Another 2020 Update

 I have been so checked out on blogging and hadn't even seen the comments on my last post until just now. It is good to hear updates from longtime readers-- some sad news, unfortunately, but also some positive news. Deaths and births and life ongoing, as everyone adjusts to the pandemic.

I lost a dear friend this past week, to old age and unrelated to COVID, but it made me think about how much I value spending time with loved ones, which has been difficult these past months. I saw this friend a few times this year, always a bit worried about the risk to her of any outing, even a tiny, socially distant, mostly outdoor, or at least well-ventilated gathering. She had lived a very long life, and wanted to keep living it fully as best she could. We went to a museum together a few months ago, and she came to my house for Thanksgiving. She was hoping to visit Paris again when travel resumed. She was 94 years old.

On a more positive note, the pandemic has had a silver lining for me. I got a job! I used to sometimes hear from friends in my industry who thought I might be interested in certain openings, but when I said I didn't want to commute into NYC at all, things fell apart. But now that everyone is working remotely for the near future, that all changed! The perfect job kind of fell into my lap-- a more junior, less stressful position than I've had in a while, with a flexible schedule and decent benefits. I can work from home permanently. I wasn't sure I wanted a "real" job again, but I feel like this is something where I can be useful. It doesn't pay much in comparison to my past jobs, but it's more than enough to cover the costs of my current lifestyle and put me back into the mode of saving money instead of depleting my resources. And I figured with everything pretty much shut down because of the pandemic, I had nothing better to do anyway! Sweetie is a little bored while I'm working away upstairs, but when the time comes that we want to travel again and do other things, I'll see what I can work out in terms of reduced hours. So far I am happy enough that I think I'd like to continue part-time work for the longer term, but if that isn't possible, I can always just retire again, and be in a better financial position than the last time I tried to retire. One thing I've realized is that I am very good at working, but not very good at managing my own time in a productive and creative way. I need some kind of project to organize-- for a while it was moving, and home renovations, but once those things were past, I was getting bored again and COVID left me feeling even more aimless. So even if it's not quite the post-retirement plan I'd envisioned, I'm in a good place.

I have lots more money stuff to talk about-- how much I invested in home office ergonomics, Sweetie's new car, my mom, my investments, and a recap of my 2020 budget and net worth. I'll try to get to it before summer! Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a joyous and healthy 2021.

Life Goes On...

I continue to enjoy my leisure as a "retiree." I'm healthy, I feel relaxed, I go to the gym a lot, I read a lot of books. I continue to feel incredibly lucky, especially when I hear about other people's struggles with money. Such as...

A friend who I don't think I have written about here before, so I'll call her Sally. She's been divorced for many years, and for almost that entire time, she's been chasing her ex-husband to try to get him to pay child support. She has often been working multiple jobs and is willing to do pretty much anything to make money, however menial or physically demanding. Her ex-husband works on and off, mostly for cash. He hides income via his girlfriend. He complains that it's "not worth it" to look for a job sometimes. He may or may not be using drugs at times. He owes her over $50,000. Meanwhile their two kids are in college and racking up huge student loans, even while attending state schools. Sally has a full time job with benefits now, which has helped her a lot, but they have crappy health insurance, so every time she or her kids have to go to the doctor, she is trying to get the doctors to not order too many tests, and questioning every prescription to see if they can stretch it out to a lower dosage. With regard to one medication, her doctor said "It costs you $900? I had no idea!" I guess it's a good thing to make sure doctors don't just over-prescribe and over-test, but I think it is better for medical decisions to be made on the basis of what a medical professional thinks is best, vs. what a consumer thinks they can afford. I just hope Sally will eventually get to a point where she doesn't have to worry so much about money.

And then there's Mortimer, who has appeared in my posts from time to time. Mortimer has been unemployed for almost 2 years now. His COBRA ran out and he's on Medicaid. He's kind of tapped out the friends who were able to help him find jobs in the past. I think he feels a bit paralyzed when it comes to next steps-- he's taken some classes to develop new skills, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to parlay them into a new career. Mortimer used to make around $75-100k, I think, and I think he is struggling with the idea of starting over at a much lower level in his late 50s.

Another friend, let's call her Tory, who has been dealing with the aftermath of divorce-- not her own, but her husband's, who she married relatively late in life. I'll call him Todd. He pays a large amount of alimony to his ex-wife, and unlike Sally's ex, he pays it regularly and on time. In his late 50s, his finances hadn't totally recovered from the divorce settlement, and then he lost his job. He set himself up to do some consulting but wasn't able to make much money. Then, fortunately, he got another job. But then Tory lost her job. And then Todd lost his new job. Todd is by now in his early 60s and Tory is in her late 50s. They have a 10 year old daughter. (Tory didn't mention it but I know it took her a long time to get pregnant so that was probably another big expense.) They lived in an upscale suburb of NYC, and after a couple of years with no success at finding new jobs, they realized they weren't going to be able to stretch out their assets long enough. So they sold their house and moved to the midwest to start a new, cheaper life. Just to kick them in the shins a little more, they ended up taking a loss on their house sale, since they'd bought it at the top of the market. Tory is happier now and seems optimistic, but I can't help feeling like there is an undercurrent of disappointment. For a few years, everything was falling into place for her, with a new husband, a new baby, a career and a nice lifestyle, and then she had to give it all up and move far away from family and friends. A tough choice.

I'm glad I have friends who are open about what is going on in their lives financially. I don't really know all the details of their savings and income and expenses, but they are honest about their difficulties and what they are doing to try to survive, rather than just pretending everything is fine. It's a good reality check.

New Life So Far

 I’ve got a few weeks of retirement/vacation/unemployment under my belt now… and I’m still not sure what to call it! But I have already made a few discoveries about myself. Firstly, that I am lazy! I had very good intentions to blog every day and go to the gym every day and be very creative and productive and healthy, but I’m not doing a very good job of that just yet.

 In my first few days off, I bounced around the apartment doing a lot of little chores like washing windows, organizing my sock drawer, and repairing a lamp. But having knocked those off the list, I felt a bit at sea. I did go to the gym most days, but that only took up a couple of hours, leaving me a lot of time to spend A) wondering if I’ve done the right thing in quitting my job, and B) staring at my phone. I have an amazing capacity to just loll around and check Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter all day!

