In The Beginning

We are hard working people. We always have been. Our work ethic is what makes us the dream of any employer. We are the people who take pride in our work, show up on time, and excel at what we do every day. We stay late whenever necessary, and our customers ask for us by name.

Fat lot of good it's done us.

As I lay awake in bed last night, I could hear my husband's brain working overtime in spite of his stationary body.

"Stop thinking about work baby, " I said with a sigh.
"You too?" He asked.
"Yeah. I'm scared."
"Me too honey, me too."

No matter how hard we work, no matter what we do, there's nothing we can do to change our lot. Times are hard, stocks are dropping, and hours are being slashed. I guess we should be grateful. There are a lot of people who don't have jobs at all, let alone hours to cut. There were people at work hurting long before it got to us. There are people right now who are losing their homes, their jobs, and their stability. We're just getting our share.

I guess it's easier for me to just lower my head and accept our lot. After all, we've been here before. Just a few years ago in northern Michigan, my husband and I watched the first stirrings of the recession that has spread across the nation. NAFTA crippled the steel industry and mines began to close or lay off thousands of workers. Jobs got scarce fast, times got hard, and families suffered. Unemployment checks ran out with no jobs to follow, and savings dwindled one week at a time. We got really good at making our dollars stretch.

When the army took us to Germany, we experienced serious upward mobility. Our introduction to the middle class was a shock, and our frugal habits lent themselves well toward building up savings. We stopped budgeting and counting every penny, because there was no need to. There was plenty to go around and plenty to save. We paid off our meager debts, built up a respectable savings, and still enjoyed life with no worries.

Now that we're civilians again, it's time for a hard reality check. We returned to the US and moved across the country in hopes of finding a better job market than we left. We found exactly what we were looking for, and stepped right into good jobs. Now those jobs are maybe not as secure as we'd hoped. Like thousands of others, we are looking at our paychecks and wondering how long we will hold out and if our jobs will be there next month. It's time to get back to the hard stuff that will help us get by.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm here. I am not an economist or a financial analyst. This blog is not terribly political or particularly controversial. I'm just a woman experiencing hard times, and I'm here to share what I know with those who feel the same pain. When I was little, I was told that the strength of our country was in how we stood together in hard times. Now is that time. If we teach and inspire each other, maybe we can all get through this just a little bit stronger.

When we lift up those around us, we all win.