Spent

Why is it that NO MATTER HOW MUCH I make, the BUSINESS OF LIVING expands right to the LIMIT OF MY PAYCHECK? The minor vexations—and unexpected joys—of A CASH-POOR LIFE.

- Dwight Garner

When I was in college in the 1980s, the general store down the road shamed deadbeats by posting their bounced checks next to the cash register. It was a pillory of sorts, a wall of shame. I made at least one appearance there, having kited a check for ten or fifteen dollars—the price of a sandwich, a pile of newspapers, and a pint of ice cream from two upstart local guys named Ben and Jerry.

Flash-forward thirty years. I’m still a guy who’ll sometimes consume half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s while reading a pile of newspapers. A man needs soothing while polishing off the op-ed pages. But now I’ve got a well-paying (for journalism) job, smart children in college, an old house with a decent bone structure, real art on the walls—the trappings of an actual life. The shocking thing to me, these years later, is how much I’m still that guy who’s worried, most of the time, about writing small checks he can’t cash. I’m shocked at how I’m still just barely getting by and how few acorns I’ve managed to squirrel away. And I’m wondering if I’ll feel this way until the end.

I’m asking for zero pity, no satirical GoFundMe pages, no fucks given. If I sometimes walk around in a small financial trench, it’s entirely of my own digging. I sometimes read stories about how much money—how much of what Bingo Little, in P.G. Wodehouse’s novels, used to call “the stuff”—one has to have to be considered rich in America. I know what my own definition of wealthy is: enough money so that when you plan to fly home with your kids to visit your parents at the holiday, you don’t need to drop hints about them picking up half the cost of the tickets. By this definition, I am not yet a rich man.