Then I got sick, and even my gym routine went out the window. It took a few doctor visits and blood tests to figure out what was wrong with me, and luckily, just some antibiotics to fix it, but not before my brain went off into some anxious (and literally feverish) spins about how much COBRA payments were costing me and what would be happening with Obamacare, and pre-existing conditions, and deductibles and premiums and co-payments, oh my.

 The healthcare costs are my main spending these days— immediately upon starting my semi-retirement (I’m just going to call it that for now), I found myself with a hankering for peanut butter sandwiches. That plus some salad greens, cheese and crackers, and a baggie full of nuts and raisins, has been my primary diet on these lazy days, and I get really annoyed with myself if I forget to bring my own water bottle from home and have to buy one. Sweetie and I have occasionally gone out for lunch at pizza places, middle-Eastern restaurants, and Chipotle, but on the whole, I’ve been really good about cutting my spending on food. I also haven’t spent much on any other miscellaneous items or clothes, other than finding my favorite jeans on sale and snapping up a couple pairs since I’ll be wearing them a lot more!

 Our basic costs of living— housing, insurance, etc— are a big drain right now, but so far, my net worth has pretty much stayed steady, even increasing a little— stock market fluctuations will have a much bigger effect at this point than any day to day spending, at least in the short term. But it is painful to see all this negative cash flow.

 Right now, I’m just giving myself some time to settle into this new life and figure out a new rhythm— it’s more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Although I did not think of myself as wrapped up in my old career as a big part of my identity, I am uncertain about what my identity is now. What I mean is that I didn’t base my self-worth on making a lot of money and being at a certain professional level— I was proud of it, but my career was less about prestige than it was about an inner feeling of competence. I liked knowing what I was good at my job (most of it, anyway) and I felt satisfaction in getting things done. Now that source of satisfaction is missing and I need to replace it with something. I need to feel like I’m good at something, and productive. It’s scary to not have a clear idea what that will be, and to contemplate doing something new where I am clueless and might be frustrated at first because I don’t know what I’m doing and make mistakes. The part of my life that gave me confidence and security has been replaced by doubt and uncertainty.

 But this is temporary. I know things will settle down— we’ve got a house to buy, an apartment to sell, and a new life to build, none of which will happen overnight, so I need to be patient with myself. And we have money in the bank to get us through the next steps. I still feel incredibly lucky to have these choices and decisions to make.

It's Done

In my last few posts, I was working my way towards a big life change... and now I've taken the next big step. I quit my job! It was both a big step and strangely anti-climactic, since I hadn't been at that job for very long and had never really settled into it in some ways. Now I just wish I'd done it sooner so I could have had more time off during the summer, but it's actually kind of nice to go into vacation mode just as everyone else is going back to school/work.

This is going to be weird, though. I haven't been unemployed since I was 21! What am I going to do with myself? More blogging, I hope! And I do intend to find other work, but at the moment we're working on moving out of NYC, which seems like a job unto itself. The main thing I'm going to have to adjust to is seeing negative numbers in my income/expense tracking. I will not be saving money in the short term. I will have to be very strict about sticking to a budget, but spending some of my savings is all part of the master plan. It is going to be painful over the next few months as we'll have higher household expenses while we deal with relocating. But afterwards, our ongoing expenses will be lower. And Sweetie will have a lot more liquid cash after the NY apartment is sold. We are pretty sure that if we play our cards right, we don't really ever have to have jobs again, though we do want to find other work, preferably part-time.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing of more and more people who are also leaving NYC-- some are moving to totally new cities for new jobs, some are moving back to their home towns to be closer to parents, some are doing reverse commutes to jobs outside NYC and planning to fully move later. Others are also leaping into the void of uncertainty: one guy quit his job, sold all his stuff, and moved to Berlin! There is a sense that the city has changed so much from when we ourselves were the young new arrivals, but maybe every new generation feels that NYC is becoming just an over-developed playground for the wealthy and their children and just isn't as fun anymore...

But for me, what I'm doing now feels exciting, inspiring, and a little scary. It's rejuvenating, perhaps, to throw off my very stable routines and enter a phase of disruption and reinvention-- though I suppose some people wouldn't think that a middle-aged couple moving to the suburbs is that adventurous! We shall see...

Health Insurance

Another important point brought up by a commenter on a recent post— how am I going to get health insurance if I leave my job? The short answer is that I’m going to pay through the nose for it!

This really is the crappiest part of trying to contemplate a sabbatical, or early retirement. I currently get pretty good health insurance through my employer, including coverage for Sweetie. I pay about $260 a month to cover our dental and medical insurance. I can see from my paystub that the employer covered portion of our insurance costs is about $1000 additional. Going on COBRA will also add some sort of administrative fee, so I’m budgeting that it will cost us $1,400 a month to pay for our insurance.

COBRA only lasts up to 18 months, so after that, assuming we didn’t have jobs yet, we’d have to buy insurance in the marketplace. I went to the NY State website to see what the costs would be under Obamacare. It looks like we make too much money from interest and dividends alone to qualify for any subsidies, so our costs for a “bronze” medical and dental plan for 2 people would be around $800 a month. “Silver” would be about $950, and “gold” would be around $1,150. Given that we are both currently quite healthy and don’t have any prescriptions we take regularly, it probably makes sense for us to try a bronze plan— this would have a really high deductible, so we’d be mainly covering ourselves for something catastrophic, and we have the cash to pay a big out-of-pocket maximum if we get hit by a bus. But that could be over $14,000 worth of charges we’d have to pay before the insurance kicks in. So maybe it’s worth it to pay about $350 more per month for the lower copays and out of pocket caps that we’d get with a gold plan?

Who knows… either way the whole system sucks. I know so many people from other countries that have single-payer systems, and they are perfectly happy with them and think that what we have to pay here is insane. Every time I see a drug ad on TV, I feel outraged that millions of dollars are being spent on all this pointless marketing, though I know that’s not the only reason healthcare costs are high. And of course, my numbers here assume that the Affordable Care Act isn’t completely destroyed by the Republicans. If the protection for people with pre-existing conditions goes away, I’ll be screwed, as I do have one hereditary thing that doesn’t require active treatment now, but would be considered a pre-existing condition and could potentially cause me to be charged a lot more for insurance in the future, or denied coverage for certain things.

