Scary and sad article–letting kids be full pay at dream Us that he couldn’t afford (but grandparents paid) fits right into CC too. Wow–can’t imagine borrowing money from my adult kids to keep warm!
I think there are people who live beyond their means, that run up debt and such to have expensive cars, and otherwise mismanage their finances, there is no doubt and the author of the story might very well fit into that, especially given that he has the kind of income stream that ebbs and flows and can disappear.
The problem with assuming that is always true assumes that people are squandering their money when a lot of these people are living paycheck to paycheck paying for even basics. Middle class is a funny thing, it is more a state of mind then economic reality, people who are barely working class would tell you that, people who have relatively high family income would tell you that they are middle class. There always were people living beyond their means, there were people who when I was growing up in the NJ burbs always had new cars, always had fancy clothing, spent a ton of money on landscaping, family vacations, so that is not new, whereas my family, living on my dad’s salary as an engineer in the defense industry (not exactly known as generous employers),drove used cars (that we fixed ourselves), never took vacations as such (I didn’t take a formal vacation until my honeymoon), our vacations were my dad was off and we would go to the beach or sailing (we had a small sailboat), didn’t wear fancy clothing at all…so I know what people are saying.
The problem is that many of the things people ‘fell back on’ back in the day don’t exist any more. Rental housing has become very expensive in many parts of the country, so that 2 bedroom apartment can take 50% or more of salary to afford, lot of other things are expensive. The wages of much of the working class have declined but the cost of basic living has gone up, the cost of food has skyrocketed, and while things like gasoline are cheap, the cost of owning a car, a requirement in many places, isn’t. There was an article in the Times about how people displaced by globabilzation react by either becoming extreme right wing or extreme left wing (shocked the economists who did this study, which is pretty funny, tells you what cloud they live on). They talked about this town in Georgia, that once was thriving with manufacturing jobs, today it is pretty much a ghost town and even though the unemployment rate isn’t that high, many people are struggling with the basics. Leaving out the author’s piece for a second, the middle class once encompassed a broad swath of this country, and for many of them it isn’t living beyond their means, it is they don’t have the means. It is great to talk about saving 20% of your salary, but if you are scraping by, barely putting food on the table and a roof over your family’s head, where does this come from? It isn’t that I don’t think that is a solid idea, it is, and I think living below your means is generally a good idea, if the means have dropped so low (and again, I am not talking about the author) for so many people, they can’t live below their means, living a barebone existence they aren’t making it.
And when people refer to the past, they are forgetting how much things have changed. 30, 40 years ago. If you had misfortune and lost a well paying job, you could cobble together a living, and that and cutting things down to the bone would be survival, but much of that doesn’t exist any more. 30, 40 years ago you could get a job as a construction laborer that paid well enough to feed a family, these days those jobs are being done by day laborers at 8 bucks an hour. 8 bucks an hour back then was enough to scrape by, maybe with a couple of jobs, what happened was the wage basically never went up. College kids are finding that the entry level jobs just aren’t there and it takes a lot longer to get established and making decent money, and they have the burden of college loans.
I agree with what one poster said, that when people who identify with “The American Dream” stop believing, we are in for a rough ride, it happened during the Great Depression (when the middle class was still pretty small), and as the economists were ‘shocked’ to find out, people who have given up hope get angry and result to extremes, and it is kind of idiotic to point out how cheap chinese goods are and benefits the lower classes, when the lower classes increasingly can’t afford basics, like food and housing, so that cheap big screen tv or microwave, as cheap as it is, might as well be a lot more expensive.
OP, to ask for no “holier than thou” posts on CC is like asking for no rainy days in Portland. 
There is an interesting story about the decline of the middle class that the author articulates in places, but I wish he hadn’t used himself as an example of the phenomenon. The author’s children went to Stanford and Emory. He lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and East Hampton. He is someone who thought that moving to, say, New Jersey, or sending his kids to a SUNY, would damage his identity (“that’s not who I am”) so he wouldn’t do it and took the consequences. He’s a BoBo who can’t live materially in the way he feels he’s entitled to. He’s not a good exemplar of the decline of the middle class (which is due in large part to forms of technological unemployment and to globalization).
The “secret shame” of the middle class is that if you can’t find $400 for an emergency, you’re not middle class.
@NJSue - Well said!
its interesting that people are criticized for not having money, but are also criticized for choices that help them become more financially stable. H and I waited 10 years to start a family as we married young and had no money. We were criticized plenty for that. Of course we were also criticized when I returned to work full time after D was born.
