Boose
Recycles dryer sheets
Gen X-er here, so cynicism is my beat. Here's what made me realize I should save early and often. How about you?
- The White House talked about trickle-down Reaganomics while New England's manufacturing sector was gasping for air. My father was an independent technician for factories in NE; his contracts morphed from lucrative system design/install into penny-pinching repair jobs. As the factories closed, he worried about staying in the black. Lots of tense dinner times.
- I was offered my first post-collegiate F/T job at a private law school for $19,500/yr. Once I accepted, the manager backpedaled and said the position was budgeted for $19,000. Really?!? The difference was 1.5 months of rent for me; how much of an impact could it have made on the school?
- I got a clerical job at Harvard in the year that they froze the clerical/technical pensions and launched a 401K. Current endowment at Harvard: $38.3 billion. The pension for this low-paid, largely female workforce was never going to break them.
- Listening to lots of disaffected music from Thatcher's Britain. As Morrissey said:
"And if you must, go to work, tomorrow
Well, if I were you I wouldn't bother
For there are brighter sides to life
And I should know, because I've seen them, but not very often"
- The White House talked about trickle-down Reaganomics while New England's manufacturing sector was gasping for air. My father was an independent technician for factories in NE; his contracts morphed from lucrative system design/install into penny-pinching repair jobs. As the factories closed, he worried about staying in the black. Lots of tense dinner times.
- I was offered my first post-collegiate F/T job at a private law school for $19,500/yr. Once I accepted, the manager backpedaled and said the position was budgeted for $19,000. Really?!? The difference was 1.5 months of rent for me; how much of an impact could it have made on the school?
- I got a clerical job at Harvard in the year that they froze the clerical/technical pensions and launched a 401K. Current endowment at Harvard: $38.3 billion. The pension for this low-paid, largely female workforce was never going to break them.
- Listening to lots of disaffected music from Thatcher's Britain. As Morrissey said:
"And if you must, go to work, tomorrow
Well, if I were you I wouldn't bother
For there are brighter sides to life
And I should know, because I've seen them, but not very often"