Restacked this and finally bought your book. Looking forward to a good read. As I said in my restack, this is exactly why we can't let Donny boy and his pals back in the White House. Cause they'll only make it worse!
Excellent piece! I enrolled in a Medicare Advantage Plan 6 months ago. One of the benefits is a Food and Home Card. It's $75 monthly to buy healthy food or pay utilities/rent. The benefit is nice but I sure wish it was more. However, Medicare IS recognizing that seniors need more assistance.
I cannot afford to stock up when items are reduced. I spend less than $200/mo for groceries, but do not eat meat and like you, I cook for myself all the time. I also don't like how expensive it has become to feed my dog. He is elderly, like your Cashew, and cannot eat just anything.
ALSO, my daughter bought the Kindle version of your book. She said she liked it very much and could not put it down! She read it in 2 days and stayed up until wee hours the second night to finish it. We were discussing it and she goes, "Well, I did NOT like Nathan. What a creep." I laughed and said, See? I told you that you would get involved with the characters!" She promised to leave a review.
You have just made me so happy! Thank you! And thank you for letting ever know about that plan — I’m not eligible further Medicare yet and had no idea that existed.
Yes, and I don't know what to do about that in a country that has been trained from childhood to fear the word "socialism". There is light at the end of the tunnel, apparently the young'uns are not rejecting the concept out of hand!
When I read things like this or talk about inequality with other first-worlders, it infuriates me. The imbalance is so ugly. I remember back in the days of fundraising "telethons" on TV. They'd have celebrities on the telethon encouraging everyone to give, give, give! I used to think, if every one of those celebrities donate just ONE percent of their riches, we wouldn't need telethons!
This is only going to get worse soon. There is a global recession starting and the U.S. is going to get hit hard within the next few months. It's good that you can cook. I would consider stocking up with what you can, while you can. We are.
I’m always stocked! I started doing it when I went through a bad blizzard and I REALLY upped my game during Covid! I hope you aren’t right but you may well be.
Michelle, I get so frustrated when I read an article about parents that are too “tired” or “overworked “ to parent? Putting food on the table, disciplining, and making sure your children are reading or whatever they are supposed to be doing for their school work is part of being a responsible parent.
I was raised by a divorced mother, we were dirt poor, evicted twice. She worked two jobs, but it was a given that I would do homework and the same for my brothers.
We were in this situation because my parents divorced when I was 8 and my dad was a deadbeat. However, when they were first married they both worked and could afford the children they chose to have.
I am all for helping children, but I rarely read in your essays about personal responsibility. It’s always the government or the rich who are responsible for poor people’s lot in life.
I have followed you for quite sometime and you write about getting your degree and that the career you choose wasn’t very lucrative. Once that career ended you weren’t forced to get another 9-5, you are now seemingly able to live off of your husband’s income and your writing. You’re frugal and you mention your home should be paid off soon. I think you are doing okay and in a position that not a lot of people who lose their job later in life are in. Do you really consider yourself poor?
I’m also frustrated. You struck a nerve, so hang onto your hat.
For the most part, parents who are tired and overworked are doing the best they can. I can tell you my parenting suffered for the four years between when my first marriage ended and when I remarried and had a second adult in the house again. I was dead tired all the time. One thing that stands out is I stopped attending parent-teacher conferences. I still feel bad about that, but I couldn’t stay awake for them. So even though I consider myself a very good mother, I see how exhaustion affects your parenting.
I’m very frustrated that you think I simply “chose” not to get another job, as if that were voluntary. On the contrary. Frantic and terrified, I applied, networked, schemed, re-did my resume, read tips, re-did my resume again, consulted people and applied and applied and applied. Changing careers late in life isn’t easy. I was desperate to get a job and not all that picky. My husband was making much less than $20 per hour at that point and things were fucking grim around here, particularly the year a pile of metal fell on him at work and broke his leg and we had to live on workers comp. I invite you to think about what workers comp (two-thirds of your base pay) for someone making less than $20 per hour looks like in a household where the wife is bringing in no money, just trying to find work.
