I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5\u201d\u201dliterally\u201d\u201dwhile I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs. I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn\u2019t know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil.<\/p>\n
You wouldn\u2019t know any of that to look at me. I like to think I appear reasonably prosperous. Nor would you know it to look at my r\u00c3\u00a9sum\u00c3\u00a9. I have had a passably good career as a writer\u201d\u201dfive books, hundreds of articles published, a number of awards and fellowships, and a small (very small) but respectable reputation. You wouldn\u2019t even know it to look at my tax return. I am nowhere near rich, but I have typically made a solid middle- or even, at times, upper-middle-class income, which is about all a writer can expect, even a writer who also teaches and lectures and writes television scripts, as I do. And you certainly wouldn\u2019t know it to talk to me, because the last thing I would ever do\u201d\u201duntil now\u201d\u201dis admit to financial insecurity or, as I think of it, \u201cfinancial impotence,\u201d\u009d because it has many of the characteristics of sexual impotence, not least of which is the desperate need to mask it and pretend everything is going swimmingly. In truth, it may be more embarrassing than sexual impotence. \u201cYou are more likely to hear from your buddy that he is on Viagra than that he has credit-card problems,\u201d\u009d says Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist who teaches at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and ministers to individuals with financial issues. \u201cMuch more likely.\u201d\u009d America is a country, as Donald Trump has reminded us, of winners and losers, alphas and weaklings. To struggle financially is a source of shame, a daily humiliation\u201d\u201deven a form of social suicide. Silence is the only protection…<\/p>\n
Financial impotence goes by other names: financial fragility, financial insecurity, financial distress. But whatever you call it, the evidence strongly indicates that either a sizable minority or a slim majority of Americans are on thin ice financially. How thin? A 2014 Bankrate survey, echoing the Fed\u2019s data, found that only 38 percent of Americans would cover a $1,000 emergency-room visit or $500 car repair with money they\u2019d saved. Two reports published last year by the Pew Charitable Trusts found, respectively, that 55 percent of households didn\u2019t have enough liquid savings to replace a month\u2019s worth of lost income, and that of the 56 percent of people who said they\u2019d worried about their finances in the previous year, 71 percent were concerned about having enough money to cover everyday expenses.<\/p>\n