That’s what they are calling the long-term unemployed.  The new underclass.  If you still have a job, at one time or another you’ve probably thought (or submitted a comment ), “Just get a job!”  If you still have a job, you might think the economic recovery, weak though it is, means that everyone who lost their job should be able to find a new one by now.  It’s not happening.

There are over 4 MILLION people who are classified as long term unemployed (people who have been out of work for more than a year).  We make up 40 percent of the unemployed.  We could fill the 15 largest football stadiums in the US and more than 2.5 million people would be stuck in the parking lots.  That’s a lot of people.

Employers are adding jobs, it’s true.  But it’s a fact that employers are also actively discriminating against the unemployed.  As this article from USA Today says “some companies — including PMG Indiana, Sony Ericsson and retailers nationwide — have explicitly barred the unemployed or long-term unemployed from certain job openings, outright telling them in job ads that they need not apply.”  This discrimination has become so obvious and widespread that some areas (e.g., New Jersey, Chicago) are proposing to ban companies from rejecting prospective employees based on current employment status or bad credit.

This issue is getting more attention lately.  Both this artice in the Business Insider (The Truth About the Long Term Unemployed) and this recent 60 Minutes segment (A new jobs program for people trapped in unemployment) do a good job of showing some of the people behind the numbers.  As 60 Minutes says, “These folks have been out of work two years, three, even four. They’re college educated professionals in their 40′s or 50′s; people who thought their company would take them all the way to retirement.”

The people interviewed for these stories used to belong to the middle class.  They had college degrees, homes, cars, and have had gainful employment their entire working lives.  Then they lost their jobs and their lives imploded.  They have applied for hundreds, even thousands of jobs.  They’ve gone back to school and ‘reinvented’ themselves.  They’ve networked and pounded the pavement, and are willing to take any job.  They just can’t find one.  And, seriously folks, it’s NOT their fault.

Remember that old Bill Withers song -

Lean on me, when you’re not strong
and I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on…

I’ve always liked that song.  Of course I always picture myself as the stalwart one helping a friend when I sing it in the shower – not the person doing the leaning.  I internalized early on the lesson of not counting on other people but instead being resourceful and competent, taking care of yourself.  It’s probably a lesson I’m passing on to my kids.  Be self-sufficient.  Learn to do things for yourself.  Don’t ask for, or expect help.  But at the same time lend a helping hand whenever you can.  It’s our family motto (one of them) – if someone needs help and you can help them, then you do so.

Of course our current circumstances have necessitated asking for help from time to time, whether it was enrolling the kids in Medi-Cal health insurance, asking a friend to take the kids for an afternoon or even overnight, or as of late to help with a tax issue with the IRS.  This past week I had to ask for help from a number of people – people whom I probably won’t be able to repay or even return the favor (a most uncomfortable situation) and it got me thinking about support networks and the nature and value of them.

As Americans we have, for the most part, become somewhat separated from traditional support networks.  The saying ‘It takes a village’ might still hold true, but most of us don’t have that village anymore.  We grow up and leave home (I moved to California at age 17 to start college), we might move several times in our careers or to accommodate a spouse’s career moves.  We lose touch with the high school friends we thought we would know all our lives, and then do the same thing with college roommates and grad school buddies.  We send holiday cards and catch up at conventions or reunions but it would be a stretch to consider them our village.

We make friends at work, at church, with other soccer moms, people whose lives intersect ours because we find ourselves in the same place at the same time and we are social animals and need and enjoy the social contact.  But would the fellow you share a joke with at the coffee pot in the break room, or the mom who commiserates with you about your kids’ crazy extracurricular schedules really ‘be there’ for you if you needed help?  Probably not.  Nevertheless those social contacts can provide some stress relief – laughter is good medicine and other soccer moms have been known to help out with carpooling – so even these superficial relationships can be beneficial.

