How close to the edge can you get?
March 9, 2015
I think about homelessness a lot more than your average middle-class partnered person might.
We’re living my financial high point right now, why can I still taste tomatoey canned sardines and rice porridge thinned with water to stretch? True, the flip side might be that it’s all downhill from here but it’s also true that I’ve not been a slim paycheck away from Final Warning-stamped bills, rent going overdue, and making just the interest on the credit card bills for almost a decade now. Prosperity, not poverty, should be the reflex.
We weren’t always a nickel toss from disaster but we lived in the fire swamp, a wander into the lightning sandpit wasn’t inconceivable. In those days, due dates were more like suggestions. Good thing I didn’t apply that to homework or library books! My nine year old brain didn’t recognize the signs of juggling bills to avoid overdrafts, I just obediently post-dated the checks as instructed. Well trained not to ask questions, it was another 8 or 9 years before I grasped what that said about our finances.
Young adulthood was equally precarious. There’s a big gap in my memory of my college years because all I did was work, school, and take care of Mom. After hiding her diagnoses for years, she’d finally admitted she had serious health problems and when I was 17, it became my second job to look after her. (That had a lot to do with why I feel responsible for decisions made long before I was a competent adult.)
My parents faced incredible challenges immigrating to America and in some ways, there was absolutely nothing more that I could do for them.
I can’t help but feel for them. They struggled in a time where the kinds of debt reduction and financial information we now have access to simply didn’t exist. Before the internet? It truly seemed like the Information Dark Ages. If the internet and money blogs and forums were a thing when I was 13, rather than 17, I can’t help but think maybe I could have made a real difference.
But that is exactly why I am so fully aware of the consequences of failure.
Questions about homelessness and what we do about it, posed in SaverSpender’s recent post, haunt me. What more can I do?
It’s a seriously personal question as I do my level best to keep my immediate family off the streets. I am their last resort, the last one with any dignity or safety, that is. It’s neither an easy or a painless task, and I do get frustrated with failures to communicate or comply. But it still startles me when people feel it’s appropriate to respond, in the face of one frustration or another with my family, that they ought to learn their lesson, that Dad ought to be left to suffer the consequences of his actions.
Perhaps on the face of it, that is the most logical answer. But is that really so simple? Is it that cut and dried as a human being to say that another human, older and unable to get hired back into the workforce, should be taught that the lesson for irritating me is to lose basics like heat, water, and shelter? What lesson is that to to be teaching someone at this stage of life? And what kind of person does that make me if I’m willing to throw him out on the street? Not that I spend a lot of time mirror-gazing, but it would even more drastically reduce how much I could bear the sight of myself.
I’ve observed that not even my oldest friends, though incredibly conservative politically, have ever responded to my sighs over the situation that the “obvious” answer is to do anything but continue to treat my family with grace and take care of myself. Never have they suggested that I ought to abandon my family in some moral object lesson.
“There but for the grace of God go I” is always in my periphery. I’m chronically ill but cannot afford to rest on my laurels because I am their last line of defense. And my responsibility grows with each day.
I don’t know what the answer to homelessness is, other than making sure no one I care for has to endure it.
I feel you. It’s hard to deal with childhood financial anxiety and even harder when you continue seeing your parents doing things that are not in their or your financial best interest.
I remember as a kid there was a month or so when my dad was homeless, just after the divorce. He took the shitty jobs. He slept in his car. And then he got an apartment. He hated it and probably continues to resent us for it, but ultimately he ended up being OK. And it was necessary for my mother to move on that it happened.
You know your parents better than I do, but when push comes to shove do you think they’d become homeless? Or semi-permenent/permanent homeless, rather? There’s a lot of ingenuity that gets sparked up when people have no other options. They find friends in the woodwork. They finally transition to that career that pays money. Do you think being “cut off” might be an impetus for your parents at all rather than just pulling out the rug from under them?
Well. Mom’s dead after a long illness where Dad was her caretaker, and he’s now closing in on 70. I’ve waited, having pulled back a fair amount of support to see how well he’d transition to taking back some financial responsibility, and he kept incredibly busy trying to make income in a very manual way but couldn’t make enough to make any ends meet. After a few years my assessment is no, this isn’t like getting a 30, 40, or even 50 year old to start over, which they both did repeatedly. There’s no career transition that’s going to spring up now.
