Yesterday I was watching the Oprah show.
Disclaimer: I normally try not to watch TV during the day (I'm too busy blogging, yo) and, when I do, Oprah is not on my list. But she was having a show about couponing and since that's my latest obsession, I watched. Also, Jeremy's away so the TV might be on a tad more than usual. You do what you gotta do.
Oprah had Dylan Ratigan from CNBC on the show and he said the economic crisis in our country will be solved when we all learn to live within our means. He said we're all charging more than we can afford, borrowing more than we can pay back, and finding it impossible to pay the bills.
I wanted to strangle him.
Yes, many, many (too many) people are living this way. But what about all of us out here who have been working hard to stay within our means? And doing so long before this crisis hit?
When Chelsea was about 9 months old, I went back to work part-time. And it sucked. Everything fell apart. I was miserable at work and doing a horrible job. I felt stressed all the time at home and I was also doing a horrible job of parenting.
I decided I needed to stay home. Jeremy and I both calculated whether or not we could afford to live on just his salary and the short answer is that we could not. Even by cutting back all of our discretionary spending (no new clothes, no dinners out, no gym membership, no cable tv) our necessities were more than his salary. It was close, but not enough.
We decided it was important enough to do it anyway. We hoped that there would be some savings from my staying home and planned to take money out of savings if we needed it to get by. And we did.
We live in a tiny apartment. We pay our credit card bill, in full, every time. We drive old cars. We rely on gifts and second-hand shops to clothe our children. We have been doing anything and everything to live within our means.
It angers me that I'm now having to scrimp even more than I already was because of people who were not able to live within their means. No, that's not right. Some people were able; they were not willing to live within their means.
As our new President has said, there's plenty of blame to go around. I just wish when Dylan Ratigan lays the blame at the foot of the American people, he would at least acknowledge that people like us exist. I know we're not alone.
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5 comments:
I didn't see it, but he sounds awful glib to be stating that this would all be fixed if the collective "we" could stop drinking so much Starbucks.
I can see why this angered you. It sucks that it should be so hard for you to do what's best for your family.
Really great post.
thank you, robyn.
i was hesitant to post this one because i don't like to be too whiny or ungrateful, so i really appreciate your comment.
I don't think you sound ungrateful or whiny at all. I keep wanting to write to somebody, anybody, and say, well, a whole bunch of stuff. Like...My husband and I have modest jobs and live in a modest house. I work part time because the full time would kill me right now, and pull our family to shreds; as is, we're doing better than last year because I took on an extra class. Part time isn't necessarily less time working: my time is just more fragmented; I often feel that I'm working every bit as hard as when I was full time, and really, there's not much difference in my workload. We pay our credit card in full every month. Our big date is the local pizza place, where we get a big cheese slice for just about nothing. I clip coupons, pack my lunch, refuse to throw away leftovers. For the past few years, we've very carefully chosen one part of the house that needs work, and very carefully planned how to use our tax refund to pay for it. The list grows longer than the money does, but we'll get to it all one of these years. My husband takes on extra stuff at work; he works his way up the teacher food chain by taking summer classes when he can.
We could trim some things out, and we have. Grocery shopping and food planning have gotten much more thoughtful. I've curtailed my book habit! I'm looking at clothes in my closet that I really shouldn't be wearing to work, because the cuffs are fraying. When we've replaced dying appliances -- and we don't replace them until they're well and truly dead -- we haven't always gone with the cheapest model, but we have a couple of times gone with the most long-term efficient model, in hopes of seeing benefits down the line. (Witness my car -- not the cheapest at the outset, but oh, do I win on gas on my commute. And now that we've paid that car off, we're going to take what we were paying for it each month and start the savings to replace my husband's older car, eventually.) When the gift cards I got for Christmas run out, that will be then end of my coffee (which is already down to pretty much nothing as is). But there's a lot we just didn't have to begin with -- we already have the basic level of This, or the no frills version of That. The next step would be, if necessary, to loose some of the This or That altogether.
