Today, I laid down and cried.
I'd just come home from a pretty stressful day at work... the type of shift when you know, from the moment you walk through the door, that it's just going to be one of those days. We had a pretty busy lunch rush, and had some contractors come into the store, in the midst of the rush, to move the door chime in the kitchen. Well, they were different guys than the ones who had been doing the tinkering, and so they needed their hands held by our general manager, so I was left in charge, with two spot-on workers (one of whom, however, was a delivery driver, so he couldn't stay in the store for the duration of the rush) and one slow and inexperienced worker in my charge. We did the best we could, but I'm still new enough to management that I was definitely feeling the heat and praying our GM would come and relieve me of my post through the end of lunch. We got through it, but by the end of the rush, we had cleaned out almost all of our prep and desperately needed to get it done so that we didn't start running out of product. Plus, we still had a food order to put away, cleaning to do, stocking, and all the other minute details that customers never notice until they're not done. So, I was a little stressed, to say the least.
My allergies have been acting up for about a week now, so my throat has been getting dry much more easily and I can't project as well when I'm trying to communicate on the line... plus, my nose has been alternating between being painfully dry and runny beyond control. It's seasonal allergies, so I know I'm safe to work, but it's very hard to work with food and the public with a bum upper-respiratory system. Work I must though, seeing as I took off Monday to regain my voice, which had been cracking and squeaking at work on Sunday, and I was scared to death I'd lose my voice if I pushed it much farther. Monday wasn't a paid sick day. Folks in restaurants don't get paid sick days. Those are for people with salaries. Nope, as hourly workers, a "sick day" translates directly to hours of work that must be made up later in the week, or else that's money lost. After all the deductions in my paycheck for income tax witholding, Social Security (which I will probably never see), Medicare (ditto.), Payroll taxes, and so on, my real wage is a little under $7/hour. That's actually an improvement. I used to make $6.50 an hour in real wages. (Bear in mind, I do get about half of the money held from each of my paychecks back as part of my tax refund, but that's little comfort on payday) So, if I miss an 8 hour work day, that's about $50. If I were sick enough to need to see a doctor, that's another $40 just to be seen. Throw medication in there and you can see where the expenses add up fast.
I've been supporting both myself and my partner, who was let go from his job after his mother died at the end of last April. He's had some work, but precious little. The security company he's been working for has not been getting as many contracts as they used to, mostly due to poor management, and that means fewer chances for him to work. He's been putting in all the applications he can, but he hasn't had a single interview. He's a good worker, and takes direction well, but he doesn't have a lot of work experience because he's young and, like was my case, his parents didn't want him working while he was going to school, and he went to college because everybody told him that was the smartest, most reasonable thing he could do, even if it meant taking on a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Luckily, we don't have that much debt. In fact, compared to the national average, our debts are fairly small. Between the two of us, we have less than $50K in student loan debt, and less than $2,000 in credit card debt. If we both were working full time at minimum wage, between the two of us, we could make $27K annually after taxes. Based on our present living conditions and our fairly bare-bones budget ($1,200 per month), that would leave $12K annually we could allot to paying down our debts. As it stands, come August, we're going to be moving into a new apartment and paying 40% less rent, and since it's a smaller apartment, the utilities should be lower as well. The problem is getting to August. Now, if we could find someone to sublease our current apartment, get some friends and boxes together to help us move, and so on, we could, conceivably, move earlier, but we live in a college town, and spring is the wrong damn time to be looking for someone to take on your apartment. The point is, we're in a bad way financially, but not because we've been irresponsible. We did everything we were told to do. We went to college. We got jobs. We lived frugally. We don't smoke. We don't drink. I cut his hair myself, every month, in our laundry room. I stopped getting mine cut after I got all of it cut to the same length. The only frivolities we spend money on are condoms and the occasional trip to McDonalds. We haven't been to the movies in over three months (and then, it was because we were both working full time and it had been six months since the last time we'd gone). We keep our thermostat set low in the winter and don't even use the A/C in the summer. If we buy anything new, it's usually from Goodwill. If a new video game comes out that we would like to play, we trade in as many games as we can to get it (or at least bring the price down low enough that we can just skip some other luxury... like maybe cut the meat out of one of our meals), and I have an Etsy shop and a Fiverr page to try and nickel and dime a little extra cash here and there. I've taken great care to plan our meals so that they're as filling an nutritious as possible for about $100 a month. I started withdrawing funds from my Kiva account, which I started putting $20/month into my Freshman year. As loans in the third world get repaid, I get a little bit more to eek out a living. We still live better than many people in many parts of the world, and for that I am very, very thankful. We've been lucky that, in spite of my working with the public, I managed to dodge the flu this year. I give credit for that to my making sure I get enough sleep and my very, very careful management of our diets.
