No. 1

from a million in the bank to (almost) selling my wedding ring

Rewind the clock 20 years and I had just given birth to my first child.  I was living in a big house in a Super Zip, commuting an hour and a half to a corporate software job in Boston.  My parents and my husband’s parents had all died within the last five years robbing us of our tribe of elders.  Then the tech bubble burst, and I was laid off within weeks of returning from maternity leave.  Two months later, I learned I was pregnant with my second.  We needed a game plan.  So we doubled down on the in-progress renovations of our 1800s home and sold it for tidy sum.   

We arrived on Maine’s doorstep flush with cash, excited to reap similar success in real estate investing…just in time for the subprime mortgage crisis.  With no buyers for our luxury investment property, we needed to pivot once again.  This pivot turned out to be a lot more difficult.

I had gotten pretty good at planning, budgeting, and designing our reno projects.  I used that as a springboard into a new career as a kitchen designer working where all new kitchen designers start out:  a box store.  Three years earlier I was making six figures; now I was making $15 an hour.

I wasn’t worried though because:  I am simple.  I am not one of “those people” who have complicated, materialistic lives.  Viewpoints like this are like the George Carlin joke:  “Did you ever notice that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot and everyone who drives faster than you is crazy?”  Only when your financial equilibrium is disturbed do you realize how dependent upon consumption your identity actually is.  I was, in fact, one of those people.  I just didn’t know it.

With access to a tidy nest egg, I buried this awakening realization and preserved my identity by continuing to spend as usual.  My problem wasn’t cars, jewelry or clothing.  It was a beautiful house.  A desire for beauty is not inherently problematic.  In fact, it is our nature.  A beautiful home feels safe, familiar, and comforting.  The problem comes from who defines “beautiful.”   When you turn to the media, “beautiful” involves something you don’t have.  Beautiful = a treadmill of endless purchases. 

I siphoned off our savings for an artisanal stone patio, custom slipcovers, and bespoke backsplash tile with rationalizations that were anything but rational.  The stress of our dwindling savings took its toll on my marriage and, by extension, my children.  Ironically, the only reason we didn’t get divorced is because we couldn’t afford to.  This just drug out the damage with endless arguing and blame.  While it is hard to point to a single low point, Googling how much I could get for my wedding ring leaps to mind.

But the stress also planted healthy seeds.  Eventually, I spent more time on realtor.com than HGTV.  We got out from under the heavy mortgage of our beautiful home and moved to a different kind of beautiful home.  This home had calming natural vistas.  It had an abundance of natural finishes and character.  With its curved doorways and wavy siding, it was distinct and artistic.  And its two acres of apple trees, raspberries, blueberries, and grapes beckoned us to spend more time outside.  Unlike my previous home, this home’s beauty came from things that influencers don’t talk about. 

But not everyone saw it that way. 

When we moved to Maine, we had the means to send our children to private school.  Over time, as our lifestyle came in line with our lower income, the people I once considered peers became “rich people.”  The shift was made clear the day my son got a ride home from a babysitting gig and his young charge said, “why is your house so ugly?”   A few months later, another child teased my son for living in “a dump.”  No matter what your income, more is good and less is bad.  When a disproportionately large share of your friends have more/good, they will see your home as less/bad.  The result was that our kids, despite being solidly middle class, grew up feeling poor because they did not have a ski condo.    

The irony is that my kids, unlike most middle-class kids, had pretty direct exposure to poverty to know better.  In the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis, we transitioned away from flips to low-income apartments.  It was a great way to apply what we had learned to provide safe, clean, ethical housing to those who needed it most.  And it meant that our kids heard stories of drug overdoses, prostitution, vandalism, theft, gun shots, and domestic violence.  They knew that we were far from poor.  But they also knew that they didn’t live like a lot of their wealthier schoolmates and that, at times, some of those schoolmates looked down on them because of it. 

Had these children’s comments been said about my prior home, a home that matched my identity as “a successful person,” I would have shrugged them off as “stupid stuff kids say.”  But when I hired a filmmaker to make a marketing video that involved footage taken at my house, I realized that my home did not match my identity.  I was embarrassed by it, and apparently my embarrassment was justified.  When discussing various locations for the shots, I said, “I’d rather not have my house in any of the shots” to which he replied “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”  After that, my husband and I stopped asking people over.  It was not conscious.  It was not something we decided.  We just never brought it up; neither did our kids.  Despite my best efforts, I still grapple with embarrassment to this day. 

The transition from high-earning urbanites to mission-oriented entrepreneurs has taught us much.  We have resolved our financial struggles and live with a new understanding of beauty.  We are not minimalists.  But we understand the need and desire for less.  We strive for contentment not for austerity.  We raise chickens for food not because we have to but because we want to understand and appreciate the hard work involved.  We fix things when they break.  Our stuff is often used.  And our lack of alternatives forced us to grow and persevere through our relationship struggles making us better people and better partners in the process.  Simply put, we have not been insulated from growth by an easy button.  It has been hard, but it has been worth it. 

To translate this into my design outlook, this doesn’t mean that I shun luxuries.  It means that I don’t shun the absence of luxuries.  Nice, new, lavish things offer exciting opportunities.  There are many luxuries that I fully embrace for their beauty, their performance, and the enrichment they add to experiences.  But I no longer give luxury or fashion more power than they deserve.  That is why I named my business balance design studio.  Because seldom are things inherently good or bad.  They just require balance.