Middle-Class Lifeboat: Careers and Life Choices for Navigating a Changing Economy

© 2007 by Paul Edwards and Sarah Edwards

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Some people’s names and their locations mentioned in this book have been changed upon their request for privacy.

Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Edwards, Paul, 1940–

     Middle class lifeboat : three safeguards to secure your financial future now / by Paul and Sarah Edwards.

         p. cm.

     Includes bibliographical references and index.

     ISBN 978-0-7852-2052-7

     1. Finance, Personal. 2. Budgets, Personal. 3. Quality of life. 4.Middle class. I. Edwards, Sarah (Sarah A.) II. Title.

     HG179.E388 2008

     332.024—dc22

2007037604

Printed in the United States of America

07 08 09 10 11 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

We dedicate this book to the millions of people who are

searching for the way to improve their lives by taking

their futures into their own hands, and we hope the

ideas and guidance shared here will make their

journey through the seas of personal and economic

change simpler and easier.

CONTENTS

PART I – RIDING THE WAVES OF A SEA CHANGE

Chapter One

Surviving and Thriving in New Economic Realities

PART II – SAFEGUARDING YOUR LIVELIHOOD: 50+ WAYS TO BECOME FINANCIALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT WHETHER THE ECONOMY IS UP OR DOWN

Chapter Two

23 Basic Local Services

1. Bill Collecting/Collection Services

2. Cleaning Services

3. Community and Corporate Meeting and Event Planning

4. Community Management

5. Errand Services

6. Family Child Care

7. Handyman Services

8. Hauling Services

9. Home Theater System Installation and Support

10. Interior Decorating

11. Massage and Bodywork

12. Mediation

13. Midwife and Doula Services

14. Mobile Services

15. Paralegal

16. Pest Control

17. Pet Services

18. Sewing Services

19. Small-Town Newspaper Publishing

20. Tax Preparation

21. Travel Services

22. Tutoring and Adult Education

23. Wedding Planning and Consulting Services

Chapter Three

13 Nichable Virtual Products

1. Coaching Services

2. Consulting

3. Customer Support

4. Disease Management

5. Editorial Services

6. Energy Rating and Building Performance Auditing and Rating

7. Grant and Proposal Writing

8. Private Investigation

9. Selling Things on the Web

10. Translation and Interpreting Services

11. Virtual Administration Services

12. Web Services

13. Writing for a Living

Chapter Four

14 Products and Services for New Economic Realities

1. Alternative Energy Installing, Servicing, and Consulting

2. Architectural Salvage

3. Elder Services

4. Environmental Remediation

5. Financial Planning

6. Functional Artist

7. Green Burial Services

8. Microfarming

9. Patient Champion

10. Remodeling for Seniors

11. Repair Services

12. Restoration Services

13. Robot Repair and Maintenance

14. Tabletop Manufacturing

PART III – SAFEGUARDING YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE: NINE OFF-THE-MAP LIFESTYLE

CHOICES FOR INCREASING SATISFACTION WHILE LOWERING THE COST OF LIVING

Chapter Five

Simply Simplifying—Eliminating Stuff That Drags You Down

Chapter Six

Moving to a Small City or Town—Farewell to City and Suburb

Chapter Seven

Nestling in a Nearby Faraway Place—Back to Walden Pond

Chapter Eight

Living in a Foreign Land—a Good Life Abroad

Chapter Nine

Living Rent Free—Room and Board in Inviting Locales

Chapter Ten

Traveling the Land or Sea—Dashboarding,Workamping, and Live-aboard Boating

Chapter Eleven

Bringing Country Life to Town, City, and Suburbs—Urban Bringing Country Thoreaus

Chapter Twelve

Living off the Grid—Powering Down

Chapter Thirteen

Living Together—Shared Homes, Shared Communities

PART IV – SAFEGUARDING YOUR ABILITY TO AFFORD THE LIFE YOU SEEK—

NINE CASHLESS WAYS TO EXTEND YOUR INCOME, WORK LESS, AND LIVE MORE

Chapter Fourteen

Getting Out of the Money Game

Chapter Fifteen

What’s Your Lifeboat?