This decrease in earning power comes at a time when the sort of lifestyle that the author describes as middle class is the sort of lifestyle my middle class parents would have called upper class. For vacations we went camping and private colleges were out of the question. We had one car and it was always bought used. Meals out were few and far between. I remember making very detailed shopping lists with my mom. We only bought cuts of meat that we could afford on that particular trip to the store. We owned our home, but did our own cleaning and yard work.We paid cash for everything and the only debt we carried was our mortgage. When I reflect on my lifestyle as a kid it seems to be frugal but at the time we felt pretty prosperous. With a few exceptions pretty much everyone in our Detroit suburb lived the same existence. This was not a “holier than thou” attitude, it was reality at that time. I really think that while the earning power of today’s middle class has shrunk substantially, the perceived entitlements of today’s middle class has expanded greatly. The result is the author’s precarious lifestyle.
If my parents were having a tough time making ends meet, I can’t imagine asking them to help fund my wedding and if I was struggling financially, I can’t imagine offering to help fund my kids’ weddings. My cousin had a nice wedding in a public park with a potluck reception. They are still happily married over 3 decades later and didn’t dig a huge financial hole, though they have 9 children, I believe.
@musicprnt, I appreciate you taking the discussion into subtler territories. I am not denying that there are huge financial challenges facing the middle/working class. I certainly understand that the cost of living has gone up dramatically without salaries to match, and that it’s increasingly difficult live on a working man’s paycheck and to educate your children to boot.
But there are two very separate things going on here: one, a discussion about the fiscal realities – and significant constraints – of middle class America. And, two, the financial irresponsibility of an educated man with, at times, a significant income.
One is a real social problem we should be very concerned about. The other is a whole OTHER story, one of a man who’s repeatedly made really dumb decisions: life in one of the most expensive cities in the world, private schools for two children, a place in the Hamptons (!) a lavish wedding paid for with retirement savings… and (one can surmise) years of dinners out, nice vacations, lots of book and movie money.
It sort of bugs me that he’s using himself as a poster child of a situation that’s not his own.
Totally agree @HImom. That’s the part of the article that struck me (that and the not paying the taxes). Depleting their 401k for the D’s wedding.
And I think @doschicos got it. The inability to say no. Or delayed gratification.
I have a friend that years ago I went shopping with. She found something she wanted and said that she was going to get it, if her store credit card wasn’t declined. The fact that the store credit card was at its limit was telling. She recently told me that they live paycheck to paycheck and that she told her husband he couldn’t contemplate retiring. They are in their mid 50’s.
A month later she was telling me about her trip to Napa and should they eat at The French Laundry. And that a week later they were going to Italy to visit their daughter who was doing a summer abroad.
People do love to criticize, don’t they? I think part of it is human nature, part of it is validation of one’s own choices (“you’re supposed to have your kids right away/be a stay-at-home-mom/etc., because that’s what I did”), and part of it is that feeling of control.
“I won’t get diabetes or heart disease or whatever-your-disease-choice, because I eat well, exercise, and maintain a healthy weight.” Those are all good things to do, but they sure don’t guarantee good health. (I’m talking to you, scout59 pancreas…)
“I won’t have that kind of money problem, because I have a lot of savings, a good job, and a 401K. And I know how to manage money.” Those are also good things, but an unexpected job loss, followed by a longer-than-expected employment search and a new job at 1/2 the pay make it much harder to reach and maintain financial goals.
By the way, one of the reasons that H and I had only one child was financial. You should have heard the outrage when I mentioned that to some critical family members!
The existence and expansion of consumer credit has done a great (or terrible) job of unyoking consumption from income and enabling people to live beyond their means. There are a lot of people in this country who simply can’t handle credit. I see the author’s plight more as a reflection of that than of long term trends hollowing out the middle class. In the 60s having a credit card was a big deal. Now everyone has one; it’s hard to function in the contemporary world without one.
People do have higher material expectations of life, it’s true. It’s also true that certain big ticket hallmarks of middle-class-hood (homeownership, a college education, ability to pay your medical bills/get treatment wrt cost) are much more expensive in real dollars than they used to be. On the other hand, clothes, appliances, gadgets are cheaper (at the price of offshoring a lot of our manufacturing jobs).
“The existence and expansion of consumer credit has done a great (or terrible) job of unyoking consumption from income and enabling people to live beyond their means. There are a lot of people in this country who simply can’t handle credit.”
