For formerly wealthy, poverty comes as a shock

[OhioChick]

Sunday, October 09, 2011, 1:35 PM

CHICAGO -- Bob Baschoff used to work for a bank, commanding a corner office and a six-figure salary that allowed his family to enjoy a comfortable life in the wealthy lakefront village of Lake Bluff, Ill.

All of that is gone now.

Baschoff was laid off during the financial crisis of 2008 and hasn't found steady work since. The family lost one home to foreclosure and was evicted from two rentals. Though they're still in Lake Bluff -- a relative is paying the rent on a modest ranch house -- they must rely heavily on charity and the government for food, health care and other necessities.

"When I'm around the parents of my kids' friends or teammates, every guy I look at, it's like, 'I wonder what he does? What does he make? Why can't I do it?' " said Baschoff, 56, a barrel-chested, bespectacled man whose sandpaper voice betrays his South Jersey roots. "I feel so out of place. I feel like a misfit."

More: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/for_formerly_wealthy_poverty_c.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. when I first got on public assistance

I saw many many people there who were embarassed, former exes, still driving their SUV's. Sad to say, they were the nastiest, as they acted like they were just here temporarily, and that any face darker than theirs was somehow to blame, therefore perfectly suited for being yelled at, cussed at, called the n word, etc.

[Journeyman]

2. The Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx was set up to house the "nouveau poore". . .

Opened in 1924, the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx was established to provide a place where formerly wealthy people who'd suffered reverses of fortune through no fault of their own could live out their lives in the fashion to which they'd become accustomed. It's benefactor, a wealthy man who barely escaped ruin in the panic of 1907, believed that reduced circumstances were harder on the rich than on the poor.

There's some validity to the thought. Those who've lived a life of want are certainly better prepared and more knowledgeable about securing their immediate needs. They are certainly more attuned to the situation and more readily recognize its dangers and opportunities. But such "advantages," if they can be so described, are fleeting at best, as people quickly adapt to match their circumstances, and left to their own devices even the formerly wealthy can be successfully poor. As is said in certain quarters, "It ain't brain surgery."

The Andrew Freedman Home: A Retirement Home Built for the Formerly Wealthy

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/realestate/streetscapes-andrew-freedman-home-retirement-home-built-for-formerly-wealthy.html

[formercia]

3. Welcome to the 99%

Soon to be 99.5%

[SoCalNative]

4. I'm sorry

but it's really difficult to have much sympathy for someone who likely had a hand in causing the problems we have now.

[Ikonoklast]

5. $40,000.00 a year for private school tuition for his kids. Wow.

That's more than I netted in any of the last three years.


Looks like this guy never thought he'd run into monetary problems.

This is why these people like this fall so hard, so fast. They never think that their gig might come to a sudden end, nor plan for it in any way, they think the gravy train is going to run forever.

His other problem, besides being an ex-banker along with lots of other unemployed banking employees, is his age.

No one will want him.

My ex-BIL is in the same boat, a little younger than this guy, worked in banking operations, never made a ton of dough to begin with, but his job is gone forever and no one will even look at him.

[Warpy]

7. Human nature is like that, we think it's going to last

The truth is that the corporate expiration date is 55, that's when their actuarial tables tell them that it's cheaper to replace a star employee at the top of his game with a green kid right out of school who's going to take at least 2 years to learn what he's doing. After that magic 55, people are lucky to work retail or food service, earning just enough to put food on the table in a cheap apartment until they can collect Social Security, hoping against hope their bodies will last another 10 years without needing repairs they can't afford.

In the meantime, the corporation has moved them around just enough that there is no way they could have paid off a 30 year mortgage, necessitating the move to the cheap apartment even if they're lucky enough to sell the "executive home."

I watched my own dad go through this in the mid 1970s. He'd been smart, though, always living in cheap housing, my mother working since I was about 11, much of what we had homemade or from discount houses or thrift shops. He was a Depression kid who knew income could be sporadic and debt was death and put his money into blue chip stocks that generated income.

There are big decisions to make early in life, whether to live up to your income or down to your expectations when you are out of a job. I honestly don't know which is the better one, since my friends in financial trouble have a lot of memories that are a hell of a lot better than mine, like being able to take real vacations every few years, something I never did.

