Tag Archives: money

April 11, 2012 · 6:20 pm

Life As We Know It Is Over

What makes me strong?  What keeps me from breaking under the load we all call life?

I have been asking that question for a dozen years.  My husband has been hospitalized more than 30 times since 2001.  He had bladder cancer.  He just kept growing tumors and finally they had to take his bladder out and put in a conduit to the ostomy that we now call Fred.

Then he had infections – and more infections and yet again, infections.  Over the last 10 years we have spent our vacations in the most expensive resort in the country – the hospital.  A jail cell really but it’s mostly white with nice subdued drapes and wardens dressed as nurses in navy  blue.

Recently, my husband did hand to hand combat with  melanoma which made a difference in how we spend our time, our money, our personal currency.

Now, he is being laid off.  He will be 60 when the axe finally falls.  He will be too old to employ – too young for social security or medicare.  And he will still be sick, still be in the hospital 2 or 3 times a year and still be the man I love with all my heart.

I am a master’s prepared, professional who is applying for jobs as a receptionist, an administrative assistant., a dog walker, anything to get a job that will help bridge the gap between his layoff and his 65th birthday.

But I can’t get a job.  We can’t sell our house.  And we cannot stop the layoff that is rolling toward us at the speed of light.

How did this happen?  When did we become part of the fringe that cannot sustain itself in this country  – the land of the brave, the land of the free?

Welcome to America – 2012.  Welcome to our country where people work and do a good job and pay their taxes and still get screwed.  This is the land where the rich once again get richer and the rest of us pay for their privilege.

We”ll keep fighting.  We will stay together.  We will find a way, smaller, narrower but still together.  But is this what is supposed to happen to people who have lived a good life?  Worked hard?  Helped out our families?

Who knows? All I know is that this is our lot.  And this we will face together — until death do us part.

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November 1, 2011 · 10:46 am

Thoughts on Winter & Darkness & Politics

I am starting to fear silence again, filling it with sound, running from whatever my head or heart is trying to tell me.  Does this happen to you?

These are the moments when I cannot sit still.  My eyes move from place to place.  My skin itches.  I must jump up and fill the time before….before what?  What could my inner self have to say that so frightens my outer self?

In the past, these moments have led to insight.  In the past, these moments meant personal growth. But what am I supposed to learn this time?

I feel too old to learn, too sure of the knowledge that my time has passed.  I am walking slowly toward death, my own, my loved ones but death nonetheless.

Maybe it’s the coming of winter, the rare October snow we just had.  Maybe it’s the approach of daylight savings — long, dark afternoons into longer, darker nights.   Maybe it’s my feeling that I am no longer the all  powerful wizard of my early days, the one with all the answers.

Maybe it’s because I fear this lesson has much broader implications.

The future keeps crowding into the present – the outside world into my small, sweet corner of it.  Our world, the world I grew up in, the world we hippies and peaceniks changed, the world we loved, was proud of, is disappearing.

Spinning faster and faster away from me, it has moved on its axis to a place of, “I’ve got mine; the rest of you, go away.”  This world is a foreign place for me and I hold no answers on how to fix it.

How I wish I was still that wizard of my younger years and able to make the coming years as rich and warm for my daughter and grandchildren as they were for me.  How I wish the future would not loom on the ever darkening horizon of financial woes, economic downturns.  How I wish our “elected officials” would actually do more to earn their pay and less to get re-elected.

Politicians have lost their way.  Honor no longer goes with the job; passion for what’s right, not what’s personally enriching has disappeared, replaced by greed and guile.

Perhaps this is the lesson I am being forced to learn — there is no easy way out of this huge and frightening mess our country is in, no easy way to close the gap between the ridiculously rich and the grindingly poor.  Perhaps politicians should have to face only one test to run for office.

Do they have a terminal illness?

If only the dying were allowed to run for office, maybe, just maybe it might help them focus on what’s truly important instead of what’s expedient.

 

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October 2, 2011 · 10:27 am

Life Is A Choice – What WIll You Choose

This morning I feel the weight of all my choices rushing in to sit on my shoulders. It is a gray wet morning, leaves scuttling across the yard and my life suddenly reflected  in the balance of good and bad choices made in my career and what they cost me.

What I Chose
Work.  Sounds so simple, so easy, but that choice cost me years and years of my life.