I’m sorry. It sounds like a rough situation, one that I’m sure has weighed heavily on you. I’m sure you’re already trying everything you can, but are there any government (particularly local) or community resources (through church or other social groups) that might help with the financial or care taking burden? Especially given his age, there might be more programs/opportunities to help you not carry all that financial support by yourself.
alas, there are so few resources, the state of CA is strapped and it shows 🙁
That sounds like a lot of pressure and precarious position to be in. 🙁
It sucks. But I have help now. And the choice is down to never seeing my surviving parent again because he couldn’t make it work solo (except still burdened by my Trainwreck sibling), so I do have to suck it up.
*hug*
*thanks*
That’s a tough spot to be in and the pressure of it must be quite uncomfortable at times. It becomes really hard not to help family out even when they should know better or should have gotten with the program. People sometimes never learn their lessons no matter what the consequences are.
Just remember to take care of yourself and your baby first, yes the family depends on your support but if you keep going until you can’t go anymore how will it work out then? I struggle to remind myself how precious our health can be.
The airmask on a plane theory – yes. Self preservation IS the most important and I am learning to remember that. I’ve made great progress there, to be honest. And health is indeed so very precious!
Oh this is a touchy one for me, my mother is the last resort for my three younger siblings who have all failed to leave the nest and are utterly dependent on her, financially and otherwise. She is now at a stage in her life that she can’t carry them and other extensive family members; her health is fading and she is retired. I feel resentful at her because she has not “cut off” my siblings when they were younger and now they can’t seem to do anything by themselves. Whenever there is an obstacle or crisis point they go to her rather than find a solution themselves.
I for whatever reason did not fall into this pattern but I feel like my mother is dragging me into the pattern by trying to make me the last resort for my siblings. It stokes my resentment and I just have a very very negative reaction when I see one family member holding up multiple members. The responsible family member often pays a very high price in many ways and the family members being perpetually supported never have a chance to be capable people.
This is a hard one and I myself am not sure which way I will go in the future.
You have all my sympathy on that situation, Kemi. Seriously, I had the same resentment of the decisions my parents made with regard to my trainwreck sibling because I too wanted them to cut him off lest I become his keeper. And I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future when Dad is gone and just my sibling is left, I don’t feel the same about supporting him as I do my parents.
Oh, hard topic. I worry about this for my sister a lot. In her case, because she would CHOOSE to live on the streets rather than deal with the system, or us, her family. Right now it is my mom helping her as she is closer geographically to her, but I know I am going to inherit this issue. I’d never just abandon my sister, no matter what the cost. I do envision that I will have to eventually choose between living my life here in NZ (or wherever) and moving home to support her. She 100% needs someone locally to advocate for her. I, too, will be her last resort. There is no one else once my mom is no longer able to help her. When I was younger I pictured me and my sister getting old together…but not in that way. However, needs must.
I am sorry that there are not better resources for you out there. In some ways we are still in the Dark Ages, even with the internet, particularly when dealing with healthcare, eldercare, and mental illness.
I am glad you have help now. 🙂
You know exactly what I’m talking about! Except you had a relationship with your sister before, I think. My brother and I got along for about five minutes over the span of our lifetimes, and so when the time comes that my dad’s gone, I don’t know what I’m going to do either.
Given your childhood, it’s not surprising that you worry about homelessness. I, too, don’t think that homelessness is something that just happens to other people.
It really doesn’t!
When I first moved to Milwaukee with only $200 (for a security deposit), no job, a box of books and a garbage bag of clothes I used to worry about becoming homeless. I too was the oldest and the one who worried about the bills because my mom only understood spending. My mom eventually left my dad. She received half of the farm (only the part my dad did not inherit) and two years of maintenance money. She found a job with a pension and bought a condo. At 75 her company forced to retire. She is still paying on that condo and living paycheck to paycheck. It isn’t fun and I still worry about her finances.
She isn’t the only one who never learned financial planning principles. There are a couple of members of my husbands family who earned a nice salary before they retired who made horrible financial decisions in retirement. Now they are going to lose their new home – they upsized rather than downsized unless we buy out their interest of a partnership we own with them. This super sucks because I knew this was going to happen. Years ago when we were first married we offered to buy them out and they refused. My husband retired this year based on the fact we would not be buying them out. So now I get to work longer and go back to scrimping until we are ready to sell.
Some people don’t learn until they are forced to. I guess you can say the same about my husband and I – we should have planned more for a potential buyout.
That’s a tough place to be in, both watching your Mom struggle at that age and those family members :/ I’m sorry that’s affecting your plans for retirement. I hope that’s the last of the people who affect your financial well being!