Nouveau Pauvre

I thought I'd coined it, but of course I hadn't. Can't be a lot of things out there that haven't been coined yet. You've heard of Urban Dictionary.com? Like Wikipedia, it is constantly being edited and updated, but usually by juveniles. Caution: you may not want to go there if you have a maturity level above the age of 12. It's a convenient place to find out what your 12 year-olds are talking about when they say "This chote came up and tried to pick a fight."(Again, caution.)

The Urban Dictionary says the nouveau pauvre are people who have money but for some reason are suddenly broke. Or, "young people graduating in the middle of a recession who have few employment opportunities, live on a budget, but want to live well." I'd like to extend this definition to include the recently unemployed who are used to a higher tax bracket and find themselves befuddled by the new set of rules and regulations they must face in their day-to-day struggle. I recently posted this on facebook: "I seem to find myself between a rock and a hard place. We earn too little for our children to qualify for CHiP (the state-based health insurance plan for children) but too rich for Medical Assistance. An acquaintance on Facebook commented: "It has been this way for a long time; you just didn't notice. Almost makes it so you have to quit your job or cut your hours so you can get coverage for your kids. How wrong is that?"

I admit we come from La La land. Upper middle class parents on both sides who held the same job most of their lives and have comfortable pensions. Matt was gainfully employed for 10 years while I volunteered here and there, musing about what I'd do when I went back to work (y'know, grew up...) Then came the recession. Given the recession, it feels surrealistic to be piling up six bags (six garbage bags full!) of used clothing that my children won't wear. Probably this isn't wise. I mean seriously, this summer when Ted or Janet want new shorts, what was I thinking dumping several pairs? Yet we are the nouveau pauvre, we don't yet know what it means to truly want. They say they won't wear them. And they take up space in our cluttered house.

Last fall I volunteered to help out a friend who was walking in the breast cancer three day. She mailed me a large box full of t-shirts in short- and long-sleeved grey and pink shirts in sizes small through xxl. My marketing skills apparently stink because I was unable to sell any. Imagine, if we lived in Haiti after the earthquake, whole families would be walking around with "Fun Bags: Breast Cancer Annihilation Tour" t-shirts and feel fortunate to boot. Instead I keep a stack by my bed for when I wake up with night sweats. The rest I dumped in the clothing donations box.

I paused before agreeing for my son to order a wrestling team t-shirt and photo--he has dozens of t-shirts and the photo from his football team lies in a junk drawer in his dresser. It hasn't entirely dawned on us that we cannot appease every one of our children's wishes when our savings account is draining. When will it sink in? We are still living off our savings, but one day, in a blink, we will not be able to pay our mortgage. Our three options all begin with the word 'borrow.'

1. Borrow from the bank. We have an outstanding home-equity loan we could access. Drawback: when does it end? It's a stop-gap strategy, not a solution.
2. Borrow from family. At least one relative has told us we could access some of our future inheritance early. Technically it wouldn't be a loan, but it would still be borrowing from our future, money we'd be able to use as we age (providing the stress doesn't down us early :-(. 
3. Borrow from our retirement savings. Having worked for a large corporation for 10 years, we've accrued savings in 401K plans. High penalties would be attached to accessing this money, although we've heard we could borrow against our 401K plan. Again, that word  "borrow."

Of course the real option is to start earning enough to support the family. To that end Matt and I are both applying for jobs as well as trying to get our business going. We love helping homeowners to reduce their carbon footprint. It makes their homes more comfortable and helps save the planet. Yet we'd have to do one long audit or two short audits a day, every day to support the family. The fact is, there are no auditors out there bringing in that number of clients, and even the busy ones have only a small profit margin.

Final note: Since I started this entry I had a phone interview for a job. The human resources interviewer was suspicious that I had no grant writing experience. It turned out her boss, the executive director, had insisted they call me in anyway. After all, I'd gone to Oberlin. (Glad to hear that still has cachet some 25 years later.) By the end of the phone call the interviewer said, "This is an off the wall question, but could you possibly come in tomorrow as a temp? The grant is due tomorrow." And so I did. Of course, being a non-profit, the pay is abysmal. But, hey, at least they're hiring. Which is more than I can say about most other organizations. I temp again next week. More on that later.