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

Index

To be middle class in America once meant living

well and having financial security. But today

that comfortable and contented lifestyle is

harder to achieve and maintain.

Parade magazine survey

PART I

Riding the Waves of a Sea Change

Opportunity beckons! But, oh, how it can be disguised. It’s not your imagination. For those of us in the middle class, it is harder to find and keep a good-paying job with dependable benefits. It is harder to retire comfortably. It is more difficult to make ends meet, and life is ever more stressed, complicated, and harried.Most likely you’ve been noticing this pinch and are feeling somewhat, or maybe a lot, bothered—or at least uncertain about what it means for your future, your bank balance, and what your life will be like if something doesn’t change.

We first started to notice this shift several years ago. It seemed we were working harder and harder to maintain the lifestyle we’d achieved. Although we’ve always enjoyed our work writing, speaking, consulting, and broadcasting, our days were growing ever more complicated and stressful. At first we thought we just needed to work a little harder, manage our efforts effectively, and everything would even out again. That’s what we assumed—until we began interviewing hundreds of people from several dozen different fields we’ve been following for more than a decade.

As we talked with person after person in one field after another, it was clear what we were experiencing was neither particular to us nor passing. Almost everyone we talked to was working harder and feeling stressed about how to find a better balance between personal desires and daily economic pressures.

Don’t worry, though; this book is not about how bad times are. The economic sea change in our economy that’s making life more difficult for middle-class workers offers new, creative opportunities and challenges as we transition from a job-based corporate economy.Most importantly, the book is about what those opportunities are and how we can ride through the waves of change and continue to enjoy the promise, security, and gratification a middle-class lifestyle has long represented.

The term sea change is one of the most evocative phrases in the English language. It refers to a profound transformation. Not just a readjustment or little shift, but a radical change in fundamental character and structure. There have been other economic sea changes over the course of history, such as when we changed from hunters and gatherers to farmers and herders, or when we moved from an agrarian life in small villages to an urban life in large cities. Similarly, life changed radically when factory work was eclipsed by information and service work. But such major shifts are not common.

Most economic changes are incremental, allowing new generations of people to gradually shift the way they live and work. The creation of an American middle class, for example, was itself a gradual change, dating from before the time Tocqueville visited America in 1831 and wrote about the novelty of a country composed of an innumerable crowd who are . . . not exactly rich nor yet quite poor. In his notes Tocqueville marveled,The whole society seems to have turned into one middle class.This economic middle grew gradually and then burgeoned after World War II when it became possible to have a middle-class life on a working- class wage. During that era, instead of asking why some people were rich, as Adam Smith did in Wealth of Nations, scholars began for the first time in history to explore why some people were still poor.

But compared to this kind of gradual evolution, a sea change happens relatively quickly and catches us off guard. Such unexpected shifts are confusing and disorienting, because we’re no longer able to count on things working the way we expect. Best-laid plans go out the window, and we’re not sure just what to replace them with in such an unfamiliar and uncertain economy. As a thirty-nine-year-old worker in the auto parts industry put it when the company where he’d worked for ten years to qualify for full-pay benefits declared bankruptcy, The hardest part of all this is that there was no warning. If we could have had a couple of years’ warning,we could adjust our lifestyle. Instead he found his life turned upside down virtually overnight.

While these huge shifts come on suddenly, adjusting to them personally isn’t always as rapid. It takes some time and effort. The way things have been done begins to crumble in the wake of a sea change, but the new structures and economic safeguards for how things will be are not in place yet. Even younger workers with more flexibility can get caught in choppy economic waters. But it is this very uncertainty that provides such a wealth of new opportunities. The upside of a sea change is that if we understand what’s happening and see the signs of what’s coming,we can participate in shaping the quality and kind of lives we and our children will be living as the new economy comes to the fore.