I was a “good” employee.  Work on the weekend?  Sure.  Fly to Florida and work there for 5 weeks without a day off?  Sure.  Spend a week out in Yosemite National Park every month for a year?  Why not?  Live in Los Alamos for 2 months while installing a new system?  Will do.

For almost 10 years of my life I literally penciled in visits to my husband, our daughter, my sisters and brothers.  I was never home on holidays.  They were ideal opportunities to install hardware and software in the many locations across the country where I managed up to 100 people on the team at Marine Midland, Newark Airport, Kennedy Space Center and on and on and on.

I was an executive with an expense account, a secretary and all the gold cards you could possibly want.  First class travel, five star hotels, I had it all.  But one day, something changed.

I started thinking about what all the gold in my wallet and my bank account were costing me.  I stood still long enough to do the calculations.  Working 7 days a week,  averaging between 90 and 120 hours –  reduced my six figure salary to an hourly rate of about $10.00 an hour – what the UPS driver was making except he went home every night and had weekends off.

Then I made the mistake of thinking about what my choices cost me.

What I Lost

My Mom
My mother lived west of Roanoke on 163 acres owned by my brother Mike.  If I saw her 5 times in 10 years, it was a miracle.  Usually, I used my frequent flyer miles to fly her here, to our home, for the one weekend out of 52 that I might be in town.

My mom died of a cerebral hemorrhage while I was in Chicago for yet another meeting.  There was so much I forgot to ask her.  So much she could have shared with me.  But I never stopped long enough to ask.  Now I can’t.

My Life
I was married, had a beautiful home on 2.5 acres in horse country in Pennsylvania.  A gourmet kitchen I didn’t use, a suite off the master bedroom complete with jacuzzi that gathered dust between the maid’s visits and years of sunny summer afternoons on the deck that I never saw.  When someone asked me what my house was like, my answer was swift and sharp, “How would I know?  I don’t live there; I just pay for it.”

I clearly remember the night that I knew I was making the wrong choices.

It was Sunday night on Labor Day weekend. Our daughter was in labor at Bryn Mawr Hospital.  She was ill but it was a holiday.  The Pathology Lab was closed and the doctors didn’t know what was making her sick.  Only after our second grandchild was born with strep did they figure it out.  Whisked from the delivery room to the NICU, the baby’s prospects were poor.

But I had a flight to catch.  I was needed back in Florida.  Heading for the airport, fidgeting in the back of the limousine, I could not get a handle on what was wrong with me.  I needed to go; I didn’t want to.  Suddenly my work ethic and my instincts were facing off and it felt like all the easy answers were off the table until I asked myself two questions:

  1. If I got on the plane and the baby died, how would our daughter be able to face his death?  How would I feel about my actions?  About myself?
  2. If I didn’t get on the plane, if I went back to the hospital to hold our daughter’s hand and be held by my husband, would the meeting be cancelled?  Would the business I worked for fail?

When boarding for First Class was called, I actually walked onto the plane, put my laptop in the overhead, sat down and ordered a drink before I knew I just could not do it.  I could not go.  Leaping up, grabbing my laptop, I raced back up the ramp and into the airport.  Dialing my cell phone, I called my limo back to the airport and ran to the arrival area to meet my driver.

That was the turning point, the moment when I knew that somehow I had sold out all my old values for money and merchandise.  Did I quit the next morning?  No.  It took 2 more years and the death of my boss’s husband to make me wake up.  He died alone, in his garage, in his car, with the motor running.  All I could think was it could have been me who got the phone call, my husband who died.

I woke up.  I realized I was committing suicide – long, slow, deliberate – but suicide nonetheless.

I made a different choice.  I traded in the gold and came home.  My salary went from 6 figures to $28,000 a year.  I came home very night, to spend weekends and holidays with my family and to enjoy time, the only thing we cannot buy.

What choices are you making?  And what do they really cost?

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September 9, 2011 · 8:35 am

How Money Can Shape Relationships – Part 2

Money talks…and sometimes it yells.

At least that’s what the decibel level in our house was like when we were growing up.  If the topic was money, we got out of the house, fast.  Dad was going to give Mom a verbal dressing down for how she spent it.

That was my early, late and constant introduction to how money was managed.  But this approach wasn’t really a problem as long as I was the one earning it and spending it.  All that changed when I got married, 27 years ago.  And the change was radical, painful and yes….loud.  There was a lot of yelling in the early years and, on my part, not a whole lot of insight as to why.

