Three in four Americans don't have enough wealth to weather financial setbacks and achieve major life milestones, according to a recent report from The Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank.

 How does one deal with this?

There are many different ways. I chose to buy inexpensive but beautiful land with a perfect view of Mt. Shasta in 1980 that I paid cash for and then built my own A-Frame.  At the time this saved my family in many different ways. The 5 of us then built our home and then we home schooled the children for 5 years until we decided to buy another business in the San Francisco Bay area. This saved us about 60,000 dollars in rent or more and all we had to pay was land taxes and since we didn't have electricity but did have water and a septic tank on our land we were okay with Aladdin lamps for light and Candle lanterns and an Antique Wood Burning Stove for cooking and baking and a wood stove my father welded up for me out of an old water pressure tank when we hauled water before his pipes were put in on his land Near Yucca Valley as we built his retirement home. So, where there's a will there's a way to survive. It all depends upon what is important to you in your life.

However, I have always found cities to be just too expensive to live in and too hard to get ahead living there either. The Country life has different problems than living in a city or suburbia. and there are many ways to make money either starting your own business or working for someone  else anywhere you live in the U.S.