Something that has long frustrated me about the writing community is twofold: 1) the lack of transparency about where so many of their incomes arise from and 2) a culture of shame around wanting to make money from your writing.
I recently wrapped up my death doula certificate from the University of Vermont and joined their Facebook group to stay in touch with the community. I saw a post over the weekend in which someone asked if folks felt like it was possible to make a full-time living from death doula work. Some of the comments were helpful, with most, unfortunately, explaining that they had to supplement income in other ways. But a lot of the comments said something like, “If you’re trying to make money from this profession, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons,”
I’ve heard nearly the exact same sentiments from the writing community and other artistic and spiritual communities. I am deeply aware that it’s risky business to turn your hobbies into your main income — the definition of a hobby is something you do in your leisure time for pleasure, meaning, to entrepreneurial-ize it fundamentally transforms it from a hobby into something else. And at the same time, there’s something extremely harmful in expecting certain interests, gifts, talents, professions, etc. to be “anti-money.”
If earning a living is the wrong reason to become a death doula, or to become a writer, then I’d like to know where this magical income arises from, and I too would like to take a sip from that spring. How does the rent get paid? Where do groceries come from? Who pays the medical bills? If the answer is a partner, inherited wealth, or only pursuing these things in retirement, then I don’t think those people should be handing out dictums on what the right and wrong reasons to do anything are.
Until we are given a universal basic income (a policy I refuse to give up hope for) we have no choice but to earn a living some other way.
And so, for the sake of transparency, perhaps I should make it obvious that I have a full-time day job working for an environmental nonprofit as a communications manager. It’s “in my field,” it’s very related to what my degrees are in, and while not six figures yet, it’s creeping closer and closer every year (though getting it that high has required job hopping every two years or so — but I now make double what I did in 2018). I work remotely which leaves me a lot of time in the mornings and evenings to pursue creative interests while other people commute and work overtime (unless it’s an emergency, unless my work could single-handedly save the Arctic, I refuse to put in more than a 40-hour week). It’s not as flexible as being a full-time freelancer (something I was heavily considering this year), but it’s stable, provides health insurance, comes with a retirement account, and mostly doesn’t stress me out.
Which in a way means I do get paid for my writing and communication abilities — just not quite in the romantic way I dreamed of as a 20-year-old. Just looking at my creative writing income not tied to my day job, I’ve made less than $1,000 over the last decade. Not exactly enough to live on.
I mention all of this because it feels nearly impossible to talk about extravagance without also talking about money. According to a quick Google search, extravagance means spending more money than is necessary or reasonable, especially if it is spent on something that is not considered necessary. Which makes the word extremely subjective.
What is considered necessary? Do all humans share the same bundle of “necessaries,” or could we argue things necessary for some people are not necessary for others?
This seems somewhat core to the great debate this country has been having for the last several decades. Call it human rights, call it basic dignity, what we’re debating at the end of the day is whether or not certain items and policies are necessary. Affordable healthcare…is it necessary? Clean water? Decent paying jobs? Enjoyable work environments? Childcare? Affordable housing?
Policymakers (mostly conservative) have basically said, “Lol, no. Not necessary. Figure it out, poors.” In which case, it could be argued that the mere fact that I buy groceries, buy health insurance, and drink clean water right from the tap are my greatest extravagances. But I think you and I can both see what dangerous territory we enter into when we start viewing such basic means of existing as extravagant.
Since moving back to Boulder, I’ve noticed some of my own hesitancy around admitting that I live here. There’s a bougie-ness, an extravagance you might say, to this town — a perception that isn’t entirely incorrect when median home prices as of June 2023 were around $1.3 million. I will not be a homeowner in this town likely ever unless we have another 2008-type housing collapse or approximately 2,000 people become paid subscribers to The Hag (currently holding strong at six paid subscribers…just a few more to go!).
Still, when I step back and look at my life, I don’t consider it all that extravagant. My partner and I split the $2,400 a month rent for a two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot unit in a triplex, with a garage, fenced-in backyard, and front courtyard located directly on a protected bike path that wanders throughout the entire town. That’s only slightly higher than the current median U.S. apartment rate of $2,000 a month (and that’s just for one bedroom). It’s only a bit more than we paid in Bellingham (for a much crappier place, with way fewer amenities nearby). To make it a little more poignant, it’s also only $100 more a month than the townhouse renting next to my Mom’s place in Mars, Pennsylvania, a relatively unimpressive suburb of Pittsburgh (sorry, Mom) and that $100 split between my partner and I is totally worth it for the access to mountain biking, skiing, hiking, backpacking, amazing restaurants, climbing gyms, swimming pools, art, music, culture, etc. that we have within spitting distance of our front door.
To be clear, housing is FUCKED UP expensive right now and absolutely should not cost this much. And people way smarter than me have been reporting on all the reasons why, so I’m not going to get into that here (but lord do I want to). Still, when it comes to extravagance, at least comparatively to U.S. averages, I feel that I’m fairly well within the range of normal.