When you become unemployed, and worse, remain unemployed, you lose some of those connections.  Work ‘friends’ tend to drop away fairly quickly – maybe they are just uncomfortable around you or maybe there’s a subconscious feeling that your layoff might be contagious.  You continue to call or email for awhile – networking – but eventually it becomes a contact that is more painful than beneficial.  At some point you can’t afford to enroll your kids in soccer or whatever other activity they were doing – dues, uniforms, activity fees – it’s just not in the budget any longer.  Friends stop inviting you out, or over.  Partly it’s because you are a bit of a wet blanket with your endless discussion of the economic news, or your endless pestering them for job connections.  Or maybe it’s because you can’t exactly repay them by picking up the tab the next time, or having them over for dinner.  And really, how long can they say to you “Don’t worry, you’ll find something!”

Eventually you are left with one or two hardcore friends, neighbors who can’t really avoid you, Facebook ‘friends’ you haven’t met in real life, the clerk in the grocery store and your kids’ teachers who have to talk to you at parent-teacher conferences. OK, that’s an exaggeration but you get the picture.  It’s NOT a village!

Studies show that people who have close networks of friends and family who genuinely care about them are the healthiest. A social support network isn’t just a practical benefit, it actually strengthens your immune system, improves your mental health and makes you less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol.  It probably makes you smarter and happier too (the study didn’t actually address those but it seems likely to me).

We do have a support network of sorts.  We have some special friends who do care – like our good friend Lu who came to my daughter’s basketball games and cheered her on with a piercing whistle and who remembers and celebrates the kids’ birthdays.  And Naomi, our school secretary who has a soft spot for my son and who cheers him on and treats him like her own son.  And families who invite the kids over for sleepovers giving us all a break.  We have special neighbors right next to us – we help each other out – jumping dead batteries, watching kids for an hour or two, lending money when someone is a little short and just needs a 20 for gas.  We have family who care from afar and distant friends who stay in touch via the internet.  And we have some very kind and caring blog readers who send messages of encouragement and support (and sometimes hire me to do some writing or editing).  Our little support network has been our lifeline from time to time but it’s like a spider web that is stretched thin and a bit frayed so we are currently considering ways to strengthen it and ways in which we too can be a better support to others.  After all, as the song says – “We all need somebody to lean on.”

They say things (good and bad) come in threes.  Ever the overachievers, we have been beset by a multitude of 3s lately!  Last weekend I found myself dealing with a rainstorm of issues – financial, computer/technical, personal and health issues.  Some of these have been resolved, at least partially, others are ongoing.  I appreciate our readers’ patience and concern and will try to get back to posting more often.  We still have some website issues but hope to resolve them well enough before too long.

I’m generally fairly good at dealing with stress and problems.  Not a miracle worker by any means but kind of a patch it up so that if it isn’t as good as new it at least, more or less, works.  This week has tested my abilities, and is pushing me towards some make or break decisions.  We have been hanging on for so long, longer than I ever thought we would have to, that my reserve is low.  Still, being pushed to (or near to) the breaking point is a great incentive to make big changes.  Don’t worry – we will take you along with us on this ride!

Boxcarkids will not be posting for an indeterminate amount of time.  We will be unable to moderate or respond to comments.

We are getting by these days on very little – a few editing and writing jobs, a new stint as a virtual assistant, and cat bed sales.  I have found most of my clients and customers through word of mouth, or from this blog.  This has been a lean month so I’d like to ask loyal readers who have provided so much support and encouragement in the past to spread the word a bit for us.  If you don’t need an editor, or a cat bed, perhaps a friend or co-worker does – or knows someone who could use one?  We do appreciate the free advertising!

Living in poverty is hard – perhaps that’s why there are so many words related to hard that can be applied to a life of poverty – hard time, hardship, hardscrabble, hard luck, hard pressed, hard row to hoe, hard-hearted…it’s just hard.  Most of us can deal with some hard in our lives – we get going when the going gets tough; we keep our chin up and maintain a stiff upper lip; we shoulder our burden.  We retain hope.  This is an excellent short term strategy.  But over the long term living in poverty gets progressively more difficult.

The ills of poverty are varied and numerous.  Some people begin life in poverty and never leave it.  They are racially segregated and poorly educated.  They work hard at menial labor in unsafe conditions, living from payday to payday at the best of times.  They possess little in the way of material goods and live perpetually in debt.  Their dwellings are poor and overcrowded.  They may be malnourished and probably have physical ills that have never been treated.  They might have fallen victim to crime or substance abuse.  They reproduce and die young.

