Over the past week, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of reading two “news” articles about how two families are planning for the future and taking control of their finances. I say “unfortunate” because neither of these articles was realistic for low-income households, and I certainly wouldn’t consider either to be newsworthy.
The first was a couple who boasted about saving and working hard to get rid of their debt. How did they do this? For one, they received a loan from the husband’s grandmother to be paid back as it suited them. This is not doable among many families crushed under debt, specifically, families who use credit cards to pay for utilities, buy groceries, and clothe themselves.
I was once credit card debt free. It was a few months after my husband and I got married. We had taken almost all of the money given to us at our wedding (about $4000) and paid off credit cards—cards we used to pay for our wedding. Our wedding was a simple one that cost $2000 in total, including food and my wedding dress. Between the checks we were given and my income, we were able to pay off everything, aside from my student loans.
We then started to use our cards again—responsibly. We would pay the cell phone and cable bill with our card that earned the most points, then redeem the points either against the amount owed or as a credit on Amazon. We were doing okay, and then I needed to see a specialist for female issues. My health insurance was crap—expensive crap at that—and paid nothing until we hit our $6000 deductible, so each specialist visit was another $150 to $220 on the credit card. Then came two surgeries and six weeks of short-term disability, which meant less income.
We made a few poor decisions now and then, like me spending a few hundred dollars at my beloved Toys R Us before they closed, but my income could cover it, so I wasn’t worried. And then I had to leave my job. Maybe I could have stayed longer, but my mental health was struggling and heading for a dark place, my physical health was rapidly declining thanks to menopause, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I accepted a job that paid less, and just in time since the COVID-19 pandemic created serious ethical concerns with the job I was leaving.
Unfortunately, the new job didn’t pay as much as I was told and was absolutely horrible. My husband finally found work and I was able to cut back to part-time, which greatly improved my mental state, but did not put us back to where we were financially. I had planned on my income to pay off debt we had incurred, and then it was gone. There was no borrowing money from a family member or cutting back on dining out to pay off debt—a tactic often suggested to save thousands of dollars. We just didn’t dine out much after leaving my salaried manager job, and even then we did not spend that much in a year. We were living paycheck to paycheck, but we were okay, up until I had to leave my job last March. We’ve been struggling ever since.
When I see these articles of how people paid off debt by borrowing money from family and cutting back thousands of dollars on unnecessary luxuries, it proves how out-of-touch the news is with the struggles of low-income Americans. It isn’t news when someone with a good income can live debt-free, and it certainly isn’t something to brag about as if it were a difficult feat to accomplish. Congratulations—you make $60,000 a year and can pay your bills. That isn’t the case for many Americans, so don’t pretend like you have some financial secret that will help people climb out of poverty.
The second article was about a family who was on a plan to retire at 35. It was a disgusting article that stated the family had an income of $135,000 a year and lived “frugally” on just half of that salary, putting the rest into retirement savings. They bought discounted groceries meant for those in poverty and plan to take advantage of “deeply discounted” health insurance after retiring at 35.
As someone who has done a lot of research on health insurance, government assistance, and tax subsidies for health insurance premiums, I will say that it sickens me that one would use the system this way. Tax subsidies are meant to help the working class get affordable insurance and government assistance is meant to help those who are unfortunate and unable to make enough to survive. These are not setup for people who make a lot of money to retire early. Sorry to say, but working is part of life. If you want more free time, you accept that you must live with less income.
However, the most sickening part is that the family is living “frugally” on $67,500. That’s more income than we had as a household in my entire life. A family of three can comfortably live on that income, even without discounted food. Maybe they are making extra payments on their mortgage, but even still, that isn’t what I would consider frugal. We lived comfortably on my salary of $40,000, and that included rent that was higher than most mortgages.
Aside from the fact that both of these stories, and so many others that claim ways to save money are just out-of-touch with the reality many households face, what is the point of all of this? To brag that you have never actually lived and that you saved every cent? No one lives forever, and you certainly cannot take it with you.
I’ve always thought it was better that I grew up without money because I learned to see the value in other things. I learned to grow my own food and to not be wasteful. I learned that there are people who struggle more than we ever did and who actually need help. We have never been able to qualify for government assistance, other than some discounted school lunch program in the early 1990s, but that doesn’t mean those programs shouldn’t exist. There are those who have had seriously unfortunate life events and they need help. Maybe it was their own doing, maybe not. It isn’t for me to judge, but to help when I can.
I wish I was rich so I could do more, but then I fear I would not have the level of empathy that I possess. It’s a no-win situation, but at least I am able to appreciate that which Mother Nature has given us. Or at least until the wealthy completely destroy the planet.