Happy New Year!

Just a quick post to say "Happy New Year" and share our plans for 2009. As my husband's pay continues to decrease each pay period, I'm still jobless after almost a year. We've tapped out borrowing from family and resorted to taking out a loan against my husband's dwindling 401K to be able to survive. We made the house payment for December, but not sure whether or not we can make the January payment. We've begun boxing up for the eventual move from our home, as we know we won't be here much longer. "Quit thinking so negatively," our daughter admonishes us. I try to explain there is a difference between negative thinking and realistic thinking.

As we prepare for our move, we daily scan the "For Rent" section of the local newspaper. Lots of rentals in today's market, but the rent in our area is astronomical, normally running about the same amount as our current unaffordable house payment. Looks like we will be moving to an area where we really don't want to live, you know, what we think of as an "undesirable area". I don't want to do that to my son, have him move away from his friends, have to change schools, but we have to do what we have to do. The important thing, after all, is that we remain together as a family and I have faith we will survive our move intact. We do count our blessings and know there are much worse things that could befall us.

If you are facing foreclosure, here is a great source of ideas on how to avoid it.

God Bless in 2009!

American Middle Class (In)Stability

The non-partisan policy center, Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, recently published the findings from their study on the stability of the American middle class. The title of their first report, "By a Thread", should give you some indication as to what the study revealed. If not, read the entire report. If in the same sinking boat as our family, no life jackets at hand, you won't feel so alone.

And while you're paddling around in the murky water of middle class, read Jeff Autero's thoughts on the subject.

Definition of Middle Class

After my first post, I began to question the middle class status I had bestowed upon my family. I've always assumed we are middle class America - you know, ordinary, everyday Joes, trying to have a better life than our parents, educate our children, have a little fun along the way. And although I don't care a diddle to what class we belong, I do care about accuracy. Had I portrayed us as something we are not? Are we really middle class, or just poor like I've always suspected?

I thought this would be easy enough to answer. There's a chart somewhere, you look at the chart, see where you fall, and there you have it. So I do what any middle class American would do when in doubt. I Google it. Ha! Seems nobody knows the meaning of middle class. Bet you're thinking the same thing as me: Come on, you're kidding, we can extract stem cells from embryos, but we can't define middle class? Right, and surprisingly enough, even the politicians who represent the middle class (wink, wink), well, they can't define it either:

From MSNBC:

Every politician in the U.S. presidential race claimed to be fighting for the middle class, and it seemed a sound strategy -- until the Democratic front-runners tried to define who, exactly, was middle class.

While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama couldn't agree during a recent debate whether someone earning $97,500 or more could be considered middle class, voters have little difficulty judging who isn't -- the presidential candidates themselves.

Bless Wikipedia's little heart as it provides the answer I'm looking for: Due to our lack of education, influence, and importance, we fall squarely in working class, the class not paid to think:

They are also not commonly paid to think, and their thoughts are not often sought by their employer organizations or clients...

If class matters to you, head on over to Class Matters.

Leaving Behind the American Dream

My husband and I have spent our twenty-plus years together striving to rise the economic ranks from working class poor to middle class. Both of us experienced meager living during our childhood years, but believed that hard work and perseverance assured us a more comfortable lifestyle than we, or our parents, had known in the past. A middle class lifestyle. You know, the American Dream. So in our early years together, as our parents cheered us on, we took on well-paying jobs, became homeowners in our 20's, housed two cars in the garage, and attempted to educate our children while providing them some of the material possessions we lacked while growing up.

Now middle-aged, we can proclaim that we are, by some definitions, indeed middle class. We live in a nice home in a safe neighborhood. We provide our school-aged son with access to a good school district. We dress decent enough, drive cars that are paid for, take a small vacation every year, and our annual income falls well above the national median. Isn't this middle class America? Are we not living the American Dream?

Yes, we are. But it is ironic that in the daily struggle to remain middle class and keep the Dream alive for ourselves, we are merely repeating the lifestyle our parents knew so well as the working class poor. As they struggled to put food on the table, so do we. As they struggled to educate their children, so do we. Yes, we have bigger homes, more possessions. But still, we struggle. Take a closer look at our family. We live in a home we can no longer afford, we can't meet our financial obligations on a timely basis, we live from paycheck to paycheck. We have nothing in savings, no education fund for our son, our oldest child has no health insurance, and our kitchen cupboards are all but bare. We live on the brink of financial disaster, and the next unexpected crisis will be the proverbial straw to break the camel's back.

We have become the middle class poor.