http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1186503grasswire (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 06:33 PM
Original message
How is the "Recession" affecting your family ties these days?
I'm curious to know what's going on in America as more and more strain is put on family relationships because of shrinking resources.
How's your family doing? Is there a spirit of generosity and cooperation, or is it "everyone for himself"? Are you living in a multi-generation home? How's that working? Do older family members understand that the times are different for their younger relatives -- that the former paths to prosperity and/or independence no longer exist for many? Is there increased anxiety? Mental illness? Is anyone food insecure? Homeless? Do other family members offer help without being asked?
What's it like, for you and yours?
Sounds like her Mama won't let her move back home.
Where do you go when your evicted from a storage space over a garage?
elocs (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 06:39 PM
Response to Original message
1. I have no family ties to be strained, so that's simple.
I haven't worked in 7 months but I'm getting by ok so far because it's just me.
elocs (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:14 PM
Response to Reply #2
7. I just have to tough it out for another 3 years until I retire. n/t
WTF. If you haven't worked, how can you retire?
Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:33 PM
Response to Reply #9
15. I spent nearly three years living on $800/month
when the mortgage took the first $560. I can't say I lived comfortably, but I was able to keep a cheap DSL account and roll up in an electric blanket at the computer to amuse myself. I also had a house full of projects. I did OK.
If I'd had to watch a kid or a spouse go through it with me, it would have been lousy.
Sonoman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:02 PM
Response to Original message
3. We've pulled through.
My sons lost their jobs in Dallas, so I set them up with a 'farmer' from Humboldt. They are making a lot more money than when they were working day jobs.
GF and I lost our asses in the Market because I couldn't believe that the US Gov would let all of that craziness happen. Thankfully, we had a car collection that we used to offset our losses.
Still, every month is a challenge.
We are gonna make it.
Sonoman
Why didn't you get a job on the farm?
grasswire (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #3
25. good to have those collectible assets, eh
I have 12,000 pieces of collectible sheet music sitting in tubs. I shoulda bought cars.
collectible?...................
Dappleganger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:06 PM
Response to Original message
4. Lots of stress in our home.
Meanwhile, dh's wealthy parents are off doing their regular traveling up and down the coast in a friend's yacht for the next two months. They are pretty disconnected from us (although they pop in when it's convenient for them). My sister's family is doing great, they constantly travel as well.
WE still have the roof over our heads...this month, thank goodness. Hopefully in another year we will be on more stable footing. Health crisis are really putting a hurt on our finances.
Keep voting for socialists. Your situation will improve.
And to spotlight Manifestor_of_Light
Manifestor_of_Light Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:26 PM
Response to Original message
13. Parents used to give me hell for being unemployed.
They are dead now.
In the 90s they blamed me for not being able to find a good job with a BA and a law degree.
I got terribly depressed.
They wouldn't help me when the dogs got fleas and needed medicine. I was on the phone crying because they wouldn't help me. I ended up giving the dogs my own antibiotics because they had septicemia (blood poisoning) and would have died otherwise.
They got Alzheimer's. They had lived through the Depression. Mom was well off because her mother had a good job, but dad was traveling a lot and probably got hungry a number of times.
They would yell at me after saying, "We paid for your education and it's a damn good one. Why can't you get a job?" and I would say "I honestly don't know."
I'm glad I don't have to put up with their verbal abuse anymore that made me feel like a complete failure.
It's because you are a loser.
Manifestor_of_Light Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 11:45 PM
Response to Reply #24
28. I was able to retire due to DH.
Without him I would be groveling.
Neither of us could function in today's work world. We are both intelligent and over-educated. We've both had bosses that would deliberately block us, lie about us, backstab us. He was in engineering and I was in the legal profession. I'm talking backstabbing lawyers, nasty hateful judges and mean court reporters. I had temp jobs where I was fired for saving the client time and money by solving a work-related problem by calling an unauthorized (by the temp agency) computer person. Show initiative and ya get punished. And I've got a doctorate.
The advice people kept telling us to get mentors. There were so many of us Baby Boomers that it was highly competitive. I never met anybody who would be a mentor. Everybody was afraid I would try to get their job or maybe they just didn't like bright, educated people.
At his last job, DH was constantly insulted and belittled by ignorant co-workers who didn't know anything about computers. He had to set up video systems for medical school lectures and they just yanked wires. They also did not understand the eight dot three filename convention for Windows. They would write filename.mpg.mpg.
:wtf:
He has a BS and MS in Physics/Math/E.E. and was taking home ten dollars an hour. And they were taking his student loan out of his paycheck as well. That job was killing him. They fired him when the new president of the school was doing his slash and burn budgets. The new president ran up a $150 million dollar deficit and fired hundreds of staff people. The med school should probably lose its accreditation. He wanted professors and doctors to do extra lectures for free, and several dept. heads left for other schools.
