Nobody budgets for a long emergency. You budget for gas at roughly what it was last month, and you’ve got a number in your head for what a week or month costs. And then the president goes to war, and that plan goes out the window.

And you adjust. Quietly, without telling anyone. Because you’re not the kind of person who complains about gas prices. You just don’t do one or two or three things this month that you did last month. That’s thirty or forty extra dollars a month or week. Manageable, maybe.

And that’s if you’re fortunate. But if your margins were already thin, you can’t just tweak a thing or two.

Each cut hurts, especially now. Yes, gas is up, and a lot. But so is food and car insurance, blow after blow after blow.

Because the thing about living on the margins, and I know a thing or two about living on the margins, is that it’s always a multi-front war, one that you can’t budget for. So America, welcome to life on the margins. Here’s hoping we won’t be there long.

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