I don’t know if my hard times count.
Growing up as a little girl we lived very modestly. My dad at one point tried to work on Wall Street and with 6 months that fell apart. I was 2 years old and my mom was pregnant. My dad took a teaching job at a college and we lived on very little. Still, I never was hungry, was always clothed, and we lived in a decent apartment. We had only one car and so the days my dad had to go to work and I had ballet class my dad had to take the train to work. My dad didn’t get tenure after years of teaching. He actually started a law suit with a colleague, but eventually dropped it. It must have been very stressful for my parents. They had very little money. I’m not sure how they handled it all. Maybe my grandparents floated them a little money to help? I wonder? They didn’t have much very either.
Then, when I was 9 we moved to Maryland. We still only had one car for a while. We walked or road the bus when necessary. The bus was a ten minute walk. There was no train for my dad to get to work, so my mom and us children were basically stuck during the day. Eventually my mom went to work and bought a second car. By the time I was near high school graduation my parents were much better off with money, but I was already practically out of the house. I benefitted that they could pay for my college.
I only mention my childhood, because the OP mentioned her socio-economic class she wa raised in. Although my parents weren’t making much when I was young, when we lived to MD my dad worked for the military so we had free healthcare so that was something we didn’t have to think about. Also, my parents both had college degrees, which goes partly into the social class equation.
When I was in my 20’s and first on my own after college, I was doing ok, making just over $14 an hour, and living with a roommate. After a few months the store I was working in wanted to promote me, which I wanted, and their fucked up promotion track meant I had to take a position that paid $8.50 an hour. I did it (I shouldn’t have) and couldn’t pay all my bills. I probably could have qualified for food stamps, or something, which never occurred to me. After a few months I quit, and worked in a place that I made more money. I didn’t like it there very much, and then I had a few health problems and I left that job. Then I worked for a head hunting company, which wound up being awful, and I still had the health thing going on. It was all pretty stressful. I made very little money, because the head hunting was primarily commission. My dad floated me $1,000. I couldn’t sustain the whole thing, and went back to the original employer again making the $14ish an hour.
All that shit going through more than one job to wind up in the same place. During that time I also had changed roommates, one of which was a drunk, and I was robbed, and I’m pretty sure it was one or some of her friends.
Not very long after that I married my boyfriend and we started building our life together, including our finances.
Everything was going pretty well until 2 years ago. My husband was laid off a couple of weeks after we moved into a new house we had built that we designed. Mind you, we had lost $150k on our house when we moved from TN to FL for this job my husband was now laid off from. Several months passed and he took a job in OH. We sold our brand new house, packed everything, and within 4 months he was let go. We still had all of our household belongings in storage, no house, living in a hotel. We went back to FL, moved all our stuff to storage in FL, and lived with his parents for a few months.
Eventually, we decided to buy a business. My husband just didn’t want to deal with “pounding the pavement” anymore.
The whole thing has been quite stressful and discombobulating, but, and this is a big but I realize, we have never been in a spot as a married couple where we had to worry that we could not pay a bill. We have had times we had to go into savings, which sucks, but we have never been down to last pennies or underwater like I was when I was a young adult.
6 months ago my husband sold his trailer and race car. I didn’t want him too. I told him not too. After the fact at one point he said with wet eyes he felt like he had to having lost his job coupled with the money we were spending to buy the business. At times I see how difficult the whole thing has been for him. It’s been hard for me too, but in a different way.
During this craziness in the last few years I’ve been working in jobs that less than thrill me. Business manager and bookkeeping stuff. I’m not a sit at your desk all day girl, but that’s the girl I am now. The saving grace is I have a ton of flexibility with my schedule.
We bought a house half the size of my last house and I have one room from floor to ceiling with boxes. Boxes I have opened, taken things out, and repacked half my stuff and flattened a lot of the empty boxes for the future move. I have crated items like my dining room table, foyer light fixture, and more, in the garage.
The scariest thing now is our COBRA will be ending in a few months.
Composing members:
0