This is so true, and coupled with the move away from employer sponsored pension plans to employee managed/funded 401Ks is a very dangerous combination for those lacking self control and financial competence. Example: using your 401k to fund daughter’s wedding.
This article was like someone dancing over my grave. My husband is a writer and the thing that most people miss about this article is that the irregular income is what does you in.
We are constantly on the edge, even with my full-time salary. I make enough to cover the mortgage, but the rest of the bills require dexterous juggling. It is impossible to budget when you literally have no clue when your next check will come. You don’t know if it’ll be five days from now or five months from now. So you pay the bills as best you can; you pay the lights every couple of months, the Internet religiously (because that’s how you work), the heat when the company sends personalized letters, the mortgage in the same month (but often late)… you are in a constant state of triage.
When a check comes, it’s often several thousand dollars and the flush of relief is so wonderful - you take the family out to the local Chinese food place and to a movie, because you feel RICH. And the next day you pay everyone you owe…except, you really can’t get current, because the check wasn’t that big, and so nothing really changes. Forget saving.
This is a choice, granted: It’s a choice to write for a living. But nobody does it to get rich; you do it because you’re good at it. Now, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, and Esquire - they pay top dollar to freelance writers, usually around two bucks a word, sometimes only a dollar a word. Do you know what they paid 20 years ago? The same amount. It has never gone up. At most places, it has gone down.
So think of his financial life story in that context before you judge. I don’t think I would’ve emptied the 401k for a wedding. But we’ve emptied 401ks and savings accounts to get through the next six months, and we’ve done it more than once.
Try to have some compassion. Not everyone makes wise decisions.
I wish he’d interviewed some people with more traditional stories. There are very few writers who can even pretend to make a middle-class living anymore. There are millions of salaried workers who can’t pretend to make that living.
@musicamusica I was thinking the same thing. Much of the lifestyle he is describing was not considered middle class when I was a kid (and isn’t for me now).
“For vacations we went camping and private colleges were out of the question. We had one car and it was always bought used. Meals out were few and far between. I remember making very detailed shopping lists with my mom. We only bought cuts of meat that we could afford on that particular trip to the store. We owned our home, but did our own cleaning and yard work.We paid cash for everything and the only debt we carried was our mortgage. When I reflect on my lifestyle as a kid it seems to be frugal but at the time we felt pretty prosperous.”
This is my current existence. I can fund 6 months of no income and probably more since we have vacation funds, vehicle accounts etc., clothing funds etc. I live my life like there are few emergencies just things that will happen that I need to prepare for. I find it funny because one difference is that as the male in the house I make the menus, do the shopping and the majority of the cooking (I enjoy it). We pay for our groceries and household supplies with cash. We also prepare meals my parents and grandparents had never heard of. We own one TV and haven’t had cable or Satellite in 14 years. (by choice, it just wasn’t something we valued)
At our older Ds first “family weekend” we tent camped at a local campground. It was in September, cost about $50 for two nights at the same time hotels were booked up and even those an hour away were at least $175 a night. We also were able to prepare out own meals which saved us some money. Our youngest just went to her senior prom and my wife and she went shopping in January for the dress. It was probably last years homecoming dress but it cost her $37.
The thing is I don’t feel deprived. Kids are doing great and our older D actually has money in a Roth since she is co-oping. I have money to splurge on that special vacation if I want to but as a rule we enjoy what we have. To me this is what middle class is supposed to be.
@Gatorama, I think you are a good writer too. I love your post.
I agree @Gatorama - I wish I could have “liked” your post multiple times.
@Gatormama We have the same predicament. H was a below the line worker in the motion picture industry. He worked from job to job. And I have my own business. I remember in 2002 we had no income whatsoever and again in 2004. We knew that this would happen from the get go. In good years we squirreled money away. We vowed to always have a years living expenses in the bank. It got pretty scary in 02 and 04. Though he is retired and has his retirement income from his union. I still always keep that years living expenses banked. And even with that I still feel on the edge.( What’s a salary? )That we have been able to pull it off and we state that, why does it have to come off as “not being compassionate”. ?
And yes,I have been slammed more than once on CC for not encouraging student loans but I really do believe that debt is the devil. 
All this discussion and no one has mentioned his kids. Can you imagine how they must feel after reading this? I can only hope the daughter had no idea M&D were forfeiting their retirement for a wedding. I would be just sick to my stomach if I thought my parents were in such a bind.
And I would be p***sed as hell if I knew my parents had done such a stupid thing.