Live Simply during a pandemic

I am continuing to create content about living simply, like a youtube video that I made with a talk I would present to teens, and more excitingly, I published a book!  Well, almost.  Check back here for updates...

But then Covid struck.  I wonder if books on the End of the World might do better right now than books challenging us to Live Simply.

However, it seems that during this time of pandemic living simply might actually be the wise thing to do!  We know that many people in our culture are living beyond their means. They are house poor, or have accumulated large amounts of debt from vehicles and electronics.  The pressure to keep up with the Joneses has them renovatig their homes or buying that RV that they can barely afford... when suddenly the economy turns down and they have even less money than before. Whereas part of living simply would mean not accumulating debt to get more stuff, and not caring how nice the Joneses new RV is.  So while many are struggling right now to make ends meet, I have found that living some distance below the lifestyle I could have afforded has given me the freedom and peace of mind of knowing that we are in a good place financially.

In fact, since the Canadian Government gave everyone $300/child, regardless of whether their finances were strained from the downturn, we were able to give each of our children the option of deciding which charity they wanted to give their money to!

The thing is-  as strained as many of us are in rich countries, it's even worse in the poor countries. I personally did not lose my income from Covid, but even if I had, government subsidies would have kicked in, and hopefully kept me afloat.  This is just another piveege that I have, in that I have a stable, well paying job that I can do (to some degree) from home.

But what about the most vulnerable in our society?  Chances are they can't.  What about people in other countries?  I spent time in Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico-  not only will those people not be able to work during the pandemic, but their government will not be able to provide for them when they have no income.  And if they do get sick, their health system will be quickly overwhelmed.  If there are disruptions to food security, it will likely be much worse there. So many people in the developping world depend on the donations we make to NGO's for their welfare-  and now even rich people are cutting back on their giving, because their own lifestyle is being challenged.

For this reason it is more important than ever now to be generous with the poor.  The need is growing, and the resources to help are shrinking.  What can you do without?