Money Talks No. 4: The Hopes

by Dan Masterton

While I can easily come off as a joyless old miser, I am also a person of hope and optimism.

For all my uneasiness with aforementioned squishy things, I also see plenty of times where others are doing just what I’d hoped they’d do, and affirming much of what I hold true, and times when things are evolving positively.

These are those hopeful things.

Political Developments

Universal Basic Income (UBI). I must admit that I’m a bit of a #YangGang guy. There are times when Andrew Yang acts or talks a bit too weird, and times when I think he may just be addicted to founding things. But on the whole, I appreciate a thinker who zooms out to see problems with fresh framing, someone who seeks to solve them with creative ideas rather than just slogging around in tired, ineffective, lukewarm responses and tired incumbency.

I was deeply skeptical of UBI – the concept that every person should receive a regular cash stipend as a baseline income – when Yang started talking about it constantly during his way-too-early campaign launch. The more I listened to him and the more I read about it, the more I was positively surprised. Here’s his pitch – you can disagree, but you won’t wonder what he’s thinking. UBI has been increasingly found to reduce poverty and instability and have an upward effect on quality of life indicators, while apparently not disincentivizing work. (Some summaries from Forbes, Marketplace, and U of Chicago offer some preliminary evidence for this.)

The value-added tax and economic restructuring involved would be immense. Nonetheless, I was heartened by the mainstreaming of this policy by Yang and others. It showed society may be very gradually evolving to reframe what every citizen can and should expect of government to achieve greater equity.

Pilot for a restructured Child Tax Credit. For the final six months of 2021, parents received cash payments for dependent children. Essentially, a pandemic relief bill temporarily restructured the perennial child tax credit. The $2,000 per child that parents can deduct when filing taxes in the following year was increased to $3,000 for kids aged 6-17 and $3,600 for younger kids and broken into monthly payments. So instead of paying fully withheld taxes for twelve months and then receiving a portion of that back through filing in spring of the next year, parents were realizing the credit in real time, without lag, and as cash rather than a credit against owed taxes.

The conversion of this benefit from delayed credit to live cash – along with the adjustments on tax liabilities for the poorest parents – did wonders for children and families. In broad strokes, it lowered the poverty rate among children in the US by 40%!!! In practical terms, it moved money around to benefit parents in the moment instead of deferring it. It was helpful to making-ends-meet, real-time needs by acknowledging that cash is the most impactful benefit to provide families.

Corporate Minimum Tax and Buy-Back Excise Tax. The details of this are a bit more complicated than I fully understand. The basics are that the Inflation Reduction Act makes it so that many corporations will not be able to use loopholes to get under 15% for their tax rate, and if they buy back their own stock from the market, they’ll pay a 1% tax on it. These are two small ways to try to push back against tax dodging and slippery stock trading, an incremental positive against macro-greed.

The Growth of Collective Action

First, I’m not talking specifically of GoFundMe, though I’m not not talking about it either. I often have two big skepticisms of these crowd fundraisers. First, do many of these people really need the help or are they kind of just seeing what attention and money is out there? Second, are we overly glorifying social injustice that causes poverty or instability by celebrating crowd fundraising?

That said, I do acknowledge the place of this approach, and do celebrate limited uses and their successes – especially this one for an 11-year-old boy whose parents both passed in a two-year span, including his dad who was a Chicago Bears beat reporter. And I have wondered if there’s a happy medium, not unlike public broadcasting pledge drives, that might become a more common model for Catholic parishes, schools, and institutions. When it comes to resourcing a broad-based public good like NPR, I don’t get the same discomfort I might get from a middle-class family asking for help with funeral costs, or something.

Additionally, though its purity and definite goodness can be so fickle and difficult to pin down, I do see some promise in the community-organizing possible through social media networks. It’s sort of unknowable whether or not any seemingly good idea will gain traction. But plenty of positive examples exist, from the mass power of K-pop group BTS and their fans to the light-hearted hilarity of things like Boaty McBoatFace.

