“The
Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader
I
am financially challenged. I have been
financially challenged most of my adult life.
I am not proud of the fact, but I am a realist—it is a fact, and I am
not going to hide from it. However, to
many people, I am the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth – a pariah, a
leper, irresponsible, stupid, a moron, and I deserve whatever bad things come
my way.
I
am not what the government would classify as “poor”. After all, my family made about $35,000 last year, which many
would consider to be a decent amount.
But it isn’t. I found that it
was about one-half of what I needed to cover the bare necessities. This discrepancy led to a big problem – I
didn’t have enough to pay the bills, so some I just could not. Luckily for me, I have a great family that
was able to come to my assistance and help me cover the difference before I
lost my house, my cars, and my utilities.
Others are not quite as blessed as I am.
Being
poor was not something I chose to be.
There are things greatly outside my control that affect my ability to
survive. In the three years I lived in
Texas, my property taxes jumped from $1400 per year to $2000 per year. To many people, $600 doesn’t sound like
much, but to me, that is a mortgage payment, or two car payments. When the budget is tight, $600 can be the
difference between success and failure.
My property taxes were not the only thing to go way, way up. My auto insurance went from $100 per month
to $225 per month. When I still had my
van that chewed up tires every three months (the result of a wreck that bent
the axle), I was paying almost as much in auto insurance per year as what the
van was worth. Yet there are those who
insist on telling me that the reason that I have been so financially distressed
of late is because I am lazy and won’t work or because I am a spendthrift or
because I don’t know how to manage my money.
These are the same people who are the same people who have had good
fortune come their way. They are the
same people who condemn government assistance as evil, promote charity as the
cure for all poverty, but lack charity when it comes to those who follow their
advice and can’t quite make it.
Let
me say that I have nothing against those who accept government assistance and
do not treat it as an entitlement or an excuse to be lazy. There are a good many hard-working folks out
there whose lives have been greatly enhanced by government programs such as
Medicaid or WIC. I was raised in an
environment that views government assistance as being only for the truly needy,
those who are unable to work for whatever reason, and that those who can work
should and should not rely on government assistance. I believe that view wholeheartedly. I have worked my entire adult life, be it as an engineer, a
laborer, a substitute teacher, or a hotel clerk. However, just because I earn wages doesn’t necessarily mean I
earn enough wages to pay all of the bills.
Therein lies the problem.
If
you look at our lifestyle the past ten years, it has been far from
extravagant. The biggest and best house
I have ever lived in is the rental I currently occupy; prior to that, we were
crammed into a house that was three sizes too small. Our Texas house was so small that our youngest child slept in our
bedroom; our garage was unusable for storing cars because it was being used to
store our stuff; my business office was a computer crammed into a 5’ by 5’
space in the corner of our bedroom.
What
about vacations? What about fancy dinners? Other than the numerous job interviews in
which I had to pay my own way (thus necessitating a 16 hour road trip to the
Arizona desert, and which are not relaxing in the least), the last real
vacation that my family has been on was to Galveston in 1997, prior to my two
sons entering the world. Eating
out? The last time we ate out at a
restaurant was to celebrate the New Year.
I don’t think once every six weeks is extravagant. (Here’s an ironic twist – Mrs. Schrader
works the night shift as a waitress and yet rarely gets to enjoy the fruit of
her labors.) If I don’t eat out, and I
don’t go on vacation, there must be something else that I am doing to have
gotten myself in such financial straits.
Cars? Well, I have a stick shift Dodge Neon with
just about 60000 miles on it, not exactly what one thinks of as a “nice”
car. It gets me from here to there and
gets good gas mileage, but it is nothing spectacular. It doesn’t even have power windows. (The horror!) Our other
car is a Mercury station wagon that we bought used and that has over 100000
miles on it. Again, not exactly a
vehicle in high demand by your neighborhood auto thief. Interestingly, I still owe money on both; by
the time I get them paid off, I will need to get replacements.