I didn’t buy a single piece of clothing for several years. We never ate out. I cooked mostly beans and homemade bread. We skipped Christmas. We didn’t buy anything that wasn’t essential. When I figured out how to make a few hundred bucks per month through writing, it was a huge help. Now I can almost always make $1K and sometimes up to $2K, and that helps TREMENDOUSLY, although I must remind you I’ll have to pay about half of that at tax time. (I also do some freelance SEO right now, which will likely dry up soon due to AI) The bright spot is the viral article that is a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. I saved most of it for retirement because I have far less saved up than I “should” and I’m scared about my old age.
To pay off a house in central Illinois is quite different from paying one off elsewhere. I paid just under $100K for it in 2008, and keep in mind I am 58 and bought my first house in 1990, so that’s a lotta house payments. Once I’ve finished paying it off, I will have an extra $500 each month in my pocket … although we still have some repairs we need to make, as this is a fixer-upper. After we’ve paid it off and paid for the remaining repairs, I can start saving more for the “retirement” I don’t expect to have. Because of our histories of low pay, my husband’s and my SS payments will be quite paltry and not enough to live on. We will have to keep working.
If I had not been married, I’d probably have ended up homeless (or, actually, sleeping on one of my kids’ sofas — they would never have let me be homeless.)
I’ve never in my life achieved the median wage, and not for lack of trying. To make $1K-$2K in writing, I spend far more than 40 hours per week at my keyboard. My hourly wage (not counting the viral story!) is a joke.
Each time Medium changes the algorithm, my pay drops dramatically until I can figure out what they want now. I do have $600 months, and when that happens I go into panic mode, fearful I won’t be able to deliver the stories the new algorithm favors.
Now let’s talk about the government. Let’s talk about society. My husband is Dutch. His sister, who lives in Belgium, broke her arm in a non-work-related accident about the same time his leg was broken at work. I don’t remember the particulars, but the differences were stark. She received full pay and was able to stay home until she recovered. Harrie had to go back to work while still in his cast — his old job couldn’t be done in a cast so they gave him office work. Of course he couldn’t drive so I had to drive him to and from work each day. I could only devote two hours of driving per day because I didn’t have a job. The cost of gas was a killer because we had two round trips per day.
When you’re married to a European and see how Europeans live, you quickly realize all this American Exceptionalism stuff is bullshit. My in-laws all live far better and easier lives. They have work-life balance. They get more time off. They are paid more. They get so much more for their taxes — the health care differences are like night and day. The workers comp they get is amazing compared to here. My SIL asked me, “Don’t you have unions?” And no, most of us don’t. We have so little power compared to the giant corporations where we work. And the workers comp laws are set by state. The insurance companies moan about how onerous these laws are, but it doesn’t look that way from my perspective. WE COULD HAVE EVERYTHING EUROPEANS HAVE. It’s a political choice.
Just now, with that sweet viral money flowing in, I feel fine. It’s amazing how lifting money fear off one’s shoulders changes things. But it would be folly to think this is going to happen again. I hope for more, and I work hard, but it appears I will continue working long hours to make a couple of thousand bucks per month (before taxes) indefinitely. Actual retirement is not a realistic goal.
Michelle, I am smarter than to suggest you didn’t “choose” to get another job. I said you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to get a job at the 76 station which we have all seen people your age working. I also said you lived a frugal lifestyle which helped your situation. I never said it wasn’t hard. I am aware of Workers Comp and Short Term Disability pay, thank you.
With your assets of owning two homes, one you live in and one you rent to your son and admittedly not a lot of or if any debt, I think your situation is leaps and bounds better than the people that you are championing.
I apologize if I insulted you as I truly didn’t mean to. I read your work and have been wondering that for a while.
I doubt very much I could get such a job. I know lots of people in my approximate position who are turned down even for fast food because they are “over qualified.” Some people have lied on their resume to look less overqualified, but that won’t work for me because everyone in town knows who I am - I was the editor of the paper for years and have a unique name. My two houses together wouldn’t buy one house in most parts of the country — one of my houses wouldn’t cover the down payment for houses in other parts of the country. I lost money renting out that house until my son moved in. Now we try to keep it even. We are much better off than we were a year ago, and I’ve often wondered whether I’d be “allowed” to champion the working class if I could manage to get up those last couple of rungs into lower middle class.
