The Fallback Option

Where do we turn when life goes seriously sideways, and we have reached the end of our proverbial rope?

Do we even have somewhere to turn?

I find myself considering this question more and more as the years pass by. What happens if we hit bottom physically, or financially — the point at which all our reserves, and even the loose change between the sofa cushions have been used up?

I'm in the middle of doing a lot of bookkeeping for my home businesses and I got to thinking how I have lived most of my adult life without any kind of financial fallback option. I always held hopes of building a "stormy weather fund" but have seldom been able to do so because something would come along and wipe things out before I'd even get anywhere.

In more recent years, crypto was supposed to be my fallback option but not only was it hard to build any kind of balance, many of the projects I held a balance in kept losing value.

Even Steemit was a sort of fallback option — still is — but I've had to power down repeatedly to pay for things like taxes and broken down cars.

Sometimes I forget that one of the essential truths about contingency options is that you end up using them. And that's the whole point, right?

Life tends to be unpredictable and when we complain about not having a backup option because we used it... shouldn't we be grateful that we had an option to bail us out of our woes? Things could have been much worse!

Perhaps I just end up feeling sad about it because it seems like "unforeseen setbacks" come along as frequently as they do, and wipe everything out.

Of course, we must also consider our overall life situation. Many people live in a reality where their income barely even covers their fundamental cost of living, and anything other than absolute necessities are a "luxury" best avoided at all costs... quite literally.

When you start looking at the greater world, there are lots of people in many nations for whom even having a fallback option is little more than a dream.

Sometimes people here on Steemit get impatient with those who power down their rewards and sell their Steem tokens... but when that is all that stands between them and starvation, who are we really to pass judgment? If it were me and those few dollars could buy me a bag of rice and some vegetables to feed myself and my family, I'd do the same!

We all face challenges on some scale. For some it might be food, for others a loomimg tax bill. Regardless, we have to do whatever we need to stay afloat!

The other day, I watched an interesting podcast that — among other things — explored the veracity of people claimimg life was easier in the proverbial "good old days."

Through a complex analysis of lifestyles, work, inflation and the cost of living, the very sad reality was a person has to put in about 2.3 times as much effort in 2024 to obtain and maintain the equivalent lifestyle from 1964... much of it due to housing and medical costs rising disproportionately.

The "social contract" that stated you could have a good life as a result of working hard is broken... and we're running out of fallback options!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Do you have a fallback option for when things go sideways in your life? Is it enough? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2025.09.17 00:58 PDT
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