Pater —$— familias

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November 4, 1979, Section E, Page 21Buy Reprints
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I am a 30‐year‐old writer and editor, and my earnings this year will be about $30.000. Not bad, you say.

You are quite wrong.

For the last several months, because of the spiraling inflation, my wife and I have been living hand‐tomouth to provide for ourselves and our two children on a budget so tight that we must periodically draw upon our meager savings just to pay the monthly bills.

Here is the discouraging arithmetic: For our modest house in the suburbs, which we purchased six years ago for $50,000, we pay a monthly mortgage (including taxes) of $400. Other relatively fixed monthly expenses include home utilities ($130), phone ($60), car payment ($50), newspapers ($30), dry cleaning ($30), gas ($100), department‐store bills for past purchases ($100), travel to and from work ($100), credit‐card payments for past purchases ($100), hospital ($50), food ($200), miscellany ($50). This adds up to $1,400 and does not count annually paid expenses for insurance ($1,000) plus an estimated several hundred dollars a year in medical and dental bills for which we are reimbursed minimally by our health insurance. Nor does it include another several hundred dollars a year in automobile maintenance and repair, for which no one reimburses us anything, and other expenses.

Where does this leave us?

With drastically depleted purchasing power.

My $30,000 is slashed by taxes to $20,000. That computes to less than $1,700 a month in available cash. Match that with the figures above and the crisis becomes clearer. That is why I drive the lowest‐priced car on the market and retain for a second car a 10‐year‐old wreck that, with 120,000 miles, is on its last legs; why our summer vacation this year consisted of a day at the beach; why my wife feels guilty when she indulges, however infrequently, on a nonessential item of food, clothing or home decor. She won't buy lamb chops or the vitamins the doctor says she needs; she's postponing her visit to the dentist, whom she hasn't seen in over two years. Me — I live recklessly. I'm going to the dentist, but how I'll pay for the root canal I expect to be told I need I have no idea.

Only a few years ago we took exciting vacations, ate lamb chops and even saved some money.

But then we lived in a small apartment, had no home to finance or furnish or children to care for, and had the pleasure of a second salary, since my wife worked before giving birth.

Ours is now a no‐frills life style.

How could it be otherwise?

Gas costs $1‐plus a gallon, tuna fish $1‐plus a can, magazines $1‐plus an issue, movies $4.50 a throw, and the gas company, electric company and phone company want to raise their rates. The other day, on Madison Ave nue, I was charged 10 cents extra for lettuce on my sandwich! A night out—just a movie, an inelegant dinner, parking, gas, tolls, babysitter — sets me back at least $50. Double it if the entertainment exceeds a movie and the dinner is to be less inelegant.

I don't have your sympathy?

Here I am making $30,000 a year with a home and food on my plate while there are a million people making half that or less in this city and other millions are starving in Cambodia and God‐knows‐where‐else and I have the gall to complain yet?

No, this is not a tale of desperation.

This is a tale of what is perceived to be the successful middle‐class American — the college graduate who, 10 years later, after Working His Way Up, is in an executive position earning what is thought to be a reasonably good wage — and what being “middleclass,” economically, means nowadays, especially in a place like New York.

Believe me when I say I have simple tastes. A weekend with a good book suits me fine — but have you seen the price tags on good books? I have earned the right to have more for myself and my family, to have what I earn get us more of what this city and country have to offer. But I fear that 10 years from now, when I am a 40‐year‐old vice president making $60,000 a year, gas will be $2‐plus a gallon, tuna fish $2‐plus a can and the Sunday newspaper $1.70. Then, when my oldest child will be ready to consider college, I fear I may decide to tell her to consider something else.

The writer asks to be unidentified.