When life is tough, it is only natural that we find ourselves wishing for better times ahead.

We might just be scraping by in a state of semi-poverty, and our lives are only being held together by blind faith and duct tape.

It's not much fun to live in such a state; many people in our modern world do.

Invariably, we carry with us — or develop, as we go — a mental list of "things I need to take care of when things get a little bit better."

Maybe there's a car repair that needs doing; maybe a cracked window that needs replacing before the next storm blows it in; maybe we desperately need to visit the dentist but have put it off for financial reasons.

Then the day finally comes!

A modest "windfall" arrives — something we've been trying to sell finally sells; maybe Uncle John unexpectedly left us a few thousand dollars in his will, whatever... — so we get the window fixed, and the car repaired, and now our tooth no longer hurts... at which point the money is gone and we're right back to square one of "JUST scraping by in a state of semi-poverty."

Extra resources arrived, and we consumed them.

It's not just about being poor...

But this is not a pattern that is purely limited to poverty.

We can "dial up" the exact same scenario to something we might call "middle class," and things are not so different; all that really changes is the scale of things.

Instead of a window, now we are homeowners, and the entire roof on our house needs replacing. $12,000, thank you, come again!

Because we live in a family with two growing children, we can no longer get by with just one car; so a second vehicle is added. $15,000, thank you, come again!

Instead of a filling for a bad tooth, maybe we need oral surger to remove wisdom teeth that have been bothering us for several years... and it's not covered by our insurance. $6,000, thank you, come again!"

Instead of the "barely scraping by" of the first example, were right back to "living paycheck to paycheck," once the available resources have been used.

We can continue to "climb the ladder" of ostensible personal wealth and it seems like there is almost always something waiting to consume virtually any opportunity that might allow us to feel like we're "getting ahead."

No matter what, it almost invariably holds true that it takes much more than we imagined to truly get ahead and put ourselves in a "surplus" situation.

Here in the USA, for example, less than 20% of the total population have more than $5,000 in savings of any kind, and almost 70% have less than $1,000 to their name.

From personal experience, the biggest hindrance to effectively being able to get ahead — as in, breaking away from the pattern of always consuming the available resources — is being able to live a life in which we don't labor through life with an eternal backlog of "things that need to be done when we can afford it."

As I write these words, we have a car that will continue to be a "driveway ornament" until we can afford the $6,000 worth of repairs needed to get it on the road again. The roof on our house — while still OK — is about six years past its estimated natural lifespan, and it will need replacing, and it will become a problem if we have any severe winter storms.

Point being, even if $25,000 magically appeared tomorrow, it would barely get us back to "point zero," as opposed to presenting an actual opportunity to set some aside. It would not be getting ahead, it would merely represent "getting back to the starting line."

Sadly, that is how a very large number of households exist, these days.

The myth of "you just need to work harder" actually doesn't hold much water. If you "work harder" it means you're away more, giving you less time, as a result of which you would have to hire people to do the stuff you no longer have time for, thereby giving up most of the gain made from "working harder."

It's an equation that sounds like a solution, without actually being a solution.

Meanwhile, all we can do is either keep on plugging forward, or we can simply "drop out" and live in a shed in the woods.

Or "in a van, down by the river!"

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