I agree that the poverty level is a joke. It should be 3-4 times what the federal government lists. This number is important, in that it’s used to determine eligibility for a number of benefits.
The only thing keeping me away is they’re pretty much all at churches and it seems poor form to show up with my PRO-ABORTION and RELIGION: BECAUSE THINKING IS HARD bumper stickers begging for a handout. 😁
The problem is not the rich people, companies are not created for charity, they are made for profit to become wealthy. You kind of hit on it at the start of your article and that is education\literacy. I am in the poor range and use a SNAP card because I screwed up, lost my leg and got rekt financially.
I am an educated man over the age of fifty which has made my life difficult in finding employment, everyone goes through hardships, and I will eventually recover.
The government is a big part of the problem, they are not very efficient in dealing with people in need. I am all for foreigner coming into my country legally, but we cannot keep adding hundreds of thousands of other people's poor.
The government needs to be more efficient and get out the way in some instances. Instead of just giving people money, help them get an education or trade, sort of like the proverb, don't give fish but teach them fish.
You can do anything in the US, help those in need when you can, and help them get out of poverty,
The war against the wealthy is wrong, not their fault people are poor, they created the company, not the workers, you can always go somewhere else to work.
I’d like to add that people do not work jobs as a charity for the owners, they work the jobs to earn money to support themselves and their families. Just want to invite you to consider turning around the first sentence!
I am an educated woman over 50 and I no longer believe I’ll ever be financially ok. I send you best wishes and hope you’ll do better than I have.
In a country full of very hard workers who are poor and a handful of oligarchs who have such riches they will never be able to spend them all, I don’t think we can blame the poor or laud the rich.
Great article! After slogging thru Capital by Thomas Piketty, I too am convinced that the real problem is the system. Per Piketty's amazing research of the last 3 centuries of financial records, unfettered capitalism ALWAYS leads to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Money makes money. We know this, and the problem has never been solved by rich people being charitable or poor people working harder. Govt has to step in, like the US did after WWII, and tax the rich. At that point in history, we understood the dangers of severe income inequality.
Restacked this and finally bought your book. Looking forward to a good read. As I said in my restack, this is exactly why we can't let Donny boy and his pals back in the White House. Cause they'll only make it worse!
Thank you!
Excellent piece! I enrolled in a Medicare Advantage Plan 6 months ago. One of the benefits is a Food and Home Card. It's $75 monthly to buy healthy food or pay utilities/rent. The benefit is nice but I sure wish it was more. However, Medicare IS recognizing that seniors need more assistance.
I cannot afford to stock up when items are reduced. I spend less than $200/mo for groceries, but do not eat meat and like you, I cook for myself all the time. I also don't like how expensive it has become to feed my dog. He is elderly, like your Cashew, and cannot eat just anything.
ALSO, my daughter bought the Kindle version of your book. She said she liked it very much and could not put it down! She read it in 2 days and stayed up until wee hours the second night to finish it. We were discussing it and she goes, "Well, I did NOT like Nathan. What a creep." I laughed and said, See? I told you that you would get involved with the characters!" She promised to leave a review.
You have just made me so happy! Thank you! And thank you for letting ever know about that plan — I’m not eligible further Medicare yet and had no idea that existed.
Yes, and I don't know what to do about that in a country that has been trained from childhood to fear the word "socialism". There is light at the end of the tunnel, apparently the young'uns are not rejecting the concept out of hand!
When I read things like this or talk about inequality with other first-worlders, it infuriates me. The imbalance is so ugly. I remember back in the days of fundraising "telethons" on TV. They'd have celebrities on the telethon encouraging everyone to give, give, give! I used to think, if every one of those celebrities donate just ONE percent of their riches, we wouldn't need telethons!
Maybe encourage the return of kitchen garden and community gardens!
All in favor, but that won't help families working four jobs.
This is only going to get worse soon. There is a global recession starting and the U.S. is going to get hit hard within the next few months. It's good that you can cook. I would consider stocking up with what you can, while you can. We are.
I’m always stocked! I started doing it when I went through a bad blizzard and I REALLY upped my game during Covid! I hope you aren’t right but you may well be.
Michelle, I get so frustrated when I read an article about parents that are too “tired” or “overworked “ to parent? Putting food on the table, disciplining, and making sure your children are reading or whatever they are supposed to be doing for their school work is part of being a responsible parent.
