{"id":454,"date":"2011-05-09T00:17:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T07:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/?p=454"},"modified":"2011-05-04T09:19:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T16:19:07","slug":"how-much-is-2-3-trillion-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/?p=454","title":{"rendered":"How much is $2.3 Trillion exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last two years we&#8217;ve been bombarded with news that contained numbers that were so big, that\u00a0I couldn&#8217;t really relate to them. I&#8217;m talking about the dept crisis, the trillion dollar budget deficit and billion dollar buy outs by the governments.<\/p>\n<p>When I look at my own savings I have a hard time relating to these numbers. I&#8217;ve found I can only get excited if I can emotionally relate to the money &#8211; one reason why I once went to the bank and had them give me all of my month&#8217;s earnings in cash &#8211; just to look at it and feel it.<\/p>\n<p>My financial nerves dumbed down so much from the stock market roller coaster in 2009 that was reflected in our 401k retirement savings, that I\u00a0 now have a very hard time to relate to any $-amount in a meaningful way. $1000, $10000, $100000, who cares? Is there still food in the fridge? &#8211; It&#8217;s almost that bad.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve started disciplining myself by using cash for monetary transactions as often as possible. The multiple digit numbers on my credit card statements don&#8217;t really mean much, if you just balance it with another number from another account. Yes, I&#8217;m lucky to be in that situation, but at the same time it&#8217;s scaring me and makes me sick how little I lately care about gaining or\u00a0loosing or spending\u00a0money &#8211; as long as the mortgage is paid and the fridge is full.<\/p>\n<p>Moments like this (when I write this post)\u00a0give me pause to appreciate the wealth we&#8217;re lucky to enjoy and live with. We\u00a0easily forget the alternative\u00a0of the less fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>Need to go now and buy some more stuff for the fridge &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last two years we&#8217;ve been bombarded with news that contained numbers that were so big, that\u00a0I couldn&#8217;t really relate to them. I&#8217;m talking about the dept crisis, the trillion dollar budget deficit and billion dollar buy outs by the governments. When I look at my own savings I have a hard time relating &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/?p=454\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How much is $2.3 Trillion exactly?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.austinity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}