Surviving the Recession: David Loftus

For the most part, my wife and I live no differently since the advent of the recession. That’s because during the preceding decade -- inspired by the Simple Living movement, ethical and ecological concerns, and the practical need to go lean in order to pursue our personal goals -- we had already made most of the changes a recession might otherwise have forced upon us.

We cleared up all our consumer debt. We gave up car ownership more than seven years ago. (Turning our aging vehicle over to the local humane society instantly bumped us into the “big donors” class, whereupon we were invited to receptions and got to rub elbows with people we never see anywhere else.) We sold our condo four years ago and moved into a rental apartment, which left us with a healthy chunk of savings. I haltingly followed my wife’s lead into vegetarianism three years ago.

Some things never change. We still watch no more than an hour or two of television a week. (The year’s chosen series is Flash Forward, though it’s clearly inferior to Lost.) I still check out a stack of DVDs from the public library in a clever ploy to save money on movies, and return them unseen.

So the only change has been that we eat out maybe once a week at most, rather than three or four times the way we used to. Well … that and the fact that I was laid off from my five-year-long job suddenly and without warning in July, and made the carefree decision -- at my wife’s urging -- to become an actor and model.