At 42, I never thought I'd be living paycheck to (almost) paycheck

Growing up in the '90s we had our whole lives ahead of us--a stack of minted Upper Deck baseball cards on a closet shelf, a checking and savings account where we split our lawn-mowing money 20-80 like Dave Ramsey said, and Beanie Babies with the tags still on. Nearly half our parents had pension plans and retirement accounts, and while the 800 bucks they paid every month on their house felt steep, their wages more than compensated for two kids, two cars, a college fund, and a fridge full of groceries every Saturday afternoon. We played sports, studied, and were promised that we could do anything we wanted in life, be anything, as long as we didn't give up, worked hard, and followed the straight and narrow path to the American dream.

They didn't tell us that our richest time would be in our 20s, when we worked 2 full-time jobs on no sleep and shoved four roommates into a studio apartment. They didn't tell us that by the time we graduated college our country would be in the deepest recession in modern history, and that we'd be fighting for entry-level jobs against candidates with multiple PhDs. They didn't tell us that as the cost of living skyrocketed into our thirties and forties, our wages would remain stagnant.

No, they told us to work hard, and never, ever get fingerprints on those baseball cards.

The Author at her first job

Now if you know me, you know I'm a stats girl. I like to break things down and see where we're getting it wrong, where things don't line up. Why, if we worked so hard, got the degrees, stayed the course, are we all so broke? Where did all this debt come from if we never go on vacation and own one lousy used car?

Well, that part's easy.

Let's take my home state of Washington. According to current studies, for a family of four with two working parents, each adult needs to make about $33.40/hour (full-time) in order to earn a "livable" wage. Currently the minimum wage in Washington is $16.66/hour, relatively high by most standards, but still less than half of what is considered "livable." In 1990 when I was 8 years-old, the average household income was around $41,164 or $10.71/hour. The minimum wage was $4.25; again, less than half. If you adjust for inflation that's about $26.15 and $10.38 respectively

But while minimum wage has gone up 60%, the price of an average home in Washington State has increased almost 300%. Meanwhile, tuition and fees at my alma mater, the University of Washington, have increased 446% for resident students since I graduated in 2005.

The Author, unconcerned with the economy, 2004

Nowadays the top 10% have three times as much wealth as the bottom 90% of earners in the United States, who are on average $90,460 in debt.

Why? Do we overspend? Are we frivolous? How are we racking up all these credit cards that keep coming in the mail?

I'll be transparent here. We have one American Express card for "emergencies." We'll talk about what that means in a minute. But our one credit card has an interest rate of 23%. But don't worry, we can get that paid off in only 22 years and for just over $30,000 (3X what we owe) if we pay the minimum balance each month, which still feels like a financial stretch.

And that income we bring home, now 75% of it goes to pay our rent on a modest upstairs apartment in a multi-family home. Tuition accounts? Don't make me laugh. In the words of Chandler Bing, "We'll pick our favorite, and that one will get to go to college."

But we turn on the news and hear politicians, Republicans and Democrats, rattle off the same-old-same-old anthem of middle-class Americans living "paycheck to paycheck." It's how we know they're out of touch. Because Americans aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Paychecks don't last that long.

Thus we return to the credit card conversation. No, we aren't taking that Jamaican cruise. No, we aren't buying that 75" flatscreen. No, we aren't going to concerts, and games, and even the movies. We're feeding our families at the end of the month when our cash runs out. We're paying for school pictures. We're praying on our way to work that our cars won't break down because we can't afford the repairs.

So thank you for the planning, the dreams, the offers of stardom and a white picket fence in corporate America, but you didn't leave us with much of anything. Just the worn-out economics of two and three generations ago. So maybe it's time to put your money where your mouth is and stop talking about eggs, stop feeding the top 1%, and remember what it really means to be great.

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.