There has to be more than me out there struggling so directly in the country’s financial middle that irony is the only real, palpable scenario. I might be considered a middle class American – I own a home, I have a full time job, I am married, have a child, a college degree, a cat, and a handful of gardening skills. When the picture is examined a little closer I fall into an indefinable group of people shouldering the debt of the country without any real end in sight.
The first time I realized my predicament I was a single mom receiving child care assistance. I got a small raise at work and when I took my paystubs in for review, I was denied assistance. My raise put me over the cap by $50.00. I remember wondering where I would find that additional money and distinctly remember the specialist congratulating me for being over the allowable amount to receive assistance. I thought she was joking.
Like anyone would, I became more resourceful. I’d clean friend’s houses for extra cash and picked up a second job on the weekends. I remember going grocery shopping and calculating to the cent how much I was spending while a couple in line ahead of me emptied their cart of steaks and various high-end grocery items. They paid in food stamps then whipped out enough cash to buy a carton of cigarettes. I cried when I got home with my two bags of reduced price vegetables and put loaves of day-old sale bread into the freezer. I made too much money to receive public assistance.
The next time I was faced with congratulations was when the housing market was in full swing and my refinance was ineligible for a loan modification because I made too much money with a full time, permanent job. “Congratulations Ms. Kennedy – you make too much money to be considered for a loan modification to bring down your monthly house payment!” Again, I thought the lady on the other end of the telephone was joking. It took the modification department seven months to tell me this. It was so frustrating.
Now don’t get me wrong – I am not looking for a free handout. I am proud that I am somehow able to balance the household budget enough to make ends meet. Even if it is by the skin of my teeth and the maxing out of my credit card. But with all the programs available to help people, to lessen their financial burdens – programs that I am contributing to – how is it that I keep falling into that category of ‘too rich’?
The final token of financial burden has come with the inability to refinance my current mortgage of 7.25% because that property is no longer my primary residence. We were transferred with my husband’s job (a Combat Medic in the United States Army) to interior Alaska, leaving behind our house, friends, and family. After falling in love with our new community, we tried to sell the house in a downturned market. No such luck. We tried to refinance so that it was an affordable ‘investment property’ since it wasn’t selling. Again, no such luck. The icing on the cake is the constant commercials I hear on the radio about the responsibility to buy homes in your local community – it builds the economy and creates jobs! Yet I cannot seem to get our finances in order to afford to be a responsible American in my new community.
There are financial classes within our country’s society – the poor, the middle class, the rich, the uber-rich. But if you look between the lines you can see there are a group of us without title. We pay our taxes, we volunteer; we work full-time jobs and better ourselves with education, we are good parents and responsible citizens. We are balancing on that line between poverty and middle class with the finesse of a tight rope walker hundreds of feet in the air. Again I say, I can’t be the only one.