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UPSIDE DOWN
Bishop Eli King is a formidable character.
Renowned in Lancaster County as one of the most conservative, by-the-book bishops in the area, Bishop Eli gives off the air of someone who rules a small dictatorship, and not just sixty or so families in his two districts.
For one, he looks just like Abraham Lincoln with his canny-looking, deep-set eyes, prominent chin, and antique beard and clothes. Abe Lincoln with a bowl cut, that is. Rumor has it that Eli will put the Bann (excommunication) on you for putting one toe over the Ordnung, the written and unwritten rules of the Amish.
Iâm a little scared of him already, and weâve only just begun our chat. It doesnât help that Iâm perched delicately on the rim of a bathtub, in the middle of a construction site where Eli works.
The only way he would agree to meet with me is if I questioned him during his lunch hour, as he didnât want to take time away from his employer. Coated with carpentry dust, munching an egg salad sandwich, he accepted my thanks for making time during his lunch break. âBeing taught to love work makes all the difference,â he said, taking another bite. âThereâs not much spare time when the budget is tight.â
The truth is, the budget has been tight for Eli and his People. Even though overall the Amish have hunkered down and weathered the economic hailstorm of the past couple of years much better than the rest of us, they havenât been completely insulated.
According to Amish expert Erik Wesner, author of Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive, the People have felt the decreased demand that comes in a downturn. âA decline in business can trickle down through the community and even affect those businesses that are strictly âAmish-oriented,ââ he said. âSo for example, instead of buying a new buggy for your soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old son for a few thousand dollars from the local Amish carriage shop, you might be more inclined to pick one up at the auction for half that.â
Adapting to shaky financial times is something the Amish do extremely well. Instead of buying new buggies, theyâll buy used. Jake the Builder will remodel old homes instead of constructing new ones. One Plain housewife I spoke to said that when times are tight, sheâll substitute maple syrup (tapped from her own trees, of course) for sugar in her baking and cooking. Wesner tells of a sawmill owner who switched to vegetable oilâacquired free as a throwaway product from local restaurantsâto substitute for diesel, amounting to a thousand-dollar monthly savings.
âWe scrape the bottom of the barrel more than most.â âBishop Eli
The Amish are resourceful, to be sure, but thereâs much more to their money success than that.
Why have they managed to do so well, even in the midst of the recession? Eli offered some insights:
âWe scrape the bottom of the barrel more than most,â Bishop Eli told me, with an Amishmanâs gift for understatement, and a rather un-Amish, zealous grin.
âWhen I grew up,â he continued, âmy parents didnât have more than the necessities. We were taught that when we go away from the plate, it is empty. Today, there is so much wasted food.
âWaste not, want not,â he concluded, polishing off the last morsel of his sandwich.
On debt, he had this to say: âYa gotta make up what you donât have; donât borrow it.â
On eating out: âWe frown upon eating at restaurants.â (Many Amish eat out occasionally, but apparently not under Eliâs oversight.)
On the Amish work ethic: âWe work with our hands so we can help the poor; the Bible says to.â
Eli expressed concern about the immoderate spending habits now creeping into Plain life and community. âMoney is our biggest danger,â he said, stabbing a finger in the air. âToo much leads to foolish spending, fancy foods.â
By the time we were ready to wrap up our chat, I felt that Eli had warmed up to me, and I to him. Sure, heâs kind of extreme, but I feel that heâs a nice man, despite his severe pronouncements.
âI see youâre wearing buttons there, Eli,â I teased. âI thought buttons were verboten.â
He grinnedâa wide and blazing grinâand yanked open the top part of his shirt. I nearly fell into the bathtub.
The underside of his shirt revealed Velcro inserts. âI fooled ya, didnât I?â
The Amish, I was to learn, are full of surprises.
FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!
Amos certainly surprised me. The forty-five-year-old farmer had saved four hundred thousand dollars over the course of twenty years, while renting a farm and raising fourteen children. When I visited Amos and his wife, Fern, and their beautiful family, I looked for signs of stinginess, of a wife and children suffering somehow under the regime of a tight-fisted, straw-hatted Scrooge.
No one seems deprived; in fact, just the opposite. Amos and Fernâs adorable children have a calmness and peace that I find striking and appealing. The Millers are a happy, thriving family, and Amos is a kind, loving father, who smiled fondly at his little ones as they climbed on and off his lap during our interviews. Fern told me that sheâs been checking out the fliers, looking for a sale on trampolines; this summer the little Millers are going to be bouncing and flipping to their heartsâ content.
I tried every journalistic trick in the book to get Amos to impart pearls of wisdom, but it finally came down to this: âAs far as our âmoney secrets,â these are values handed down for generationsâwe canât take credit,â he said.
And heâs partly right. Thrift, common sense, wise money management, delayed gratification, etc., are taught from the time wee Moses and Mary are knee-high to a grasshopper. Amos canât boast about being thrifty any more than a child born into an Amish home could brag about knowing how to speak Pennsylvania Dutch. Money lessons are learned from the start of life.
Though he wonât accept credit, Amos is definitely doing something right, and has been doing itâwith Fernâs helpâ for the last two decades.
Basically, Amos doesnât really know what heâs done thatâs so remarkable. (The Plain humility is one more way the Amish are radically countercultural.)
âIâve been around them a long time,â said Banker Bill, âand the main thing that sets them apart, money-wise, is their values. They are upside down.â
Kind of like the topsy-turvy English translation of some Dietsch sentences, like: âJakie, throw Grampop down the stairs his hat.â Or, âIda, outten the light and make the door shut.â And one more: âBuzzy, did you come over the hill down?â
Just which culture has things wrong side up?
It makes you wonder, just as we get the visual of poor Grampop lying on his head at the bottom of the stairs, just which culture has things wrong side up?
When compared to our Englisher money bungles, the Amish way of wealth is a whole inverted lifestyle of thrift, self-control, carefulness, sharing, and community. Itâs a curious prosperityâa rootedness, simplicity, and a step back to âquaintâ money valuesâthat goes way beyond debt-free living.
My peek at the Amish and their upside-down ways convinced me: they turn us Fancy folk on our excessive, over-leveraged heads.
So how do we get turned right side up again?
The Amish canât teach us one golden piece of money wisdom that will help us live happy, contented lives while slowly but surely amassing gobs of cash like Amos did. On the contrary, there are about a dozen financial habitsâmoney secretsâthat we can pick up from folks like Amos (and Bishop Eli, Ephraim, Sadie, Naomi, et al.), spokes in a wheel that has been turning smoothly for centuries.
Hanging out with Amish folk such as Amos, I finally learned to pay attention to their habits and practices more than their words.
There was the old shovel, perfectly usable, with a piece of steel welded onto the handle, lying in the front flower bed (âYou and I would have bought a new shovel a long time ago,â Banker Bill pointed out). âWe try and repair what we can,â Amos said with a shrug.
Fern buys flour and sugar and other staples in fifty-pound bags from the Amish bulk food store, eliminating the middleman and saving scads over the years.
And as cherished as Lizzie, Eli, Katie, Sadie, and the rest are to their parents, Amos and Fern do not spoil them with a lot of extras. âWe donât buy them whatever they want,â Amos said.
When the work is done and the cows are milked, the Millers have fun together, playing badminton and making soft pretzels and homemade ice cream. The gentle tempo of their simple lifestyle seemed like soothing music to me.
Amos, you may not be willing to give yourself a pat on the back, but I give you all the credit in the world. Now all we have to do is figure out how to apply your tips (or ânon-tips,â as it were) to our own lives, and we...