I also have a deep affection for classic community spaces, highlighted by libraries and park districts. Taxes are so often associated with politically charged debates and deeply polarizing disagreements; I enjoy looking at my property taxes for our family home and seeing the portions of our money that go not just to our public schools but to our forest preserves, our park district, and our library district.

I build my kids’ activities around the park district and library offerings. I love how it's local, a fruit of our community’s contributions, and a place where everyone is welcome and able to be involved. There can be better facilities, better coaching, or tighter ratios in private organizations – and as my kids show clear passions and gifts, we’ll surely splurge here and there – but I love the broad-base, low-barrier path that’s so available to us and all our neighbors here. It’s a positive, impactful fruit of collective action between taxpayers, local civil servants, and even some corporate benevolence, too.

The Greening of Life

The circles I run in lead me to selection bias, but it sure doesn’t seem like environmentalism is quite the fringy topic it once was. I remember the dogged activism of friends in high school who fought just to get dedicated recycling bins in our cafeteria and get people to use them, let alone succeed in convincing people to buy used clothes or incorporate meatless meals. Now, those ideas, and campaigns seeking deeper, wider change, are taking stronger root and becoming increasingly consensus, mainstream issues.

My hope is nurtured not just by this greater attention and awareness but also by being a part of the chain reaction. It’s fun to read others’ tweets, get sent links, and have in-person conversations about changes people are making to be more green. And I am finding opportunities to share the changes I’ve made in a way that allows others to learn and consider them.

I am not particularly timid about doing something abnormal or unpopular, but it is neat when things you think are good and worthwhile catch on more widely. It’s especially (selfishly) edifying when it seems like you were an early adopter, or maybe even an early influencer, to help bring exposure to positive trends. I had the idea to suggest “green-packing” in a reflection during the pandemic, the practice of declining napkins, straws, flatware, and other single-use or otherwise unneeded extras with carryout food. It’s been neat to see apps and ordering services start to incorporate this consideration into their interfaces (even if it’s horribly unlikely that any of them ever read my article).

Here's Panera's version-

And this is Chipotle's version-

Keep an eye out for these toggle boxes!
Decline the extraneous stuff and avoid waste.

The People Close to Me

The potency of Christian faith comes from its incarnational nature – our belief and our truth isn’t just abstraction or philosophy but rather is incarnated in the person of Christ. So these ideals and principles, these uneasy feelings and these hopes, aren’t just something borne in a vacuum or discussed around a seminar table. They come into play in lives, in actions, in relationships. And I’m grateful for people around me who model whole, integrated ways of putting love in action.

I’m grateful to have friends who not only practice green living, but are able to share what they’re reading and thinking and doing, and do so in a non-judgmental and inviting way. My friends have taught me about bamboo-based (instead of plastic-based) products that are more sustainably sourced, dual-flush/low-flow home toilets (I’d only seen them out and about), the finer points of recycling and sorting, the scope of compostable items and materials, and more. Especially when we’re visiting each others’ homes, I feel like I always learn a new wrinkle of greener living that I can carry forward.

When our group of close friends converges for our annual group vacation, we rotate between staying in each of our family homes, and the hospitality really shines. One year, our hosts gave up their bed and bedroom to my wife and me since my wife was pregnant; they relegated themselves to air mattresses to keep the expectant mother comfortable. Another year, our hosts gave up their bedroom because it was the only way to fit all the guests under one roof, and they stayed at a hotel! And another year, our friend’s parents invited us to their beautiful home out in the countryside. It is a big property and big living space, but it is a great example of how having lots of room isn’t for luxury or status but to be earnest, inclusive hosts.

I’ll never know the extent to which I successfully model or share my ideals. And maybe it’s best that I never know! But I hope with a “be good for goodness’ sake” and “act like someone’s watching” type mindset, I can keep striving to identify goods and follow them with right actions, a metanoia that keeps the BS stripped away and keeps me focused. I think the greatest propulsion toward this is the Christian loving example of those close to me, and the ways their charitable and just living grounds me in Christ.

