I’ve Been Lying About My Childhood All These Years

Don’t Downsize in Retirement…Upsize to a More Rewarding Life

It feels like I’ve been lying all these years. 

For most of my adult life, I’ve looked backed on my childhood growing up with my grandparents in South Louisiana and I’ve told people it was a lower-middle-class life.  

Vacation was never anything more than a couple of days at my grandfather’s sister’s house in Gulfport, Mississippi, where I slept on the couch.  

Meals away from home were relatively rare and generally consisted of a twice-monthly visit to a Piccadilly cafeteria…or, if my grandfather wanted to splurge, a burger, fries, and a frigid root beer in a pewter mug at the Ground Pat’i. 

Both my grandparents worked—my grandfather as a tire salesman for a department store; my grandmother a purchasing clerk for a chemical company. 

These days, I am looking back on that childhood very differently—much more positively. 

And that’s actually sad. 

See, a news story popped up—on Christmas Day—that has stuck with me now for a few weeks. The headline says it all: The American middle class used to signify economic security. That’s now quickly becoming a luxury only the wealthiest can afford. 

I don’t need to tell you anything else about that story. Everything you need to know, you already know. 

Which steers us to the main point of my dispatch today: Life can be better than that. 

Looking back now, I can see that my grandparents and I had it pretty darn good. They certainly weren’t making a ton of money, but they could afford a comfortable tract home in a prime location. They both had relatively new vehicles. My grandfather owned a basic bass boat for his regular forays to a lake, where he and two of his brothers owned a raggedy old cabin they got for the cost of hauling it away for the previous owner. 

Never had a day in my life as a kid when I went hungry. 

I now see that by 1970s standards, we had complete economic security at a fairly low rung on the social ladder. 

By 2022 standards, complete economic security in America is statistically rare beyond the top 10% or so.  

The rest of the ladder…people are barely hanging on.  

Many have fallen off and they’re relying on easy access to credit to keep on keeping on until they can crawl past the finish line of retirement and snag a barely adequate Social Security check, and then die holding a mound of debt. And I’m not being melodramatic. A 2017 study showed that 73% of Americans carry debt to their grave, and the average amount is more than $61,500. 

Alas, dying in debt somehow means winning in America today. You lived larger than you could afford, and the credit-card companies eat the loss. 

It’s here that I come back to, “Life can be better than that.” 

I was video-chatting with a colleague this week and we were talking about what I’ve found most surprising about my life after more than three years in Prague. And I told her, “Nine dollars and seventy-seven cents.” 

She looked at me strangely. 

And then I explained that my wife and I recently had dinner at a pub near our apartment. We had schnitzel, an order of bacon-garlic green beans, and we split a half liter of local beer. A meal for two people, and it was the equivalent of $9.77.  

I just looked at McDonald’s 2022 pricing: A single, quarter pounder with cheese extra value meal is nearly $10.49. 

The point I was making to my colleague was that once you’re outside the American economic bubble for more than the length of a vacation, you realize that cost-of-living in the U.S. has jumped the shark. And I don’t mean New York, Los Angeles, Seattle. I mean average America. Places like Baton Rouge, where I grew up. 

Here I am, in a world capital, one of the prettiest cities in Europe, and the average cost of living is nearly 25% cheaper than Lincoln, Nebraska. Not knocking Lincoln, just making the point that living in a beautiful world capital in the heart of Europe is cheaper than living in a second/third tier U.S. city. 

This is relevant in that so many Americans are looking for retirement affordability. Sadly, many are not going to find that in the U.S. They’re going to retire, they’re going to collect their Social Security, they’re going to draw upon a modest nest egg, and their going to shoe-horn their retirement into a reduced lifestyle…because being middle class in America is, indeed, a luxury in 2022.  

And too many of us don’t have the luxury anymore. 

But overseas? 

Well, luxury never went out of style.