Strangely this description of life in the tenements of New York at the turn of the last century can be just as well applied to many Americans at the turn of this century.  And with the Great Recession leaving scores of formerly middle class families homeless, without regular income, and without medical insurance, the likelihood is that this description will be aptly applied to even more people.

Poverty in the U.S. grew substantially more common during the last decade, with hardships increasing for millions of people and their families, especially with regard to food, medical care and housing.  (Poverty, Hardship and Families: How Many People Are Poor, and What Does Being Poor in America Really Mean?)

Poverty has been associated with numerous physical, mental and social ills in any number of studies.  People living in poverty today are more likely to be ‘food insecure’ or have to forego purchasing needed prescription medicines or visit doctors.  Children in poverty are more like to suffer abuse.  Depression abounds amongst the poor, so much so that studies have questioned which comes first – does depression cause one to fall into an impoverished lifestyle, or does being poor make one depressed?

I daresay some people, depressed to the point of being unable to maintain social ties and good work habits, descend with their depression into poverty.  Yet I also believe that the constant ongoing stress of being financially insecure, on the verge of homelessness, and unable to find employment is a clear cause of depression.  The strain and anxiety, the insomnia and irritability, the worry and shame, they all eat at one, dragging one down in an increasingly steep spiral, until it requires a near Herculean effort just to get up in the morning.

You might think having children would inoculate you against depression.  It doesn’t.  It gets you out of bed in the morning but if anything thinking about your children, the material and social advantages that you cannot give them, the insecurities and privations they endure, and your anxiety about their futures, the concern that you may be causing them incalculable harm, merely serves to contribute to your burden and diminish your sense of self-worth.  When you are poor you feel very much alone.

Poverty, like smoking, accidents or obesity, has even been found to be a cause of death in America.  In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that in the year 2000 poverty caused nearly 300,000 deaths (compared to about 120,000 deaths per year caused by accidents).  I suspect that number will only increase.

Yesterday I was scrolling through our local craigslist looking at the job ads and saw this:

We coordinate the securing and cleanup of foreclosed properties and are looking for people to sign up as vendors who have skills and/or experience in the foreclosure industry. You need to have a digital camera, a computer, your own tools, a reliable truck and hopefully a trailer. You need to be able to change locks or rekey locks, remove debris, perform janitorial services & cut lawns.

According to some sources more than one and a half million homes have gone into foreclosure since the beginning of the Great Recession and are owned by banks, or the federal government.  More still lurk in the shadow inventory – homes that are stalled in the foreclosure process or inhabited by owners who have given up paying the mortgage on a house worth less than their buying price.  Many of the foreclosed homes have not been resold, due to tighter lending policies and bargain hunting buyers waiting for the prices to bottom out.

This means that there are a lot of vacant houses in the U.S.  Most are clustered in cities hardest hit by the Great Recession – New York, Las Vegas, Detroit, for example.  These houses are a problem.  Although legally the responsibility of the mortgage holder, the cost of upkeep (mowing lawns, repairing broken windows, draining pools) and security is frequently falling on the local governments, taxing already overburdened city budgets.  Unmaintained vacant houses are an eyesore and a drag on neighborhood property values.  As property values fall so do the tax revenues.  Vacant buildings attract squatters, youth looking for hangouts, gangs, thieves and vandals.  They are frequently broken into and have been destroyed by accidental or intentional fires, requiring the attention of police and fire fighters.

As the housing market continues to be depressed (and some experts do not expect it to rebound for years to come given the continued high unemployment, constrained borrowing power and glut of available homes at low prices) cities and the federal government are looking for ways to deal with the problem.  They have taken two different approaches – cities condemning and razing vacant buildings and the federal government selling blocks of homes to investors who enter into an agreement to rent the homes out for a specified number of years. Both of these plans have merit.