So will we really be paying an amount equivalent to the rent on a small outer-borough apartment just to get health insurance? I guess we will, at least for a while. I’ve been googling “part time jobs with benefits” as that would be an ideal scenario, but I’m not sure we’ll get that lucky…

Remote Work

Several commenters have asked if I could move out of NYC and work remotely at my current job. I have definitely thought about this option. Unfortunately, in my current position, it would be a non-starter. There is certainly plenty of work I can do from home, but there are lots of meetings and face-time is required (the old-fashioned kind, not the Apple program!). Someone who works for me actually asked to work remotely and though I sympathized and wanted to say yes, my boss wanted to hold the line and say no. It’s seen as a productivity issue, and a fairness issue, I guess. There are some jobs where it may make sense, and some where it would be hard to measure productivity, so although there are some people who work remotely, they often say no, as they’re worried that the more they say yes, the more they’ll have to say yes to everyone just to be fair, and then the office would be a ghost town.

A lot of companies seem to want their employees to work remotely, so as to save on expensive office real estate. But then there is the question of office culture, team spirit, etc. I would certainly be interested in trying to work from home, but it would probably have to be a different job, with a different company. Or I could do some freelance consulting. I would love to have a flexible schedule, where I could bum around in jeans all day instead of having to get dressed up and commute to an office. But I do also worry a bit about whether my temperament is suited to it. When I have a day off, I can laze around for hours, getting distracted by solitaire and Facebook and reading the newspaper. I might not be disciplined enough to work from home. I think I’d also miss the social aspects of going to an office. Some of the suburban/rural areas we’ve considered moving to are actually within what many people consider commuting range— I work with people who travel up to 1.5-2 hours each way, so that’s a pretty wide radius around the city. But that kind of commute would just spoil any quality of life gains we’d get by moving, and those Metro North train passes are pricey.

So that leaves me thinking about what I could do for work from home, or locally wherever we end up living. I’m not feeling pressured to make a ton of money, so theoretically I could have a lot of options, but A) I’d have to figure out what those options are, and B) I might face some age discrimination. I’m not afraid to do menial work, and I did plenty of it when I was younger, but now that I’m pushing 50, I wonder if I’d be taken seriously as an applicant. I’m tempted to just apply for a bunch of random jobs to see if I could get one— kind of as an experiment in what today’s job market really is like. But I would also feel bad if I got a job that I didn’t really want for the longer term, but someone else might have really needed. So at least in the immediate future, I think I will try to focus on doing some networking in my industry to find out more about remote and freelance job opportunities and also try to talk to friends in other industries about what other kinds of professional jobs my skills would lend themselves to. But whether or not I find some other job, I’m becoming more and more certain that I’m going to quit and some kind of big change is coming!

More Thinking About Early Retirement

On the last post, bethh commented:

"I'm curious how you decided to set whatever goal it is that you have for retirement - is it salary times x, or spending times 30 years, or what? I feel pretty sure that if I were in your shoes I'd be retired already!" 

This kind of got me thinking about whether I could indeed be retired already. With about $1.2 million in assets and no debt, I already have a lot more money than many people do when they retire. But I'm still under 50, so I have a long window of time that money has to cover. At some point years ago, I had a somewhat arbitrary number of $2 million as my retirement savings goal, which I guess I had calculated would cover what I thought would be my desired retirement lifestyle. I can't remember exactly what math I did at the time-- maybe I should search my own blog archives to help my memory!
Some people use the rule of having at least 25x what your annual spending will be, on the theory that you can safely withdraw about 4% of your savings each year without eating into it too much, since it would hopefully have investment gains of more than 4% each year.
You also have to think about what "retirement" really means-- does it mean you don't work at all? Are you going to want to fill all that spare time with expensive hobbies and travel? Or are you willing to downshift to some other sort of work that will bring in some income, even if it's not much?
I've played around with lots of scenarios in a retirement calculator-- retiring now, retiring later, having a low income now and retiring in a few years, etc. I always felt like I was more or less on track but retiring early never seemed comfortably within reach based on my current lifestyle.
But here's something that I never added to the scenario: Sweetie.
One night when I was noodling around with all this, Sweetie said "does it let you input another person? You know, we're in this together..."
It's not that I didn't think we were in it together, but actually running the numbers this way made a huge difference. Sweetie owns real estate, and has savings, and a small mortgage. After being unemployed for a couple of years, Sweetie got a job that pays a low salary that covers some of our expenses. More importantly, at age 65, Sweetie will get a good old-fashioned defined benefit pension. And someday, Sweetie will most likely inherit a few hundred thousand dollars unless the family circumstances drastically change.
Plug all that in, and boom, we can both retire now.
Of course, this does not make me totally comfortable. We've talked about getting married at some point, but we aren't yet. Our finances are totally separate except for a token joint checking account with $2000 in it. And I just have this independence thing ingrained in me somehow-- the idea of being supported by someone else is just bizarre! But given how miserable I've been at my job, this is now making me think A LOT about quitting.  That may not be "retirement" just yet, but it's pretty amazing to realize that I may have the freedom to just walk away and not worry too much about what my next source of income is. I could try a new career, try doing consulting work, or just step back into a lower level job with way less responsibility. I haven't had more than a 2 week vacation since I was 22, and the idea of just having some time off is very appealing. Once you get this kind of thing in your head, it's hard to stop thinking about it...
So much in the world is uncertain right now-- would it be insane to just walk away from a secure six-figure job??

A Lot Can Happen in 6 Months!

Might be my longest ever lapse in blogging! Plenty to catch up on but I will check in with a couple of positive bits of news. 

My net worth is still over $1 million, and I don't think has dropped below that level since I last posted. It is an arbitrary number and doesn't mean I can stop worrying about money, but it is still a milestone to feel good about. 

And... It should become easier to maintain growth in my net worth because I got a new job that came with a big raise! I had been letting my career momentum stagnate a bit over the past few years-- perhaps because of hitting that other milestone of a 6-figure income and realizing I didn't desperately need to make a huge amount more money to reach my goals. But now I will be making 30-40% more depending on my bonus. And depending on whether I get fired for failing at my new job! I hope that won't happen, but it will definitely present new challenges, and more stress. I think more and more about retiring early, so I need to stay focused on saving my extra income to reach that goal. 

I will try to get back to posting more about other issues. If any loyal readers are still sticking around, thanks for bearing with me!

