Millions of Americans are struggling with finances and that number grows every single day. We’re told by the Biden admin and it’s ardent libtard defenders that the economy is doing great even though it’s being bolstered by unrestrained money printing and borrowing from foreign debtors. But even if big line is going up and those pesky Zoomers are wrong about their “vibecession” it sure doesn’t feel like people are doing alright financially.
As for myself, I know what it’s like to struggle, roughly a year before the pandemic I’d lost my decent paying job at an engineering company and after months of searching had to settle for a part time job as a 3rd shift stocker at Kroger making less than half of what I made previously.
This was while I was still renting an apartment for $900 (a cheap rate today) a month coupled with other expenses. I found another job working full time but the rate was only $13 an hour and the company was an hour away from where I lived.
I’d work during the week at my full time job and at Kroger on the weekends. I’d get home from work at around 4:30pm on Friday then I had about 4 hours to myself before I had to go to my Kroger job. I would drive through the nearby downtown area on my commute and see people at the bars drinking and laughing.
It made me bitter knowing that I’d have to will myself to stay awake for the next 8 hours putting boxes of noodles on shelves so I could scrape together enough money to not get evicted. I just wanted to have a Friday off and eat some nachos at the bar while a baseball game was on, but I couldn’t even afford that.
Occasionally I’d get scheduled during the week at Kroger, which meant I’d have to work from 10 to 6 on a weeknight and then drive an hour to my other job and put in another 8-9 hours all on zero sleep. How I made the drive back home without nodding off and plowing into a guard rail I don’t know.
I kept this up for about 6 months, averaging roughly 60-70 hours a week and still barely making enough to keep a roof over my head. I would work for 3 to 4 weeks in a row subsisting on mostly 711 hot dogs, Monster energy, and Marlboro Reds. The one positive thing is I did lose quite a bit of weight from the stress alone.
In late 2019 I finally quit Kroger and decided I had to move back in with my dad at the age of 33. During the pandemic my old job called me back and offered me a position and I happily took it. If I could have made it a couple more months at my apartment the bonus payouts from unemployment assistance would’ve carried me for a while. I might still be living there today if they hadn’t renovated and drove the rent prices up 30%. I miss those apartments though, it was a fun neighborhood to live in even though it was heavily progressive.
I’ve discussed my situation since moving to the west side of my state before, you can find the posts here and here (subscribe please). Long story short I moved into my sisters old trailer and had trouble staying employed for the first 6 months I lived here. I racked up a bunch of credit card debt which I’m struggling to pay off and I’ve had some health issues that, while non life threatening, require semi frequent doctors visits and medication, not cheap.
I stayed in the trailer for about a 2 and a half years before moving in with my sister who lived next door. I’m saving money now but I’ve had to cut down on a great deal of things that I’d been wasting money on before. I have pretty much everything I need and I’m getting hours back at work that had been previously cut, so I can’t complain too much about my situation. I don’t make enough I can live high on the hog but I can get by if I’m frugal.
I tossed out a bunch of old furniture, my couch, my coffee table, and my old dining room set to name a few things. I inherited a bed and bookshelf from my aunt. I kept my loveseat I bought in 2016 and I keep my TV on a coffee table I got from my sister. I wired my old Logitech PC speakers into it because I sold the surround sound system I had. The most money I spent on a piece of furniture in the last 8 years was $200 on a computer gaming desk I bought during the pandemic.
I’ve sold old tech I’m no longer using like my camera I bought back when I thought I’d be really into digital photography (I wasn’t). Most pieces of tech I own are at least 6-7 years old. I bought my computer and TV in 2017, my headphones I bought in 2016, my webcam I bought in 2015, and I have a headphone amp and monitor from 2014. My smart watch is a Chinese model I bought off Amazon for $35.
Being broke sort of realigns your perceptions about money or at least what to spend money on. I used to think I’d love to own something like a Dodge Charger Hellcat, but I’d just drive it back and forth from the grocery store and 700 horsepower doesn’t mean shit if I’m stuck in construction traffic, a staple of my midwestern state.
I feel the same way about a new pickup truck, the damn thing is going to cost upwards of $70K now, mind you that’s not for a Mercedes or a BMW but for a fucking Ford. And what would I do with that big ass truck? I don’t have anything to haul and if I needed to carry something back home from the store or wherever I’d just rent a pickup from Home Depot. I see dudes with spotless lifted super duties on huge rims that would crack if they go offroad and I have to laugh, like what are you trying to prove bro?