According to a GAO report on the nation’s vacant house issue, Detroit, Michigan, has spent more than $20 million since May 2009 to demolish almost 4,000 vacant properties.  And in Cleveland, Ohio, where the recession left one-fifth of all houses vacant, more than 1,000 have been razed and as many as 20,000 more are slated for demolition.  A recent 60 Minutes news story titled “There goes the neighborhood” documented Cleveland’s effort to deal with the spreading blight of vacant homes.  Abandoned houses have fallen victim to thieves who break in to steal fixtures, appliances, copper piping, and even the aluminum siding.

In an effort to rid themselves of near worthless properties banks are also calling in demolition crews and then donating the cleared land back to cities.  Not only do they clear their books of a property that costs them to maintain, they can get a tax write off through their donation.

The federal government recently announced a new plan to deal with foreclosed homes – selling properties held by Fannie May and Freddie Mac to investors for use as rental properties.   “The federal program is aimed to clear the backlog of distressed properties that has flooded the market and depressed prices, while at the same time meeting the increased demands of renters.”  Given that America is becoming a nation of renters, this might be a strategy that banks could use as well to offload some of their inventory of foreclosed homes.  The sooner these vacant houses are filled, the sooner home prices will stabilize, property tax revenues will increase, property crimes will drop, and neighborhoods will recover.

Well, now that we have some plans to deal with all these vacant, abandoned houses, maybe we could turn our attention to the plight of the homeless?

Some half dozen years ago I spent the better part of a day volunteering at a local soup kitchen/food pantry on the weekend before Thanksgiving.  There’s something about the holiday season that heightens my desire to care for strangers and this was a perfect opportunity for a busy single mom of 2.  A friend who admired my initiative but didn’t share the same commitment was happy to take my daughters for the afternoon so I donned my work clothes – jeans and a sweatshirt - and a feeling of benevolence, and headed off to dole out charity.

The first hour or so was spent sorting food that had been donated – mostly canned goods, bags of pasta and rice, but also loaves of day old bread, and produce; heads of wilted lettuce and limp bundles of carrots.  There were dented cans, food that was past the expiration date, and foods clearly given more as a means of cleaning out the pantry than to provide a meal for the hungry.  Cans of sauerkraut, pearl onions, gravy, and surprisingly (given that Thanksgiving was still to come) cranberry sauce.  The only meat I saw that wasn’t in a can of soup, was a can of Spam.

As we packed the food into paper grocery bags, a more experienced worker gave us tips.  “Put the generic veggie cans and odd stuff on the bottom,” she said, “then rice, bread or pasta and produce.  Try to top it off with something appealing if you can – like this.”  She handed me a box of Frosted Flakes cereal.  Naturally there was no dairy, nothing that needed to be refrigerated or frozen.

Once the bags were filled we were directed to the kitchen to help prepare the ‘Thanksgiving’ Meal.  This was a lot closer to the meal I would be having the following week – it was ham instead of turkey, but the other fixings were much the same.  Mashed potatoes, peas, dinner rolls, salad, and pumpkin or apple pie for desert.  We peeled mountains of potatoes, chopped lettuce, opened industrial-sized cans of peas and heated rolls.  It was an assembly line effort and we were hurried along by bustling workers who warned us of the growing lines forming outside the doors.

Eventually the food was ready, tables were set and the doors were opened.  The people filed through and lined up cafeteria style to receive a plate filled with a hot meal.  There were older homeless men who shuffled through silently, maintaining a tight grip on their soiled backpacks.  There were migrant workers, darkly tanned and hardened by hours standing and bending and lifting in the sun.  There were families – not so many (this was before the recession) but a few.  Children so eager, eyes alight, tummies rumbling, reaching for their plates.  Parents with downcast gazes, hurrying the children through the line, hating the need to be there at all, mumbling their thanks.

We dished out over 100 meals that afternoon, and gave each adult one of the grocery sacks packed with food that we wouldn’t take home and serve to our own families because it wasn’t our brand, or was too old or unpalatable in other ways.  We were brightly cheery in the presence of the needy, proud that we had taken the time to come and serve them.  We accepted their gratitude as our due and frowned at the child who had a tantrum and refused to eat her peas, instead shoving her entire plate to the floor.  We murmured among ourselves, wondering what led people to make a life on the street instead of getting a job and living a ‘normal’ life.  Drug use?  Lack of education?  Lack of drive?  We couldn’t imagine it.