Money Talks No. 3: The Squishies

by Dan Masterton

For all the good of identifying positive habits to practice, there persists plenty of other things that make me feel uneasy or even uncomfortable. My wife, Katherine, and I often use the word “squishy” for this – some combination of discomfort, objection, and skepticism.

With money and things, these are my squishies, and I will call them my squishies. And they shall be mine.

Big, Empty Houses

When I would teach social justice to teenagers, I would hyperbolically put it this way: if you want to buy a ten-bedroom house, you are welcome to buy it, but if those ten bedrooms aren’t all in regular, needed use by your family and those in your household, you better be ready and willing (and maybe even proactively seeking) to host people experiencing homelessness or other needs in the open bedrooms. St. Thomas Aquinas, as quoted in Rerum novarum §22, taught that we have a right to private property but we must view it as common to all when it is needed by others.

A house should befit a family, both today and for whatever hoped-for or prepared-for future. I understand having an extra bedroom(s) for expected or hoped-for kids down the line, for work from home, for frequent out-of-town guests, especially if grandparents, siblings, or close friends don’t live locally but want to visit, or if there’s a likelihood of multi-generational living down the line. I get uneasy when those bedrooms sit empty and unused much of the time; on a similar note, it feels silly to me when “bonus rooms”, basement spaces, etc. go virtually unused.

Life goals, man.

Second, a house can and should have space for the hospitality that the household hopes to provide, but hospitality space has to be used consistently. When I used to watch House Hunters, it galled me when buyers obsessed over the hosting functionality of a house ahead of its practicality as a home for daily life. Often, I’d imagine the homeliness of a house for the household is likely closely tied to its consistency of hospitality.

Those are intellectual evaluations. Here's the reality, which is front of mind: no house will be perfect and completely efficient, and most of us will never have the means and timing to custom-build a right-sized home right where we need it. However, we can max out our mindfulness on the front end. I think we often ask (myself included), “How much house can we afford?” Then we go and look at the top end of the budget at the biggest, nicest houses we can find. I’m torn because I understand, especially for parents including myself, the desire for stability and comfort at home, but I feel squishy about how we perhaps over-emphasize fanciness, aesthetics, and size in pursuit of those ideals.

Antsy Spending Habits

Trying to decide if something is so worn out or broken that it warrants replacement is very subjective, and an easy place to rationalize.

I think it could go a long way just to apply a waiting period to these choices. It could force some time in between the thought to buy and the shopping, as well as in between the shopping and the potential purchase.

Cars are a tough one. When you pay off a vehicle’s financing and own it free and clear, it’s definitely tempting to identify its value, add that to a new financing line, and see what cars are out there at that price. The alternative is to simply continue in the car you now own with no monthly payments and drive it for free. If you really want to be proactive, you could take the monthly amount you had been paying, and put some or all of it in savings to pay down the cost of the next car you get, hopefully after driving the current car for free for a bit. I am currently living in this limbo as our fully owned car nears 100,000 miles and our need for a van nears.

Clothes are another. If it’s an integral hobby for you, then it comes from that constrained splurging, or if it’s a treat you allow yourself here or there, it can work. The tricky thing is that e-commerce has made it incredibly easy to entertain the impulse, buy, and ship. And when things don’t fit or look right, it’s easy to return. I get squishy feelings when someone takes a chance on a $50 item, tries it on, finds it doesn’t work, and exchanges it, or even uses it as cash down toward a more expensive item. The ease of purchase and return/exchange shouldn’t just grease the skids toward buying; it should also slow down our rationalizations to buy and spend more, and instead show us the simplicity of a pure return and refund. We be just as quick to spend that $50 as to get it back when it doesn’t work.