I’ve cancelled every streaming service and subscription I have except for the gym. I used to torrent movies but my internet isn’t that great now so I find them on streaming sites run on servers that could be in Siberia for all I know. I haven’t been to the theater in over 3 years, if I want to watch something I’ll wait for a camrip to appear on the sites I use. And it’s not like the slop coming out of Hollywood these days is anything other than pozzed garbage written by gay nihilists. But on the off chance a new show or movie catches my eye I know where to find it.
I’ve also stopped playing video games, haven’t opened Steam in months. All the triple A titles are bogged down with online service, DLC, clunky interfaces, massive updates and shitty writing, it’s a fucking burden to try to play anything that came out in the last 4 years. And as for indie games there’s some fun titles but I don’t think we’re ever going to get the next Deus Ex or Bioshock from a small dev team and just have to settle for 2D pixel rougelikes for the forseeable future. Miss me with that shit.
If I want to go out I’ll go to the gym or drive to a park. The nice thing about this area is that there’s plenty of parks and some really nice scenery, yeah a lot of it’s surrounded by highways and industrial buildings but hey it’s free. If I do wind up spending money going out it’s usually on wings and a draft beer at the Bdubs next door, when I don’t eat before I go of course.
I have some side hustles, but I hesitate to call them that because they’ve only earned me a few hundred dollars over the better part of a year. I have some crypto holdings and some money in an IRA. I try to keep a few hundred in my savings account but it’s offset by my checking account which is usually in the negative because diving into my courtesy funds is the only way I can keep my bills paid most of the time. But I’ve paid off most of my medical debt and I don’t have to worry about a big rent payment and instead just slide a few bucks to my sister every paycheck. I’m in a better situation than I’ve been in years but I still have a good amount of debt to climb out of.
I’ve also reassesed how much living space I need, I have my computer and TV in one small room and my bed in another small room. I’d like to have a house sure, but that would only give me an excuse to fill it with junk. I’ve been downsizing and I just don’t see the need for crap that doesn’t serve a purpose. And yeah the housing market is shit but economists don’t predict a crash anytime soon, although there is hope for lowered rates at the end of this year. But still, spending 30 years of your life paying for a pile of wood and windows sounds less appealing to me day by day, I can only speak for myself though.
I know a lot of people these days have to find ways to live on the cheap. In hear stories about single guys co-habitating like frat bros in their 30s. Millennials and Gen Z are staying with their parents longer as well. I see pictures all the time of guys who only have a gaming chair and a TV in their small apartments. I go to liquor stores and see the cheap swill has been bought up; I go to the grocery store and find the macaroni and cheese and ramen gone. Guys at work are always broke too, my boss recently asked me if I could spot him $50 and he makes $5 more an hour than I do.
We helped a friend of the family move from a room he rented to a small apartment, he basically just had a mattress, chair, some books, and a laptop, the whole thing took us maybe an hour. I don't know if that’s the kind of life I want to live, but I may not have a choice. Maybe lack of money will help me reasses the materialism of society, maybe I don’t actually want all the expensive crap that advertisers and celebrities tell me I should want. I’ve accepted that I’ll probably be alone indefinitely, I guess I’ll have to accept never clawing my way up to the middle class.
I don’t know what the future holds for me, when I was younger the thought of being stuck as some blue collar slob for 50 years and having nothing to show for it at the end filled me with dread. I guess there’s worse ways to live, as long as I can keep a roof over my head and food in my gut I figure I got it better than a lot of people. But these days I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be employed for the forseeable future. I fantasize about cashing out my IRA and buying a van and disappearing for a while, going to California for handouts from Newsom and smoking joints on the beach. But I can’t disappear into some dreamworld, I can’t check out and stop caring like a lot of other guys are doing.
It’s hard to keep giving a shit, it’s hard to wake up every morning and drag myself into the shop for a 10 hour shift knowing that I could be laid off or replaced by a foreigner at any time. But I gotta do it because I don’t want to be reliant on the state or a burden to my family, I have to keep some semblance of honor. And if the reward for me hard work is just more work, oh well at least I’ll have work.