yesterday's buds of tomorrow

[fflo]

From yesterday, on the way out of the office. Just about to burst with it, aren't they?


In yesterday's mail was one of those This Is Your Life in "Earnings" things the Social Security Administration sends out. You know the things I mean, right? Shows you in a little list how much money you made in every year you earned money that had Social Security taken out of it?

I used to look at the thing and think how little money I've made, through the years, and maybe feel a bit like a fuck-up, or have crop up some of those worries of it all catching up with me, having not been Responsible. Look, here's the evidence of one major version of that in digits in type in a couple of inches of a column of a sheet of paper totalling up all that I have officially earned.

This time it seemed all about ebbs and flows. My first year of income was a 3-digit figure (before the decimal). It's gone up to as many as 5, but not been steadily there through my adulthood.

Yesterday before I went in to the duck drama I sat in the car looking at the curve the changing lengths made, and noting the corresponding years, thinking about what was happening in the rest of my life (there is life apart from earnings, I maintain) as the numbers went up or down.

Don't guess I'm going to get to quit working and go driving around the country again. Those were the best of times & the worst of times.

But I might well have more best of times and worst of times.

One can hope.

Anybody have feelings about those statements? I realize I've never talked about them with anyone other than a co-habitating partner.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

FOr a few years in the late 80's up to 1990 I made real money with a real job. Aside from that, yes, it's a little bit of a jarring reminder of how little money I've made. Sometimes I'm astonished that I've been able to survive, and even own a condo, winding up in a position where I have no debt beyond a mortgage and this month's bills on such paltry income. Of course there is income not covered there--two inheritances, and self-employement, which I paid income taxes on but not Social Security taxes on.

Yeah, my statement is evidence of a life diddled away. And if I were to look at my W-2 form for this year, and my working hours as a part-time instructor, I realize that the biggest loss is not the money I haven't made, but the music I haven't made and the books I haven't written in my copious free time. If I'm going to diddle away my life, I should really diddle it away.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i've had some thoughts similar to some of those, fer sure. jealous of your debt load, too.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I have to give my ex credit for reforming herself into a cheapskate (as did I) for the last few years of our marriage. We spent three or four years successfully beating down something close to $40,000 of credit card debt. I recall the strategy involved a rather severe definition of frivolous vs. necessary spending, and a small but real frivolity budget in the form of cash in pcoket. We split ourselves into adult halves and a kid halves. The adult halve only bought boring survival stuff with checks or debit cards. The kid halves relearned to save their alloweances for fun stuff. And we kept a big ol' graph of our credit card debt on the refrigerator. Watching it go down was satisfying, and I remember even holding a ruler up to it to see when it would cross zero.

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

I have received those statements in past years. (Not last year for some reason.) In my younger years, up to about age 38, I spent a lot of sucky time unemployed. It was a great relief to get one of those statements that said I had worked my 40 quarters and was eligible for Social Security when I was 62 & 1/2. In recent years I have seen a steady and regular increase in income.

The painful thing I have noticed is how rarely time, money, and health all come together at once to really enjoy life.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

That's a hard one, that one about having money at the same time you have time. And health. Including the mental version thereof.

I do take some comfort in the string of recent years of gainful full-time moneyraking, if with pointed awareness of the irony that the need to be frugal is greater now than pretty much ever, for me. And the old difficulty of accepting the trade-off of half of my waking hours on most of my days.

[kohkae.livejournal.com]

I think of what I was doing in the corresponding years and I see the recent valleys with a little shame - mainly that I felt lost...hopefully that will improve.

M's statements are kind of funny...since she has railroad retirement instead of SS, it looks like she hasn't earned anything most of her working career. The RR retirement board sends a somewhat similar statement, but doesn't really break it out the same way. When those come you kind of say "Yikes!" about all the extra money she's had to put in above and beyond SS.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Wanna say somehow that shame is a shame. That shame is shame, and shame in general is a shame. Though I do relate to feeling susceptible to that black-and-white measure of one's worth as a good wage earner.

Every year at tax time I wonder about that railroad benefits thing. I always figure there was some exception when SS was set up for railroad workers, who, what, maybe had it better? Or were getting screwed more?

[squirrelykat.livejournal.com]

i've pondered the SSA income reports. mine took a dip when I left bartending to work at my current job (wow). sad when i see the starting income, and how little it really has become over the years. but we get by. suprisingly.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you brought in the bucks tending bar, didja? :)

[squirrelykat.livejournal.com]

OH YEAH. it was great! had lots of fun....the year after i moved back to A2 i was up north with the PUs. one of my former customers saw me, and started
yelling for me, saying how great i was, and how much they missed me. well, that kinda pissed my PUs off. they were mad that when i graduated that i was bartending. they were happy when i got my current `real' job.