Then the ideas of “refreshing” and “updating” can really bleed into everything, especially in home ownership. A home is full of opportunities to tweak or upgrade – dining furniture sets, dinnerware, couches and sofas, lamps and tables, rugs, window curtains, bed linens, frames and wall decor, and so much more. If you wanted to do it, you could go to HomeGoods or Bed, Bath, and Beyond or Target and come home with a new item to swap in or add constantly.

This whole squishiness comes down to a thought that most of us could stand to be waaaaaaay less antsy. We could easily use more of our things for longer periods of time and reduce a lot of the buying.

Fixations on Personal Wealth and De-Regulation

I’m a big fan of budgeting, saving, and investing. And it’s a capacity enabled in part by my privilege. I think some attentive work now prepares us immensely for short- and long-term future considerations. However, I don’t think it’s something that should consume us unless money is tight and there’s present-day issues to manage constantly – definitely a place where the regular mental energy I spend is in excess of the attention this needs.

I get uneasy, and a bit upset, at the obsession over amassing personal wealth, and how some are so wealthy that they, and generations after them, could live on passive income alone from things like rental properties in which a person is barely involved and puts in little to no labor. That extent of wealth, even when it funds philanthropy, is excessive and complicit in social injustice.

And I think it’s wrong when individuals and companies resist reasonable regulation of investment actions and use accounting might and loopholes to wiggle out of tax liability. There should be no wealthy $0 tax-payers.

I would not say I’m a full-on “tax the rich” proponent; I would say that, while “wealth tax” policies have typically failed, that there needs to be some kind of minimum that sets a baseline for what people of certain net worth, and companies of certain revenue, must pay, perhaps as a ratio of their conservatively estimated net worth.

It’s sick that big companies and wealthy people can utilize accounting to pay less in taxes than many working class and impoverished people.

Let's allow ourselves a smidge of imagination and
be able to conceive of rich and wealthy folks
who are also willing to pay a legitimate tax rate.

Causing Tension with People Close to Me

I think what makes me most uneasy is when I can tell, and when I know, that my outlook annoys, bothers, or even upsets people close to me.

It’s hard when someone asks my opinion about something relating to money or things because I’m not always sure how candid I feel like being. I typically look carefully at multiple views or considerations on an issue, and speak from those perspectives, before I necessarily get too far into personal commentary. The difference with questions on money-and-things questions is that I have stronger, more deeply held personal views, so my ready-to-share opinions rush out ahead of empathy and deliberation.

My approach varies from case to case, but I generally have adopted this principle: I will live this minimalism and resist consumerism as well as I can for myself, but I won’t have much, if any, expectations on how those around me respond to these questions. When decisions affect mostly me or only me, I feel secure being as austere as I can; when they affect my wife or kids or family or friends, I try to calibrate my comments and actions and be more deferent.

There are times where I choose to listen to the question or discussion and simply decline comment. Other times, I will just ask a leading question or give a very brief reply. Once in a while, I might attempt to explain what I’m thinking, knowing it likely may not be received well.

I try to pick my moments carefully because, even if I feel what I have to say or do is worthwhile, it still stinks to feel uneasy after an interaction with a loved one.

Money Talks No. 2: Some Minimalism Minimums

by Dan Masterton

(This is the second of my Money Talks. I invite you to read my intro note before reading this reflection.)

I am very practical minded. So when it comes to money, things, and simpler living, it has definitely helped me to identify some practices that help smooth the path.

Some of this stuff is pretty accessible – basic stuff that most anyone could try doing if they wanted to go for it.

Some of the things are certainly more doable because of the privilege I have. My wife and I studied hard and try to work hard, but we are aware that we were born with many advantages. Our parents’ steady marriages, our stable family lives, our parents’ prosperity, their ability to get us through good schools, our race, and more have helped advantage us in ways we definitely acknowledge. One of the ways I want to respond to that privilege is voluntary simplicity and resisting excess.

Here are a few ways I recommend.