Nonetheless, I'm scared. The grace period on both of my credit cards is over, and I have one (thankfully, small) private student loan for which payments are due beginning next month. I'm still waiting to find out about my general student loan repayments, but in the meantime, forbearance is a blessing. Has my own credit been destroyed? Yeah, at least for a while. Everything is in my name, so my partner's record is clean. Like I said, once my partner can find work, even if it's minimum wage, we will be fine. I don't want to get handouts. I don't want food stamps or welfare. We don't have kids. We're young. We have strong backs and sharp minds and if someone will set us to work for what the federal government deemed was a fair wage in the 1990s, we want to earn our keep... and we don't want that aid, not because we don't believe it should be there, but because we recognize that funds are limited, and we would rather the money be there for people who need it more than us... people who aren't physically or mentally capable of work... people who have kids... people who have elderly family they take care of. We just have us.
If I'd never gone to a four year college, I wouldn't have this debt hanging over me. If I'd started working in food service at the ground floor and ascended at the rate I have in the last three years, I'd probably be looking into higher levels of management by now... but I wouldn't have met the love of my life. If I hadn't been willing to cover both of us, I wouldn't have had him to come home to. He may not be able to work much, but he's good to me. He washes and massages my feet when I come home from work. He started learning to cook so I wouldn't have to after having cooked all day for complete strangers. He soothes me when I'm stressed and contentedly listens when I rant about things and people that frustrate me. I would not be able to throw myself into my job like I do without his emotional support.
Today, I laid down and I cried. I curled up on our bed and I wept. My partner came in and asked me what was wrong, and I told him. Like a deluge, all my fears and insecurities about our state of being leapt from my tongue. I told him how I felt like a failure. How I was so ashamed that I couldn't make payments. How every little moment of luxury I'd allowed myself to enjoy-- the $20 meal at a Mexican restaurant a month earlier, the trip home to visit my mother, the $1 wine cooler I'd had. My engagement ring, which we'd purchased when he and I were both working full time (A simple topaz and diamond ring that cost $100)-- every one weighed on my heart as a waste, even though they raised my spirits so much. I told him I was so tired of my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night being about money... that I knew God would provide, but how I desperately hoped He would provide just a little more. That part of me, a quiet, small part, couldn't bear the thought of the precipice upon which we stood and would rather die than endure potentially falling off that precipice.
Then it came: his quiet, calm offer: to walk away. By my own admission, he was the source of my present financial state. If the only one I had to shelter, feed, clothe, and cure was myself, my wages could do that. If, when our lease was up, he just moved in with his family and I lived by myself or with roommates, my wages would be more than enough for my existence to be maintained.
I almost couldn't believe my ears, and without a moment's hesitation, came my response: No. I need him. The only effect would be moving the burden of providing for him to somebody else, which just is not an option in my mind... and anyway, I'd already committed to our spending our lives together, maybe not officially. Maybe not legally or in the eyes of our families and community, but in my heart, have already ceased to imagine a life without him. Eventually, either by the sweat of my brow or by his, we will come out of this darkness. When we do, when we will be stronger for the battles we've fought now.
I don't think we'll ever be rich, and in my heart, I never want to be financially wealthy. I don't want seven mansions and a yacht. I don't want to have buildings named after me. I don't want to be on the cover of magazines... not because I don't have ambition, but because those ambitions are not what would bring my heart joy. I want enough money that I can live without fear of losing the roof over my head. I want enough money that I can support a family. I don't want excess. I just want enough. Anything beyond that is frivolity. Anything beyond that is for God. I would not live in abject poverty, but I would not live with more than I need.
The last time I spoke with my father before he died, he told me: life is not stuff. His greatest joy was the thought of retiring and having enough money that he and my mother could live out their last days in their home, and that he could garden all day, every day, whenever it was warm enough, and show his eventual grandchildren how to tell when a rosebush needs pine mulch. This would be possible with enough money, but not that much. He told me that I would probably work, all my life, making somebody else rich... but that wasn't the point. The point was that my labors would, in all hope, give me the ability to live in comfort, if I had the wisdom to appreciate what I had.
And what do I have?
Not much. In all truth, I don't own anything. I have things, but none of them are valuable enough to count for anything, not financially. The roof over my head is not mine. The clothes on my back were almost all used by someone else before I got them. I am, at all times, one very bad day away from losing everything I do have... but I have a partner. I have a partner who loves me and who wants, desperately, to see me happy... who would rather walk out of my life than have his temporary dependence on me cost my happiness. With him, I have the hope of one day having a comfortable family. Yes, we are financially poor, but we are, in essence, the living personification of a crappy Bon Jovi song. Someday, things will change.
