The American Dream is the American Nightmare
If you carry longterm debt, you’re an indentured servant.
Somebody else is making money from your debt not you. If you subtract what you owe from what you own and are left with a zero balance, then you have no money.
You’re broke.
Living above our means has become the path to the American Dream which is nothing more than a scam. You’ve been scammed if you’ve bought into this empty promise.
Long before COVID, the amount of debt Americans carried as well as how little they saved, regardless of socio economic bracket, always shocked me. I started paying attention to American spending habits around 2008 when so many people lost their homes during the Great Recession.
Suddenly, a pattern of risky behavior revealed itself.
The majority of Americans no longer saved for a rainy day. They had embraced the popular idea called the American Dream, a lifestyle that everyone was told they should aspire to because it was our culture’s main way of assessing success. However, for most of us, the American Dream required a commitment to lifelong debt.
I call it the American Nightmare, but I was definitely in the minority back in the day.
You might remember those days when a new credit card offer showed up in your mailbox almost every week. The financial philosophy of most people I knew at the time was to use their credit to attain the lifestyle they so desperately desired. Nice house (as big as possible), two nice new cars (as pricey as possible), an annual vacation (as decadent as possible), a hobby or two( as expensive as possible), and shoes, handbags, and clothes (as name brand ostentatious as possible)
That was what it took to make Americans happy.
When the crash took place, I’d just left Florida where I worked for less than a year after retiring early from a career in public education. Florida was hit HARD in 2008. Tons of deeply in debt people lost their nice homes and fancy cars. It was a real eye opener for me. I couldn’t figure out how so many led such lavish lives in the first place. Turns out they were faking it.
As a retiree from rural Maine, I was spared the drive to play that game.
The few Mainers I knew who were climbing the social ladder tended to be in the LL Bean crowd, a less showy lifestyle. The rest were poor by most American standards. They were doing their best to heat their homes with wood in the winter and get their deer during hunting season to supplement their food bill.
I was lucky not to have been drawn into the shallower pursuits of consumerism.
But, hey, diddle diddle, Florida was going down with the party. Were they ever! I felt very out of place there. Beyond the fact that I’d left Maine winters behind, there was little else that impressed me. I packed up and left with a very bad taste in my mouth. I soon realized that Florida was a horrible place to live if you were still working. I may write a separate article about that, but for the time being let it suffice to say that the work world in Florida is a true cesspoool.
Florida is a sunny state for shady people.
The crash hit the nation with such force as to be heard from coast to coast. That’s when I discovered that the cars, houses, vacations, toys, and clothes were a front for being broke. A lot of Americans were over leveraged. If you deducted what they owed from what they owned, they were living in the red, zero assets. ZERO! Some of these folks were making much more than I ever dreamed of making, too.
They were essentially broke!
Then I began to notice the same trend amongst friends and even some relatives. I’m not talking about someone working for minimum wages either. I’m referring to dentists, doctors, lawyers, even movie stars. No money. Lots of stuff which made them the envy of everyone, but empty bank accounts and wallets.
I was reading articles stating that 85% of Americans didn’t have so much as $1000 put away for an emergency. The saver was in the minority.
My financial philosophy has always been different than many if not most.
It goes like this …
My number one goal was to live debt free. No mortgage, car, bank, or credit card loans. Zero debt. It took me a lot of years to reach that state but with perseverance and a little luck I made it and have been living a debt free life for over two decades.
The luck I’m speaking of refers to the fact that I was healthy. Getting sick in America is the number one cause of bankruptcy. Don’t ever forget that! I’ll write about that soon. I promise.
Living without debt was my big goal. However, that’s not my entire philosophy. There’s another equally important piece to my financial plan. My overhead must be as low as possible. Why? Because if my overhead goes up then my earnings must go up, too.
I don’t want to spend my entire life striving to earn more just so I can spend more.
For the last two plus decades, I’ve met my goal. My annual overhead is around $20,000. That includes food, gas, spending money, electric, heating, city utilities, Netflix, cell phones, internet, taxes, and health insurances.
I had about four years when my overhead was even lower, however.
Right after I retired, we sold everything that we owned and lived everywhere but nowhere for almost four years. We lived all over Europe, Mexico, and the isle of Saba for often as long as 90 days, the amount of time most countries allow an American without a visa.
Because we didn’t own a car, that saved me a lot of money each month.
After the great adventure abroad, we came back to settle in the midwest where housing was very inexpensive. We purchased one used car and resumed the expenses of ownership.
My philosophy is based entirely on reality not wishful thinking.
I have no money to lose. I’ve never been rich and my job as an elementary teacher and principal did not afford me the luxuries that I saw so many people enjoying.
Later, I found out that those luxuries cost them dearly.
It’s true that my lifestyle would simply not appeal to many. I’m not very materialistic. I freely admit that I’ve never been materialistic. I value experiences over stuff. That’s just me.
But what I can say without reservation is that I wasn’t cut out to live with financial pressure.
Until I reached my goal of living debt free, I was always stressed about money. I hated it. I sleep much better with the knowledge that I have low overhead and no debt.
What’s it been like for Americans since 2008?
Well, six out of ten Americans in 2022 according to statistics don’t have $500 they could lay their hands on in case of an emergency. That’s bad, but we do have the excuse of a pandemic.
However, in 2019, pre pandemic, it is estimated that the number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck reached a high of 78%. The statistics vary according to the source, so feel free to do your own research.
If you do, one thing will become pretty clear. Long before 2008, the American Dream was only possible for most people if they were willing to take on lifelong debt.
That means going into retirement with a mortgage or a car payment for many. We’ve been convinced that living above our means, regardless of our socio economic bracket, is a perfectly acceptable way to get through life.
If the next crash causes us to lose our homes or cars again, that, too, has been normalized. So many people have lost a home or car since 2008 that it no longer carries the same shame it once did.
It’s almost become par for the course.
The only reason that the powers that be have encouraged this risky lifestyle through propaganda and advertising is that capitalism is dependent upon constant growth.
That means more cars, refrigerators, handbags, clothes, bigger houses, etc. must be sold this year than last year.
The struggling middle class consumers are the only ones who can take on this task of increasing our annual GDP. The poor have no money. The wealthy specialize in extravagant purchases but it’s the middle class that by sheer numbers push the GDP growth ever forward.
We trade our security to help the oligarchs build greater and greater wealth. Our promise of the American Dream is an empty promise. It literally becomes the American Nightmare.
Don’t think for one minute that anyone actually needs all of this STUFF they’ve convince us to spend our money on in order to be happy. What we need is a roof over our heads and some money in the bank so that when the next crash comes along, and it will, we might not go down with the ship. What I needed even more than that was ONE good night’s sleep for a change. The sleep of a free woman who had paid her way out of indentured servitude.
It’s amazing how wonderful I feel the next day after I’ve had a good night’s sleep.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