Join the Buy Nothing movement.

Buy this great book here.

I first discovered Buy Nothing when reading The Grace of Enough, a great personal reflection by Haley Stewart about simpler, more sustainable living that I highly recommend. In short, Buy Nothing facilitates local person-to-person exchanges via message board. People can post giveaways or requests and seek matches by comments and messages.

The positives are myriad: diverting waste from landfills, finding secondary uses for items no longer needed or wanted, connecting people with neighbors, saving money and reducing new-item consumption, and avoiding passive donations that often lead to landfills anyway (much is resold but a non-insignificant excess gets thrown out).

The main caution is to protect your safety. Share your address by DM only with committed pick-up people only, never in public posts. Offer porch pickup so that you can receive neighbors outside rather than having to invite them in. For smaller, portable items, consider using a police station or local government building for a public meetup.

This group has been great to help me get extra items to people who can use them – everything from old closet hangers to used birthday party decor to the dress/work clothes I wasn’t wearing any more (took me five years of part-time work to realize it and pare down). It’s been fun to briefly meet and greet neighbors and know the items are going into new, local use rather than the goodwill abysses.

Additionally, while many groups are housed on Facebook – search locally and apply to join yours – Buy Nothing now has an app where some folks are migrating (myself included) to have an alternative to Facebook.

Revise clothing standards.

I’m not saying everyone should buy used/thrift clothes (admittedly, I don’t), though it’s a decent option. I do steer clear (most of the time) of rationalizations like “freshening up” my wardrobe, using sales to buy items I didn’t previously explicitly need, or saying “if you like something, get four of five of it.”

I try hard to wear something until it wears out, not just until I’m tired of it. I still have t-shirts from middle school sports leagues and camps, dress shirts from high school and college, and undershirts from before I got married. Some poke fun at me for this, and I enjoy the recognition. It’s a low-key statement that I don’t have to displace these old reliables with unnecessary new items.

My pride and joy:
the shirt from summer baseball camp
at Harper Junior College in 5th grade.
Why did they give us adult large t-shirts?

When I think I have a clothing need, I make myself sit on it. I put it in a note or on a list. I look around for the item, maybe bookmark a possibility or leave it in a cart. And I wait. I see if I feel like I still think I need it days or weeks or months later. In the fall or winter, I’ll toss it on a Christmas wish list note in my phone or Google Drive. And then after a while, I sometimes get it.

I also have successfully done clothing-purchase fasts for a year at a time. It helps reset things.

Try composting.

When we lived in an apartment, I didn’t try this. In the city, I could’ve joined a pickup service; in our last suburban apartment, I could’ve gotten an elevated compost barrel for our mini-deck. Once we got our house and a yard, I took the plunge, and it’s been great.

As far as minimalism goes, I enjoy that it makes me face waste more confrontationally. Dumping stuff in a garbage can and taking it out to the curb is rote, and easy; the compost bin under our sink and the barrel out back nudges me to think and act more carefully with shopping lists, grocery buying, and food prep and use. While I do love creating compost, I don’t want to artificially add to our barrel by wasting food in our kitchen.

Produce cores, rinds, peels, etc. are good compost. So the compost novelty is a good companion to trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my diet, and my family’s eating. And that has improved gradually as we improve our eating habits.

The minimalist in me loves it even more for yard care, especially lawn mowing. I mulch-mow, meaning I let the cut grass fly out a side-chute and “grass-cycle” it into the lawn. I typically allowed myself one bag-mow during the fall – our big trees drop a massive amount of leaves, and bagging one time made the fall manageable. But I’ve since learned that incremental additions of leaves to the compost barrel works well (dumping a ton all at once can get super dense, especially when wet). And I can move leaf layers to other parts of the yard to mimic the grass-cycle effect for ground cover, planter beds, pots, and more. So I’m ditching the bag-mow this year.

And the humus that composting produces is a great nutrient-provider for us to spread back over the lawn or bury in the ground, and save us money on buying manufactured products.