Bonus Time

So my last post was about how tax time is usually a happy time of year... this goes hand in hand with bonus time, which is also usually a happy time of year. This year was a bit of an exception.
I have mostly had jobs that involve measurable performance in some aspects, so a bonus has often been a significant part of my compensation, sometimes more than I even expected! I always remember my first job in NYC, where my salary started at $25,000. I knew that some sort of bonus would accompany that, but I don't know how much I asked about how big it could be. I was coming from a job where a bonus meant maybe $1500-2000, so I didn't think of it as a make-or-break thing. So it was a fantastic surprise when I ended up making about $15,000 in bonus that first year, and all of it went straight into the bank. I've always tried to make ends meet on my base salary and put bonuses towards saving, it just seems easier to be disciplined that way.
Nowadays, my bonus tends to be about 15-20% of my total compensation, so it's still a good chunk of savings that I rely on to meet my overall goals. And this year, because I had done some things that went above and beyond in terms of my job performance, I was counting on a bigger than usual bonus. In fact, I had sort of been told, or it had been implied, that when I got only a so-so raise this year, it was because that was not the way my work was going to be recognized, but that I would see the payoff in my bonus.
My personal performance isn't the only thing that determines my bonus, so when I have this conversation with my boss, she usually hands me a piece of paper that shows the whole calculation. My eyes usually jump to the total, I smile, I thank my boss profusely, and that's pretty much it. But this time, my eyes went to the total, then dodged around a bit, then back to the total, then back and forth over all the math. While this happened, I was sort of zoning out on what my boss was saying and my face must have slowly dropped from a smile into a blank look into a frown. My total bonus was less than the prior year, and specifically the part that was about my individual performance was less than the prior year. I knew one part of the bonus might be down due to certain sales numbers that it would be based on, but I just could not comprehend how my personal number was less. I managed to gather my thoughts enough to say, I think gracefully, what was already written on my face-- that I was surprised and disappointed, because I had accomplished X, Y and Z, etc., that were a significant jump over what I'd done last year.
This all happened on a Friday and I spent the whole weekend in a funk. It wasn't so much the money itself-- it was that I felt insulted. I also felt demoralized. I had worked harder than I ever had in my life, and been amply praised for it, but if it wasn't going to be recognized with either a raise or an increased bonus, what was the point? Why was I working so hard? And though I am certainly not irreplaceable, why would my company send me this message at a point when it would be quite difficult for them if I were to leave? What were they thinking?
In the end, fortunately, it worked out. They reconsidered the bonus and gave me a couple thousand dollars more, so that in the end, my bonus was slightly larger than last year's. They said lots of nice things and I was able to feel more valued again. But the whole thing did leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I probably haven't been a squeaky enough wheel about asking for bigger raises the last few years, so maybe I'm being taken for granted.
That said, I am always thankful that I have a job with a decent income, where I've gotten promoted and have interesting work to do-- life could be far worse! I was talking to a couple of people from another company recently-- one complained that she had found out that she was being paid a lot less than her male counterpart who did the exact same job, despite some pretty significant accomplishments on her part that the male co-worker didn't have. The other, a younger and more junior employee, had asked to be promoted when a spot above her opened up, and was disappointed to be told that no, they weren't going to hire someone for that spot, and no, she could not have a better title, and no, she could not have any more money either!
Ultimately, no matter how much you like your job, it's never all that great to work for someone other than yourself... and being self-employed is no piece of cake either! Retirement is starting to loom large in my imagination... but I still have at least 20 years or so before that will be an option... ugh!

Poverty Among Young Adults

Interesting article on the Atlantic's website. Has Being a Young Adult Always Been a Financial Nightmare? Scary charts! The one below kind of made me glad I'm getting old! I shudder to think what the addition of a 2000-2010 date range would look like.

"Young people have never had it easy, but they (probably) have had it better. By the turn of the century, 20- and 30-somethings were much far likely to experience a stint in poverty than they had been in the 1970s. Rank's newest research implies it's become even more common today. 

That said, I think we should be cautious about simple comparisons across time. The truth is, poverty in 2000 was not quite like poverty in 1973. Consumer goods that make life more bearable (think air conditions and decent televisions) have become cheaper and more commonplace over time. We have cell phones and Internet. And some changes in the safety net, though certainly not all of them, have made life near or right above the poverty line a bit less harsh. You don't necessarily have agree that the poor are far better off today than at the start of the Reagan era, as some conservatives will argue. But their standard of living has improved in ways that make it hard to say definitively whether Gen Xers or boomers really had a rougher time when they were young.... "

It is hard to compare. I was in my 20s in the 1990s, and in my first few years of work, my net worth was negative by several thousand dollars due to student loan debt, and my earnings went from $5.75 an hour, to $19,000 a year, to $30,000 a year, to somewhere around $50,000 by the end of the decade. I was lucky enough to be able to live with my parents for a couple of years, and of course their help left me with a much lower debt burden than I might otherwise have had if I'd had to pay for all of my education myself. When I look back at that time, I remember feeling the stress in those early years when I had my first apartment and struggled to pay all my bills while doing at least a little bit of the fun stuff a young adult wants to do.

My career advanced quickly enough to help me get past that stressful time fairly quickly, but the other thing that made the biggest difference was that I didn't procrastinate about saving. I was always aware that I needed to start saving money, and from my first job, I started contributing to a 401k. It might have only been 5% or 10% or 15% of my income at first, but pretty early on, I pushed that contribution as high as I could, knowing that it would be less painful if I learned to live without that money from the get-go. And somehow, as I saw that retirement account balance growing, it made me feel more inspired to save money. For some people, having savings might make them feel like it's ok to spend all the other money they've got coming in. But for me, I saw that having money makes more money, so I kept thinking about ways to cut expenses and debt. I paid off my student loans, and had become a homeowner rather than a renter by my late 20s. Seeing myself succeed in saving money made me feel great-- and when you know you're doing well at something, you want to do it more. It's a snowball effect.

For so many people, it's just the opposite. They start out with debt. They can't get ahead and fall deeper into debt. They live paycheck to paycheck, unable to invest in things that will pay off long term. Thinking about the situation is too depressing, so they put it off til another day. All that lost time is lost interest, lost investment gains, lost appreciation of a home's value. By the time they're 30 or 40, they may be making more money, but without the foundations laid in those early years, they're still in debt, maybe-- or even if they start to get ahead, they realize they'll never save enough money by the age at which they'd want to retire.
And of course none of this takes into account the curveballs life throws at you-- illness, injury, accidents, loss of a job, dependents to care for. I am so lucky to have had none of these to deal with yet, knock on wood. I am always so conscious that my life could easily have gone in a different direction...

