What possessed me to tell the Amish buggy driver that I was Mennonite on that vacation day in Lancaster County?
After all, I didn’t look the part, with my sleeveless, above-the-knee sundress, bright coral nails, jewelry, and makeup. I looked about as Amish as a contestant from Dancing with the Stars.
Maybe it was because the Amishman’s name was Menno, the same as our mutual fearless leader, Menno Simons, who founded the Mennonite Church in 1525. (He was a Dutch priest who radically upended the spiritual traditions of his day. The Amish would splinter about 170 years later.)
Somehow Menno, rocking the bowl haircut, beard, and suspenders, didn’t look surprised.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked mildly, smiling.
“Ja, ein klein bisschen,” I said. (How “klein”—“little”—I didn’t say, but he could probably figure it out when our conversation ran out of steam after a few questions.)
“Well den, denki for visiting us,” he said, ambling off to cart another buggy-load of “Englishers” (anyone not Amish; you could be from Swaziland and they would still call you an Englisher) to their destination.
Across time and space, Plain and Fancy, Menno and I had made a connection; both of us were spiritual children of Menno Simons and his revolutionary band of Anabaptists. I marveled that we could still understand each other’s language (although Menno might beg to differ), that our cultural cuisine was similar (delectable, carb-based, mostly beige foods, sometimes with a colorful side of chowchow—kind of an Amish kimchi, featuring beans), and that our views of peace and war were in sync.
Another connection: Amish and Mennonites both draw heavily from the Bible for their names. My dad’s name was Abram—Abe—and if I had a nickel for every relative named Jake (for Jacob) or Isaac or Lydia, I’d have enough money for a shoofly pie.
So despite my “Fancy” dress and worldly ways, I felt at home with Menno and his ilk, bearded, bonneted (the women, anyway), and covered head to toe in heavy fabric. We had the same point of origin, though the Amish and the Mennonites broke up in 1693, when Jakob Ammann, their founder, got his shorts in a knot about the issue of shunning. (Apparently, the Mennonites weren’t as crazy about shunning as he would have liked them to be—he and his followers took their marbles and went somewhere else to play.) Another bee in his bonnet was the matter of buttons. While those sassy Mennonites were binding their shirts and pants with newfangled buttons, Ammann, a tailor by trade, felt strongly that only hook-and-eye fasteners should be used.
Buttons: of the devil. Hook-and-eye fasteners: godly.
I wonder if it made more sense then than it does now?
At any rate, 317 years later, I was buttoning my pants, and Menno was still fastening his.
Despite the “button schism of 1693,” and some seriously head-scratching issues of division, I had always felt drawn to the Amish and their gentle, otherworldly ways. A “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” somehow I knew there was still a piece of my heritage in Lancaster County, waiting to be found.
THE CRASH
A few months after the economy crashed and Wall Street had driven us all in the ditch money-wise, I was feeling the aftereffects in my own life. The two industries I work for, book publishing and newspaper publishing, were both in a slump, and my work had definitely begun to dry up. My husband had a good job, thankfully, as a computer programmer, and after several months of turbulence and layoffs, it seemed as if he had some semblance of security.
But it was my work as a writer that was supposed to pay for our kids’ school tuition and big-ticket items, such as our son’s hockey and ice time and plane fare for my widowed mom when she visited us from Winnipeg, a thousand miles away.
Between fewer freelance assignments, pay cuts, and an overall sag in book sales, I was feeling the pinch more and more. How could I continue to pay for everything I needed when the dollars were drying up?
Things stretched tighter when we attempted to move.
What? Were we nuts?
Call me ferhoodled (rough Amish equivalent for “loopy”), but those bonneted, buttonless People were onto something, money-wise.
Pretty much so, yes. But after ten years of squeezing into our snug saltbox (and adding two more kids to the one we arrived with), we jumped— yea, lunged—at the chance to snag a bigger house, currently on a “Blue Light Special,” supersaver deal just a mile away.
