Locating yourself in a US financial disaster

I call this locating yourself, but I can only write about myself and hope you resonate. This week has been an education in financial terminology I've heard for years but am finally hearing explained. Frankly there's a part of me that lives back in the 1950s. People go to work, get a paycheck, put it in the bank and maybe set up a savings account. They may have a single credit card and use it sparingly, paying it off in full every month, and consult a sound family budget weekly.

Never mind that I don't live this way, but I do think this way. And there's the problem. I actually learned my lesson the hard way with credit cards and for the most part charge everything to a debit card, which is just cash in plastic.

But I currently have only one secure savings "instrument" and it amounts to less than a month's overhead. In short, I live by the sweat of my brow; I depend on my work to pay the monthly bills and I'm not earning enough to meet the monthly numbers. This means that for the first time ever I am doing such a drastic spending plan and debt consolidation that my lifestyle of the past thirty plus years is about to change beyond my wildest (and probably most fear-filled) dreams.

Honestly I do not know right now what life would look or feel like living exactly within my means. From here it looks like poverty living. It feels reductionist and small, without vision or hope, in a place of defeat, devoid of opportunity, within a cocoon of depression and lackluster energy.

Hmmmm. Is there another way of looking at this? Is there any tiny ray of light in such a dark picture that something creative and expansive and life enhancing could emerge? I don't know yet; I'll keep posting on this as I do not wish to resolve that which is in flux and cannot be tightly and neatly concluded before its time. I will say this: there is some measure of comfort in the big downslide. I am not the only edge person out there. There may be comfort in numbers and we may work this out together way better than alone.