I'd just come home from a pretty stressful day at work... the type of shift when you know, from the moment you walk through the door, that it's just going to be one of those days. We had a pretty busy lunch rush, and had some contractors come into the store, in the midst of the rush, to move the door chime in the kitchen. Well, they were different guys than the ones who had been doing the tinkering, and so they needed their hands held by our general manager, so I was left in charge, with two spot-on workers (one of whom, however, was a delivery driver, so he couldn't stay in the store for the duration of the rush) and one slow and inexperienced worker in my charge. We did the best we could, but I'm still new enough to management that I was definitely feeling the heat and praying our GM would come and relieve me of my post through the end of lunch. We got through it, but by the end of the rush, we had cleaned out almost all of our prep and desperately needed to get it done so that we didn't start running out of product. Plus, we still had a food order to put away, cleaning to do, stocking, and all the other minute details that customers never notice until they're not done. So, I was a little stressed, to say the least.
My allergies have been acting up for about a week now, so my throat has been getting dry much more easily and I can't project as well when I'm trying to communicate on the line... plus, my nose has been alternating between being painfully dry and runny beyond control. It's seasonal allergies, so I know I'm safe to work, but it's very hard to work with food and the public with a bum upper-respiratory system. Work I must though, seeing as I took off Monday to regain my voice, which had been cracking and squeaking at work on Sunday, and I was scared to death I'd lose my voice if I pushed it much farther. Monday wasn't a paid sick day. Folks in restaurants don't get paid sick days. Those are for people with salaries. Nope, as hourly workers, a "sick day" translates directly to hours of work that must be made up later in the week, or else that's money lost. After all the deductions in my paycheck for income tax witholding, Social Security (which I will probably never see), Medicare (ditto.), Payroll taxes, and so on, my real wage is a little under $7/hour. That's actually an improvement. I used to make $6.50 an hour in real wages. (Bear in mind, I do get about half of the money held from each of my paychecks back as part of my tax refund, but that's little comfort on payday) So, if I miss an 8 hour work day, that's about $50. If I were sick enough to need to see a doctor, that's another $40 just to be seen. Throw medication in there and you can see where the expenses add up fast.
I've been supporting both myself and my partner, who was let go from his job after his mother died at the end of last April. He's had some work, but precious little. The security company he's been working for has not been getting as many contracts as they used to, mostly due to poor management, and that means fewer chances for him to work. He's been putting in all the applications he can, but he hasn't had a single interview. He's a good worker, and takes direction well, but he doesn't have a lot of work experience because he's young and, like was my case, his parents didn't want him working while he was going to school, and he went to college because everybody told him that was the smartest, most reasonable thing he could do, even if it meant taking on a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Luckily, we don't have that much debt. In fact, compared to the national average, our debts are fairly small. Between the two of us, we have less than $50K in student loan debt, and less than $2,000 in credit card debt. If we both were working full time at minimum wage, between the two of us, we could make $27K annually after taxes. Based on our present living conditions and our fairly bare-bones budget ($1,200 per month), that would leave $12K annually we could allot to paying down our debts. As it stands, come August, we're going to be moving into a new apartment and paying 40% less rent, and since it's a smaller apartment, the utilities should be lower as well. The problem is getting to August. Now, if we could find someone to sublease our current apartment, get some friends and boxes together to help us move, and so on, we could, conceivably, move earlier, but we live in a college town, and spring is the wrong damn time to be looking for someone to take on your apartment. The point is, we're in a bad way financially, but not because we've been irresponsible. We did everything we were told to do. We went to college. We got jobs. We lived frugally. We don't smoke. We don't drink. I cut his hair myself, every month, in our laundry room. I stopped getting mine cut after I got all of it cut to the same length. The only frivolities we spend money on are condoms and the occasional trip to McDonalds. We haven't been to the movies in over three months (and then, it was because we were both working full time and it had been six months since the last time we'd gone). We keep our thermostat set low in the winter and don't even use the A/C in the summer. If we buy anything new, it's usually from Goodwill. If a new video game comes out that we would like to play, we trade in as many games as we can to get it (or at least bring the price down low enough that we can just skip some other luxury... like maybe cut the meat out of one of our meals), and I have an Etsy shop and a Fiverr page to try and nickel and dime a little extra cash here and there. I've taken great care to plan our meals so that they're as filling an nutritious as possible for about $100 a month. I started withdrawing funds from my Kiva account, which I started putting $20/month into my Freshman year. As loans in the third world get repaid, I get a little bit more to eek out a living. We still live better than many people in many parts of the world, and for that I am very, very thankful. We've been lucky that, in spite of my working with the public, I managed to dodge the flu this year. I give credit for that to my making sure I get enough sleep and my very, very careful management of our diets.
