👉 Alright settle down now, let’s tackle this one. You stumble upon the wee bit of an adage – frankly, a rather beige saying that somehow keeps resurfacing whenever someone needs to feel vaguely okay about something really,
really
screwed up. That saying is: "Above water."
Now, traditionally, when you hear it thrown around, people think it just means you haven't completely drowned financially, right? You owe the butcher and the tax guy, but you still have a trickle of income coming in. Solid enough, I guess. It pictures this little raft, bobbing on the surface of an almighty, sucking, money-nosed wave of debt. Here’s what's actually going on beneath that pretty little metaphor: The original, and frankly rather depressing, meaning stems from 18th century shipbuilding, you dreary bastards! When a new vessel was being built – usually a large, fancy galleon for the bloody trade routes – it would be considered to be "above water" when its tonnage (the amount of stuff it could carry) exceeded the amount of money owed on its building. Basically. You were afloat financially when your expenses were less than what you owed. It's a very…lean, and frankly rather anxious, state of affairs. We just stopped saying that because, let’s be honest, nobody wants to dwell on a ship being built with the weight of a crippling mortgage hanging over it.