Embrace generic brands, especially with groceries.

Even though I periodically enjoy treating myself to a nice item, I really try to limit it to things I’ll truly use constantly and run into the ground. I asked for a North Face jacket for Christmas in 2007, and it definitely felt like a splurge – I still wear it in fall and spring and layer with it in winter fifteen years later. For many or most other things, I’m a generic brands guy. And not just to use it for a bit and antsily replace it soon after, but because most times they’re pretty good.

This is especially true of groceries. It’s worth trying the generic of everything at least once, and trying to figure out the items for which one’s taste or health just needs the name brand. For example, generic chocolate syrup doesn’t cut it for us – it’s got to be Hershey’s; sodas like my favorite, Mountain Dew, need to be name brand, partly for taste and partly because the already high sugar and calorie count are often even higher in store brand soda. On the other hand, I’ve found that staples like bread, eggs, milk, cheese, cereal, pasta sauce, condiments, and more are at least serviceable in store brands, and often every bit as good. And the savings is good, especially in the aggregate. (Cheers to go-to, Meijer!)

Two quick reasons for this – first, saving money here feels easy and can preserve money for more important things; second, brands and marketing are designed to make you think that a name brand is the only option, and I don’t want to get my mindset hardwired to subscribe to that if I can help it!

Identify a few hobbies and limit splurges to those.

Sometimes I see folks who are really into shoes or handbags or even cars, and I think, “Man, those are expensive hobbies.” But I also think, “They didn’t necessarily pick those hobbies.” And I kind of settle here: we all can and should have hobbies – and some of us might like things that are pricey – so perhaps we can each identify a small number of favorite hobbies and limit splurge-spending to those.

For me, it’s sports and writing. My choices and spending on sports fan gear, game tickets, and TV plans certainly don’t fit cleanly with most of the rest of my principles. So, too, might someone fairly criticize my spending on a nice home-recording microphone, a vanity publishing project, and paying postage to mail friends books.

I can’t square this spending totally with the rest of my outlook. I think it just comes down to allowing myself a few hobbies.

Identify your favorites. Allow yourself to spend a little. Have some grace, ensure some sanity, and hopefully do some self-care and growth along that way.

Be wary of rationalizations.

Limiting myself to a few intentionally indulgent hobbies also limits the breadth of rationalizing I try to do. Within those silos, I can spend more without greater justification; outside of those, I try to stick to the tighter belt.

When it comes to my kids, I certainly want them to have opportunity, memories, and chances to grow into all they can be. But I don’t think that necessitates having a ton of things. There are only so many toys, clothes, and chotchkies that a kid can play with; you saturate their monkeysphere of play. The danger here is saying new clothes “will look so cute” on them or that “they’ll be so excited” for some new toy; the problem is that basically all clothes look cute on kids because kids are cute and that basically all new toys are exciting for kids because kids like new things. By these motivations, one could essentially buy things for kids nonstop. It gets out of hand.

When it comes to adults, I think we tell ourselves things like “it will make life easier,” “it will do a better job,” “it will last longer,” or “it will pay for itself.” God knows I’ve used these lines in my head before. And once in a while it’s the honest truth. I think the challenge for adults is to limit the bloat. Follow the previous ideal for hobbies, but then try mostly to box in the other stuff, too.

One area that’s nuts to me is home-cleaning. I would feel pretty confident with just a vacuum, a broom, a mop and bucket with dish soap, a good versatile spray cleaner, and some washable rags. The differentiation of all the specialized items for different surface materials, different tools, different scents, different finishes, different appliances, etc. is seemingly limitless. I understand different soap is needed for laundering fabrics than for washing dishes, but I have no problem using the dish soap also to clean the dishes as well as to wash my hands and fill my mop bucket. The range of options marketed to us as necessary or impactful is overwhelming.

Prioritize spending that facilitates experiences and relationships.

