There was a stretch where we could not cover the most basic of bills.
I know “extremely tight” means something different to everybody. So let me tell you exactly what it meant in my house.
It meant I started thinking about how expensive paper towels were.
I would pull them one at a time. Then I would tear them in half and use half a paper towel. Whatever was possible to save a little bit of money.
That is not being frugal
Being frugal is buying the discounted paper towel. Being frugal is using one sheet instead of two.
I was way past frugal. I was trying to figure out if I even needed paper towels at all.
Obviously the paper towels aren’t the point. They’re just the clearest way I can explain what was going on in my head as the man of the house, unable to provide at the level I wanted to.
I couldn’t control the big things. So I went after every small thing I could reach:
- Shutting the lights off whenever humanly possible.
- Running the heat and the air conditioning at a genuinely uncomfortable level to save a few dollars.
- Using as few paper towels as humanly possible, and being conscious of it every time.
- Planning every dinner, and buying just barely enough food to get by.
- Only buying what was on sale, instead of the brands I preferred.
- Looking everywhere I possibly could to save a dollar or two.
My thinking at the time — and this still lingers with me today — was that if I could save a dollar or two here and there every single day, over the course of a year that’s hundreds. Maybe thousands.
I couldn’t do much about what was coming in. So I focused on what was going out.
What I could still give them
Here’s the part I want you to actually hear, because it’s the only part that mattered in the end.
I paid attention to making things as special as I possibly could.
The way I did that was food. I cooked. I planned the meals, I made them good, and I pulled my family into the process of making them. That meant I got time with them doing something fun and hopefully delicious. It meant we were building memories around gatherings and holidays and traditions that were good ones.
I couldn’t buy them anything. I could give them that.
What they didn’t notice
My family largely did not notice any of it:
- the budgetary constraints
- the house being too cold in winter and too warm in summer
- the thing with the paper towels
- the steaks quietly becoming a bulk pack of chicken thighs
None of it registered. Not really.
What they did notice
What they noticed is that their father was attentive.
That he did things that showed them he cared. That he spent time with them. That he cooked them good meals and brought them into the kitchen while he did it.
Doing those things showed them that I loved them deeply. And it left them not wanting for more.
The thing underneath
I wrote recently about the prison of sacrifice — about parents who give up everything for their children and slowly become a hollow version of themselves while the kids watch it happen.
This isn’t the opposite of that. It’s the answer to it.
Because what I gave up in that stretch was steak and a warm house. What I did not give up was my presence. I didn’t disappear into the sacrifice and hand them a shell of a father with a full refrigerator.
Marcus Aurelius wrote that if a thing is endurable, then endure it, and stop complaining. I thought about that a lot in those years. There is a version of hardship you can carry quietly, without making your family carry it with you.
That is different from martyrdom. Martyrdom needs an audience.
If you’re in it right now
You may not be able to provide at the level you want to. I know exactly what that feels like, and I’m not going to insult you by pretending the money doesn’t matter. It does. I spent years digging out, a dollar at a time.
But your kids are not keeping an inventory of the brands in your pantry.
They are keeping an inventory of you.
You haven’t missed your chance.
Built by Failures is for people who aren’t finished yet.
Real stories. Hard lessons. Second acts.