Just realize if you're a corporate star that it's going to end when you turn 55, so you'd better plan for that. It's been happening for decades and will likely continue to happen, laws against age discrimination laughed at in all the boardrooms.

[Ikonoklast]

9. Try eating those memories for breakfast.

Not too filling, low in calories.


I have more compassion for the lunch-bucket guy that worked like a dog at a job he never made much money at and then got kicked to the curb than some over-paid banking functionary like the one in the OP.

I realize they both ended up in the same boat, and the guy in the OP was caught up in circumstances beyond his control, but, c'mon already, does everyone that makes a little bit of money just blow it all, thinking that there will always be more next week?

[Warpy]

10. I know that and you know that but most of the people born after 1955

had parents who were too young to remember much of the Depression and they did think they were smart and the good times were going to last until retirement because, hey, they were great at their jobs.

But yeah, I value that lunch bucket guy a hell of a lot more, myself. I just understand how the executive types with the corner offices get blindsided by that age 55 corporate expiration date just like my dad did, even though he had prepared adequately for it.

[kestrel91316]

6. Why is he living in a "modest ranch house"?? If he is relying on charity

and family to pay his bills he needs to get his a-- (and his family's) into an apartment, preferably one too small, poorly insulated, and in a bad neighborhood.

Otherwise, :nopity:

[jwirr]

8. IMO he has still not realized that his talent has nothing to do with

"Why I can't do it?". Your circumstances are beyond your control - you are not going to get younger. He has yet to recognize that his chance to make it in the system is over and this is what he is going to live like the rest of his life. Too old for a job and too young for social security. Hopefully he will finally have some time to think about all the times he thought of the rest of us as deadbeats.

We used to say that the rich had it harder because they had further to fall. I still think it is true. All of the things he lost one at a time after losing the job must have caused a great deal of pain and fear again and again.

[wizstars]

11. "one thing to remember when you're climbin' to the top"--

"you'd better know the way back down, yeah
I can't believe you'd really stumble,
But I always knew you'd fall..."

lines from an old '70s song...quite apropos, I would say.

[Tsiyu]

12. I want to give a damn...really

but I know that Baschoff no doubt looked down his nose at the poor - as did most former middle and upper middle class - wondering 'what their problem is.' Now, he's lookin them in the eye.

It isn't harder for the rich to suddenly live in poverty. Poverty is goddamned hard on everybody. The former well-off just know how to whine about it and get news stories written about them.

It ain't "there but for the grace of gawd go I," it's "woe is me - I'm just not this kind of person!"

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. "With little cash in the bank, they quickly realized they couldn't make it on their own"

Therein lies the problem.

Higher income only meant higher level of debt.

So many grasshoppers, so few ants.

[nichomachus]

14. He wasn't wealthy

He was lead to believe he was wealthy, so he'd slave harder for the ultra-wealthy. They let him have a few toys to keep him plugging away. As he found out, he was just a few paychecks away from Medicaid and minimum wage jobs.

If you can't write a check for $1 million without batting an eye, you are not wealthy. If you can't live off the earnings from your investments, you are not wealthy. The handful of people who run this country can do that. Most of the useful idiots who have been led to believe they're wealthy cannot.

For one thing, most of them, in a desperate climb up the ladder, have to maintain the trappings of the elite, but they really can't afford them and are overleveraged to the max. Despite a six-figure salary, they have to pretend they are wealthy, like spending $40,000 on private school tuition. Really?

Sucker.

[southernyankeebelle]

15. I think this country is great that people can be upper middle class or even millionaires. But

when a family drops to middle class it is a shock to them. Then when they drop down to working poor they surely understand what people are experiencing now. I have been saying this a very long time even before things got really bad. Once the middle class start experiencing what the working poor in this country have been feeling for years and years then truly then finally can understand what the world is going through.

This is america and everyone should try to make it if they can. If you become wealthy that is wonderful. However, if a person is lower and working middle class don't put them down.

[saras]

16. Here ya go, Bob. Another Bob offers some advice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk3mAX5xdxo">Bob Dylan in his prime