Spring Update

What a busy few months it has been... for the first time in years, my job has been stressful enough that I started to question whether it was worth the money I make. Sweetie has been feeling the same way, and we often fantasize about ways we could escape the office grind and make a living in some other way... like winning the lottery! We are definitely prisoners of our lifestyle-- we enjoy having certain luxuries, but they have to be paid for, and it's not that easy to find jobs that would make us enough money to continue as we are. We know we could cut out some of those luxuries and still be happy, but they are things we enjoy. When we fantasize about quitting our jobs, it's so we'd have more time to do things like traveling and reading books-- but travel and books cost money. (Books might be obtainable for free at the library, but there is no travel library where you can borrow a plane ticket, unfortunately!) We're both grateful to have jobs in this economy, but when you go from being challenged and entertained by work to feeling like you're stuck in a Dilbert cartoon or just deluged with thankless tasks, it's hard not to question whether there's something better you could be doing.

This is all made more complicated by the fact that retirement seems to get closer and closer. Sweetie is older than me, and will have a nice pension, plus income from a 401k and other savings. I will have to rely on just a 401k and savings. Sweetie's retirement income will actually be pretty good unless the stock market totally tanks, but that would all change if there was less income in the in-between years. I'm still worried about whether my savings will be enough to live on by the time I retire, so the thought of early retirement doesn't seem very feasible. But we need to sit down and do some in-depth analysis and planning, which will be made easier by the fact that I finally got Sweetie set up with Quicken to track expenses.

In other news, one of the little luxuries we've currently been enjoying is a food delivery service. It's a weekly delivery in which you get all the ingredients for 3 meals, plus recipes. All you have to provide is your own pots and pans, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The cost works out to $10 per person per meal (including shipping), and you can pick a meat/fish plan or a vegetarian plan. We've been doing the vegetarian plan, and I love all the new ideas we've been getting for how to eat a well-balanced meal without meat. The portion control is helpful too. Sweetie is someone who can cook creatively and inventively, but I am not, so I love having someone else make all the decisions and just tell me what to do!

As for the cost, I've been thinking it would be interesting to do an analysis on whether this service is "expensive." A lot depends on the specific ingredients included each week, but even without getting too in depth, it's possible to draw some comparisons. Compared to a restaurant meal, $10 per person is definitely cheap. Compared to ordering takeout food, it could be about the same price per meal, depending on what sort of takeout-- it probably works out to be cheaper than most takeout in our area. Is it cheaper than buying our own groceries? Probably not, except in the cases where the recipe requires an unusual ingredient. If I had to buy a whole jar of a spice, it could easily cost $5 or more, so it's nice to get just the exact amount needed and not have to worry about waste. And occasionally the recipe and ingredients make enough food that we have enough leftover for a lunch the next day. When you factor in the convenience factor and the enjoyability of the meals, I would say it's a good value and certainly reasonable in relation to our current financial circumstances. But if we did lose our jobs and have to budget more carefully, I'd probably discontinue it and make more effort to cook at home with cheaper ingredients bought in bulk. (The service is called Blue Apron, if you're interested, and I have not been asked or paid to write about them.)

What else is new? Well, I think my mom is going broke, as predicted. She has had her cable TV service turned off to save money and occasionally says things about money being tight, but I haven't asked for details. It is just too upsetting to get into it with her. It really makes me ill that she couldn't listen to reason a few years ago-- she should have sold the house instead of pouring money into renovating it, and moved into an inexpensive condo. I think she still has a little money left in CDs that haven't matured yet, but I'm sure she'll cash them in soon if she hasn't already, and then she'll be stuck living on just Social Security and the continuing payments she gets from my dad's pension plan, which she'll find impossible to do without running up debt, so she'll end up having to sell the house anyway, and then she'll blow through that cash too. There is no satisfaction for me in being able to say "I told you so."

How about you? What are your financial plans and dreams and worries these days?

The Latest News

Yes, it's been too long since I've posted a net worth update or any other juicy details. And it's not just because I'm in love! I've been really, really busy at work, far more stressed out than I've been in years. One night I came home from work almost feeling like I was having an anxiety attack-- it's times like this that I start to wonder how else I could earn a paycheck...

So with all that going on, I haven't wanted to be on the computer all that much in my downtime. I haven't been blogging much, and hadn't even updated all my financial data in a while. But I did just catch up on some of that a few days ago-- I reconciled all my investment accounts through the end of March and the good news is that after some nice 1st quarter mutual fund results, plus a better than expected bonus, my net worth is currently somewhere around $620,000.

I will post more detail about my spending and account balances soon. I actually pulled together some comparisons of my spending by category from 2003 to the present. It was interesting to see that a lot of my expenses haven't increased that much (and those that have increased did not increase as much as my income has, so the net result is that I've been saving more). It gave me an idea for a future post about a financial tipping point-- in other words, if your current lifestyle, or what you consider a minimum acceptable lifestyle, costs X, at what point in your life did you start making enough to pay for X without going into debt? For me, at least so far, I'm pretty far past that tipping point, but for a lot of people it's not a one-way journey-- losing a job could mean you go back and forth across that line of being able to afford certain things you consider "normal."

Another tidbit of recent news-- this is the first time I've not been able to contribute the maximum to my Roth IRA because my income was too high. I guess that is a milestone to celebrate, in a way, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed!

And I will have to write more about it soon, but I highly recommend the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there about financial decision-making, as well as actionable tips that will help you check yourself from making errors of judgment.

So, lots of blogging ideas on my to-do list if I can get back into a rhythm of posting more frequently! Thanks for sticking with me and leaving comments that remind me to fill you in! I'd love to hear more from all of you about what's up in your financial lives lately-- what's on your to-do list? What's keeping you up at night? How are you personally weathering this economy?

The Employee/Employer Relationship

I've been thinking a lot about this issue lately, for a number of reasons.

I'll start off with a story about a friend of mine who I'll call Karen. She has someone who comes in and cleans her apartment every week. Let's call the cleaning lady Tracy. Karen first hired Tracy about 15 years ago. At the time, she only had Tracy come every other week. As is typical for this kind of situation in New York, Karen paid Tracy in cash. Over the years, Karen raised Tracy's pay a few times, and when Tracy lost some of her other clients, Karen started having her come in every week so she'd have more work. Tracy has rarely missed a week due to being sick, but when she has, Karen pays her anyway. Karen also gives her a Christmas bonus every year. Tracy takes a couple of weeks off every year, which Karen doesn't pay her for, but if Karen is going to be away and doesn't need Tracy to come, she still pays her for the weeks she's canceled.

