Today is my birthday. On this day, turning fifty-five should be uplifting. I know I worked hard and sacrificed much to make this a joyous occasion but it is a day of self-pity and self-doubt. This is a day that is all about lack of "Hope" and coming face to face with an existence that has no future.
You know how you always hear about business uncertainty and how important it is to keep the corporations comfortably? Little is ever said about how workers feel. Well you do here the expression "Gave up looking for work" that sort of reminds me of "canon fodder." Sometimes there is mention of the "underemployed," a category I expect to be in for at least another eleven years, perhaps the rest of my life.
The part that really sucks is that I saw it coming many years ago and have planned accordingly for at least twenty years. Back on my thirty-fifth birthday I saw my own future and instead of living from paycheck to paycheck for twenty years I've been saving twenty percent of my salary. Those savings have been all for this day. A day that instead of putting in my papers, I went downtown in the snow and shaped up at my union hall.
Twenty years of planning and sacrifice might not sound like a long time to you but my pain is my own and while I know there are many Americans far worse off than I am, I'm still depressed, very depressed. There has been so much that has changed since I started planning for this day, so many new pressures on the working class. Do we even exist in this nation anymore?
It seems like a very long time ago to me. Back when I turned thirty-five with the first Bush only five days from attacking Iraq and nine moths before the Feast of the Guardian Angels announcement from a promising young Governor from Arkansas life seemed so promising. I remember exactly where I was, working eight hours a day in a carpentry shop and four hours a night on changing over soap opera sets but I took Friday night off, never worked on Saturday or Sunday and really enjoyed my weekends.
Instead of scoffing at the old timers back then who were telling me "There isn't going to be anything there for you when you retire," I watched them struggling to get that sheet of plywood up on the table saw or push heavy road boxes up those ramps in the cold and thought about myself being sixty years old climbing ladders and humping scenery around at 1 o'clock in the morning. It wasn't a pretty picture.
That was a day I will never forget. I did the exact opposite of what is expected of a thirty-five year old American and took responsibility for my own future. It was a sacrifice, perhaps a sacrifice out of reach of someone supporting a family but I was still single and there was plenty I could give up. For the first ten years I actually set aside 25 percent of my income and that seemed like a huge change. I did it with such determination that I gave up quite a bit of living over that past twenty years.
A few days after my thirty-fifth birthday I even went for professional help to find out where my income was going and decide what to cut back on. From the little things like photography and collecting CD's to bigger ticket items like my collection of fine art prints and love of good food. Changing a few spending habits seemed like the answer. I also opened my first brokerage accounts, one from my net pay to supplement an early retirement pension from 55 to 59 and 1/2, another from my gross pay for after 59 1/2 when there would be no I.R.S. penalty.
Twenty years ago when I saw a future for myself I just learned to enjoy new things. The first to go was those weekends off because weekends are very lucrative in my business. Instead of too many nights out on the town there was coupon clipping, dinner at home and boxed lunch. Leisure time went from music, a good book and "too much socializing" to The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily with an hour a day on the Precor while watching CNBC. I did enjoy it, the 1990's were anything but harsh and it felt like acting responsibly.
Such practical planning didn't seem so un-American as it does today but breaking with tradition and giving up stupid consumerism was still outside the norm for someone with expendable income. Vacations went from an expensive three weeks each year to one economy getaway for a short week. Restaurants went from trendy to economical. Home furnishings and clothing went from fashionable to to classic and permanent. I did not take out a home equity loan for a new kitchen and bath because my early 1960's kitchen and bath still functioned, still does. Actually outside of my co-op mortgage and one 0.0% car loan I have not used any credit since deciding I would retire early. At least not until last year when I started borrowing money from myself for basic living expenses.
I have to admit that I would eventually cut back a bit. By the turn of the century managing money seemed so tiring and after the attack on September 11th I was not feeling too sure I would live to see this day. After being assured by my accountant that what I did save "would double to a very comfortable number by January 12, 2011," I switched everything over to blue chips and large cap service economy stocks, started reading the business page just to see what was going on and let it ride. I went almost European and began taking a good four weeks of vacation each year, started going out more and eating better food, while cutting back to saving 15% of my income.
On this day where those twenty years seem so fruitless the efforts were not unsuccessful. Those savings did not double in the past ten years, actually I feel lucky that the funds stayed stagnate. But I set aside an amount that could produce something like slightly comfortable. There are unforeseen events like the fact that my early retirement pension would be just about equal with the medical insurance supplemental and the plan to secure investments by switching over to bonds at retirement, have you looked at the payoff from bonds or considered how risky they have become for retail investors?
I could still pull it off by going money market and living off some of the principle to make it to 62 except for the extreme uncertainty. Everything seems so uncertain now. I'm not sure there will be Social Security when I'm 62 and if there is I'm almost certain that "means testing" would take a chunk out of it for people like myself. Even if I'm wrong, I can't afford to take the risk and wind up becoming a golden age Wal-Mart greeter.
I would have be completely out of my mind to go ten years without a job and trust that medical insurance inflation would not at some point become greater than all of my income. Even if I do make it to Medicare I read somewhere recently that senior citizens now use a larger percentage of their income for health care than before Medicare existed. How can I take that sort of risk?
I know where the uncertainty comes from. I can feel a State of the Union address coming where Simpson-Bowles will be featured. I watched a campaign promise of taxing the rich for health care sanity become a 40 percent excise tax on my own health insurance in 2018, even retired. I saw a soft sell on taxing the rich become a very hard sell on the liberal Democrats in the House and the Social Security payroll tax take a holiday. My perception now is that there will be another hard sell on the Democratic Senate, something about Republicans standing in the way of a deficit cap and to deal with them there will need to be entitlement givebacks. My perception might be wrong but my perception is not about your faith in government. It is all about self preservation and not becoming a homeless senior citizen. My perception is nothing but pessimism because of what I'm hearing from what I used to call "my government."
It feels a bit odd to pour out so much about myself but it needs to be said. It's not that I'm not thinking about the Americans who did live the American dream, those people my age and younger who spent everything they had and then some, state workers who now see their pensions and welfare being presented as a drag on the economy, people in private industry who thought they would have a pension but the very successful corporations restructured. It's not just about me but on this day I wish I was one of them. Perhaps my biggest regret about my obsession with planning for this date is that I might have started a family myself were it not for all that careful and wasted planning. Either way today I'm feeling very fucked up and very fucked over.
I know one thing I was right about twenty years ago. Bending over to pick up something heavy hurts like hell. I'm always so tired, my knees are always aching, my back is always sore and I just can't find the fun in working anymore. Perhaps my depression is clinical but just the needed chiropractor, I can't neither afford the co-pay nor do I have the stamina to seek out a diagnosis. Such is middle aged middle class life in America.