Monday, April 25, 2016
This month’s cover story in The Atlantic is titled “The Secret Shame of the Middle Class; Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 in a crisis.”
In brief, people don’t have savings. Their money is tied up in loans or credit card balances. Daily expenditures gobble up income. In other words, many people aren’t able to live from one pay check to the next.
I commend the author, Neal Gabler, for his thorough and candid report. He counts himself among the people he is writing about.
The trail of my after-thoughts branches into two paths. In one, I review the many reasons for gratitude for what we have: a house, a monthly Social Security check, a modest retirement kitty, and income from a spouse who works in a fair-trade store.
The second path has me thinking about expenditures. Might I suggest that the middle class in America, of which we are a part, makes five kinds of expenditures, probably many more.
- Needs. Necessities for living.
- Desires. Expenditures to maintain a desired standard of living beyond “basic.”
- Impulses. Spur-of-the-moment purchases.
- Obligations. Payment of debts for past expenditures.
- Charities. Helping others.
This categorization falls apart, however, by the variability within each one category. People differ on how they define basic needs. The range of desires is as broad as the middle class is wide. What one person defines as impulse buying another will define as necessary diversion. We define our obligations differently, just as we differ on how soon we pay off our debts. And how can one define fully what should be dedicated for the wellbeing of others?
OK, but I won’t discard the five-part picture of expenditures because it may help me think through what I intend to buy in the next month.
— Crocs (Mine have now lost their straps.)
— sand for re-laying bricks in the garden
— getting the dents in the car repaired
— graduation gifts
— coffees with friends
— on and on and on
There is a mantra I seek to follow: less is more. But I recognize the limits to that fair phrase.
jdanielhessblog 