A Middle-Class Hero
5 September 2016, 11:22 a.m.
42° 26' 41.6" N, 87° 49' 32.5" W
$103,000. One hundred and three K. I suppose it’s some kind of an accomplishment to run up that much unsecured debt in the middle of a financial crisis. But I wasn’t trying to give a finger to the system, and I sure didn’t feel like an outlaw existential hero. No director of the nouvelle vague, not Truffaut, not Melville, not even fucking Godard would cast Jean-Paul Belmondo to play me. My values, my hopes, and my expectations are too thoroughly middle-class. Belmondo couldn’t play me because I’m too damned boring.
You see, when the bills came in, and they came in over about the next two months, two very bad months after I returned to Waukegan, it never occurred to me to do anything except work my butt off to pay them.
So here’s a brief outline of the last seven years:
Once I added up all the numbers, I figured I needed to increase my income. Dramatically. Which meant that I needed a higher-paying job. It wasn’t hard to find one, which maybe should have been a warning sign. In any case, by August of 2009, I had left the Waukegan Public Library and was working at an insurance company. The company seemed really solid, and they urgently needed a database administrator with my skills. I had always joked about how much more I could be making in the private sector, and this was the time to cash in. The insurance company offered me a salary that was $35,000 more than what I had been making at the library, and for three months I followed through on my intention to live like a monk and put every penny of the increased income toward paying down the debt. I worked 80, 90 hours a week and managed to reduce the debt by almost $8,000—which was enough to get it under control, to keep it from ballooning from late fees and overlimit charges.
Then the insurance company folded.
To be honest, I hadn’t done what they call due diligence regarding the financial soundness of this company. How could I have? I’m not a finance guy, let alone a forensic accountant. I just figured the worst of the crisis was over, and all the businesses that had invested in what they were calling toxic assets had already gone under. What I didn’t realize was that there was a second wave of shocks coming, that the companies who had insured the toxic assets were about to feel the pain.
So there I was, unemployed, in the depths of a worldwide recession, with almost $96,000 in debt. The rational thing, I suppose, would have been to declare bankruptcy. Or just drop out of the system. One way or another, tell the banks—if you can still call them banks, anonymous predatory capitalism might be a better term—that it was their fault for giving me too much credit. For trusting me with those credit cards. That’s what anyone either higher or lower in the economic pecking order would have done. Let those assholes (whoever they were) cover Henry’s bar bills.
But I just couldn’t do it. Not boring-old-me. Not I’m-going-to-conquer-this-thing me.
Nope, what I was going to do was pay off the debt. I was going to rebuild my credit rating.
And the thing is, every database needs a DBA, even if the business or the organization can’t justify hiring one. So there were a lot of freelance jobs available, usually from clients who desperately needed someone to do an emergency restore from a backup, but who might or might not be able to pay the invoice. The next two years were wild. I worked like crazy, when there was work; dunned my clients like crazy, when they wouldn’t pay; and networked like crazy, when I had time on my hands. My income was all over the place, $14.03 one month, $24,212 the next. I always managed to make the minimum payments on the debt and I tried to build up an emergency fund.
I prayed (inconsistent atheist that I am) that I wouldn’t get sick, and I waited for the day the Affordable Care Act would go into effect.
It turned out that I didn’t need Obamacare. Just before it became available, I found a job here in Zion, at the school district. It paid less than what I had been making at the Waukegan Public Library, but it was a full-time job, with reasonable hours and… benefits. I had just turned 50, so barely a month into the job, I went in for my recommended colonoscopy. My out-of-pocket cost? Zero dollars. Now normally, a colonoscopy is not something to brag about. But if you haven’t had health insurance for three years, it sure is.
Once I had a job, I kept three of my more reliable freelance clients, and used every freelance penny to pay off the debt. Which got me into trouble the first year, because I forgot about taxes. It turns out that stupid credit card debts don’t count as tax-deductible expenses. After I sorted that out, I used 62 cents of every freelance dollar to pay off the debt, and kept the rest in a fund for taxes.
And so I can say that for the last seven years I have lived up to my middle-class values. I have paid my taxes and my debts. Well, almost. There’s still a grand or two left on a couple of cards. Let me check....
Two months from now. I’ve got the last payment scheduled on Auto-Pay.
November 7, 2016. That’s when I’ll have it paid off. That’s my date with freedom, if my 10-year-old car passes the emissions test without needing any big repairs.
Shit, that’s the day before the election. I don’t know why that matters, except that the whole country has been yakking about November 8 for so long. Most of the people I work with can't even imagine how a guy like Trump ever got nominated. Except for the maintenance supervisor, who commutes every day from a farm somewhere out west of Antioch, and thinks Zion is a big city. He leaves his red MAGA cap in his pickup and puts it on as soon as he drives off of school property.
Well, it will all be over soon.
The reminders are on my calendar: on Monday, November 7, confirm that my debt is paid off, on Tuesday, November 8, be sure to go vote, and on Tuesday night, celebrate the end of my personal purgatory and the nation's bad dream.
There probably won’t be a big bash this time down in Grant Park, but I’ll find a party somewhere.
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