Posted on 10/13/2002 9:22:35 AM PDT by American Preservative
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:41:09 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Many middle-class people joke about being "one paycheck away from the street." This is the story of a couple who've slammed hard into that reality.
Over the past 18 months, they've gone from his six-figure salary and life in a tony townhouse apartment complex in Silicon Valley to collecting aluminum cans and sleeping in a 28-foot-long recreational vehicle in a parking lot behind the husband's old office building. Once distracted by VCRs and mega- cable, they now watch local television on an old black-and-white set, stand in line at a public food bank for groceries and do their laundry with a garden hose.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Bingo! You may have nailed it. I just this morning read this other similar article from a Seattle paper, about all those in similar straits there.
You'll appreciate the linked article then in #61!
I think you're right -- it sounded phony to me as well.
Oh, no no. Just ask Bush. He'll tell you it's Saddam's fault. ;P)
So the problem is how much money you make, but how much money you spend.
Just like the old commercial said, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.
I learned long ago from my first financial mentor, named Humberto Cruz (whose columns can be found on the net), that the way to get ahead is to live well beneath your means. And it works.
I drove back and forth over 17 for MANY years. traffic is worse than ever. Maybe someday they will fix the bottle neck at fishhook Hiway 1
For an over qualified Silicon Valley person ... getting a job .. any job IS NOT THAT EASY. I live very near the CC county and San Joaquin county lines and job are not available here. I was out for 8 months and almost lost everything. I tried to be a truck driver bar tender and clerk. I was too qualified (and too old) Luckily I went outside the box and took a job that was only remotely related to my old engineering position. To say that these people deserve what they get is BS. Some of us worked VERY hard all our lives for what we have. I personally worked the midnight night shift at a grocery store to put myself through college. I NEVER got a penny from anyone that I didn't earn.
Your statement that these "materialist clowns" is NOTHING but class envy that would make any DU lover proud
Interesting credo!
I'd agree. My variant: "Job security is being underpaid and overworked."
It's okay to overspend when the time is right ----but there were plenty of warning signs in the 90's if they'd have been paying attention. It's their own fault if they didn't observe and see what was coming, I used the 90's to get rid of all debt and get two jobs. Sometimes I wish I could work fewer hours but I wouldn't dare give up a job at this time.
The article is a hoax for the most part. The writer seems to believe that a television is some kind of indicator of wealth or financial health which it isn't at all. I've seen color televisions recently for $60 --new.
If you spend your adult life building a career in electronics you don't move to Podunk to pursue it. I flew to Boston, Austin, Portland, and Seattle in pursuit of a job. The living costs are pretty close to the same when factoring in areas salaries. In Austin and Boston the livings cost ARE pretty much the same. I drive 70 miles each way to work in Silicon Valley. The living costs are catching up even out here.
The IT industry is in just as bad shape anywhere in the country, but there are a lot of places with much lower costs of living than Silicon Valley. What happened is that all of the large enterprises, like Wells Fargo and American Express, that used to have in-house IT operations that hired local contractors have farmed IT out to India. This has enabled them to unload their US personnel. We're in the same situation as the steel workers back in the Seventies.
The good news is that those of us who are adatable can retrain and do something else, just as the steel workers did. I, for example, am developing a new market repairing home PC's, putting in office LANs, and helping peple overcome problems they are having with their home and small office applications. You would be amazed at the number of PC and Mac users who can't scan in artwork and produce a simple brochure. I'm still burning through savings, but not as fast as earlier in the year.
Now for the bad news: there's an election coming up, and the legions of IT people like the couple in the article will be suckers for the first Democrat to offer them "free" prescriptions, make-work jobs in airport security and rounding up and shooting all the immigrants. We can kiss the Republican House goodbye, but if Freepers can hide out in caves in Idaho for a few years, we'll see socialism collapse yet again. It always does.
I had a fully paid off house and 529 plans for kids before I dared even THINK about buying a luxury car, instead I held on to my 1988 model car until just this summer and paid for a new car with cash.
Methinks these consumers has warped priorities. you think we need another depression to remind folks of the the dangers of debt?
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