prickly times is holding on to our integrity, finding a healthy balance between personal responsibility and the need to hold the larger system accountable for what it forces us into.
I hope that some of these ideas are useful to you and that you feel less alone in your own work / meaning / money journey today.
This piece was originally shared to my email newsletter subscribers. You can learn more and sign up here.