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Not sure if you recall but a few months ago I wrote about my Recession Guilt. The kind that plagued me and made me feel bad for having it relatively easy while so many were struggling financially. And then I went and bathed in hundred dollar bills.
Since then my tune has changed because this recession thing is starting to wear me down. There are repercussions and a domino effect that is beginning to slowly suffocate me as other larger entities are hit hard by the happenings in the markets. In a word: suuuuuucks. We twenty somethings have had things pretty good and it is a truth universally acknowledged that we enjoy immediacy. With the recession things are less immediate and more like a tortoise on Ambien unless it's a credit card company who wants their money NOW.
Money that used to come back quickly is now scrutinized. My student loan payments have been late because of the waiting for the money. My credit card bills are out of control and sometimes I have to breathe into a paper bag before logging into my bank account. I haven't spent more than I have in ages but the rate at which the money comes in and then goes out has sped up because (*cough*government owned*cough*) Citibank wants their money but I can't get them their money until I get my money and it's a truly vicious cycle. A cycle of UGH topped with CRAP.
Recently the New York Times had a fantastic article from their own economics reporter, Edmund Andrews, who wrote about his own credit crisis on the heels of the bursting of the housing bubble:
"The icy slap of reality hit me two weeks after New Year's Day in January 2005. We had been living in our new house for five months. I walked out of The Time's Washington bureau, several blocks from the White House, and crossed Farragut Square to my bank. I had a bad feeling about what the A.T.M. would reveal about my balance, but I was shocked when I looked at the receipt: $196. We were broke"
Go read the rest of the article but for me it hit close to home. As I had recently talked to a friend of mine and told her that I couldn't believe that I was paid to write about personal finance when I felt like I couldn't hold my own finances together. I was a failure at doing something I loved and it's hard to dispense any sort of advice when you are under the same boulder of woe as most others.
The silver lining - at least in my case - is that I'm not a personal finance or business expert. I am a person paid to write about my experiences with being a semi-fresh out of college twenty-something headed down my career path. So it's not like anyone is looking at me to decipher every word out of Tim Geithner's mouth. But still...it's that feeling of, hoo boy, this is harder than I thought, have bubbled up to the surface. And what I love most about blogging is the ability to find people who are right there with you; so know that I am. There are the differences of raises and salaries and how I check the 'Single Income No Kids' box but I think it's safe to say that no one...I mean NO ONE is safe from this recession. I just feel stupid for thinking otherwise.
Related reading: CBS Reports with Katie Couric: Children of the Recession
Why do moms have higher unemployment rates than dads? HeatherB also writes at No Pasa Nada and her shopping habits (tsk, tsk) at Beauty Hacks.