That’s the goal of this book. Part I provides a snapshot of what we’re dealing with, offers four steps we can take to survive and thrive in the evolving new economy, and discusses how Parts II, III, and IV will supply a wealth of choices for how we can safeguard our income, our lifestyle, and our ability to afford our lives.

Many Americans are upset about the direction

of their lives, but find it difficult to imagine

how their course could be altered.

Harwood Group. Futurist magazine,

September–October 2004

CHAPTER ONE

Surviving and Thriving in New Economic Realities

Viewed one by one, the signs of the economic sea change going on around us don’t seem all that significant at first. They may seem more like the result of unwise personal decisions, a misguided public policy, or a market aberration. But considered as a whole, they reflect a confluence of forces beyond the scope of any single personal, political, or economic decision, and their impact can jolt us into action.Here are a few of the signs furrowing many a brow these days. They cause people like you to make some changes—as we and many others have been doing over the past few years—in how we live and work. At the very least, the signs prompt us to begin looking for possible new choices.

For example, how many of the following changes, or the impending possibility of them, are already affecting you, your family, friends, or neighbors?

♦ Longer work hours

♦ Increased workload without additional compensation

♦ Layoffs, closures, or required pay cuts

♦ Fewer or no vacation and/or sick days

♦ Increased health insurance costs or no health insurance benefits

♦ Loss or freezing of retirement benefits

♦ Lower return or loss of investment income

♦ Increased cost of gasoline and/or cost of heating and cooling a home

♦ Increased cost of day care

♦ Longer waits to find a new job

♦ Available jobs paying less than previous ones laid off from

♦ Jobs being offshored to workers in another country

♦ Higher personal debt to keep up one’s lifestyle

♦ Reduced or no government benefits to get through a tough time

♦ Need to shop more at box discount stores and outlet centers

♦ Inability to save as much or not at all

♦ Little or no discretionary income for things one once enjoyed

♦ Less time to devote to the aspects of life you value or enjoy most

We don’t want to dwell on the statistics available to show how common and widespread these signs have become recently. In fact, we hope your reaction is that it’s not all that bad for you yet. Hopefully it won’t ever be. By international standards we in the American middle class are still living well, but a review of a variety of surveys of middle-class Americans over the past few years sheds light on a growing unease beneath our apparent prosperity. They reflect a disquieting rise of concern about such things as being able to:

♦ Keep or replace a job

♦ Pay the bills each month

♦ Get ahead financially

♦ Obtain affordable quality health care

♦ Finance a college education

♦ Provide for a comfortable retirement

♦ Have time off for family, friends, vacations, relaxation

All such things were once considered relatively secure aspects of a middle-class life, yet over half of us express concern for the first time in generations that economic circumstance will be worse for our children and future generations. The Gallup Worry Index, which tracks public fears on economic issues, showed us as an anxious nation, recording as of this writing its highest anxiety reading ever.

If you would like to read more about the findings of these studies and others we mention in this chapter, you will find them listed under Studies in the LEARN MORE section at the end of the chapter.

A Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances offers a detailed

portrait of the financial balance sheet of the typical U.S. family:

♦ About $3,800 in the bank

♦ No retirement account, but living next to neighbors who have about $35,000 in a retirement account

♦ No mutual funds, stocks, or bonds

♦ Own a house worth $160,000, on which $95,000 is owed

♦ An income of more than $43,000 a year, but unable to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance

One way many of us have managed to stay afloat so far, despite such concerns, is by living on credit. Credit card debt is at an all-time high, averaging $9,312 per household. But how much more debt can we carry, and how much stress does our growing debt load add for the 80 percent of us who are already overstressed from juggling family and work? With minimum monthly payments and no additional borrowing, it will take an average of ten years to pay off such a debt, and the overall cost will be almost double the original amount borrowed. So is it any wonder 81 percent of people polled report experiencing some type of financial difficulty?