So is this a mutually beneficial, fair relationship? Tracy offered to do the work on her own terms, and I don't think anyone would describe Karen's treatment of her as in any way exploitative or mean. Of course there's a tax evasion issue-- as you might be assuming, Tracy wanted to be paid cash because she wasn't a citizen-- at first. But now she is a US citizen and could presumably get another job where she and her employer would have to pay taxes. She's already past the age when most people want to retire, and Karen is wondering what to do about it if Tracy does want to stop working-- she's never paid any Social Security taxes for Tracy, so it's unclear what, if anything, Tracy would be able to collect. Tracy's children might or might not be able to help look after her. Karen is thinking about whether she should give Tracy some sort of pension, out of a sense of what's right and also just because she and Tracy have an affectionate relationship and she genuinely cares about what happens to her. That's more than can be said for a lot of people you read about who feel they have to economize by cutting the hours for the hired help just because their mutual funds are down.

Do you think most people feel this sense of responsibility towards those whom they employ? Is this kind of arrangement between two individuals a fair way to decide terms of employment, or should the government always be involved in setting the rules and collecting taxes and providing benefits? Should there always be an obligation to take care of an long-serving employee after the employment has ended?

The other thing that's had me pondering these issues is the TV series Downton Abbey, which everyone seems to be talking about lately. Thanks to streaming Season 1 from Netflix, I can count myself among the fans! It's set at a point when the sun is starting to set on the British empire and the old ways of life for the aristocracy are starting to change. But amongst the servants on this big estate, you have a variety of attitudes towards their situation and the people who employ them. There's a rigid class system, but there's also a sense that master and servant consider each other family, at least in some ways. Of course, sometimes this turns into the masters telling the servants what's best for them, which usually involves their continuing to be servants-- it's a paternalistic relationship where the servants have no real dignity or autonomy or choice.

And then there's what's going on in the US in current times. Some politicians are trying to make laws against collective bargaining, more and more people have to work as "independent contractors" rather than as actual employees of corporations, pensions are underfunded, and some benefit packages have been so aggressively negotiated as to be unsustainable. People are yelling "get a job!" at Occupy Wall Street protesters one minute, and saying Obama doesn't deserve re-election because of astronomical unemployment numbers the next.

If there's anything I take away from all this, it's that ideally, we'd all work for ourselves... but that just isn't possible. How can we best maintain our dignity as equals when some of us have to work for the rest of us? How can people without much power be protected from those who do have power? Would most employers actually treat people fairly if they weren't forced to? What are the best ways for government to be involved? We live in a complicated world, and wishful thinking won't make it any simpler.

And to come back to Karen and Tracy, what would you do? Would you refuse to pay someone cash under the table, employ only legal workers and pay all the taxes so they could collect Social Security? Or would you pay someone cash and just figure they knew benefits were never going to be part of the deal? Or would you feel obligated to help take care of someone who'd worked for you after they'd retired?

New Productivity Features in iPhone OS5: Email Flags and Reminders

In the almost 15 years since I've started using electronic devices to manage my life, there's one thing I've wished for: the ability to read and FLAG emails and synchronize that with Outlook.
Flagging emails, and sorting my inbox so they remain at the top, is my number one tip for staying organized at work and making sure things I have to do don't slip through the cracks. But when I first had Palm Pilots, I either couldn't sync my email, or they didn't have a flagging option. I have had Blackberries issued by my employer, but until the most recent one, flags weren't supported-- and I really hate the Blackberry screen, so I've avoided using it since I got an iPhone. But the iPhone email app isn't that great, and didn't show flags at all... until now!
I just upgraded to iOS5 on my iPhone 3GS, and now the flags synchronize perfectly with Outlook! I can read my email on the go and not have to mark it as "unread" if I want to remind myself to follow up when I am back at my desk. Unfortunately, the iPhone email app still lacks a lot of features I'd love, like being able to filter the view to only unread messages, or sort the inbox so flags are at the top.

The other feature I'd been looking forward to in iOS5 was the "Reminders" app. I've used other 3rd party To-Do list apps-- Toodledo is pretty good, but the problem with that was that syncing to Outlook was always a bit dodgy (and the app I used is no longer even supported)-- and that was when I was able to actually install the needed desktop program on my work computer. When I was upgraded to a new computer, the IT department totally locked down our ability to install any non-approved programs, so I completely lost my Outlook syncing.

But now that I've got iOS5 and Reminders, the problem is solved! After upgrading, Reminders was automatically added to the apps syncing with my Exchange account, and the first time I opened the app, my tasks were there and syncing worked perfectly in both directions. Unfortunately, there are a couple of major features missing again! First of all, my tasks are not sorted in any order I can figure out in the iPhone app list view-- they aren't by date created, they aren't alphabetical, they're just totally random. There are no options to determine your preferred sorting method. You can sue the date view to see tasks due on a particular date, but you can't see more than one day at a time, so that seems pretty useless.

The other issue is that I can create multiple task lists on the iPhone, and all the tasks in those lists will sync with Outlook-- but on Outlook all the lists are merged. There is no way to map your Outlook task categories to your Reminders lists. So much for my idea of going back to having multiple task lists on Outlook for Business, Personal, Grocery List, etc. Yes, I can have these lists on my phone, and I can recategorize tasks on the desktop, but it will be annoying to have to maintain this somewhat manually instead of having it automatically sync.
I have yet to come across any other reviews that address these issues, but I can't believe I'd be the only one to want these features, so here's hoping they add them later! I won't hold my breath, though. But I can at least loop this back to the topic of money by pointing out that these kinds of productivity aids help me manage my job and hopefully get ahead in my career and make more money... and the iOS5 upgrade was FREE!

Does anyone else have any good iPhone productivity tips?

Good News: Raise, Promotion, Inheritance

A little happy news! I was promoted and got a raise of a little over 6 percent. The percentage seems a bit small for a promotion, but I wasn't going to quibble over it, especially as I've yet to be asked to do anything more in exchange for my more exalted title!
It's funny, I've often felt conflicted about my career ambitions-- on one level, I do want to make more money, do fulfilling work, and feel that my efforts are publicly acknowledged by a prestigious title. But another part of me worries about hitting what I think of as "the responsibility wall." In part, this is an anxiety about exceeding my level of competence, and failing after years of succeeding. But it's also about not wanting to work too hard! I have a life outside my job, and I want to have time for activities I enjoy and not feel like work consumes all my energy. It's an issue I'll continue to mull over, but for the moment, I guess I have the best of all worlds!

