I may have been wrong all along.
I thought we were poor
For most of the last few decades I’ve looked back on my childhood in New Jersey and I’ve told people it was a lower-middle-class life.
I don’t remember ever going on vacation.
Meals out were pretty rare. An occasional trip to Stewart’s Root Beer or the Sparta Diner, but not often. Miniature gold or bowling were a big deal.
Mom raised us as a single mom before it was stylish. Worked like a Roman galley slave at two jobs to keep up with everything. Back when women really were paid 70% of what men were.
I grew up in an idyllic town in a different era and even though we didn’t have much, most of the time I didn’t know it then. Most of the time.
But looking around me now, I’m thinking very differently about it. That we had it pretty good.
And part of me is sad about that.
I stumbled across a news story the other day. The headline tells the whole story: “The American middle class used to signify economic security. That’s now quickly becoming a luxury only the wealthiest can afford.”
You don’t even need to read the story, do you?
You already know what it says.
We actually had it pretty good
Looking back on my childhood, even though mom didn’t make a ton of money, we grew up in that idyllic small town and the only house I ever lived in before I moved away with the Navy.
Mom drove relatively new cars, we had clothes and I never missed a meal growing up. Not once.
Except for that time I refused to eat the Asparagus, but that’s another story…
Looking back, by 1960’s and 70’s standards, we were on a lower rung of the ladder but nowadays, economic security in America is statistically rare except for the top 10% of the population.
Everybody else…barely hanging on.
A 2017 study showed that 73% of Americans carry debt to their grave with the average amount being $61,500.
Working their entire lives, just to get to a social security check that doesn’t cover the bills and dying less than broke.
Life can be better than that.
But to do that, you have to be a little different than “average ” folks.
More like the 10%, really.
You need an income that is independent of the meager wages the vast majority of jobs pay. You need something that can be independent of your effort so that you can out-produce today’s inflation and the sad reality of the shrinking American middle class.
Something like this ==> CLICK HERE
It isn’t making me rich yet, but I made an extra $280 last weekend for about a half-hours work, writing something like this email. And that $280 is recurring income that will keep coming in every month for quite some time with no additional effort on my part.
Want to know what I did? Go HERE.
It’s the simplest way to double your income I’ve found.
And if you’re going to make it in the future America…doubling your income is a good place to start.
