Question Do you think your BK is just the outsourced professional middle class cram-down?

[JackBondLove]

Maybe I'm looking at my BK this way because my business is (was?) as software developer. It took a while, but the big outsourcing places in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) seem to have finally made enough market penetration so that once Big Business had the excuse of the Great Recession, they just dumped their well paid professionals onto the street and hired those folks.

I made all my financial decisions predicated on the belief that I would find a certain amount of decently paid work to swing any debt payments, and with a disaster loan to build a new home (I had been flooded), be able to tie all the debt into a nice net low interest home loan (including getting a 125% "liar" loan.) Well, that expected income never came, so I ran out of cash (after using the last bit to purchase exempt assets.)

I really believe that I will never have such well paid work ever again. Before I would get hired, Big Business would hire some young chipper college graduate at low pay so that he would be "moldable" and not accustomed to having freedom from "The Man", or they would just say the heck with it, hire a half dozen even more moldable chippers in the slums of Calcutta.

Obviously if the labor value of my intellectual skills is practically worthless, I am not a whole lot more marketable then some high school graduate whose career options are working for Target. Those kind of folks can't by anything more than an cheap old starter home (at that's when the banks were lending to such folks), and certainly can't juggle a 6 figure debt; they are the types of folks who can't seem to be able to stay current on their $5K balance card.

I don't have a family, but as I would hard pressed to have even that starter home (BTW, I now have a starter home that was built 90 years ago, 75 years older and half the size of my former home) and feed multiple mouths, how in the world would I be able to pay $1500/mo or so in health insurance? How does anybody? (Of course for me, I have a history of cancer, so it's not like I could get it in any case.) I am even starting to think like a man in the REAL underclass, in that the best way for me to have a family is to just knock up some woman, and let the government pay for the child's expenses.

About the only thing that is keeping me from becoming part of the new high class underclass is that I did do the prudent thing and contributed into my retirement account, and managed to weather then storm quite well (I'm actually above the last peak of late 2007 high - thank goodness retirement accounts are EXEMPT! ) But as I can live now with free rent, Food Stamps, Medicaid (in 2014, when the health reform program mandates that even childless adults must be eligible), and who knows what else, can live a fairly decent college student existence (even teach abroad to pay for my travel), I just can't see being a stupid punch clocker at $8/hr stacking shelves at Target.

Is this what we have come to as a nation? When an early middle-aged man of very high IQ, with multiple graduate degrees in engineering is worth the same to society at large as some low intelligence, lazy, uninterested person who used to spend her time in math class writing such great pomes in her notebook as "OMG Heather, Bill is so in', why is he dating that tramp Julia?"

Enough of my rant

[StartinOver]

Wow. I hear ya! I'm not nearly as well qualified as you... what am I saying, you're right, I'm no more and no less valuable to an employer than you are or that shelf-stocker minimum wage monkey is. I do not have a college degree and I see ads that I can't apply to even though I've been doing the job for years, because they won't even take an application without a degree anymore. Fortunately, at the moment I'm not unemployed. I'm an early 50's female with skills that seem less and less marketable lately.

But yeah, I can see your point. BK and surrender all for me might be my ticket out of the stress of keeping a job only because having one is better than not having one, and I can't find another one that compares to what I have that would take my application.

I can see that I must never ever incur debt of any kind again - I'd be only one pink slip from a near permanent disaster again.

[Flamingo]

One thing that has come out of this economy from the glut years of the 90s into the past decade is that you just cannot bank on anything anymore. You cannot bank on a good job or your long-term employer to keep you on for 30 plus years, you cannot bank on making more money in the future and you cannot take anything for granted. Life has changed in many ways for everyone - credit will not be like it was and handed out like candy, people will learn to live on cash and realize how stupid they were with buying things left and right on credit and then came the job loss and no income to pay the bills (OMG - we have no savings!) and gradually people will lose the materialistic image of the 80s and 90s. No one is looking to buy the new McMansion anymore because it costs a fortune to heat or cool it. Most of America is broke or underwater, jobless, adults moving in with grown children or vice versa, etc., etc.

Filing BK is a big lesson learner for most that they did not plan, made mistakes and relied too much on credit when they did not have the money to pay. It's a free, legal ticket out of it and part of the learning process for many. Society, in part, is responsible for all that with all the hype of buy, buy, buy and buy it now to outdo your neighbor - you want to look good to everyone, right? You won't unless you buy this and in sixteen colors - LOL! Anyone reading this knows what I mean...

Times have just changed...hopefully in time better things for most will come out of it....

[frogger]

Times have just changed...hopefully in time better things for most will come out of it....

Times are changing, they continue to change, and we're going to see MASSIVE changes in the next few years.

I have ideas as to what some of the change will be, but it's going to be "true change", not political talk of "change that we can believe in".

It is going to be interesting.

[Meatstick]

I feel your pain but I don't recall anyone being guaranteed a certain income/lifestyle because they have a degree or multiple degrees. It seems with this crappy economy that those who do have a higher education do have a much better job outlook than those wihout a degree. But then again some colleges today seem nothing more than high-priced adult daycare centers.

[angles]

Times are changing, they continue to change, and we're going to see MASSIVE changes in the next few years.

I have ideas as to what some of the change will be, but it's going to be "true change", not political talk of "change that we can believe in".

It is going to be interesting.

any hints?

[albacore44]

i feel your pain. i have worked for an S & P 500 company for 31 years, and i am 54. i followed my dads footsteps who did the same for 37 years and was able to retire at 58.

I feel very vulnerable. every single person in my division is old. we are the left overs from a corporate merger 10 years ago. i have a locked in pension, and am very fortunate, but i really need to make it to 62. i have been working on a spread sheet depicting "what if' scenarios, in case i dont make it. most people wont retire until well into their 60's due to the fact we don't have retiree medical.

Flamingo is right about the Mcmansion.s, I am so over it, and just the utilities alone are a killer. But i am in a bit of a pickle. it would be difficult for me to move. My 83 year old mother-in-law lives with me, and some of her $$$ bought this place, which is underwater, so if i move she has to go with me, and I have no way to pay her back. so i painted my self into a corner .

i long for a simpler life without all the responsibility. hell i'd be happy in a flippen trailer. in fact the mrs. and i have talked out just living out of a motorhome in a few years...........but with my luck grandma just might out live me.

[blockhead]

It took a while, but the big outsourcing places in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) seem to have finally made enough market penetration so that once Big Business had the excuse of the Great Recession, they just dumped their well paid professionals onto the street and hired those folks.

There are a flood of H1B visa guest workers here taking away jobs from American citizens. They're mostly used to facilitate offshoring

[shark66]

blockhead wrote:

There are a flood of H1B visa guest workers here taking away jobs from American citizens. They're mostly used to facilitate offshoring

I'd beg to differ. It's the companies themselves taking these jobs away. One can't get a H1B visa without a sponsor guaranteeing them a job in writing...

[researchnerd]

JackBondLove, you make an excellent point. I am still working (and thankful for that every day), but DH was laid off 2 years ago and hasn't been able to find anything at even half his former salary. He's an engineer with a university degree and nearly 20 years of experience, and now he's literally cleaning toilets part-time at a job that pays less than unemployment. As you mentioned, he's not any more marketable than a HS graduate at this point, and maybe even less so because he's over 40. It's sad.

Meatstick, a college education hasn't been a guarantee of anything for many years. Even when I graduated from high school 30 years ago, the kids who went to vocational school often had better opportunities than the ones who went on to traditional college. On the other hand, I went back to school mid-career and got a second degree 20+ years later, and doubled my income in less than five years. It almost seems random at this point.