It actually feels like a bit of a milestone-- I've reached a level in my career that I wasn't sure I'd ever attain. And although my total compensation including bonus has been over $100k for a few years now, this is the first time my actual salary will rise above $100k-- I'm not sure why this means anything to me, but it does!

One sad thing about my promotion is that I can't help wishing it had happened before Great-aunt Minnie died. She was the first person I would have wanted to tell, because I know how proud of me she would have been. Quite coincidentally, I also just got word via my sister that it looks like my share of the inheritance may be around $15,000, which means Minnie's total estate must have been over $180,000, even though she never owned a home. I'm even more impressed that Minnie managed to have so much money saved at the end of her life, and I feel very lucky to benefit from her wisdom and generosity in this unexpected way.

My Great-Aunt Minnie

I've been thinking a lot about my Great-Aunt. I've been meaning to write about her ever since starting this blog, as I mentioned in this post (I gave my great-aunt a water buffalo.), but for some reason I never have. She's now 95 years old and sadly, her health is finally fading and she won't be around much longer. Maybe this is a good thing, in a way-- it must be hard to live so long and feel the pain of losing so many people before your own time comes. My Dad was her nephew and I'm sure she never thought she'd outlive him. But she's never lost her strong spirit, and she's actually been a great financial role model in many ways.

Minnie has always been a great aunt, and a great great-aunt, probably because she never had kids of her own and never married. (Perhaps she was discouraged from doing so by seeing her sister pop out six babies in ten years!)

Minnie would have been referred to as a "career girl" in her youth. After graduating from high school, she started working. I don't know the full details of her early jobs, but I assume they must have been more or less secretarial, as that would have been the norm for that era. At some point she must have shown that she was very capable and not on the marriage track, so she started to be given more responsibility. I remember her telling me she'd worked for a large corporation in the 1940s and was sent to live in New York for several months to set up a new office there. She spent the last 25 or so years of her career working her way up to the position she held until she retired, a very prestigious job that she was the first woman to hold.
I remember visiting her in that office when I was about 8 years old. Minnie always dressed very casually when I'd see her on the weekends, so it was funny to see her wearing a formal skirt suit, with reading glasses on a gold chain around her neck, and I was very impressed to see her doing these important, business-y looking things. Everyone in the office called her "Miss B." rather than using her full last name. This was back in the days when people tended not to call the boss by his or her first name, so this was actually quite informal, but I think Minnie was the type who could allow that kind of cheekiness while still seeming very authoritative! She is a very warm person, always cheerful and easy-going, but she has a certain sporty toughness about her too-- she always used to like to pretend we were boxing right before she'd grab me into a big hug.

I didn't think much about it at the time, but in retrospect, I think it was quite important to me to see a woman running things as someone's boss. She wasn't anyone's mother, she wasn't a teacher or a nurse or a doctor or a store cashier-- I came of age at a time when women already had a lot more options for careers, but other than Minnie, I wasn't close to anyone who went beyond those roles.

Though Minnie worked hard, she never let the job become her life. She had a group of friends she would take vacations with, spending a week each summer at the beach and traveling all over the world, always bringing back little souvenirs, some of which I still have. She always loved sports, and used to swim and play tennis and golf, and I remember her being really good at bowling too! She also went to Red Sox games and got tickets to the Olympics a few times. Every other weekend, she'd be at my grandmother's house when my family visited, and every Christmas, she'd be have to be dragged out of the kitchen and forced to eat instead of serving everyone else. She moved back in with her elderly parents to take care of them at the end of their lives, and ended up staying in that apartment, which was rented, until a few years ago. I sometimes wonder why she never bought a house or a condo, but I suspect there was so much history there that she never wanted to move, and the rent was quite low. The apartment was full of things that my great-grandparents had owned, including a few items I now have in my own home, like a little handmade stool, and an old Saltine cracker tin.

Minnie, of course, grew up during the Depression and like so many others, never lost that frugal mentality. I have no idea what her salary ever was or how she might have invested, but she retired with a pension and I know she must have saved quite a bit of money. Every birthday and Christmas, I'd get $20 or $25 from her, as my many cousins must also have, and I know she gave my father and his sisters larger amounts. When I was in college, I remember her taking me aside once just to give me a $10 bill, "for some pizza," she said. And another time, when I'd gotten a $75 speeding ticket on my way to visit her and my grandmother, she again cornered me secretly to give me the money to pay the ticket-- not that she wanted to encourage me speeding, and not that she was ever the type to spoil anyone-- I guess just because it made her happy to do odd little things like that when you wouldn't expect it.

About 10 years ago, Minnie moved in with my grandmother, and one of my aunts moved in with them. After my grandmother died, her house was sold and my aunts helped Minnie find an assisted living facility. At first, she didn't want to do it-- she was still quite spry and she was horrified at how expensive assisted living was. But as she herself admitted, she was "deaf as a haddock," and she didn't want to become a burden to anyone, so she ended up moving to a lovely community where she dove into every activity that was offered: shopping trips, lectures, concerts, fitness classes... Even a few weeks ago she was still going to tai chi regularly because she knew the instructor would be disappointed if she didn't show up. And here's another thing one of my aunts told me: Minnie recently said that maybe this coming year, she'd finally give up doing her own taxes and have her lawyer do them instead!

As I grew older, Minnie was always interested in my progress. She was very proud of me when I started to work, and when I got my first business card, she was thrilled when I gave her one. Every time I've gotten a new card since, I've always given her one. She has always been far more interested in my career than my own parents, and now that I know her time is limited, I find myself wishing I could reach one more big career milestone, just so I could tell her about it. She also has loved hearing about my travels, and whenever I see a sporting event, I tell her about it-- she's even quite tolerant of my having turned into a Yankees fan! In our family, I am pretty much the only female of my generation who followed in her footsteps as the unmarried "career girl" and it's become a bond between us, something I feel very lucky to have had.

Coping with a Pay Cut

A poignant article from the Times: Still on the Job, But at Half the Pay.

