After keeping a close watch on the weather and roads that I’d be traveling on my bus trip, I made the choice not to get on the bus this morning.
I made the decision yesterday morning since there was still a state of emergency in Oklahoma, Kansas being a mess, and in Missouri they had a no travel advisory.
Making the choice wasn’t easy, but I’m just not interested in getting stranded or in an accident. My ticket was not refundable, and since Greyhound didn’t issue a cancellation notice on their site for leaving Albuquerque this morning, there isn’t a chance of us getting a credit for a later date.
I was able to get a refund on my hotel room though.
I suppose if I had credit cards to rely on I could have taken the chance and gotten on the bus, knowing that if we did get stranded I could stay at a hotel or motel near by. But we made a choice many years ago never to have credit cards (even for emergencies) so throwing caution to the wind doesn’t work for me. It seems so easy doesn’t it? Just get some plastic and all your troubles would be solved. Not so. Unfortunately, credit cards just convey a false sense of security that you can do whatever you want to do…even in a major blizzard (some people are really stupid). In the end, however, you still pay the price.
Beyond the lack of credit cards and unlimited cash supply is the fact that if there were delays in the bus schedule for more than just a few hours, I would totally miss Saturday’s play productions (there are two), especially since the bus doesn’t get into Atlantic City until Saturday morning.
Because we don’t have credit cards we are limited in what and how we do things. Car rental agencies expect a credit card on file. Some hotels and motels as well. Those kinds of limits are a lifestyle choice, and we refuse to be victims to the weather, or any other type of threat. Knowing our own financial limitations keeps us protected especially when the impulse of false security aka credit cards are available at the snap of a wallet fastener.
I don’t have any faith in credit cards, back up money supplies, or false senses of security. It goes against everything we believe in.
Could you do it? Could you live without ANY credit cards? I mean none at all, not even for emergencies. The world-at-large believes we need them to function, but is that the real truth? And, if you choose to live without such things, would you be looked down upon as naive or stupid? Where and in what do we put our faith in?
The reality of our lifestyle choices to work towards being completely 100% debt free, hurts at times, but like any good discipline, we gather wisdom and patience in such things, relying more on God and less on the world.
That is a truth, that in the end, satisfies completely…even when your heart hurts from cancelled plans.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
We have been debt free but still had a card for emergencies. We also use it to make big purchases (that we then immediately pay off) because it is issued for a store that we purchase a lot of needful things from; our purchases build up “bucks” that we then use to purchase more supplies for “free”. If we’re going to make the big purchases anyway, we prefer to get something back on it in addition to the initial purchase. But we wouldn’t freak out if credit cards just went away either.
I think everyone will live the way they feel most led and comfortable. We’re moving away from big purchases all together, and working towards second hand or even free products, rather than needing to buy big.
Very true! I did have someone say to me once, “Well, I’ll ALWAYS have a mortgage payment, that’s just a fact of LIFE.” Ummmm…. no, it’s not. (Said person now has TWO mortgage payments. *sigh*) I’ve given up on trying to inform people of that mindset though and just focus on our needs/wants.
I’m hoping that we are done with big purchases for a while – but then again, I consider anything over $100 “big” and I’m too cynical and untrusting, I suppose, because I get skittish about buying things secondhand (what? no warranty? what if it BREAKS???). I’m sure some of that is because we don’t have a good basis in any one area because we move so much – it’s not like we know the trustworthy places in town. lol We just feel like a lot of things are “catch up” for us at this point – we’ve been able to soak up knowledge from books and videos, but not access in-person classes or actually DO a lot of these things. Didn’t expect to have to hemorrhage money to get started but presumably that smooths out sooner rather than later.
There’s a book Dom just got from the library called Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them by Rolfe Cobleigh that I instantly fell in love with. We need to own this book. It has so many lost skills and simple contraptions that I thought we needed to purchase from a farm store, and while it was written in 1910 and speaks of how farmers are starting to use the automobile to transport their goods lol, I feel the knowledge contained in this little book could help bring us back to earth. We’ve been sold a bill of goods that in order to have a “proper” anything, we need to buy it. This book (and others like it) empowers us to make our own way without reinventing the wheel so to speak.
When I read that we can make a one man butchering stand for cattle and pigs, I was hooked. I worried that we would need to somehow find a butcher with a USDA facility to butcher any larger animals out in mountains somewhere. That’s the mindset I was in until I realized that Dom and I could easily butcher a full market sized pig or even cattle together, on our own property. Go figure!
I’m also interested in learning how other cultures farm, build, raise animals, garden and so on, because there is a wealth of knowledge that goes beyond purchasing power, or our own American culture.
Since agriculture is one of the most important aspects of our lives, I’ve often looked to the French for agrarian skills and know how. Probably because I love French cooking, and crave (too light a word to describe the yearning) using the different fats, herbs, preserved meats (confits), veggies, fruits, cheese and wines they have spent their lifetimes perfecting. Preparing food is an art form for them (and me), so naturally I look to the great skills of past peasants, farmers, chefs, butchers, and craftsmen to help me create a fresh new perspective and way of life suited to our particular family.
That book is on our wishlist – I’ll have to bump it up. Thanks for the tip!
Yes, we’ve (societal we) definitely been sold a line about having to BUY STUFF to make things work…. and we’ve lost so many skills and so much knowledge falling for that. *sigh*