They did not pay DH overtime. He kept an Excel spreadsheet of the unpaid overtime for six years, from his very first day (that methodical techie mind) and presented it to them after he was fired, with a letter saying, "I don't want to take legal action, but..."
They cut him a check for several thousand dollars.
The psychopaths are running the work world. They get away with it because greed is infinite.
What a wast of oxygen.
Urban Prairie (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:31 PM
Response to Original message
14. We run the entire gamut from wealth to near poverty
My siblings are all doing MUCH better than I am, however I believe that I eventually will become more secure financially long-term than my younger brothers are, being a disabled former federal government and railroad employee, with "relatively" secure FULL pensions waiting MAYBE once I reach my mid or late 60s. If I don't collect @ age 65-66, then they most likely won't either, since I am the eldest. My stunningly attractive sister however, married into MONEY, and has/is living in the lap of luxury for 30 years now. My sister and her husband HAVE helped me out a little bit, by paying for a few of our monthly utility bills while we were in foreclosure, but before we were evicted four years ago...and also helped a couple of years ago by providing us with an ancient '01 full-size PU truck with 160K on the odometer to drive, (gave it to me a couple years after I became perma-disabled, and lost my home to foreclosure and my wife (who coincidentally also lost her career job to outsourcing soon after I had to resign for health reasons from mine, and then we consequently lost our vehicles to repossession) the truck now if I had to guess, might be worth around $600.00 or less IF I was able to sell it as is.
The truck wasn't in very good shape mechanically (okay body-wise, the tires are fair, as they still have some tread) when we got it from them two years ago, but the tranny failed in the following late fall, and the truck sat un-drivable in our rented condo's parking lot for the entire winter, (they finally agreed to help pay to have the tranny rebuilt in the spring, but only after I called them once and a while over a four month period) then the battery died last winter, (I bought a new one) and it still needs some engine work, (new fuel-injectors, plugs, hoses, belts) and the linkage/ball-joints/brakes need to be replaced/repaired...I (we) DON'T have the money to fix it, but guess that I can't really look a "gift horse" in the mouth, now can I??
Another deadbeat.
southernyankeebelle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 07:36 PM
Response to Original message
16. Well let me tell you. My son and his wife and 2 kids live next door to us. They pay no rent. All
we ask them to pay is the water bill and the electric bill. Now we have been paying the water bill. But we told them them need to give us at least $200 a month for the electric. My daughter in law had a decent job at a nursing home and she really like it. But she quit because having to lift patience really was bad on her lower back. Now she is working as a waitress and she is good at that. The thing is I really love her but she never lasts long in a job. My son is a cook who makes around $10.00 hr which is ok for this rural area. He doesn't care for his job but he knows he has a family and continues to work and would never quit a job without having another. We help them buy food and cloths for the kids. We haven't been able to save because we have to help them. Both our homes need work. We do the best we can. I would never throw them out of the house because they try. They cut our grass (which is allot). They don't go and waste money they just don't make enough with the prices going up. I grew up in a house were we all helped each other. I think my husband gets alittle upset. He is an only child. I grew up in a large Italian family. Yet my husband is there if they need us and they are there if we need them. We all try to make it work.
Today my husband and I went to Wal Mart with our grandkids. We were coming up to a traffic light and I noticed this guy sitting on a cart holding a sign up. It said Disabled Vet. All I had was $3.00. I felt terrible I didn't have more but he was so appreciative and said god bless. We left and I cried and my husband who is a Vet said don't cry and I couldn't help it because for the grace of god it could be us. We should be taking care of each other in this world. Shame on this country. No wonder we are going down hill. We deserve what this country gets. God has blessed us and the republican party somewhere lost their souls to the religious evangelicas and the rich.
The kids problem is that they had DUmmies for parents. I suspect that they will have problems with their kids, and so on.
YellowRubberDuckie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Fri May-27-11 08:05 PM
Response to Original message
18. I don't know about the recession...
...but I was sick for an entire week two weeks ago, and I only got paid for one day of it. We are pretty SCREWED until the end of last month. Have to skip paying utilities, but luckily, my husband forgets to do so often, and they know us there. LOL
Duckie
grasswire (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Sat May-28-11 02:06 AM
Response to Reply #33
35. how old is your child?
wow, it's really hard for all generations. I have been watching The Waltons for a few weeks just because I missed it years ago and am interested to see how the Great Depression affected the family dynamics. The grandparents always deferred to the parents on childrearing, it seems.
It's not a real depiction of life, it's a TV show.