So if you never spend any money, Dan, then what is the stinkin’ point of it?

Short answer: having money should help individuals, couples, and families gain stability and basic comfort from which to seek experiences together and gain and deepen relationships with family and friends, new and old.

Because of that, I generally say no to upscale items and upgrades across the board on furniture and decor and other bells and whistles. It just feels like it will fuel a neverending churning and tweaking of my environs.

I say no to preponderant subscriptions and recurring costs like year-round exterminators and lawn-care companies. These treatments may be effective, but they bank on breaking down the cost into months or quarters, having you forget the aggregate cost, and then your subsuming another automatic charge into the monthly budget.

A visual approximation of me, late at night
when I've taken off my normie look
so I can just revel in my miserly ways.

I say no to excessively enabling services like Amazon Prime that are certainly convenient for emergency needs but massively grease the skids toward easier, more frequent impulse buying and consumption. (I do admit to having used loved ones’ Prime accounts in a pinch and acknowledge their efficiency.)

What a miser! I know.

Do you ever say yes? Indeed!

Yes to TSA Precheck and the frequent flier card on our preferred airline. These are the gateways to free checked bags and whisking touchy children through travel transactions more smoothly and quickly. These remove barriers to traveling so that we can see friends, spend time with family, and enjoy getting away together. (Children under 12 join adults’ clearance automatically!) And yes to having a car that is comfortable and roomy enough and an attractive way to get us all out together on road trips to vacation.

Yes to a Costco membership where I can buy inexpensive, high quality meat for cookouts we host, staples for my kids at great prices and high volume like wipes, diapers, and supplemental formula, and discounts on rental cars for aforementioned travels.

Yes to meetups at breweries and restaurants, even when the tab feels majorly overpriced. We try to pick local and small businesses; microbreweries are our favorite. We try to go places where our kids, our nephews and nieces, and our whole families can all be together. And I swallow the tabs because the good food and drink and fun time together is what money is for (and a reason why I increasingly can stomach high costs of birthday parties, too).

Yes to spending when it’s done to meet others’ tastes and expectations. Part of not being an asshole is acknowledging when going out of my comfort zone can be a loving gesture for someone I care about. I think it’s silly to “bring something” to a party when you’re specifically told not to bring anything, but I will do it if I feel like, even in a socially confusing way to me, it is indeed still expected and/or appreciated. I will go to a restaurant I don’t expect to like if a loved one wants us to come try it. I will rent a tux or suit and match the party to be in a loved one’s wedding even though I think my suits and ties are plenty nice and presentable.

Yes to giving treats and gifts to others, for special occasions or just because. While there is a unique satisfaction in pinpointing that perfect surprise gift for someone, I don’t actively aspire to it. I like to bring that favorite sweet treat or adult beverage to someone who will enjoy it. I love to write a heartfelt personal note by hand. And I love to donate to causes that match a person’s passions and interests, especially for people who are marginalized, and briefly note that in their letter.

And finally, especially for those parents and families out here, I spend less to save so I can then spend later and differently. I contribute the kids’ 529 education investment savings plans and maintain a modest monthly auto-debit. I leave the equity in our starter house untouched. I scrape the extra bit off the top of our rainy day checking account to build the strongest baseline I can for the forever house. I maintain an IRA with a smidge of my monthly part-time income, and we aggressively contribute to my wife’s retirement to max out her matching benefits.

I want to maintain as much home equity, retirement asset value, and brokerage investments and bonds so that I am maximally prepared. I want to get my kids through Catholic high school and university education with minimal debt for them and us; I want to maintain a comfortable and welcoming family home; I want to be ready for emergency health situations; I want my wife to retire from full-time bread-winning when she is ready to retire and not work forever because I didn’t set it up well enough for her with my management.

And for better or worse, I do, at least partially, see that extra piece of new furniture or that unnecessary wardrobe refresh as eating into the longer-term plays and the ways I can max out in helping these core hopes become fullest realities.