In sitting down to write this, I felt an initial temptation to say that my greatest extravagance is my place in Boulder. It’s clean. It’s quiet. It’s safe. It’s super cute. It’s gorgeously landscaped, with raised garden beds. Our landlord rocks. Our neighbors are so sweet. It’s the most I’ve ever paid in rent. What a privilege, right? What an extravagance!
But, also, it’s just a unit in a triplex on the south edge of town with laminate flooring, somewhat dingy bathrooms, and still requires us to be under the thumb of a landlord (no matter how great she is). I’m not saying I’m not grateful, but I do wonder, isn’t it a little risky to allow ourselves to think of this as extravagant? When did we start viewing anything other than a shithole apartment and a shitbox car, and ramen eaten out of a plastic frisbee instead of a bowl as the standard and everything else as luxury?
I don’t think it is a privilege to want to, or even be able to, live in a house or apartment that isn’t an utterly ugly, loud, dirty, unsafe mess that hasn’t been updated, cleaned, or inspected in 30 years. I do however think it is a disprivilege that anyone should have to.
Culturally I think we’ve taken the concept of privilege to mean overabundance, an unnecessaryness, a luxuriousness to life. But I think we make a grave error when we consider growing up in a two-parent household, regularly having enough to eat, having access to extracurriculars, playing sports, attending college, and having access to clean, safe housing as overabundance or too much. To me, so much of so-called privilege is actually the bar on the mother fucking floor. So often it’s not that privilege exists, it’s that disprivilege has become so widespread.
So when I consider my greatest extravagance, this is the foundation I am building from. I just don’t see it as extravagant to live in a decent house that is safe and quiet. I don’t think it’s extravagant to eat good food or occasionally buy that $20 bottle of olive oil because it tastes so freaking good. It’s just not extravagant to buy comfortable clothing that lasts for decades, or even to adorn my home with far too many plants because it’s the one living being a landlord can’t say no to. I think everyone should be able to do these things.
However, the one thing that seems to be nonnegotiable, the one thing just about everyone deems as necessary is retirement savings. But because housing has gotten so expensive, because wages haven’t kept up with the cost of, well, everything, because I have student debt, because I do not work in a field that makes $250K, because pensions aren’t a thing anymore, and because I don’t have intergenerational wealth, there’s not a lot of money left over each month to save.
I have a small, liquid cushion if there’s an emergency, but it is definitely not enough to put a down payment on a house and it is certainly not enough to retire on. I also toss what I can into my Roth IRA and my various 401ks and 403bs and other seemingly nebulous accounts, but I’ve crunched the numbers and even in a best-case scenario it absolutely will not be enough to fully retire on by the time I’m 65, or even 75 for that matter.
I am one broken leg away from bankruptcy (even with insurance) and three missed paychecks away from homelessness — and I suppose my greatest extravagance is choosing to live my life in the most enjoyable way I can, regardless.
Do The Math
Just to break it down for you, I currently put about four percent of my income toward retirement (and about another five percent toward liquid savings in case of an emergency). If I never make any more money than I do right now and want to retire at 65, that will leave me with about $190,500, or $635/month (you can calculate it for yourself here). Definitely not enough to live off of. To be able to have 85 percent of my current income in retirement (the recommendation) I’ll need to start saving closer to $30,000 a year (about $25,000 more than I save right now), or roughly 40 percent of my income. This also assumes that by 65 I will own a house and won’t have rent or mortgage payments (hence why you only need 85 percent of your income). The median home price in the U.S. right now is $436,800 which means a 20 percent down payment is $87,360. With the current interest rate, plus taxes and fees, that will put me at about $3,050/month in mortgage payments for a 30-year fixed-rate (calculated here). This means in the next five years (so I can retire by 65), I need to come up with $87,360 for a down payment, figure out how to increase my housing budget by $650/month, while also saving 40 percent of my income for retirement, while also paying off my remaining $32,000 of student loans, while also paying off the remaining $6,000 of my car loan.
Now, I’ve never been all that great at math, but even I can tell this is an absolutely impossible scenario. Short of saving my entire paycheck every year, there just isn’t enough money to stretch between all of the “necessary” things I’m supposed to put my money toward.
And look, if it were the case that saving an additional $500/month could help me buy a house in the next couple of years, or ensure a half-decent retirement, you bet your ass I would buckle down and save that up. That’s what our parents did, right? A couple of years of penny-pinching to make things happen. But the reality is that it would still take me 14.5 years to have enough for a down payment, and would barely put a dent in the retirement problem, and I am just not willing to sacrifice so much joy in my life right now for a chance at barely any increased stability by 45.
More Life Lessons From Mary Oliver
A couple of months ago, I listened to this audiobook about Mary Oliver’s life (though I’d actually call it more like an extended podcast than a book). At one point, Rainn Wilson reads Oliver’s poem Humpbacks, and you can hear his voice cracking as he fills with emotion trying to get through the last few stanzas. Specifically, he softly breaks right here:
I know several lives worth living.
Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song.
I think it is the line, I know several lives worth living, that really moves me. I am tearing up even now being with it. I have spent a not insignificant portion of my life convinced security leads to happiness. Weighed down by the knowledge that I am not meeting the metrics that financial planners, banks, and investment firms have set out for me. That if I am unhappy, if I am unstable, I deserve it. Because they created a roadmap, and I couldn’t follow it.
Here is what Machen Wealth Management says will happen if you don’t save enough for retirement:
You need to keep working until you die.
You drown in debt instead of planning for the future.
You leave your family with financial and emotional stress.
You reach retirement age with $300 in the bank.
You throw your financial future away.
Your kids support you in old age.
You need to die by age 72 to make it work.
You wind up believing money grows on trees.
You trade your cozy house for a tiny apartment, then suck it up.
I believed for so much of my young adulthood (arguably the actual golden years) that this is what I was headed for every time I purchased an ice cream that I didn’t really need, picked up a new hobby like skiing, or just generally enjoyed my life at all. How small did I have to live to not receive criticism? How small did I have to make my life to not deserve horrible economic forces outside of my control? What was the right way to live to not get lambasted for spending money?
I didn’t know there were several lives worth living. But now I do.
What Even Is Retirement?
This past December when I met up with one of my favorite college professors back in Pittsburgh, I started to consider if a firm view of retirement really served me. Dr. Gramm told me she was getting closer to a time in which she could technically retire, but even after the pandemic, even with difficult students, she still loved teaching and would probably keep doing it long after she would be financially able to retire. I walked away from our conversation glowing and a little stunned — you can just choose not to retire? And be happy about it?!
I am not certain what the next 35 years will look like. I would ideally like to not be writing Instagram captions at 65. But I very much hope I’m still writing. I’d love to be teaching nonfiction or poetry courses. I hope I’m getting books published. I’d love to be assisting people at the end of their life. Maybe I become an herbalist. Who knows? (And contrary to what Facebook commenters say, it’s totally okay to make money from those things!) What I do know is that I don’t require an empty schedule of nothingness to fully embrace the last quarter (if I’m lucky!) of life.
I watched an interview in my death doula course of a woman in her 80s with terminal cancer who would be undergoing medical-assisted suicide in the next 48 hours. Her voice was bright and vibrant, though her eyes were sunken deep into her skull, she had lost all of her hair to the chemo, and her hands looked like skeletal bones gesturing. She wasn’t sad. She didn’t cry. Up until a few months ago, she’d still been teaching logic at the university she’d worked for all her life. She loved it. She never wanted to stop. She was so grateful to be able to do what she loved almost until the day of her death.
I found myself hunched over my desk sobbing for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was arguably the least sad interview I’d had to watch for the course and yet I felt so overwhelmed by her story.
I began to wonder if it was better to spend the next 35 years restricting my life down to bare bones to afford retirement, or to spend the next 35 years filling my life with so much joy and abundance that I find myself bringing in money in a way that feels so wonderful, I can just keep on truckin’ right up to my death bed.
Maybe, just maybe, you don’t need to labor over a job that makes you miserable for 50 years, crossing your fingers that you don’t get sick, injured, or die for a handful of work-free years when your body is on the decline and rapidly losing its ability to do the things you swore you’d do once you retired.
What if I’d been viewing retirement wrong this whole time?
Several Lives Worth Living
A few months ago, I was talking with someone very close to me who was harping on me for not saving more of my income. This person had saved, cheaped out, and lived small all their life to ensure there was enough for retirement. And now that the retirement years were looming, they weren’t confident they had enough to fully stop working.
With tears running down my face at the shame being put on me I asked, “But don’t you regret it? Living all your life like this and finding out you still might not be able to retire? Do you regret missing out on so much of life?”
“The only thing I regret,” they said to me, “is that I didn’t make more money.”
I felt a cosmic shift in the very core of myself. There are so many lives worth living. And for me, that was not one of them. I knew I was headed in that direction if I didn’t quickly change my attitude.
Since that interaction, pricey farmer’s market tomatoes have tasted sweeter, the $40 hand-crafted ceramic mug that perfectly nestles into my palm has felt firmer, and trips into the mountains are seemingly more alive. Every dollar that leaves my hand (or more realistically, the little plastic card in my wallet) feels juicer. Richer.
I’m finding myself so much happier curled in the bed of the camper, wiping dried salt from my skin, sticky and itchy with wildflower pollen than I ever could have been sliding those dollars it took to get there into some dusty financial account.
I’m not going into debt, but I’m also not killing myself and opting out of every wonderful experience for the sake of some future retirement account.
This life, lived fully in the present, is my greatest extravagance.
**It should be noted, I am not taking financial advice at this time (unless it’s full, unbridled support and understanding for what I’ve laid out above)! Thanks!