We’re familiar with people being “under water” with their mortgages, but during the Dust Bowl entire houses were literally buried—under dust rather than under water.
When have you experienced the greatest financial hardship?
2 thoughts on “Buried”
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When? Right now. It appears to me that on my relatively fixed pensions paid from my state employment years coupled with my Social Security income, by my Medicare A, B and D expenses at a rate that will cause a substantial decrease in quality of life. I hesitate to say that this is true because I know in my heart that there are many, many people who will be suffering much more drastically than I. However, balancing this guess about my change in financial situation, I feel fortunate but uneasy, about the invested reserve that I have that can cover (1) increased medical costs and (2) a lowering or loss of my inheritance that I have designated for charitable organizations; perhaps it means that it will diminish or be consumed by needs that I will have that use it up before my death. It is a universal problem except for the very rich but the rest of us must consider solutions than may not really be viable.
I’m still pretty young, and fortunate enough to never have been at risk of not affording my home/apartment or going hungry. However…
It was scary when my husband had to go to an out-of-network doctor for a major surgery that he couldn’t get anywhere else. (He had to go to NYC for the operation on his spine for a rare condition. We live in MA, but no one in Boston would/could do it.) We had to get a lawyer to sort it out with the insurance when it looked like the weren’t going to pay. Owing so much money, a few years’ salary, was scary.
My husband works for the federal government. When politicians throw the word “shutdown” around, I want to punch their smug faces in. (I know this is church, but I’m being honest.) Last shut down, my husband still had to work (“essential” worker) but didn’t know when his next paycheck would come (i.e. when the shutdown would end). So he couldn’t take a temp job to bring in money during the shutdown. He also (for some odd technical reason) couldn’t take days off during the shutdown. So he had to work without knowing when he’d get paid next, and be forced to not Not work during that time. It was absurd. And scary, because Congress was so dysfunctional that it looked like no end was in sight.