Analysis of household income over the past fifteen years tells us that good economic times today are little better for most of us than what would have been considered bad times back then. But again, our aim is not to focus on economic woes. You have undoubtedly already read or heard plenty about the thin economic margin so many of us balance on and what could happen were it to suddenly disappear.

Our goal is to emphasize that, for reasons beyond our personal control, many of the benefits we’ve come to rely upon to maintain a secure and comfortable middle-class lifestyle are slipping away, leaving us with the challenge of how to fill in the gaps. With three out of four working people believing it is becoming harder today to achieve the American Dream, many are already finding exciting and imaginative ways to do just that.When polled, nearly half of Americans say they’ve begun making voluntary changes to address forces that are threatening their way of life. They are building an economic lifeboat for:

♦ Financial security and a sense of control over their future

♦ Dependable work that is interesting and meaningful

♦ A simpler life, with fewer work hours

♦ More time for loved ones, personal interests, and community

♦ Less pressure, stress, and complexity in their lives

♦ A greater sense of autonomy and freedom within a close, stable community

How they are doing this, and how you can do it too, is precisely what this book will address. Here are the four essential steps we need to take starting right away:

Four Steps to Securing Your Own

Middle-Class Lifeboatsm

First, we must educate ourselves as to just what is happening and understand the forces that are shaping the changes around us. Otherwise we will neither recognize the safeguards we must put into place nor see the many new opportunities that are open to us. Next, we must decide how we will safeguard our livelihoods to assure that we have a secure, dependable, and rewarding source of income we can rely upon in the evolving new economy. Then we need to make positive changes in the way we live to safeguard the quality of our life. Finally, we need to make sure we can afford to make the changes we want to make and enjoy pursuing them.

So let’s begin by looking at just what is happening.What are the forces driving this economic sea change? How might they affect you, and what changes might they motivate you to consider making?

Step One to Securing Your Own Middle-Class Lifeboatsm:

Understand What’s Happening and the Personal Changes It’s Inspiring

Life has always been a struggle for the poor. The rich have always weathered change with less difficulty than the rest of us. But the middle class holds a unique and sometimes precarious position somewhere between the extremes of rich and poor, a place where we may never feel as financially secure as the rich, but where we can rest assured that if we do a good job at our work, we can enjoy a comfortable life. For most, such a life includes a nice home, good schools for our children, material comforts, being cared for in our old age—all the things that add up to making us feel sufficiently successful and satisfied.

Right now 92 percent of Americans define themselves as somewhere in the middle class, but most of us don’t think it’s as easy to stay there as it once was. Whereas 95 percent of voters believe you could enjoy a solid middle-class lifestyle twenty-five years ago if you worked hard and played by the rules, today less than half belief that, says a Douglas E. Schoen poll. Instead, most of us believe our numbers are shrinking.

Analysts agree. They are noticing that as the global economy progresses, our vast middle class is decreasing at a rate of 5 to 6 percent each year, and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Already, the most recent Census Bureau figures show that the richest fifth of U.S. households received 50.4 percent of all national income, the highest level since they began compiling such data in 1967, while the poorest fifth got just 3.4 percent. Loss of middle-income jobs has been well documented for some time, but Census Bureau data now shows that middle class neighborhoods are disappearing at an even faster rate than comparable jobs.

Such patterns are common in times of large-scale economic change.When the United States shifted quickly from agrarian times—when wealth was distributed relatively evenly—to the industrial era, the gap between rich and poor in some urban areas left the wealthiest 4 percent of the population in control of as much as two-thirds of a city’s wealth.

In other words, in such times as these, pressure to hold one’s own economically increases. Obviously we don’t want to slip into poverty, but we don’t want to work ourselves into the ground either just to stay where we are. So what are the forces catalyzing the economic sea change that are making life more difficult, raising anxiety, and propelling us to question if our way of life is as secure as we would like it? Here are six of the key interrelated forces that are churning up our economic seas.

