Dreams vs. Disillusion

I'm a typical American girl, if there is such a thing. In a world where atypical is more typical than "the norm," I want a lot of the standard "American Dream." I want to get married. (Check.) I want to have babies. (Check... with hopefully more checks to come.) I want to own a home. I want to own enough land to justify buying a riding lawn mower.


But I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR this morning. They talked to a professor from the University of Michigan, where the Consumer Sentiment Index is developed. The way it works is that at least 500 telephone interviews are done each month to get individual opinions on the economy as well as peoples' own personal financial situation. What they've found lately is that most people acknowledge a rising economic outlook, citing mostly the falling unemployment rate, but that their own personal economic outlook is dim, even depressing.


I couldn't help but sympathize with the consumers they interviewed. There's something terribly wrong when a small family, with two working adults is struggling to get by. I currently, and thankfully, work a full-time, 40 hour per week job that I love. My husband, a graduate student, teaches two classes at the local community college and also serves as a Teaching Assistant at the university where he's pursuing his degree. We have one daughter, age seven, who is a healthy, active, high-spirited kid.


I have a Bachelor degree in English, that I'll be paying approximately $80,000 for total, after all my student loans are paid off, sometime around my 50th birthday. I'm not using my degree. Not really. I'm a receptionist. While proper grammar in memos and emails is important, a college degree was not a requirement for the job. Meanwhile, I'll soon be paying over $150 a month for that degree. Was it worth it? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like it right now especially since the degree I'm paying for (but not using) is cutting into the bottom line on our very tiny budget.


My husband, because he's considered "adjunct faculty," doesn't qualify for health insurance. For the time being, because he's young enough  and because of the laws congress passed, he's still on his mom's health insurance plan. He'll lose that in October when he ages out. Our daughter, thankfully, is currently on CHIP or Children's Health Insurance Program. It uses a sliding income scale to determine if you qualify and if you do, how much, if any, you have to pay for your services. I applied for CHIP before I got my job in January when our income was low enough to qualify. Since getting my job, our income is now over the threshold for the program but she's covered for a year anyway.


When my husband and daughter lose their respective health insurances, our only option will be to add them to my policy through my job. Because my employer pays 75% of my cost, my out of pocket insurance cost is not too bad. But once we add the rest of my family it will cost us $1400 a month. FOURTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS! That leaves me with a profit of about $400 a month, BEFORE taxes. Take into account that I'm currently spending about $300 a month on gas to get to and from work (I have a ridiculous commute.) and the $140 a month we pay in after school care costs and suddenly, my paycheck isn't just gone, we've spent more than I make.


Nevermind that I drive a car that's 11 years old and holding on for dear life. I shudder every time something breaks on it... my power outlets don't work anymore. My driver's window doesn't roll down. (Hello fun in the drive thru!) The dashboard is cracked in multiple places. And my sister, a smoker, who had the car before me, has cigarette burns all over the upholstery. It gets decent gas mileage though and it gets me to and from work safely (after we put four new tires on it) so I shouldn't really complain. But the truth of the matter is, I'm going to need a new car. Maybe not next month. Maybe not next year. But in the not so distant future.


 Nevermind that someday we want to buy a house with a yard and a fence and a garage and our very own mailbox. Oh. And lots and lots of closets. We're currently renting a very tiny, not ghetto but not nice, apartment that we quite honestly don't fit in. I hate it. It seemed like an oasis after we spent an entire day looking at dump after dump after dump. When we got to it and it didn't have any holes in the walls and the linoleum flooring didn't look like something out of a bad 1970s cop movie, we signed the lease. It wasn't till we started moving in that we realized that our couch took up 3/4 of the living room and that we only had two, very small closets. Alas, we have five months left in our twelve month lease so it's all downhill from here.


Nevermind that I want babies. Lots and lots of babies. Most people think that the Duggar family is completely crazy with their 1900 children. Ok so that might be an exaggeration but I kind of get where Michelle Duggar is coming from. If I could afford 19 kids, I'd probably have that many too. Ok, not really, but I'd certainly be less worried about the financial implications of having more kids. Right now, Hubson (as I affectionately refer to him) and I are wondering how we can afford to have ONE more kiddo. Much less two or three more like we both dreamed of. I mean, diapers and formula? That's the tip of the iceberg. There's daycare, basic needs like food and clothing, dance lessons, sport camps, and "Mom, can I have some money to go to the mall?" But what about the biggies? College educations? Weddings? 


I already told you about the cost of my degree. Let's talk about my wedding. Hubson and I are coming up on our first anniversary in March. With my mom, being and artist and crafter extraordinaire, we did an almost completely DIY wedding. That's "do-it-yourself" for those non-crafty folks out there. Things we didn't do ourselves? The food, the venue, the music and the attire. Everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING, down to the very last floral arrangement and every single bow, we did ourselves. I spent the night before my wedding ironing our one-hundred handmade table runners. Even with all that extra effort on our part, our "budget" wedding, ended up costing well over $20,000 and I'd guesstimate closer to $30,000. We already have one girl. What if baby number two is a girl too? That's two weddings we have to bear the brunt of the cost for. 


These things are just the beginning of the costs we'll incur over the course of our lives. We're both hard-working, life-loving, law-obeying (what speeding ticket???), voting, American citizens. It's just hard to imagine that there's a possibility that the "American Dream" won't come true for us, no matter how hard we try.