What Me Worry? Or I Should I?
by Sarah Anne Edwards
co-author Middle-Class Lifeboat
A new USA Today/Gallop poll says most says Americans are deeply worried about maintaining their standard of living. 42% say the nation’s economic conditions are poor. 39% percent say it’s fair. 72% say it will be getting worse.
The greatest worry is the rising cost of gasoline and home heating prices, which concerns a whopping 57% Half of the families are worried about maintaining their standard of living. Almost as many are worried about having enough money after they retire, 47%, having to postpone their retirement, 45%, and the rising costs of health care, 43%. Other worries more than one in three people worry about include losing the value of their homes, not being able to afford college tuition or pay off college debt.
But it seems in American hope springs eternal. Although 76% of people think the economy is getting worse, 60% say that they personally will be better off this time next year. Hmm. What accounts for this? Are we just an optimistic bunch? Do we think what’s happening right now is a short-term blip? Do we think that we personally will luckier than most over the next year? Or are we actively undertaking changes in our careers and lifestyles that lead us to believe we’ll have a lifeboat?
I sure hope it is the latter, because changes in the global economy would suggest that is we keep on as we are now - accumulating greater debt, watching more jobs offshore, suffering more defaults on sub-prime loans, seeing the dollar lose more value, continuing dependence of fossil fuels - you can bet that things will not be better.
But in having spent the last three years interviewing people all over the country for Middle-Class Lifeboat, we found thousands of people are not waiting and hoping for things to get better. They are making changes right now. We found the range of creative and imaginative things folks are doing is exciting and very encouraging.
We’ve certainly been making changes ourselves. We’ve moved to a nearby faraway place. We’ve simplified our lives, cut back on things we don’t really want or need, and taken a slew of steps to make our home and cars more energy efficient. Still we worry at times about where the economy is headed, so we are repositioning our careers right now too to make them more secure for today’s economy.
What is worrying you? We’ve posted a poll. Are your concerns similar to those in the USA Today/Gallop poll? Also, we invite you to leave a comment about the steps you’re taking to secure your futures.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Hi Sarah. I was surprised to find that I don’t worry about any of the factors on your list, and even surprised when I checked “none of the above” to find that I was the only participant who had done so. Not that I don’t worry about the future, just that I worry about concerns not on your list, such as an imminent economic collapse or, even worse, that such a collapse (combined with peak oil and other resource depletion issues) might be severe enough to knock our society into widespread violence and looting for a time. How I might plan to survive such a scenario is currently occupying my worry space. A drop in my material standard of living? Ha, I regard that as inevitable, and I stopped worrying about it a few years ago.
David S.