The first time my husband and I engaged in combat over cash was literally prompted by how much I tipped a waiter.  When I was flush (read gainfully employed) Pat and I used to love to eat out.  Since we both worked in Center City Philly, there were a thousand different ways we could spend our money on dinner.  And we did.

Pat usually paid the tab but one night, when the check came, he wasn’t at the table so I paid.  When he came back, he looked at the tip and the total and asked one simple and in hindsight I have to admit, innocent question – why did I always tip 20% then round up to the nearest $5?

I didn’t know why  And it didn’t seem like a big deal to me.  But he kept asking – as we walked out of the restaurant, walking down the sidewalk to the car and all the way home – he kept asking.  Pat was actually only asking why the tip had to be for an even dollar amount.

I thought he was questioning my right to spend our money on such a big tip.  And I lost it.  I think if he could have run, he would have.  The tip battle was round one of an almost 5 year fight over whose money it was and who had the right to decide how to spend it.

We never got to the point that one of the couples we knew did – separate bank accounts and splitting the bills.  But we did do some serious damage to each other and to our relationship.  In this entire 5 year fiasco, I must admit, I was the one who was wrong and I had my Mom and Dad to thank for it.

I never would have figured it out and I am guessing our almost 3 decade marriage would never have survived if I hadn’t asked my brother Bob (a plumber who was also an extraordinary poet) a casual question about his desk drawer full of paychecks.

When he explained that he earned money but didn’t like it, didn’t spend it (his wardrobe consisted of jeans, t-shirts with his business logo on them and cheap sneakers) and did NOT want to talk about it, I recognized a  link.  And Bob and I talked it through.

I learned how much he was affected by Mom and Dad’s constant bickering and monthly brawls.  And suddenly, I realized just how much they had affected me, too.  I could also see very clearly how my parents relationship was affecting my relationship with my husband.

I went home.  I apologized.  I explained.  And Pat and I began to heal the wounds that battling over money caused.

Was it fast?  No.  Even today, when a check is not written into the register or there is a question about an expenditure, I feel the wings of my meat-eating, money monster start to unfurl.  Even today, I have to remind myself to breath, to relax and to work with my husband to get the answers he wants and needs.

I have to agree with the man behind the Retrospective Entrepreneur – money breaks up more marriages than infidelity.  Think about that the next time you are putting on the gloves for yet another round in the ring about the cash.

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September 7, 2011 · 9:33 am

How Money Can Shape Relationships

It used to be (back in the dark ages of the 1950’s) that kids learned about relationships from their parents and maybe from the parents of their best friends.  In my house, we learned that Dad was the boss and everything, and I mean everything, revolved around his schedule, his likes and dislikes, his sense of right and wrong and his money.

That’s right.  My parents were NOT equal and the money was all Dad’s.

Our family was the definition of old-fashioned.  Dad went to work every day; Mom stayed home with the five kids, the laundry, the housework, the cooking, mending and shopping.  The biggest argument my parents had was held at the end of each month when it was time for Dad to look at the “books.”

Arguing wasn’t really what happened during those sessions as the only voice we ever heard was Dad’s.  Inquisition is a more apt description.  It was not a pretty sight and even if you couldn’t see it, you could not miss the frequent and loud outbursts that emanated from Dad’s mouth.

My Mom was in a losing position before one word was spoken.  The reason was simple math.

At the height of his career, Dad earned $24,000 a year before taxes.  Out of that money, my mom had to feed, clothe and keep in “necessities” five children, a foster teenager, her mother-in-law, herself and Dad, keep the house and car running and tithe to the church.  That was no mean feat and often there was little or nothing left at the end of the month.

Dad’s question was always the same — where did my money go?  The real answer – spent on the family – was never good enough.  And the war raged on around us.  Little did we know how very much we were learning about how money shaped relationships.

My brother Mike controlled the cash in his house, just like Dad.  His wife and children answered to him for every nickel and dime that went missing. Bob refused to talk about money or manage it.   He put his paychecks in a drawer and only deposited them when his wife was telling him, at the top of her lungs, that their checking account was running on fumes.

I made money, lots of it.  And I spent it, paid for my college education, raised a daughter on it and managed it for more than 20 years.  I felt total control when it came to money…until I married Pat.   Only then did I begin to understand how my parent’s monthly battle over money would affect my relationship to my husband.  And what I discovered was that ugly behavior can be learned.

More on the battle over money in the next post.

 

 

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