Yesterday I stood in line at the biweekly food pantry at a local church.  Ahead of me were other single adults, an elderly lady white-haired and hunched over, a man who limped along with the aid of a cane, and a woman about my age, nicely dressed in a colorful skirt and blouse.  Behind me a young mother tried to keep her toddler son entertained as the line edged slowly forward.  Most of us moved forward silently, keeping eye contact and conversation to a minimum. At the head of the line was a small card table, manned by several nicely dressed and groomed middle-aged volunteers.

They politely asked each person their circumstance and the number and ages of the people in their household before handing out a little green ticket that afforded one entrance into the part of the parking lot that housed the food.  Tables laden with sacks of paper grocery bags, bins filled with local produced rejected by the stores, and another table stacked with loaves of bread.  I handed over my green ticket and took the grocery sack I was offered.  A box of Frosted Flakes peeked over the edge, resting on a head of limp lettuce.  I declined the offer of extra cabbage and carried my bag to the car where I pushed aside the cereal and produce and reaching in, pulled out one of the cans.  Cranberry sauce.

I took the bag home, put away the food and made two tuna fish sandwiches.  These I took to the homeless man who was squatting outside in the bushes, leaning against the wall that surrounds our mobile home park.  I put the cranberry sauce aside for the next food drive at the kids’ school.

The following are a few examples of how we manage on our meager income, plus tips from other websites and sources on ways to save money and live frugally.  Everybody has some fixed expenses – fixed however doesn’t always mean completely unchangeable.  For instance, interest rates are down – it might be possible to renegotiate your mortgage for a lower payment.  You might have a monthly cable TV bill that is ‘fixed’ but of course it’s up to you to decide whether you need cable TV (or the specific plan/provider that you have).  Then there are the expenses you should be able to curtail to some extent – such as food, entertainment, and purchase of clothing and other household or personal goods.  These are the areas you have the greatest control over and the easiest first step in preparing a frugal budget.

Food

Our challenge is feeding a family of five, plus pets, on a limited budget while living in a small space.  How do we do it?  Well, naturally we clip coupons. But I don’t even try to ‘extreme coupon’ (haven’t seen the show but have an idea of what they do).  We don’t subscribe to the newspaper (too expensive) but I generally buy the Sunday edition for the coupons and I find coupons online (Shortcuts.com and mypoints.com for example).  I can either load the coupons onto my grocery club card or print them.  If I use coupons from My Points, I get points in addition to savings – those points eventually translate into grocery or gas gift cards.  Unfortunately a lot of coupons are for name brand products that, even with the coupon, cost more than the store brand, so I get limited use out of them.  The days of grocery stores doubling the face value of a coupon are over (at least where we live, although they will double up to $1) so I generally only use a coupon if it is an item we use/need and whenever possible I try and combine sales and coupons.

We shop at the bargain and warehouse stores – Dollar Tree, 99 cents store, Big Lots, Food for Less, Smart and Final – and sometimes these are good deals, sometimes not.  It helps that I have time to shop around but due to the price of gas I try and limit my visits to multiple stores and only go to those near another destination (generally one of our schools).  It’s not worth the gas to drive out to the closest Walmart (12 mile roundtrip) to save a few cents on one or two items.   And sometimes the bargain stores aren’t such a bargain – yes I can get a small bottle of dish soap for .99 but I have to calculate the unit price (is the $2.99 larger bottle at the grocery store a better price per ounce?) and decide whether I’m OK with trading quality for the lower price. If I use twice as much to get the dishes half as clean is it a bargain?

The warehouse store issue is buying in bulk.  The cost of some foods is less at Smart and Final when I buy the ‘value pack’ and I like S&F because you don’t need to pay to join like you do with CostCo and Sam’s Club.  But even though the cost per unit is sometimes quite a bit cheaper at S&F, the total cost is frequently more than I can afford.  And, with limited storage space, even when I have the money to buy super large bags of rice or flour or multiple packs of canned goods, I have no where to put them.  Nevertheless these stores are worth scouting out if you have a garage or large pantry.  When we lived in a house we had a freezer in the garage and I regularly stocked up on bulk frozen goods.   I miss that freezer!

