It’s a Great Time to be “Middle Class.”

September 22, 2008.

Guest Rant by Rachel N.: Credit and the Economist.

I’m glad to have been allowed aboard the ship. I have been following FactFace’s recent posts and find myself, at times, howling and at others, cringing… that said, I heard something last night that made me furious… The tv was blaring in the background (cable bill’s not due for a couple of weeks…)and I heard some wiseass economist spouting his sage advice to the masses.

He said, “People should be cautious about using credit at this time…”

What! So this monkey with the, at least, six figure income is going to sit there in his Brooks Brothers suit and tell us that we shouldn’t use credit right now…Uh, How else will the kids get fed, the mortgage paid, the car gassed up? It is time for a reality check on several different levels…

I own my own home, have a small home equity line, a car payment, lots of credit card debt and a master’s degree in Education. I am married and my children all claim to be adults, but seem to need more and more help financially every day. My husband has a master’s degree and a shitty temp job with, wait for it, the US Government and his prospects for a permanent position just blew away in the wind. I am living in a rented house 2000 miles away from my actual home and I can’t even get a part time job working in a classroom for $10.00 an hour. Honey, I’ve been living on credit for months! Robbing Peter to pay Paul has become a daily game for me, and I would speculate for millions of other hardworking (or would like to be) Americans who are well educated and flat stuck! We used our incentive check to pay BILLS, not partake of some new little luxury. We can’t sell our house, so frankly, if something doesn’t happen for my husband or I, right quick, I might add, we may be faced with losing it over a measly HELOC…

Don’t use credit, my ass! Walk a mile in my moccasins and then come talk to me, otherwise, don’t talk to me at all… my government, MY GOVERNMENT, has failed me and every other decent person in the country while they all get rich and we get raped… And the saddest, sickest part of all of it is that we haven’t even reached the worst of worst… My friends, it is my belief that this has just gotten started. We are in the slide of our lives…

Use those happy credit cards to stockpile food, guns and ammo and then hunker down because the fun has just begun…. I’ve already starting thinking about the most defensible locations on my property… Hmmm, I wonder if I have enough room on my credit card to buy a Hummer….