I was raised by a divorced mother, we were dirt poor, evicted twice. She worked two jobs, but it was a given that I would do homework and the same for my brothers.
We were in this situation because my parents divorced when I was 8 and my dad was a deadbeat. However, when they were first married they both worked and could afford the children they chose to have.
I am all for helping children, but I rarely read in your essays about personal responsibility. It’s always the government or the rich who are responsible for poor people’s lot in life.
I have followed you for quite sometime and you write about getting your degree and that the career you choose wasn’t very lucrative. Once that career ended you weren’t forced to get another 9-5, you are now seemingly able to live off of your husband’s income and your writing. You’re frugal and you mention your home should be paid off soon. I think you are doing okay and in a position that not a lot of people who lose their job later in life are in. Do you really consider yourself poor?
I’m also frustrated. You struck a nerve, so hang onto your hat.
For the most part, parents who are tired and overworked are doing the best they can. I can tell you my parenting suffered for the four years between when my first marriage ended and when I remarried and had a second adult in the house again. I was dead tired all the time. One thing that stands out is I stopped attending parent-teacher conferences. I still feel bad about that, but I couldn’t stay awake for them. So even though I consider myself a very good mother, I see how exhaustion affects your parenting.
I’m very frustrated that you think I simply “chose” not to get another job, as if that were voluntary. On the contrary. Frantic and terrified, I applied, networked, schemed, re-did my resume, read tips, re-did my resume again, consulted people and applied and applied and applied. Changing careers late in life isn’t easy. I was desperate to get a job and not all that picky. My husband was making much less than $20 per hour at that point and things were fucking grim around here, particularly the year a pile of metal fell on him at work and broke his leg and we had to live on workers comp. I invite you to think about what workers comp (two-thirds of your base pay) for someone making less than $20 per hour looks like in a household where the wife is bringing in no money, just trying to find work.
I didn’t buy a single piece of clothing for several years. We never ate out. I cooked mostly beans and homemade bread. We skipped Christmas. We didn’t buy anything that wasn’t essential. When I figured out how to make a few hundred bucks per month through writing, it was a huge help. Now I can almost always make $1K and sometimes up to $2K, and that helps TREMENDOUSLY, although I must remind you I’ll have to pay about half of that at tax time. (I also do some freelance SEO right now, which will likely dry up soon due to AI) The bright spot is the viral article that is a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. I saved most of it for retirement because I have far less saved up than I “should” and I’m scared about my old age.
To pay off a house in central Illinois is quite different from paying one off elsewhere. I paid just under $100K for it in 2008, and keep in mind I am 58 and bought my first house in 1990, so that’s a lotta house payments. Once I’ve finished paying it off, I will have an extra $500 each month in my pocket … although we still have some repairs we need to make, as this is a fixer-upper. After we’ve paid it off and paid for the remaining repairs, I can start saving more for the “retirement” I don’t expect to have. Because of our histories of low pay, my husband’s and my SS payments will be quite paltry and not enough to live on. We will have to keep working.
If I had not been married, I’d probably have ended up homeless (or, actually, sleeping on one of my kids’ sofas — they would never have let me be homeless.)
I’ve never in my life achieved the median wage, and not for lack of trying. To make $1K-$2K in writing, I spend far more than 40 hours per week at my keyboard. My hourly wage (not counting the viral story!) is a joke.
Each time Medium changes the algorithm, my pay drops dramatically until I can figure out what they want now. I do have $600 months, and when that happens I go into panic mode, fearful I won’t be able to deliver the stories the new algorithm favors.
Now let’s talk about the government. Let’s talk about society. My husband is Dutch. His sister, who lives in Belgium, broke her arm in a non-work-related accident about the same time his leg was broken at work. I don’t remember the particulars, but the differences were stark. She received full pay and was able to stay home until she recovered. Harrie had to go back to work while still in his cast — his old job couldn’t be done in a cast so they gave him office work. Of course he couldn’t drive so I had to drive him to and from work each day. I could only devote two hours of driving per day because I didn’t have a job. The cost of gas was a killer because we had two round trips per day.