1. Globalization. The increasing integration of worldwide markets for goods, services, and capital over the past decade is one of the key forces driving the changes we’re experiencing. It means that we in the United States are now sharing many of the traditional well-paying jobs with workers in other countries. More U.S. jobs, including those in start-up companies, are being offshored, that is, sent to other countries, like China, India, Mexico, the Philippines, and Eastern European nations, where workers are paid far less and have fewer benefits. This includes white-collar jobs once thought to be secure, such as analysts, accountants, customer service reps, engineers, graphic and software designers, marketers, programmers, and even some medical specialties. Economic analysts predict the offshored share of such jobs could double in the next three years.

Pasadena Now, an online newspaper, advertised on their Web site: We are seeking a newspaper journalist based in India to report on city government and political scene in Pasadena, California.

2. Othersourcing. An increasing numbers of jobs that were once done by people are now being done by nonhuman means (such as automation, digitalization, and robotization) for example making bank deposits, checking-in for flights at airports, moving cameras on television sets, and checking out merchandise at retail stores. Keep in mind that by using labor-saving technology, companies can continue to profit and grow without adding jobs.Management guru Tom Peters predicts that between these first two forces, 90 percent of the white-collar jobs we know today may no longer exist within the next dozen years.

3. Growing dominance of multinational corporations. In a democratic society such as ours, an important role of national government is to intervene in the marketplace when necessary to assure economic stability—good jobs at decent wages and strong, safe, and secure families and communities. One effect of globalization, however, has been the rise of multinational corporations and financial institutions not subject to the jurisdictional controls of our national government. This lack of jurisdiction weakens our government’s ability to provide a counterbalancing role in maintaining economic stability. These financial institutions can operate beyond the reach of public accountability, making our role as consumers more important to society than our role as citizens or workers. In this position, our voice is often confined to little more than choosing which products to purchase from among these corporations.

4. Dwindling natural resources. Growing international competition for dwindling natural resources is yet another factor in the economic sea change. The United States, Europe, and Japan have been using 80 percent of the world’s natural resources, some of which are becoming depleted by rapid population growth and increased standards of living. Now economies in other countries are expanding too, and we must compete with them for these vital resources. Companies in India, China, and South Korea, for example, are competing with U.S. companies for oil supplies in countries as far and wide as Myanmar, Canada, Russia and the many nations of Africa.

Such competition means U.S. business and industry must pay more for things they’ve long enjoyed at a low cost, such as oil, gasoline, natural gas, water, and everything we consume that requires such resources. These costs are, of course, passed on to us as consumers.More than half of Americans polled say, for example, that rising fuel costs are causing them financial hardship. Six in ten report they’re cutting back on discretionary spending as a result of higher gasoline and energy prices.

Also, as costs of commodities rise, businesses that can no longer compete are forced to close, while others feel compelled to make major cuts in their work force and/or benefits. Federal, state, and local government services are also affected by these rising costs, and recent cutbacks in such programs as Medicare, Social Security, job training, and unemployment compensation are expected to continue.

5. A cultural shift in social responsibility. Such cuts in the private and public sector revenue mean that we as individuals and families are increasingly left to shoulder more of the cost for economic safeguards once provided by our employers or the government.We find ourselves required to:

♦ pay all or a larger part of our health care costs

♦ manage our own retirement funds in place of guaranteed pensions

♦ assume the risk that accompanies such investments

♦ cover the costs of an economic crisis, such as being laid off, injured on the job, becoming seriously ill, or providing care for ill or disabled family members

This shift is having a particularly profound effect on the family. Long thought of as the backbone of economic security and stability, marriage and family are becoming an economic risk. Married couples and families are more likely to file bankruptcy, lose their homes, and fall behind on their credit card debt than are singles. We’re not used to thinking of children as an economic liability, says Jacob S. Hacker, author of The Great Risk Shift, but fully one quarter of ‘poverty spells’ originate with the birth of a child. The Census Bureau tells us that for the first time, households headed by singles outnumber those headed by married ones. Also a first, 51 percent of adult women and nearly 50 percent of men now live without a spouse. This shift in the epicenter of risk is not just a U.S. phenomenon—it is occurring across the Western world.