But I won't compromise on which health insurance I choose at work; I won't give up my WeightWatchers monthly pass or my gym membership just yet, because I actually feel a bit like I'm signing my own death warrant if I do. (I exaggerate slightly, but not much: I did drop the gym thing a while ago, and ended up re-signing, because I actually felt scared and sick to my stomach at giving up this means of improving my health. I felt like I was deliberately making an unhealthy choice, and it actually viscerally scared me. But I'm careful to make sure I get my insurance benefit back for both these things.) I hear a friend (also very careful about money) talk about how she and her husband are going to take a trip because he has miles from work, and they haven't taken a trip in a while, and I realize, we actually never have (not since our 2 night honeymoon) unless you count the ones my parents have subsidized, with our whole family. My son's daycare was neither the cheapest nor most expensive I saw -- but it was modest. And I love it, and wouldn't trade it for anything: the paint might be peeling, but they hire great people, and he's soaking it up like a sponge: it's a really little school, and it does my heart no end of good to know that I have absolutely no reservations about dropping him off there. In the summer, we scale it way back to save money, but he goes for a couple of mornings, just to keep connected and to help ease his transition in the fall. The thought of adding a second child calls everything into question, and we're not really sure we can do it.
And then I hear people on the radio lecturing us on how we need to be patient while big banks get bailed out, because the savings will come around to us eventually. In time to save my husband's modest public school teaching job in a district that's struggling NOW? I even get frustrated (admittedly unfairly) when I hear "create new jobs" and "build infrastructure" because -- while I know these things are necessary for people out of work now -- they still seem to go back to this "hang on and it will come to the rest of you eventually" argument. (And a job building roads or new schools will not help me with my Latin teacher degree. Nor would I be good help to the roads. Much better for ALL parties concerned if I stay where I am!) Can we also do something concentrated to save the jobs that exist now, in the schools that exist now, please? Perhaps I should be grateful for ANY job...but I'd also prefer not to have to change jobs, change fields, relocate my family, uproot my life when I didn't make the bad loans or run up 10 credit cards drinking lattes. Why is it OK for the average joe to have to be uprooted that way, but not for the CEO making a zillion dollars a year?
And I'm getting very tired of the lecturing tones we keep hearing EVEN from people TRYING to help hear from towns and their "wish lists" (as in one interview with a guy from Minnesota): he's trying to be fair and equitable, but there's still this tone of "You all just have to realize...." Right. I do. That's why I pay my credit card every month, and have a modest house, and etc. etc. Tell it to the banks, and the CEOs getting obscene bonuses and then saying, "This salary cut will be an adjustment from the lifestyle to which we are accustomed." Cry me a river: imagine what losing a job must do to a person's lifestyle.
Sorry -- was I ranting again? =/
I also feel I'm whining a little myself, and I hope nothing I say rubs the wrong way: this is such a sharply sensitive subject, and getting more so every time the job cuts swing too close.
Thanks for articulating this, Heidi. And good luck --
kristin,
thank you. thank you. thank you.
you know i can relate all too well to the challenges of living on a teacher's salary, or two teacher's salaries.
i'm sorry to hear that things are as tight for you as they are for us. as i said in my post, i know we're not alone in trying HARD to live within our modest means.
hang in there.
Hi again, Heidi -
I didn't realize how LONG I'd rambled until I saw the comment posted -- sorry!
I have to say, we're pretty blessed in that things are actually not terribly tight -- or at least, I don't perceive them to be. There's a lot of extra stuff we don't do, but I find I miss it more in theory than in practice. (Who has energy to go to a movie??)
And I'm shamefully conscious of my own privilege when I talk about cutting back in terms of things like my gym membership....when there are people probably not too far away cutting back on things like, oh, you know, FOOD.
But while we're not in any holes yet, we're increasingly nervous as we watch the budget at home and in town -- and the scariest part is that it's NOT about our decisions. We can trim all we want, and be as smart as we want and as careful as we want...and it comes down to the decisions other people have already been making, spiralling on their merry way. It's about what the housing market in town will do, which will change property values, which will help determine whether the school employing my husband can weather the storm long enough see us through the other side.
Anywho, thanks for your perspective and encouragement. Teacher power! Best of luck to all of you --
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