Kingman ? Susan Hubbell’s mandate for making it through tough economic times translates into living within one’s means.

There’s a big difference between wants and needs.

“You don’t need cable,” she said.

Her list for a less costly lifestyle includes limiting magazine subscriptions, not eating out and setting the thermostat several degrees lower in winter and higher in summer.

Hubbell, who serves as Kingman County register of deeds, and her husband, Mike, with three children still living at home, know firsthand about job layoffs and getting by in today’s economy.

Mike has been laid off four times from his Wichita aircraft manufacturing job, the first time right after 9/11, and more recently, the Friday before Christmas 2008. During those down times, he finds part-time work in construction.

Because there aren’t many of those jobs locally, that means going out of state.

Living within their means

Susan Hubbell remembers a year ago reading about people on both the East and West coasts who “got upside down on vehicles,” in which the amount they owed on them was more than the cars were worth.

“What’s wrong with keeping an older vehicle and driving it until it dies?” she asks.

As for home mortgages, banks have increasingly been financing houses for those who can’t afford the payment. When she hears of families who have been evicted from high-dollar houses because they can’t make the mortgage payment, Hubbell said she wonders whatever happened to the idea of a couple buying a “starter home” and trading up when it became affordable.

Along with her family’s willingness to live a financially conservative lifestyle, Hubbell said rural Kingman residents Bob and Debbie Massey also work hard and practice thriftiness.

Bob works two jobs. His full-time employment with a pharmaceutical company provides their health insurance and a retirement plan. He works part time in the motorcycle business they own.

Debbie raises a large garden and works and keeps books for their business.

“Talk about a penny-pincher — Debbie even started making her own soap,” Hubbell said.

Lessons in thrift

Debbie Massey admits to being probably “the biggest tight person you will ever meet.” She learned thrift from her mother and her grandmother, who did their own baking and raised gardens that fed their families. She’s expanded her own garden this year, adding asparagus and rhubarb, and planted “lots of green beans” and okra that she’ll can or freeze.

“We farmed for 30 years and there just wasn’t a lot of money in farming,” she said of her younger years.

The lessons she learned haven’t gone away. The soap-making effort that called for a mix of naphtha, washing soda and borax wasn’t as successful as she’d hoped — it didn’t clean the clothes as she expected.

But the experiment wasn’t a total wash. She discovered that if she added washing soda to her laundry loads she could cut back on the amount of detergent.

Sharing resources

They further economize by buying boxed meat, in a partnership with extended family. “We wait until it goes on sale, and it’s a lot cheaper,” Debbie Massey said.

Last year, when gasoline hit $4 a gallon, her family cut back on their rodeo recreation, hitched rides and shared horse trailers.

“I refused to go if I couldn’t share,” Massey said. “It was too expensive, even at break-even, to spend $100 in fuel and $40 to $50 for entry. That’s a lot of money. You can do a lot with $150.”

Growing their income

With their family of six children raised, Sandy and David Hayes, of rural Kingman, have continued with his project of a big garden. It keeps increasing in size, Sandy said. David works full time at a Kingman manufacturing plant, returns home after his 3:30 p.m. shift and they work for several hours in what is now their truck farm garden. Along with the garden furnishing food for them, they sell produce at the Wichita farmers’ market.

That income supplements her husband’s wage and allows her not to work away from home.

“Today’s paychecks don’t keep up with the increase in taxes, groceries, insurance, you name it,” Sandy said. “The garden does tide us over. We’re not getting rich, but it helps.”

They pick fruit at a local orchard and also raise bees that have increased their garden production. Along with canning and freezing garden produce and fruit for themselves, with enough left over to share with family, in winter she bakes homemade bread. They also heat with wood.

Rocky retirement

They’ll both work to age 75, but they’re uncertain about what the economy is doing to their retirement.

“I don’t suppose there’s anybody who doesn’t worry about that,” Sandy said.

Susan Hubbell credits their rural heritage for giving people who live in the Midwest a good work ethic and keeping them in touch with living within their means.

Along with the sagging economy, loss of retirement funds has added another critical element, Hubbell said. That’s a concern for her and her husband, who at age 51 is just a little more than a decade from retirement age.

This year has added unemployment, and everybody is scared for their jobs, Massey said.

“It’s a whole different set of circumstances and everybody has different views for how to get along,” she said. “What I can do without, you couldn’t. I’m always finding a way to make a buck stretch.”