Wow…..I play scenarios in my head constantly. Keeps brain active and often brings up something more we need to focus on learning, stocking, ducking, and avoiding. But this low slide backwards is creepy. The beginning of an avalanche is always slow…until the bottom drops out from beneath you.
I grew up in an era in rural America….no one was really wealthy. All the wealth had to be dumped back into the farm to finance the next year. But we all were about even….everyone had holes in their at-home winter boots. You just put plastic bread sacks in to keep your socks/feet dry and went out to play. Next season…when your feet had grown, you get a new pair of winter boots. Or inherited from older siblings.
Then things changed. I actually went to college…as did DH. He grew up urban poor…single mom/4 kids style urban poor. Taped glasses frames cuz …boys break things and single moms are not going to replace them AGAIN this year.
Yet, he went to college and beyond. We both worked professional jobs that didn’t pay as much as was expected. This was decades ago. Ours was the generation that first got hit by student loans….followed by lower paying jobs. Siblings that learned plumbing-construction-truck driving had a MUCH higher lifestyle than we did. Um….we began to scratch our heads…while paying those student loans every month.
Time passed and we had a higher living than we’d grown up with, but it wasn’t stable. Seemed like we were one bad event away from slipping backwards. Then….I was diagnosed and fell out of the job market. I’d never made much despite my impressive job titles/responsibilities. Wait…what? We definitely had that creepy feeling that we’d already passed the best economic days of our lives….before we turned 40.
But, as you say, it felt like we were alone. Others had cars and vacations and fine dining and such. But we didn’t know what their credit card balances were. We’d had that era briefly and modestly too. Perhaps it should have been even more brief and more modest’
The past 2 decades have been interesting. DH pulled out of his profession, dumped some debt thru painful means. We’ve rented for decades now – forget owning now, tho we did before. I cook from scratch as much as I’m able…literally able. We have gone back to many things we grew up with…frugal things. And…it’s not bad. We’re okay.
But the situations are still shifting. We’re aging…and that’s a deal-breaker. We’re not able to DO as many things manually that we did before. Hiring the work done is not an option. We’ll need to get near our younger generations soon.
Our younger generation is still in their heyday….enjoying. But they’re in retail and self-employment. Their rental space will be bulldozed for another hotel…and they’ll have to build out a new space…again. So they understand things they didn’t while we were in self-employment. Now they’re seeing their problems and seeing our former issues more clearly. But they don’t know that this black mold is spreading…quickly. It’s not just us…and them.
I could feel this creeping but your article, more than any other I’ve read, snapped it into focus. This is what I’ve been seeing all along. We know we’re not even in the middle class anymore. Can’t say when we crossed over but it certainly has happened. We’re still ok. And we’ll be ok for longer than most because we define “okay” by lower standards than most.
OldMtWoman …yeah, I do go on and on…. :shrug:
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
OldMt Woman.