Gambling
must be it. Well, I’ve been to a
racetrack four times in my life, blowing about $10 each time. That’s $40 in thirty-six years, or just over
a buck a year. No, that’s not it. I’ve never been in a casino, and I’ve only
bought two lottery tickets ever, and I won two bucks. The last time we went to a movie was when we got free tickets as
a thank you for buying so many groceries, and that was in 2001.
Groceries,
that’s it. We spend about two hundred
dollars per week on groceries. Of
course, given that we have seven people in the family, that comes to under $30
per person per week, which is the price of one dinner at some really fancy
restaurants. When you deduct diapers,
baby food, and formula from the equation, and the $5 bag of “Hungry Hound” dog
food, it comes out to be more like $25 per person per week, which is less than
$5 a day, or the price of a meal at McDonald’s.
Why,
then, am I consistently made to feel so bad about myself? I feel like I am wearing a big scarlet
letter, and that I am the object of ridicule and scorn. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard
the platitudes about how I spend too much, about how I am irresponsible, about
how I don’t know how to manage money.
When I ran for Grand Prairie City Council in 2001, the Dallas Morning
News made a big deal about how I was unfit to run for office because I had
declared bankruptcy in 1996. I’m sorry,
but try and take a $40000 hit and see if you can pay all your bills. It was really easy for the incumbent to
criticize me while at the same time the city was appraising my property higher
to get more taxes. Unlike the
government, I do not have the option of picking someone else’s pocketbook in
order to overcome a revenue deficit.
In
August 2001, my business was doing well, and we decided that we were
financially secure enough to have another child. In September 2001, nineteen lunatics decided it would be great
fun to use jet airliners to destroy American buildings. My business dropped to one-third of what it
was before 9-11, and never did recover.
The economy took a break, but the bill collectors did not. Unfortunately, being fervently pro-life,
there was nothing that I could do about my already conceived son except hope
that things would be better by the time he was born. It wasn’t. The economy,
at least in North Texas, was in the toilet.
Despite the fact that I had nothing to do with what happened that awful
day in September, and their was nothing I could do about the economy, I have
been subjected to snide and ignorant remarks about being stupid and
irresponsible for having too many children when I can’t afford them, even
though I could afford them at the time they were conceived. Ironically, these snide remarks come from
those who claim to be pro-life. (I
guess I am just a bit too pro-life.)
For
those who don’t “get it”, here it is – being poor is not fun. I do not enjoy it. I did not declare bankruptcy to stick it to creditors, not only
because I think it is wrong, but also because I have been on the receiving end
of such a stick. I surely do not want
someone else to have to experience what I have experienced. No, I declared bankruptcy because it was
about the only option I had left. When
you have been stiffed for $40000, and have to live on credit to cover the
shortfall, your options are pretty much limited.
I
don’t know about you, but I personally do not enjoy the constant harassing
phone calls and letters from creditors.
I know there may be some masochists out there who do, but trust me, I am
not one of them. Believe me when I say
that I am not sitting on a big wad of cash just laughing at creditors; no, if I
had the money, I would pay it. I do not
like having to make the tough decision of buying the groceries or paying the utility
bill. Trust me when I tell you that it
is not fun, and if I never have to make such a decision again for the rest of
my life, I will die a very happy man. I
can only pray that God’s grace will shine down upon me.
I
am afraid that something major may happen in my life sometime very soon because
I have a bad credit rating. To some out
there, having a bad credit rating means that you have some sort of character
flaw. Period. My auto insurance in Texas was dropped because I had a bad credit
rating, and only because I had a bad credit rating. (I have never been at fault in an accident and it has been five
years since I have had a vehicle damaged by another.) I have been turned down for employment because of a bad credit
rating. (I was deemed
“untrustworthy”.) Every day I worry
that the hammer will fall again before I have had the opportunity to make
enough income to restore my credit rating.
I
am not a deadbeat. I am not fiscally
irresponsible. When your basic expenses
exceed your income, there is not much you can do – no amount of money
management will make money appear out of thin air.
I
am the working poor, and I am tired of being stigmatized as lazy or incompetent
or flawed. I think every person who is
quick to judge and quick with the moral platitudes and who has never had to worry
about losing a house or a car or his or her livelihood should take a good hard
look in the mirror and say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I!”