How We Turn This Thing Around

 

The West is in bad shape, in some ways, maybe worse than it has ever been. But none of us have the power to turn around trends, though perhaps one day you may be in a position of political authority where you can make positive changes. But despite our inability to turn things around at the macro level, this does not mean we cannot start to make changes in our families, homes, communities and churches, which have an incredible effect now and into the future.

And it starts with changing how we think about our own wealth and futures. In essence what we need to do is reject much of what we have been trained to work towards and focus more biblically on how we should think about our resources.

Rather than planning for retirement younger Gen X, Millennial and Zoomer parents will be working hard to work out how they can help their kids get on the family and property ladder quicker. If we want grand kids, and our kids to prosper, we need to think not just in terms of helping our kids get a good career, though this is significant, but also we need to be thinking about how we can lift much of the cost load that our breaking society is wanting to place on their shoulders. Instead of buying caravans to travel, we will be looking at building up our properties to house multiple families, or combining incomes with sons to make combined living possible, and stay at home mums more viable and greatly treasured again. The further ahead we think about this the better we can set up our kids.  

We will not be working so much towards retirement, but more thinking about how we can make sure our kids are not overburdened by the high cost of living, so they can still have families and succeed in this world. This will actually make our retirements better, though, because they will be family centric rather than cruise and vacation centric. We will have to greatly devalue regular vacationing, unless you are genuinely wealthy, or at least extravagant holidays, because the cost of doing basic things will make such thing either frivolous, or prohibitive. But this will enable families to find other ways to do things together which builds their family connections, rather than puts experiences in the place of connection.

In essence the destruction of the economy is forcing us to get back to what we should have been doing all along. Seeing parenting as a multigenerational responsibility, and our wealth as a means of advantaging our kids, and kids, and their kids kids. Instead of simply a means of seeing Europe, Israel and New Zealand three times, and maybe the USA once, to tick off the bucket list. This way of viewing our money has been popular for some time and was only really made possible by excess abundance, anyway. But it was never a good way to steward resources. There is a reason why the West is in such hard decline, we became essentially narcissistic in what we prioritized. This will need to end or at least diminish greatly.

Those who focus on this sooner will set up their descendants for a good head start ahead of others. Those who are already doing this are well ahead of those who aren't. Those who are from families that have been doing this for generations currently rule most of our society.

In essence the breaking economy is causing extreme individualism to show its bankruptcy. Guess what, many immigrant communities already know this and are well ahead of westerners in this regard. This kind of family thinking will win the future. So be proactive and start planning now how to bless your children’s children. I would suggest you start planning this even if you have not yet had kids. You will not regret it.