The dark blue captain’s hat, with its golden oak-leaf clusters, sits atop a bookcase in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of reach of the children. The uniform their father wears still displays the four stripes of a commercial airline captain, but the hat stays home. The rules forbid that extra display of authority, now that Mr. Lawlor has been downgraded to first officer. He is now in the co-pilot’s seat in the 50-seat commuter jets he flies, not for any failure in skill. He wears his captain’s stripes, he explains, to make that point. But with air travel down, his employer cut costs by downgrading 130 captains, those with the lowest seniority, to first officers, automatically cutting the wage of each by roughly 50 percent — to $34,000 in Mr. Lawlor’s case.

But here's some bits that disturbed me:

“I don’t want to be a 50-year-old pilot earning $40,000 a year,” he said, adding that his wife does not want to be married to a pilot with so little earning power.

That seems a bit harsh, don't you think? From the rest of the article, the wife doesn't really seem to be taking that view-- she's worried about their loss of income but she also gives her husband kudos for helping out more around the house when he's working less. They're stressed out, as anyone would be, but it's not sounding like she's ready to divorce him if he doesn't get a raise.

Another quote that bothered me:

Bryan and Tracy Lawlor, who is also 34, have hidden their straitened circumstances from their four young children, mainly at his insistence. But as their savings dwindle, Christmas, a key indicator in the Lawlor family, will mean fewer presents this year. The Lawlors have made a practice of piling on toys and new clothes for their children at Christmas, buying relatively less the rest of the year. That will make a cutback noticeable this holiday season, and the parents are concerned that their children will begin to realize why.

“You don’t want to see disappointment on their faces; that makes me feel horrible,” Mr. Lawlor said. “You can be the best pilot in the airline and make the best landings, and in their eyes, I am not going to be as important as I was.”

I don't mean to criticize this guy-- he's in a tough spot, one that I can't claim to have been in myself. I do know how much fun it can be to give my niece and nephew presents, and I can imagine how my heart would sink if they seemed disappointed. But it's just sad that he seems to place all his self-esteem in his earning power and ability to shower his children with presents. I hope he doesn't really think his kids and his wife only respect and love him because of his rank and salary.

Unintended Consequences: 401ks Mean Fewer Jobs for Young People

Interesting, this is something I hadn't really thought about: when people rely more on private retirement savings, they retire later, leaving fewer openings for younger workers to fill.

A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer Openings

In other parts of the developed world, people are retiring as planned, because of relatively flush state and corporate pensions that await them. But here in the United States, financial security in old age rests increasingly on private savings, which have taken a beating in the last year. Prospective retirees are clinging to their jobs despite some cherished life plans.

As a result, companies are not only reluctant to create new jobs, but have fewer job openings to fill from attrition. For the 14 million Americans looking for work — a number expected to rise in Friday’s jobs report for August — this lack of turnover has made a tough job market even tougher.

All those baby boomers refusing to retire isn't going to help our unemployment situation...

Bad Credit Can Prevent You From Getting a Job

What a catch-22: Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries

Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen job prospects.

Out of work since December, Juan Ochoa was delighted when a staffing firm recently responded to his posting on Hotjobs.com with an opening for a data entry clerk. Before he could do much more, though, the firm checked his credit history.

The interest vanished. There were too many collections claims against him, the firm said.

One one level, I can understand the reasoning behind credit checks for employment. If someone makes a mess of their finances, they might make a mess of their job too. But a credit report can't always tell the full story and it ends up reducing a job candidate to a stereotype. A company might just as easily screen out former football players because they might be "dumb jocks," or people who like knitting because they might be more likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome.

How is someone supposed to get out of debt if companies won't hire them because they have debt? But it's certainly another strong incentive to stay out of debt in the first place...

More on Unemployment Benefits

After writing last week's post about unemployment benefits by state, I checked in with Mortimer to get his take on the subject, as he is still collecting unemployment himself. Here's what he had to say:

Benefits don't change at all based on single/family. It varies by state, so if you work in NJ you get more $ than NY and Mass gives even more $ than NJ (close to $600 per week I believe). Then most states calculate based on your last salary -- I think it's some sort of time frame involved like how much you made over the last 3 quarters. Most folks will get the maximum unless you are making like 30K or less. Max now is $405 plus the feds are adding $25 (not sure how long the $25 lasts). So single person making 200K and a family of 7 making 50K will get the same $405.

Not sure if there is a fair way to do it re families -- they would have to look at household income because you could be a family of 7 with another income in the house. Too complicated. NYS needs to up what it is paying -- they haven't done that in a number of years. They aren't even making inflation adjustments.

And while we're on the topic, there was an article this past weekend about unemployment benefits running out for a lot of people:
Prolonged Aid to Unemployed is Running Out

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

That's pretty scary. There may be some signs of light at the end of the economic tunnel, but stats like that don't bode well. If your job is gone and your savings are gone and you lose your umemployment benefits, what's left? Here's a few examples cited by the article:

Ms. Lampley, 40, who is married with three children, lost her job as a human resources officer in January 2008 and had been receiving $351 a week, which covered the groceries and gas. Even so, she and her husband, who still has work as a machinist, were sinking into debt. Now, still poorer, she feels devastated because they cannot buy their son a laptop to take to college and she cannot give her 9-year-old son money for the movies.

In Ohio, where unemployment is 11.1 percent, Cathy Nixon, 39, a mother of four teenagers from Lorain, has been out of work for much of the time since June 2007, and her benefits — $313 a week — run out in September. Ms. Nixon is already fighting foreclosure and said she feared that when the benefits end, “we’ll be homeless.” She was unable to afford summer camp and baseball activities for her children, despite scrimping on basics.

Raymond Crouse of Columbus operated heavy construction machinery but has found no work since 2007. Mr. Crouse is 72 and receives Social Security but said that was not enough to live on. The $190 a month he has received in unemployment benefits enabled him and his wife to hang on to the house they bought 15 years ago, he said. But with the benefits ending next month, he fears that they will not keep up.

The comments on the article get into quite a debate over some of these quotes, such as whether or not it's trivial to worry about getting a laptop for your child to take to college, or giving a kid money to go to the movies. (A lot of colleges require students to have a laptop these days. But while it sucks to have to deny a child little things they want, saying no to a movie might be a good lesson in reality.)
What if this situation goes on for many years? What do we now take for granted that we'll have to give up? Will we see more extended families living together under one roof? At some point, will our whole definition of middle class life change?