So it’s been a terrible few weeks – politically, economically, and especially for specific people in particular – and it’s looking like we’re headed for more intense bad times ahead in the US. 

I am going to focus on the microeconomics of the moment since it’s my lane, but the political repression, chaos, and democracy shambles of the moment is not to be ignored. In fact, the chaos IS the reason to do some re-thinking of your personal economic reality. 

There are two things to do in this moment:

1. Take a look at your overall resources – there are four types: earned income, savings, support, and unearned wealth. Understand these to determine which you can work on to be more stable + if you’re in a position to offer others stability.
2. Think about your everyday use of money – your spending / your budget: it may be time to focus on new priorities, which could mean using your money differently.

Let’s get into each of these.

Assess Your Overall Resources

The other week I was thinking to myself: “is the point of the current political-economic chaos that anyone without a multimillion dollar trust fund is totally screwed so we’ll be forced to work on Mars for some horrible Elon company?” and then I realized that I was thinking too small about resources. 

There are many ways people have survived crushing regimes – and this one is looking to try to be just that, compounded by mass surveillance and high costs. So, to identify our sources of economic resilience, we need to look at various kinds of resources available – and then understand if and how any of them might be mutable, to shift your position in them and get more stable.

Again, there are four types of resources to consider here: earned income, savings, support, and unearned wealth – but you have variable control over each of these:

Earned income. You can somewhat pick your job, or do more/less work – but also some people can’t work, or don’t get opportunities due to all kinds of marginalization reasons, and jobs can go away. 

Savings.  Technically, if you earn more than you spend, you can save – but having savings is tied to how well your earned income covers your needs and costs, which vary due to both personal taste and extenuating circumstances. Also sometimes – surprise! – people have emergencies or get windfalls.

Support. Creating social networks of support looks like sharing food, housing, care work, entertainment. Support can also look like living at your parents house if they have one or having a partner who pays for things so you don’t need to earn as much income.

Unearned Wealth. Look either your family has money or they don’t – and even if they do, they may not be inclined to share it with you. Either way this one tends to be out of your control but massively impactful – for you and potentially others – if it’s available, more so if the wealth your family has is large in scale and old.

To be somewhat stable, you need resources in at least two quadrants. 

• If you have no resourcing in any quadrant or only in one quadrant, you’re likely struggling or very precarious…(* unless one of your resources is unearned wealth, then you’re stable)
• If you have resources in two quadrants, you’re likely precarious but somewhat stable (*same)
• If you have resources in three quadrants you’re stable and resilient
• If you have resources in four quadrants, congratulations you are wealthy, stable, and resilient

Adding resources to any quadrant will increase your economic resilience. And in any case if one of your resources is unearned wealth, you automatically get more stable. Hi there, wealth inequality!!

What’s not possible to do:

• Have a secretly rich family or go back in time and make your family make different decisions so they’re rich today
• Immediately control the whims of the federal government or the impacts on the labor market at large
• Stop having emergencies or create a magical windfall

But – if you’re trying to figure out how to get MORE stable in this very uncertain time, you can:

• Change how you’re earning income – new job, more jobs, start a service business, sell a product that serves a need people have…
• Build up savings – spend less, set up automatic savings, stick money in other accounts where you can forget to spend it…
• Create stronger social support networks – neighbors, friends, lovers, comrades, whatever you like, it’s time to expand your people and do things together, bonus if they are things that make any of you less dependent on money. Build a tiny house on someone’s land, plant a garden, become street medics, throw a potluck, build a mesh network…  

Finally – if you are stable, resilient, or wealthy:

• What can you share: Recurring donations? A tiny house in your backyard for red state refugees? Commit to paying rent or buying groceries for 1+ friends? 
• How can you create more resilience for others? Can you create jobs?  Are we out here starting churches, businesses or compounds? Are we teaching other people skills we learned from our road to stability?
• How can you be honest about it? Remember – wealth makes you skip the line, so it’s not fair to say you’re precarious if you’re not [even if all the cool kids are living it], so what feels right to say instead? 