The only problem was, our snug saltbox was unsalable, literally, having been appraised at twenty-seven thousand dollars less than what we paid for it a decade ago. Argh. After freaking out, some tears, gnashing of teeth, and prayers sent up, flare-like, we figured out a way to make it work. But it would mean living with extreme thrift for a while.
Have I mentioned that thrift makes me itch? It totally does.
Menno to the Rescue?
Then one day, I got a dispatch from on high (well, more like a broadcast from public radio, but looking back, it was somewhat epiphanic). NPR was doing a report on how a certain American subculture had managed to emerge, smelling like roses, in a year of utter financial slop. It was the Amish. My Amish.
What are Menno and company doing right? I wondered. Because I sure didn’t get Menno’s memo, and he’s not much for Facebook.
I needed to know what was on that memo! So I decided to interview Bill O’Brien, the Lancaster County banker profiled by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters.com, and many other media outlets. I’m a journalist, after all; that’s what I do—get to the bottom of things.
Turns out, 95 percent of his clients at HomeTowne Heritage Bank are Amish, and he oversees some $100 million of their loans. Here’s the kicker: in 2008, a year of financial doom, when venerable banks had crumpled in hours, Bill’s bank had its best year ever.
Call me ferhoodled (rough Amish equivalent for “loopy”), but those bonneted, buttonless People were onto something, money-wise.
When I investigated, I found out that Amish culture, serene, simple, and rooted in centuries past, held surprising financial wisdom for me. What could I learn from them that would prevent my husband and me from spending our retirement living under a bridge, sucking on bouillon cubes for nourishment? I mean, of course we probably wouldn’t, but there’s nothing like a global money droop to get the imagination spinning.
In contrast to my paranoia about being overleveraged and underfunded, the Amish were at peace, unruffled, and rich in contentment. As I dug deeper, I realized that these Plain people could teach me a thing or two about money, and what I could do, not only to hold on for dear life during this recession, but to actually thrive.
Dave Ramsey in a Straw Hat
Used to be, I thought “parsimony” was a garnish. I admit, I even had bad dreams in which Dave Ramsey (who looks just like my husband, I’ve been told a million times) was somehow my accountant and had access to my checkbook and financial records. In these dreams, Ramsey would come at me, leering, with scissors in his hand, threatening to cut my credit cards to smithereens.
I’d wake up in a cold sweat, panting, look over at my slumbering husband, and realize something had to give.
During my Period of Extreme Thrift, when I researched the Amish way of wealth, I realized Dave Ramsey wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, he’s downright Amish in some ways, when it comes to his views on spending and saving. Snap a pair of suspenders on him and the man would fit right in.
At any rate, discovering the money secrets of the Amish gave me and my family a “Total Money Makeover” of a different kind. Beyond tips on saving, spending, and investing, I learned how to live a lifestyle extravagant in peace, sharing, family, and community closeness.
Could a clotheshorse, spendthrift, clueless-about-cash girl like me actually spend less, save more, and make shoofly pie?
I always thought some of my frugal friends must have a special gift for hunting out savings and bargains, living abundant lives below their means, with money in the bank—a “thrifty bone”—I called it. As I spent time with the Amish and watched and learned their simple money habits, I realized that thrift is more of a muscle, and I intended to work that muscle until it was strong and lean and powerful enough to withstand temptations of all kinds.
But could I pull it off? Could a clotheshorse, spendthrift, clueless-about-cash girl like me actually spend less, save more, and make shoofly pie?
Yes, yes, and stay tuned—stranger things have happened.
My husband thinks my “Amish money makeover” is a small miracle (wait until I actually bake that pie!). Somehow though, through the course of writing this book, I noticed how the “generous frugality” of these simple people was slowly entering me, influencing me in every dollar I spent.
Wall Street drove all our financial buggies off the road. Can Menno, Moses, and Sadie, et al. help you and me get hitched up and on the right road again?
The answer is a resounding Ja!