An embarrassment of riches

I was watching Oprah on Friday and it really made me think. The show was on the plight of people that work low wage jobs. It was amazing how hard these people work and yet how hard it is for them to get ahead.

Sometimes it is easy to not realize how good you have it. My husband is always feeling bad because he is not providing more money for the family. This is a crazy thing to get depressed about because we have so much. We are thrifty people so we have plenty of things with money to spare. I think the only item that we are really missing is a home of our own. The crazy price of housing has put that one thing out of our range. We could actually probably buy one but we would be far too over extended financially.

The media really seems to try hard to make people unhappy with what they have. There is so much advertising out there telling us that we must buy this and we will be happy. Get this because you deserve it. Even the great state of California operates through deficit spending. Every election there is one bond measure or another encouraging us to spend money that we do not have for this or that program.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with the irresponsibility of others. It is frustrating to see others blowing money like there is no tomorrow and seemingly not having any true consequences. Here we sit with all our investments, with our savings account and all the scrimping that we do. Sometimes I think about just going out and blowing it all on something fun. It would be easy but then I would regret it later on.

I am thankful for show that help me realize how lucky I am. I have a great family, a roof over my head, more food than I can eat. We also do not have to live from pay check to pay check worrying about what would happen if one of us got sick.