What I like about this framework is it acknowledges that unearned wealth is a way to skip the line, but it’s not required for stability and resilience, especially if you have social networks of support (hello chosen families, polycules, and community networks). It tells the truth that some people have the resource of family support (staying with mom for awhile!) that others just don’t have, acknowledges that both jobs and savings can be unfairly gotten or lost – AND CRUCIALLY

It points us to areas where we do have some power to make change, reminds us that not all of our resources have to be financial for us to be somewhat stable, and tells the truth that social support alone is not enough to create stability.

Spending design for new priorities 

This is a moment to be a bit more choosy about where and if you spend money. 

1. To make sure you have money set aside for any emergencies, surprises, or interruptions,
2. To share resources you have with folks who are less stable than you, and
3. To stop it with giving Amazon money and spend locally/small-business-y instead

To think this through, I put together a little snapshot you can copy and use, to holistically assess:
your income – your bills – your savings+giving = what’s left for discretionary

Here’s a few more ways to think about the changes in priorities you might be considering:

Bills: Are things more expensive but perhaps you haven’t updated how you think about your bills? Might be time to do a little review and make sure what you think you need is actually what’s needed. Is your student loan started up again? How are those credit cards?

Creating savings is one of the critical quadrants of stability I called out above.

I think of savings like water out West where I live: sometimes you gotta stick some in a reservoir for later, when there’s no rain.

I am here talking to you as someone who grew up poor and was low-income for many years: if you don’t have a support net with money or family wealth it is really important to put some savings together because there are certain problems that only money can solve, regardless of how great your friends are, unless someone has some money [ideally unearned wealth] there will be gaps that savings need to fill. 

How? One trick to spend less is to set up automatic transfers into savings which come out of your account right after you get paid, or to manually transfer money into other accounts where you can more easily forget to spend it. Pro tip: this only works if you have excess consumer spending you do, and you cut down on that behaviour.

Sharing extra resources can be as simple as setting a giving/mutual aid target and figuring out an easy way to stick to it. 

I have a bunch of automated transfers that go each month and then a smaller amount I decide about as things come up.  At this point because I’m stable and resilient, I give 6% of my income each month, but it’s a lot more common to give 2-5%. The exact percentage is less important than having a specific number you can keep track of. 

For example: If your giving target is $150 a month, maybe its made up of: one $50 donation, two $20 donations, and $60 left to give to various stuff throughout the month which you keep track of in a little note on your phone. This should not be overly complicated! 

Spending differently. So how do you consciously and intentionally adjust your spending so you can maybe save money and have a regular amount to give?

First off, shopping is not the same as solving problems. 

It’s a constructed “activity” we’re encouraged to do by a corporatized web of incentives that exploits our needs for acceptance, curiosity, and gathering; leverages shame and scarcity, and normalizes spending when instead we need to be feeling or living.

You could probably shop less. And, if you do need or want to shop, where you do it matters.

And speaking of, I don’t like shaming but … you…do realize that every possible item you ever want to buy is available on a website that is not Amazon, right? In the last few weeks I’ve bought: direct from a university press, from ThriftBooks.com, from FlagsForGood.com, from a place called justhourglasses.com for, you guessed it, a random hourglass! EVERYONE HAS E-COMMERCE GUYS IT’S 2025. If you’re really feeling so cheap as to be choosing amazon to “avoid” paying for shipping [you are giving them $15/month remember] maybe you don’t need the thing. Yall Bezos sat on the stage with Trump; we need to stop it with Amazon wherever possible and also like don’t buy a Tesla. Or buy late-night from IG. Break the consumer cycle babes!!

Find a local retailer or a small online business (I’m looking at you FlagsForGood] and see what you find. Shopping local or small might cost you a few bucks more – or not, if you end up buying less crap. I invite you to add it up. What’s the actual difference in your monthly costs if you literally stopped buying random stuff on Amazon or off Instagram and instead made yourself wait 20 minutes while you looked up a different option online and maybe decided the work isn’t worth it and end up spending less time on your phone and not buying anything instead.

Changing is hard, so pick your targets

Folks, it’s not fun to both have the world collapsing around you and have some random internet lady [me] telling you to do more about it. So, do what you can – but pick something small, and try it. One quadrant shift, one savings automation, one less amazon box in transit.

People who have experience living with little should be considered howto experts in this time – if you haven’t gotten a lot of practice saying no to yourself, this is your time to try. If you do know how to live cheap, babes flex it.