The Privilege to be broke

The privilege to be broke

Constantly striving. The two words that capture best what it is to have the privilege to be in the broke class. My son has been asking lots of questions lately about money and our class background and these are questions I approach with nuance, but I am also clear and direct. I don’t believe in politeness when it comes to discussing finances. The shame placed on those who struggle is another tool of White supremacist culture. When I speak with my son I don’t place a flat numerical figure that captures “success” or class “level” because what I have observed, lived, and learned is that no matter how large the annual income one earns, what really matters is what goes out and what you can save. Wealth, I explain to him is about how much one can save, how much one has left after they have paid for the privilege to live and work, at least that is the reality in the United States. I shared the example of people who work jobs some would consider unremarkable-postal service workers, teachers, etc., yet they were able to save over time and redistribute those earnings either in death or once they accumulated a sum that insured their security.  

When I reflect on my substantial community of friends and colleagues over the years, who I have had very honest conversations with about the intersections of race and class, the one element that seems to distinguish all of us, are those who had parents able to pass down their wealth and opportunities or married people who did and those of us who did not. There is a very small, I mean really small number of people who did not have the benefit of intergenerational wealth, who were able to enter into fields right after school fast enough that they started out earning well and by the time those “life crisis” started showing up, they had enough substantial savings to weather the disruptions. When I say small number, I mean, out of a group of roughly 80 people who I maintain some level of contact with, I could identify 3 people who fell into this category. 

Those of us (I consider myself in this category) who have done all of the things society told us to do-went to school, got jobs, yet, confronted life disruptions in the midst of our pursuit, are constantly chasing a carrot, some of us over time have been able to discontinue the chase, with a phenomenal amount of hard work and attention placed on the smallest amount of spending we do. We obsess over our monthly budgets and spending, yet our circumstances (having children with special needs is extraordinarily expensive) means that what goes out each month is substantial. That many of us parenting children with special needs or supporting adults with special needs is a lifetime of expenses that aren’t captured by medicaid. These expenses can never be fully accounted for because their costs, even with insurance is often unknown.  I accept that substantial medical debt will be as persistent in my life as my housing costs.  For those of us who are in social work education or policy, we teach our students about the cycle of poverty, but not other cycles of economic insecurity. 

For example, I have been fortunate to earn pretty solid salaries in my opinion, and at present, I am earning a good salary, given my circumstances, I will need to earn even more eventually, but it is a good salary. A salary that has enabled me, in the midst of the pandemic to pay for the privilege to work by enrolling my two children in specialized private schools to address their special learning needs, in schools that have met in person, one hybrid, one full-time in person throughout the 2020 school year, and heavily subsidized by financial aid, yet by the end of the school year I would have paid $24,000, along with another $16,000 to date for childcare/remote learning support on distance learning days.  I never could have done this in the position I resigned from previously, that also had an $8000 health insurance deductible for families. If student loan payments had not been paused, I most certainly would not have been able to afford these costs. I was also fortunate to have a friend who rented an apartment for me at a cost well below the median for Chicago, a significant savings. If I did not have the means to earn additional side income to further subsidize the unexpected costs of the pandemic, like significant increased utility and food costs, I would have likely fallen behind. I also never could have done this without a friend who set up a full-year of monthly budget projections that let me know when I would stop having carryovers and when I needed to start bringing in extra funds. Some of us spend a significant amount of time obsessing over our spending and spend considerable time in the on-line communities provided by sites like the budgetnista (https://thebudgetnista.com/), which demystifies the illogical system of credit.

It certainly would have been amazing to have put this money towards my substantial six-figure student loan debt, substantial because in 2008 my ex was unemployed for two years, which meant student loans were placed in forbearance, literally doubling the total due. I went from 5 digit and manageable to 6 digit and unmanageable. I accept that I will either die or become disabled before they come close to being paid down substantially. Price gouging is baked into the student loan schema of this country and unfortunately, the outrage is muted. While there are masses who are restless, vocal,  and advocating for student loan debt forgiveness, white supremacy has established a culture of selfishness. A culture that has a substantial body of people whose “success” in overcoming their student loan debt does not cultivate an ethos of not wanting others to struggle or suffer as they did, rather, if I suffered and struggled, you have to do it too. 

I am sharing so transparently because I think about how different this country would be if people were not taught that you don’t talk about money and politics. That financial success is not about “how hard you work” rather it is about education and understanding the system. And most importantly, how different it would be if the system was deconstructed in a way that people who have lived in the cycle of poverty or in the cycles of being broke, could tweak the elements that make the cycles persist. 

The reality is that only a few politicians have lived the in these two particular cycles, but they all know that a massive student loan forgiveness, some form of universal health care, educational funding not based on property taxes or subsidized by corporations, and a more robust system of elder care not based on arbitrary income levels, and tweaks to our tax system would be truly transformative. Particularly in households headed by BIPOC women. Such transformation threatens existing bodies of power. If we reconsidered the measures for public assistance, student loan payments, etc. and based them on what is going out and not what is coming in, yes, there would be more variability and complexity to determinations, but imagine if the measures were determined on a baseline of what one has left after covering all of the costs for living, and included individuals who are caring for sick parents or relatives. Perhaps this would get us closer to people feeling a sense of possibility for lives that can aspire for more than the privilege to be broke. 

I am excited about the experiment of sending out checks to people with children, but I am also thinking about people who do not have children and are caring for other family members. I am excited that for a whole group of people these payments are going to make a real difference, it will propel many into the privilege to be broke class, there are some who may even skip this class and be able to save or progress and start building wealth. 

I know how incremental and slow change can be, yet when I consider the many lifetimes of people spent in this country residing in the privilege to be broke class, it is stunning to see how it seems we will continue to perpetuate the mythology of hard-work as “enough” for success. Working hard is certainly required for survival, but for many it will never be enough. And that is what makes me the most angry, sad, and frustrated. That the violence of white supremacy is dependent on low-income, poor white people believing that BIPOC people are taking something from them, when the reality is that we are working as hard as some of them at overcoming a system that undermines you at every moment you begin to get ahead. That despite what is said, the level of internalization and belief that one is better because of their white skin color and based on stereotypes of people who are BIPOC will never make their lives any better. That the global mythology of the United States as a place where one can “make it” through hard-work is a lie, or a half-truth, you can make it, sure, but it takes a lot more than just working hard. It takes creativity, knowledge, skills, and to be honest, a little bit of luck in life to be successful in this country.