Values, in the items we buy, in the good thoughts we all in Maine try fervently to carry, to use to run our day to day.Enjoying Simpler Maine Outdoor Living.
Living in Maine means not needing more money to impress someone. To use to make another person envious or to call attention to your material success. The real value, gold and silver is having money saved for a rainy day, a twist in the road. Money is security for lean times that happen in life.
Love of money is never having enough or the newest model that is bought, admired, discarded when something shinier comes down the marketing conveyor belt.
In Maine, a rural state, we try to take money out of the equation. With plenty of do it yourself ingenuity and a healthy supply of patience as we save smaller wages. You don’t need to make more money, but rather see, study and take note of how you spend the stack of dead Presidents you slowly salt away.
Getting value when you do decide to spend requires better impulse control. Not needing it, wanting it right now like a child beside themselves. Clenching a new, crisp twenty dollar bill in a candy store and set loose like a bull near a china closet is not the way we raise our kids in Maine.
Raking Maine blueberries, picking potatoes, reeling in lobster pots on a boat far from the sight of land.
Chores, earning our ipods, the upgrade to the standard issue our parents budget for, can afford happens in Maine. Taking a deep breath, making sure the money you let go of that was carefully, consciously earned and tucked away is not wasted. It requires going without, not needing to test the credit limit of the plastic.
Patience in our spending and an easy does it approach to the Maine household budget. Where money is needed for essentials, luxuries like heating oil, groceries, insurance on our Maine homes, vehicles. Saving for college and updates to the house that are for its structural strength and not for just cosmetic show.
Luckily we live in Vacationland so our fun is no cost, or involves only a couple gallons of gasoline and a picnic to accomplish.
Less money, harder earned means sweeter, simpler living in Maine. It prepares our kids for practical priorities in their life and heaven help them if they get yoked, saddled with someone I remember hearing about reading to the kids nights at bedtime. About the galloping gimmees, never being happy for long.
