Striking Distance By Dr. Juan Harrison

As a ten-year-old barefoot boy playing around the base of a large willow tree by a pond near our house, I encountered one of my most memorable moments.  Earlier I had cut the soft tree with a keepsake from my uncle’s early Navy days.  Halfway through, the tree snapped and fell over into the pond.  Today I was squatted down six inches from the break in the tree trunk with a large water moccasin coiled up lined up with my face.  Only God’s grace spared me from likely death from such a large venomous critter.  The concept of being within striking distance took on a whole new meaning.

Today as an elderly person I see a world of people out there struggling trying to keep their heads above water.  I’ve frequently heard that a majority of Americans couldn’t come up with a few hundred dollars in an emergency.  A lot of people’s last resort plastic cards are almost used up.  Rising interest rates only serve to exacerbate the situation.

With everything being more expensive and incomes seeming to slip further back in their buying power, us ordinary regular folks keep getting pushed further away from the holy grail of making the money and the stuff come out about even at the end of the month.  More folks are feeling the need to not retire or come out of retirement to make ends meet.  Frustration is rising as people find themselves postponing or skipping doing things they used to work hard to be able to do like vacations or house renovations that we used to be able to figure out how to git er done.

The business manager in the family may have a few new bald spots as they struggle to pay enough on the bills to not feel like you’re drowning.  I call it staying within striking distance.  We get ourselves into tight spots, sometimes willingly, sometimes not.  The challenge is to not let ourselves get to feeling totally overwhelmed without feeling like we’ll ever get back to at least striking distance of our goal of financial solvency.

What seems to have helped me in those times has been to have a regular consistent monthly plan where you try to knock out some of the smaller bills which should eventually help you to pay more on the bigger ones as we knock out a bill or two.  Another thing is to put a sticky note on each envelope to be mailed with a date approximately a week before due date to make sure bills get there on time and not incur late fees or rate increases if we fail to keep up paying at least the minimum.  Be it car payment or credit card, anything extra that can be paid on a bill balance can feel like a small victory.  Maybe one day things will go back to normal where we can feel free to do a little extra without feeling like your spending isn’t pushing you further away from striking distance.

By Dr. Juan Harrison