View From Your Recession

One of my favorite blogs is Andrew Sullivan's of The Atlantic. For awhile he's been running a regular feature entitled "View From Your Recession" which are letters from people highlighting the impact (or lack thereof) of the current economic malaise on them.

If you have a job I think it's easy to externalize the effect of the recession on people but these letters certainly make it real. I've read many of these letters but one from today resonated more than all the rest...

I arrived on these shores 17 years ago with $2.35 and a college scholarship. I studied like my life depended on it (because, in a way, it did), and my work paid off. I'm now a software engineer with 2 BS degrees and an MS. Having emigrated from hell (ok, maybe not quite hell -- Nigeria -- but definitely hell-adjacent), I know first-hand what it is like to live in a society without an economic safety net. I had gone to bed many times with unresolved pangs of hunger. I wasn't going to take a chance that it would ever happen again.

I worked and saved carefully. Pinched pennies, dined on Ramen noodles and turned down the thermostat in the winter. My house has always been the smallest among my colleagues and my car is over a decade old. So, what did I do with all this money I scrimped and saved? Well, I put 70% into real-estate and 30% into retirement accounts. Big mistake. Huge! [...]

[...]If I had been profligate, at least I would have the memories. It's hard to muster the discipline to save again. It was difficult (horrendous even) to work an average of 75 hours a week for over a decade. It stings to realize that it was all for naught.

The entire letter is well worth a read.