* * *

For a simple guide to simple living, it’s not all that simple, right!? I definitely have times where I think and do things that I worry, or know, are hypocritical. I try to admit it pretty forthrightly. My goal is thoughtful fidelity, with perfection an idealized goal and not a likely outcome. The deviations are chances for humility and introspection, and a way to keep thinking and acting with fresh insight.

Cubs great Miguel Montero put the range of possibilities well. When the 2015-2016 Cubs teams were hitting their stride, Miggy said, “We are good.” When things started to fall apart after that, Miggy remarked, “We stinks.” I feel this.

Money Talks No. 1: A Bank Note

by Dan Masterton

There are some time periods during the year where I struggle – the gift-giving season around Christmas, the run-up to my kids’ birthdays, the moments when I find out a large expense is about to be necessary, among others.

It’s not grief; it’s not stress; it’s not anxiety or depression. It is frustration.

I get frustrated with all the things.

Whether or not what’s going on is actually all that bad – it often probably isn’t – to me it often feels like there is just so much buying, so much money, so much consuming. It feels like the need to have a ton of food, a ton of gifts, a ton of decoration, and more becomes the focus rather than the person or occasion for which people gathered to celebrate. It feels like the impulse to shop and buy, to spend more and more money, to get more and more things, to run up higher and higher tabs so easily gets out of control, or even is so unchecked or mindless that the costly tabs and preponderance of things purchased is largely unnoticed.

I certainly don’t aspire to be an ascetic or a mendicant, which is beyond my spirituality. Io want to figure out ways to live out Catholic Social Teaching more fully. I feel drawn to care for God’s Creation, to consume responsibly and minimally; I feel called to opt for people who are marginalized, not least by minimizing my consumption and giving of time and treasure in charity for people in need. I find peace and an attractive tension in the often prophetic, countercultural threads of what these CST themes and others challenge us to think and do.

Intellectually and spiritually, I enjoy nuance and tension. I like going to those places where simple black-and-white answers fail, and, instead, complex, overlapping shades of gray must be sought. The tough part is that the considerations that go into money and spending and things aren’t totally abstract; in daily life, I am immersed in how others talk and act, and have to figure out how to reconcile how my choices may affect people close to me. It’s different to have a think on some hypothetical philosophical question than to figure out how to react to a close friend or family member spending more money or buying more things than I would.

So, on the one hand, one could easily just become relativistic. As others make choices and act, I could just rationalize that their principles are totally subjective to their personalities. I could say what’s morally right for me is different from what’s morally right for them, and I need not react in any meaningful way.

Or, one could be a bit of a policeman, an enforcement arm for the absolute truths we believe and hold in the Christian tradition. When I see greed and gluttony, I could vociferously call it out, bringing others to task for their excesses.

Visual approximation
of a nothing-burger.

The former would make me feel like a vanilla nothing-burger. The latter would too easily magnify the jackass judgmentalist that does exist within me. Neither of them are any good. There has to be a describable, worthwhile third way. There has to be a way that is neither abrasively, rudely austere nor relativistically consumerist. The deeply-seated moderate streak in my personality insists on it.

That’s what I want to try to describe here this month. How can I love my close friends and family, even if they often act in ways that I think are excessive and perhaps potentially harmful? How do I think about this stuff and act in a way that models something I think is good and just but stops short of imposing it on them? How can I make space for my wife and kids to have fun and enjoy themselves without being too much of a miserly killjoy? What are areas that I think are troubling or problematic when it comes to money and things, and then what are meaningful, worthwhile ways to save and dedicate resources toward?

I want to share some favorite practices for my trial-and-error minimalist life, talk through some partly open-ended things that make me feel squishy, and share some elements that give me hope for navigating a good middle course.

I am not out to judge. I try, and often fail, to avoid hypocrisy. But as usual, I think there’s some merit in clumsily slogging my way toward something in a reflection. So I would like to give it a shot.