Basics Cost More

Some vital expense categories have far outstripped the consumer price index. Percentage changes from September 1986 to September 2006:

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

6. Rising cost of essentials.While many things, such as T-shirts, digital cameras, video phones, and computers are becoming cheaper, most of our fixed costs, the essentials we must have, such as housing, utilities, gasoline, transportation, health care, child care, medication, and education, are becoming progressively more expensive. Families are being forced to live beyond their means, just to pay for the basics, such as housing and health care, says Christian Weller, a senior economist for the Center for American Progress.

The average homeowner spends more than a fifth of his or her total annual income to pay the mortgage, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, and utilities. More than a third of homeowners spend more than 30 percent of their annual income on mortgage payments alone. With the U. S. population aging and living longer, rising health care costs are of particular concern. Over the past year, the cost of health care premiums rose to an annual average of $11,500 for a family plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. This doubling in only seven years is twice as fast as the overall inflation rate and salary increases. A Watson Wyatt study reports a vast majority of employers are planning to cut or eliminate health coverage for current and future retirees. In fact, health care costs borne by both workers and retirees are expected to keep on increasing, says Paul Fronstin of Employee Benefits Research Institute.

While we can easily cut back on or do without a larger T-shirt wardrobe and forego the newest electronic device, living without the essentials is a much greater challenge we’d prefer not to contemplate. Yet some of us are already facing trade-offs we’d rather not make. Do I drive an hour each way to work from a larger home we can afford, or does the family stay in a cramped apartment closer to work? Does gas money come before regular family dental care, savings for college, or funds for a much-needed vacation? Do I reduce how often I take my prescription medicine, let it go unfilled, or make the credit card payment?

The prospect of having to make such trade-offs is spurring people like those you will meet in this book to step out of this discomfort zone and create new lives for themselves that safeguard their livelihoods and the quality of their lives.

Personal Changes Inspired by These Forces: As we contemplate the full impact of these changes, it becomes clear that some of us may not be able to continue living and working in the costly ways we do today, and most of us won’t want to. We’re seeking lives that cost less in terms of our health, happiness, and future well-being. In other words, we need to find what could be called sustainable ways of living. We invite you to consider careers and ways of living that allow you to enjoy a secure source of income outside the hyperconsumerism that keeps us buried in debt, working too hard, and diminishing our overall sense of satisfaction.

Sustainable Living Defined: Simply put, sustainable means that which can be maintained over time. In this context we are referring to living and working in ways that don’t jeopardize our security, health, and well-being over time, as well as that of our families, communities, and the natural resources we rely on to live a good life.

So sustainable would be the opposite of I just can’t keep this up. That’s how Becky Kowalski put it when she told us she had to find an alternative to her daily schedule. It involves driving her eight-year-old daughter to a private special education school in one part of the city, then heading off through heavy, smog-laden traffic to her job in another part of town, then back through the traffic to get her daughter after work, and home again across town where she can afford to live. A single mother, Becky makes what most of us would consider a lot of money, yet she worries constantly about whether she will be able to continue paying for her daughter’s private school with special education and tutoring. She worries if she can keep up with escalating rent increases. But most of all, she worries about her daughter’s emotional and academic problems and that she only sees her mother when she’s rushed, exhausted, harried, and on edge. I wish she had a better mother, Becky confessed sadly.