In addition to shopping habits we’ve changed our eating habits.  We don’t buy treats (cookies, soda, ice cream, etc.).  We buy things on sale.  We buy fewer convenience goods and I cook more from scratch, although I have found out that sometimes the packaged meal is cheaper than buying all the ingredients and making the meal.  We have all given up foods we like and we seldom eat meat (which I must say I think I miss more than the kids do).

We get a box of food from a local food pantry about once a month if things are very tight – and sometimes end up with odd cans of things like cranberry sauce and mushrooms but sometimes get treats like strawberries and pork chops.  One month our box was nearly entirely made up of bread and bread products – loaves, rolls, bagels – and a frozen container of bread stuffing!

Entertainment

We own a TV but do not have cable TV service.  It’s too expensive and essentially a luxury for us.  We used to just use the TV to watch DVDs that we rented through Netflix or from one of the video rental boxes (Redbox, Blockbuster and the like).  And we picked up DVDs on sale (Blockbusters sells ‘previously watched’ dvds sometimes quite cheaply) or borrowed from friends or the library.  This was great for the kids who don’t mind watching the same show/movie over and over, but not something I used much.

We were given a Wii for Christmas some years ago and found that with an internet connection we could stream Netflix videos through the Wii.  This works perfectly for us and we use the Wii more for streaming than to play games (although the kids are really enjoying playing Wii Party Games – a Christmas gift from a friend this year).

Frankly an internet connection (something we did without for some time) is something more than a luxury.  It is a necessity for job hunting, and responding to requests from prospective clients.  I use it to sell on Etsy (cat beds) and, at one time, eBay.  I have multiple job searches set up via various websites, and use it to network (LinkedIn) and of course, write and maintain my blog. It is also the way I keep up on the news (our old trailer had a built in radio, this one doesn’t) and weather forecasts. The kids use it for homework (particularly my oldest two) and entertainment.

Our other ‘entertainments’ are on the cheap – we hang out with friends when we can; go to the YMCA, public playgrounds or the beach; read books checked out from the library (which occasionally does involve an expense as the library is out of our way and books are sometimes not returned on time); do puzzles and play games.  I try to put aside a little money for things like fieldtrips (my oldest is going to a science museum in LA next month) that have entry or bus fees so that the kids can do things with their school classes.

Clothing

Unfortunately due to the size difference between my daughters and the lack of storage space we can’t do too much in the way of hand me downs.  So we shop at thrift stores and bargain stores like Ross.  Internet coupons for stores like Kohls, plus shopping the clearance racks are great go-to places when we need a specific piece of clothing, like the black skirt/white shirt combination my middle school daughter needed for her band uniform.  Mostly we just wear things until they are worn out!

I think we are saving some money by washing clothes at home instead of going to the Laundromat.  Our electric bill is somewhat more expensive in our new trailer and I’m sure some of that is the washer/dryer use, but I no longer have to drive to the Laundromat so there’s a savings in gas to offset it.  I wish our washer had more than one setting – you can only wash a full tub of clothes since it fills all the way up with water regardless – but even so it is a big convenience to have it.

Internet Bargains

I use the internet to comparison shop, look for coupons and sales, and check craigslist for garage sales and freebies.  I used to look at freecycle but since we don’t really need to acquire much I tend not to go there these days.  If we ever have an apartment to furnish I’ll resubscribe.  I also sometimes pick up a Groupon deal – such as the $20 worth of Old Navy Clothing for $10 that I got just before Christmas.  Between the Groupon and the clearance racks I was able to find several pieces of clothing for nearly 80% under the list price.   I picked up another Groupon right after the holiday with a little of my Christmas money – $30 for THREE oil changes at a local auto shop.  That means the next 3 oil changes will only cost me $10 each, and are already paid for.  Yes, I expect the auto shop will try and talk me into new air filters, and any other add-on they can come up with but if I stand firm I’ve got a real deal!

