Simple

When I'm not cleaning paint and dirt from underneath my fingernails or making a new iTunes list for my next spin class, I'm doing either one of three things.
1. Cleaning the kitchen after yet another meal/snack
2. Laundry
3. Desperately seeking time alone to pray/read/just "be".
On one of those rare occasions, I picked up a book at the Library called "By the Rivers of Brooklyn" by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole
It's a fiction transformed from some fact of how 75,000 first and second generation Newfoundlanders lived in Brooklyn, New York-did you know that happened? me neither.
Aside from the rich history in the book, the novel chronicles all female characters from the 1920's, through to 2004 describing their lives in the times we so often hear as 'a simpler time'. I couldn't help but feel comfortable reading and imagining the years in which the pages took place, knowing full well that as much as it's fiction, it's fact too. Visceral images of hanging wet laundry on a line, stirring a tea cake batter up, poking coals to heat a small kitchen or the reference to how far a few pennies went in the 1930's; it's impossible to not have a warm feeling associated with all those things. One of my favorite passages in the book, I felt, related so much to partly why I write 'Budget Wise' or even have this blog to begin with. Ethel, of the original head of the Evan's family, has been responsible for her house hold for the seven years since she married Jim. This passage takes place during the depression when Jim, a steelworker who helped to build the Empire State Building, hasn't had work for 3 months...

For nearly seven years Jim had been working to support her and their children. Now it was her time, her moment. She stood up and crossed the room, dragging her chair with her, climbing up to stand tip-toe on it and reach up to the top of the cupboard over the counter, reaching way in back for the biscuit tin. She had been putting money into the biscuit tin ever since they got married, always keeping it a secret from Jim and even in a way, from herself, for no matter how badly she wanted to she had never opened it up and counted the money inside. It was mostly coins but quite a few bills too,  especially from the first years when Jim's pay was steady. "For a rainy day, " her mother had told her. "You puts aside a little, whenever you can.".....
"Wherd'd you get this?" Jim said, as if she'd robbed a bank and asked for it all in small change. "I've been saving it," Ethel said. "Ever since we were married. Saving it for a rainy day. "

How amazing would it be for all of us to have a 'biscuit tin' for each of our households. Where now, a few coppers doesn't count, but instead replacing them with a few toonies or some five and twenty dollar bills, just collecting over time, for one of our rainy days.
A biscuit tin now is often referred to as an emergency fund. Something as small as $1000 to give you a cushion in the event something arises. The idea of putting money aside seems impossible to me at times, especially $1000!!?? , but ya know, if Ethel (as in any women in the depression who could save enough to cover three months wages) could do it? So can we!