What Depression?

My husband and I already had two houses with two mortgages on each, but we bought as much land around us as we could. When the banks wouldn't lend us more money, we used credit cards. We woke up when we had $82,000 in unsecured debt, and said, "This is nuts!"

Since then we have been living in our own self-imposed recession. Everything we made and didn't need for the basic necessities went toward paying off our debt. No more Starbucks, no more eating out, no buying from vending machines nor convenience stores. We take our lunch. If we forget it, we go hungry. Our clothes we buy at thrift stores.

It didn't take long for our kids to decide that we were "poor," in spite of our nice income. We didn't have Christmas. Well, this wasn't a direct effect of our debt. My husband worked at the time delivering magazines to various outlets. Most of the magazines would publish only one issue for the months of December and January together. So we got one month's income for two month's expenses. We just couldn't have Christmas.

Still it took a few years of my husband's pleading for me to get it. The first year after I got it, I couldn't bear not to give the kids SOMETHING. So I went into their closets and found toys I didn't see them playing with, and wrapped those up and put them under the tree (which was free, from our land).

When they opened their presents, my son just gave me a look. "We didn't play with them because we didn't LIKE them," my daughter explained.

Okay, so after that, I used my grocery budget and bought them junk food that NEVER got bought on a regular basis, like chips and soda, and wrapped those up.

We don't have cable or satellite and I really resented having to buy a new TV (though our old one was about 15 years old) for the digital switch (and though I asked for the stupid converter box coupons, they never arrived. I think they were stolen in the mail.)

In the last several years of drought, our well went dry twice. The first time, we had the pump lowered, closer to the floor of the well. The second time, we couldn't lower it more, and we couldn't afford to drill a new well (everyone around us was drilling deeper.)

We survived by bringing water in from our workplaces in Albuquerque in one-gallon jugs. We recycled all the water we used. Water to wash our clothes and our dishes went into big 5-gallon buckets and we used that to flush the toilets. Now our well is coming back, but still low flow, so we continue to recycle the water.

My car is a Chevy Metro, the last year they were made in the US. I have managed to keep it going past 200,000 miles, and it's still getting me 45 mpg. Every other vehicle we have, we bought used. My husband's a courier so he has to have a reliable truck, but other than the loan for that, we won't buy a car unless we can pay for it all at once, now.

Last week, we paid our last payment on that $82,000 debt. Now we're working on our mortgages and my husband's truck.

We know what it will be like for the rest of you folks. And it just won't be that bad, if you can just get over the idea that you can't live without your goodies.