I’m a member of My Points and redeem the points that slowly add up (you can rack them up faster if you shop on line but I generally earn points through emails, surveys, and coupons rather than shopping – although I do purchase my Groupons through My Points to get points in addition to the deals) for gift cards for the grocery store (Safeway) or gas station.  Since gas is one of those necessary expenses that I cannot stock up on it helps to have a gas card tucked away for the times when money is in short supply.

And of course I used the internet to ‘monetize’ my blog with Google ads and the Amazon.com affiliate shopping link.  Thanks to all of you who did your Holiday shopping through that link we will receive a check for nearly $200 in March (payment trails earnings by about 2 months).

What are your frugal living tips?

When you have a small and sporadic income, budgeting isn’t easy.  To be honest, even when I was employed fulltime I was never the poster child for budgeting.  You know how we’re told by all the personal finance gurus that you need to have 6 months worth of living expenses saved in case of an emergency or lay-off?  At best I managed 3 or 4 months.  Periodically I got hooked on some new financial management software or gimmick and, as with exercise programs, followed it religiously for a few months before reverting to old habits.    Money management wasn’t really part of my education – it was one of those subjects that wasn’t discussed much at home and in school the only part of the curriculum that came close was learning to balance a checkbook in home economics class.

Nevertheless I was relatively responsible in how I handled my money – tucking some away in savings, never coming close to the extravagant credit limit on my cards, and paying my bills on time.  I did enjoy browsing through stores and sometimes indulged in a little ‘shopping therapy’ when blue or to mark special occasions in my life.  I had a laid back attitude about money because I had a healthy and regular income.

To say that’s changed is an understatement.  These days financial issues are my biggest stressor.  Nothing keeps me awake late into the night, or makes me as anxious and irritable as wondering about whether I’ll be able to pay the bills.  With over 20 million Americans out of work, I figured others are probably having the same concerns so I went looking for tips and advice.

The blog, Living ‘Poor’ and Loving It, caught my attention by virtue of the title alone as we are living poor and I’m not loving it!  Unfortunately the blog’s author’s three rules consist of 1) Have Very Little Money; 2) Live on it; and 3) Rule 2 will change your life if you let it.  These are rules for people who have some money but live as though they have more.  People who run up their credit cards buying things they don’t need but think they want.  People who need to pare down their expenses by not eating out, buying sporting tickets, and going on vacation.  The author says “My most important money-management tool hasn’t been figuring out how to get more but rather discovering how little I really need and how much I already have.”

Been there, done that. We passed this phase of living poor during the first year after I was laid off.  Thanks to unemployment benefits we were able to ease into being poor (although it didn’t seem like it at the time) and as I detailed in several early blog posts we learned to live with much less – in possessions, space and income.   We gave up eating out, going to movies, subscribing to cable TV.  We clipped coupons, shopped at thrift stores, and ate a lot of beans and rice. If we were careful we could afford small luxuries like buying yearbooks for the kids or eating out on a birthday night.  We made do.  It wasn’t easy but it was bearable.

Now we have entered (sunk to) a new level – with no guaranteed income, some fixed expenses, some variable expenses and the occasional emergency.  We very much live hand to mouth.  My income (mostly from writing and editing jobs and the odd sale of a cat bed) is uncertain, frequently comes in very small amounts and goes as quickly as it comes.  When someone pays you $30 and you have a quarter tank of gas in your car you don’t worry about trying to save – you just head to the gas station.

When I have a slightly larger payment or a windfall I always put aside money for rent, stock up on necessities and use part of it to pay forward on whatever bills I can (after getting caught up on whichever bills I’m behind).  I find that paying two months of internet service, or car insurance, for example, relieves some of my anxiety and a less anxious mom is definitely a good thing for the family!  But sometimes I’m too eager to get caught up and paid forward and am then caught short-handed when, as happened last week, the car battery dies and needs to be replaced or the computer crashes and needs expert care.  Then, with no credit or borrowing power, I need to borrow from the rent money, hoping that another job comes along in time for me to replace it.

I believe we are on the edge of moving from living poor, to survival living.  It’s a scary place to be – I don’t like the view from here.