Comments on: Keeping Up Appearances

By: Danika Knoepke

Danika Knoepke — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:56:02 +0000

Wow! Thank you! I continually needed to write on my blog something like that. Can I include a portion of your post to my site?

By: nowinki techniczne

nowinki techniczne — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:04:16 +0000

Człowieku, ty to masz łeb, dobrze pieszesz!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:45:16 +0000

Coping with changing life conditions is not just about coping with external events but also an “inner journey” towards accepting that things are Different now. Reading about an unemployed real estate agent, my question is how long you can consider yourself to be a real estate agent if you have been unemployed and not sold a house for two years? When do you accept that you no longer are a real estate agent and that you might never again be one?

This “inner journey” perspective was one of the take-away points for me of reading Katherine Newmans’s book “Falling from grace: the experience of downward mobility in the american middle class” a decade ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Grace-Katherine-S-Newman/dp/0029231213

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:11:07 +0000

Almost certainly true, MEA. I don’t think there is an answer, just a reality.

Sharon

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:10:25 +0000

Dewey, I agree with you – but I also suspect that most of the people interviewed have quite a few ways to conserve they haven’t even explored. The things that actually offer visual markers are pretty small – you can, for example, spring for the haircut before the interview, rather than every 5 weeks, still keep in shape by running in Central Park, have an off-park address and still get a good job.

What probably is needed, however, are cooperatives of unemployed people – places where you can borrow an “up to the minute” suit, or where you can collaborate to get someone to watch your kids to go to interviews.

I think in this case, there are two things going on – one is the need to keep up the markers of the kind of person you are. The other is the assumption that you are destined to remain that person, and thus the last possible response should be “give some of it up.”

Sharon

By: MEA

MEA — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:23:00 +0000

I don’t know how to get my brain around the ‘if they spend less, other people earn less’ problem. It’s partly becuase I don’t graps the dismal science.

Is there an answer?

By: Deb

Deb — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:27:26 +0000

dewey. I think you have a good point. I do however, beg to differ. It’s a matter of priorities. I spent 15 years in a well paying corporate job with great benefits, a retirement plan and all sorts of perks. It meant dressing everyday in a suit and heels, driving a new car and presenting myself in the corporate image. I’ve been there. When I quit and walked away, we didnt lose the house, we didnt live in abject poverty and I certainly didnt miss it a bit.

I’ve spent the last 15 years working in a nursing home, working as a cashier, working for a non-profit and now working for a CSA–none of which my resume got me the job. We pulled in on spending, spent more time at home, didnt put the kids in daycare, make all our own meals, do most of our own repairs around the house and wear respectable but sturdy clothing. I homeschooled for a while and realized it’s much cheaper financially than sending the kids to school with all it’s concommitant fees and expenses. I put some cash into household items like canning equipment and tools. But we live comfortably if very frugally with no credit card debt. My comfortable living is poverty to many tho. My siblings think we are fools tho my mother understood.

It can be done.

By: dewey

dewey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:20:03 +0000

I also think of the fact that many formerly-well-off unemployed women will believe that if they go to a job interview with a home haircut and no makeup and driving a rustbucket, they’ll be punished for it. Unfortunately, given the exacting status-display requirements in corporate America, they’re probably right. You might say well, then, they should give up on the idea of having a white-collar job again and look for a job that has lower standards of display. But they’ll know that without experience, they have no hope of winning a job that pays well enough to keep them in their house. It’s a problem of sunk costs; if your “investment” of decades’ worth of resume lines is all in office jobs, switching tracks means certain poverty, so your only hope is to fight tooth and nail to stay on the same track. I have a lot of sympathy; there’s fortunately no pressure for conspicuous consumption where I work, but having spent most of my adult life on one particular thing, if I lost my job I wouldn’t be considered highly qualified to do anything else, except flip burgers.

By: Deb

Deb — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:12:32 +0000

Lynne, a friend of mine suggest I give classes for the wealthy feeling the pinch on “How to be poor.”

It was intended as a joke. Sometimes I wonder tho.

Deb

By: Kristi

Kristi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:55:12 +0000

Gabrielle – Thank you. It was the first time I had been there and was truly shocked at the first woman I saw. It was pouring rain, and I didn’t look around me any further. The people to whom I imagined I was donating and the person that came out of the building were radically different. I think I need to re-evaluate my reasons for donating.