When you’re married to a European and see how Europeans live, you quickly realize all this American Exceptionalism stuff is bullshit. My in-laws all live far better and easier lives. They have work-life balance. They get more time off. They are paid more. They get so much more for their taxes — the health care differences are like night and day. The workers comp they get is amazing compared to here. My SIL asked me, “Don’t you have unions?” And no, most of us don’t. We have so little power compared to the giant corporations where we work. And the workers comp laws are set by state. The insurance companies moan about how onerous these laws are, but it doesn’t look that way from my perspective. WE COULD HAVE EVERYTHING EUROPEANS HAVE. It’s a political choice.
Just now, with that sweet viral money flowing in, I feel fine. It’s amazing how lifting money fear off one’s shoulders changes things. But it would be folly to think this is going to happen again. I hope for more, and I work hard, but it appears I will continue working long hours to make a couple of thousand bucks per month (before taxes) indefinitely. Actual retirement is not a realistic goal.
So no, I have not achieved middle class.
Michelle, I am smarter than to suggest you didn’t “choose” to get another job. I said you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to get a job at the 76 station which we have all seen people your age working. I also said you lived a frugal lifestyle which helped your situation. I never said it wasn’t hard. I am aware of Workers Comp and Short Term Disability pay, thank you.
With your assets of owning two homes, one you live in and one you rent to your son and admittedly not a lot of or if any debt, I think your situation is leaps and bounds better than the people that you are championing.
I apologize if I insulted you as I truly didn’t mean to. I read your work and have been wondering that for a while.
I doubt very much I could get such a job. I know lots of people in my approximate position who are turned down even for fast food because they are “over qualified.” Some people have lied on their resume to look less overqualified, but that won’t work for me because everyone in town knows who I am - I was the editor of the paper for years and have a unique name. My two houses together wouldn’t buy one house in most parts of the country — one of my houses wouldn’t cover the down payment for houses in other parts of the country. I lost money renting out that house until my son moved in. Now we try to keep it even. We are much better off than we were a year ago, and I’ve often wondered whether I’d be “allowed” to champion the working class if I could manage to get up those last couple of rungs into lower middle class.
I agree that the poverty level is a joke. It should be 3-4 times what the federal government lists. This number is important, in that it’s used to determine eligibility for a number of benefits.
The only thing keeping me away is they’re pretty much all at churches and it seems poor form to show up with my PRO-ABORTION and RELIGION: BECAUSE THINKING IS HARD bumper stickers begging for a handout. 😁
The problem is not the rich people, companies are not created for charity, they are made for profit to become wealthy. You kind of hit on it at the start of your article and that is education\literacy. I am in the poor range and use a SNAP card because I screwed up, lost my leg and got rekt financially.
I am an educated man over the age of fifty which has made my life difficult in finding employment, everyone goes through hardships, and I will eventually recover.
The government is a big part of the problem, they are not very efficient in dealing with people in need. I am all for foreigner coming into my country legally, but we cannot keep adding hundreds of thousands of other people's poor.
The government needs to be more efficient and get out the way in some instances. Instead of just giving people money, help them get an education or trade, sort of like the proverb, don't give fish but teach them fish.
You can do anything in the US, help those in need when you can, and help them get out of poverty,
The war against the wealthy is wrong, not their fault people are poor, they created the company, not the workers, you can always go somewhere else to work.
Enjoyed the article Michelle.
I’d like to add that people do not work jobs as a charity for the owners, they work the jobs to earn money to support themselves and their families. Just want to invite you to consider turning around the first sentence!
I am an educated woman over 50 and I no longer believe I’ll ever be financially ok. I send you best wishes and hope you’ll do better than I have.
In a country full of very hard workers who are poor and a handful of oligarchs who have such riches they will never be able to spend them all, I don’t think we can blame the poor or laud the rich.
Very powerful and clearly written
Great article! After slogging thru Capital by Thomas Piketty, I too am convinced that the real problem is the system. Per Piketty's amazing research of the last 3 centuries of financial records, unfettered capitalism ALWAYS leads to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Money makes money. We know this, and the problem has never been solved by rich people being charitable or poor people working harder. Govt has to step in, like the US did after WWII, and tax the rich. At that point in history, we understood the dangers of severe income inequality.