Nonetheless, I'm scared. The grace period on both of my credit cards is over, and I have one (thankfully, small) private student loan for which payments are due beginning next month. I'm still waiting to find out about my general student loan repayments, but in the meantime, forbearance is a blessing. Has my own credit been destroyed? Yeah, at least for a while. Everything is in my name, so my partner's record is clean. Like I said, once my partner can find work, even if it's minimum wage, we will be fine. I don't want to get handouts. I don't want food stamps or welfare. We don't have kids. We're young. We have strong backs and sharp minds and if someone will set us to work for what the federal government deemed was a fair wage in the 1990s, we want to earn our keep... and we don't want that aid, not because we don't believe it should be there, but because we recognize that funds are limited, and we would rather the money be there for people who need it more than us... people who aren't physically or mentally capable of work... people who have kids... people who have elderly family they take care of. We just have us.
If I'd never gone to a four year college, I wouldn't have this debt hanging over me. If I'd started working in food service at the ground floor and ascended at the rate I have in the last three years, I'd probably be looking into higher levels of management by now... but I wouldn't have met the love of my life. If I hadn't been willing to cover both of us, I wouldn't have had him to come home to. He may not be able to work much, but he's good to me. He washes and massages my feet when I come home from work. He started learning to cook so I wouldn't have to after having cooked all day for complete strangers. He soothes me when I'm stressed and contentedly listens when I rant about things and people that frustrate me. I would not be able to throw myself into my job like I do without his emotional support.
Today, I laid down and I cried. I curled up on our bed and I wept. My partner came in and asked me what was wrong, and I told him. Like a deluge, all my fears and insecurities about our state of being leapt from my tongue. I told him how I felt like a failure. How I was so ashamed that I couldn't make payments. How every little moment of luxury I'd allowed myself to enjoy-- the $20 meal at a Mexican restaurant a month earlier, the trip home to visit my mother, the $1 wine cooler I'd had. My engagement ring, which we'd purchased when he and I were both working full time (A simple topaz and diamond ring that cost $100)-- every one weighed on my heart as a waste, even though they raised my spirits so much. I told him I was so tired of my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night being about money... that I knew God would provide, but how I desperately hoped He would provide just a little more. That part of me, a quiet, small part, couldn't bear the thought of the precipice upon which we stood and would rather die than endure potentially falling off that precipice.
Then it came: his quiet, calm offer: to walk away. By my own admission, he was the source of my present financial state. If the only one I had to shelter, feed, clothe, and cure was myself, my wages could do that. If, when our lease was up, he just moved in with his family and I lived by myself or with roommates, my wages would be more than enough for my existence to be maintained.
I almost couldn't believe my ears, and without a moment's hesitation, came my response: No. I need him. The only effect would be moving the burden of providing for him to somebody else, which just is not an option in my mind... and anyway, I'd already committed to our spending our lives together, maybe not officially. Maybe not legally or in the eyes of our families and community, but in my heart, have already ceased to imagine a life without him. Eventually, either by the sweat of my brow or by his, we will come out of this darkness. When we do, when we will be stronger for the battles we've fought now.
I don't think we'll ever be rich, and in my heart, I never want to be financially wealthy. I don't want seven mansions and a yacht. I don't want to have buildings named after me. I don't want to be on the cover of magazines... not because I don't have ambition, but because those ambitions are not what would bring my heart joy. I want enough money that I can live without fear of losing the roof over my head. I want enough money that I can support a family. I don't want excess. I just want enough. Anything beyond that is frivolity. Anything beyond that is for God. I would not live in abject poverty, but I would not live with more than I need.
The last time I spoke with my father before he died, he told me: life is not stuff. His greatest joy was the thought of retiring and having enough money that he and my mother could live out their last days in their home, and that he could garden all day, every day, whenever it was warm enough, and show his eventual grandchildren how to tell when a rosebush needs pine mulch. This would be possible with enough money, but not that much. He told me that I would probably work, all my life, making somebody else rich... but that wasn't the point. The point was that my labors would, in all hope, give me the ability to live in comfort, if I had the wisdom to appreciate what I had.
And what do I have?
Not much. In all truth, I don't own anything. I have things, but none of them are valuable enough to count for anything, not financially. The roof over my head is not mine. The clothes on my back were almost all used by someone else before I got them. I am, at all times, one very bad day away from losing everything I do have... but I have a partner. I have a partner who loves me and who wants, desperately, to see me happy... who would rather walk out of my life than have his temporary dependence on me cost my happiness. With him, I have the hope of one day having a comfortable family. Yes, we are financially poor, but we are, in essence, the living personification of a crappy Bon Jovi song. Someday, things will change.
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