Sustainable would be a counter to feeling as if there has to be another way, as Lee Lyons expressed it when he was laid off from his job of thirty-three years just months before his retirement vested. I never saw it coming, he said, proceeding to explain how disappointed he felt when he realized that at his age he not only wasn’t going to find a job that paid what he had been earning, but he wasn’t going to be able to find a job for half his past wage. In fact, at his age, it appeared he wasn’t going to be able to find any full-time job. Not long after this realization, Lee suffered a heart attack. After a series of heart surgeries, he is now disabled. To make ends meet, his wife, who had been approaching retirement from her job, rented an apartment in another city, where she could take a higher paying job. Her new job requires near full-time travel. Whenever possible, she sees her husband on weekends.

Another word for sustainable might be affordable. That is, living and working in a way we can afford to keep doing without:

♦ Going bankrupt or deeper in debt.

♦ Suffering from one or more of the chronic stress-related illnesses so common today. Conditions ranging from high blood pressure and heart disease to obesity and diabetes are all becoming more prevalent and striking at ever-younger ages.

♦ Depleting our environment of the vital resources that sustain us, such as clean air and pure water, or despoiling it so we will be susceptible to the growing number of environmentally related illnesses, such as asthma, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and psychiatric or developmental problems like ADHD or autism.

Because individual circumstances, needs, and desires differ, the changes individuals and families want to make to safeguard their middle-class lives are different as well. The task before us is to make innovative choices that will work for us personally. That means being explorative, bold, and creative, as well as willing to look beyond the usual way things have been to what could be.

Tina Alvarado, 43, for example, was living in a small apartment working as a leasing specialist in San Diego, California, one of the largest and most desirable, but also most expensive,metropolitan areas in the United States. Visiting friends in Helena, Alabama, outside of Birmingham, she realized what a toll the high costs, long commutes, and tension-filled hours on the job were taking on her health and happiness. They had left her feeling stressed, isolated, and unhappy.At age forty-three, she also faced the reality that, with the escalating cost of housing in her metro area, she was never going to be able to own her own home. In fact, the average mortgage payment there is more than double the average rent.

The sense of community and personal friendship Tina experienced among her friends in Helena, especially at their church, was the biggest draw for her. I knew I needed to make a big change, she recalls.Within the year, even though she didn’t have a job offer in hand, she gathered the courage to quit her job and relocate. It was a daring move, she admits. It required a great deal of faith. But Alabama has a diversified economy coupled with a relatively low cost of living, reasonable housing prices, and low property taxes and utility costs.

Six months later Tina had not only found a job, but she’d also found her dream job with a dream company. I love this job, she says. I want to keep this job until I retire. And she is now the proud owner of her own home. Her new home cost less than a tenth of the average home price in San Diego. But, best of all, she no longer feels alone and isolated. In the church community that drew her there, she has found the close friendships and deeply spiritual life she had been missing in San Diego.

The Blanchards decided to make a more dramatic change. Katy, 57, a fiber artist, and Rick, 62, a landscape architect, had lived their whole lives in a metro area, but they yearned for a simpler way of life closer to nature—somewhere Katy could grow dye plants for her artwork. They took a trip across the western United States in search of their dream location and found fifty-six acres of land outside of Abiquiu,New Mexico. As appealing as living on this beautiful site was, when it came to actually leaving city life behind, Rick, who was telecommuting to an employer in another metro area, hesitated. He was worried about the financial repercussions of such drastic change, until his banker convinced him they’d be much better off living in a less expensive area like Abiquiu.

The Blanchards now live there off the grid, relying on solar power for electricity and water from the well on their property. Katy continues to knit and weave but also grows dye plants and indigenous medicinal herbs and teaches these lost arts to others. Rick still telecommutes to his California employer. I knew that if we stayed where we were, we’d have to work our tails off forever, Katy explains. Every cell in my body told me I needed to do this, and we are very happy we did! It’s a blast.

Peter and Susan Baylies of North Andover, New Hampshire, made a far less drastic, but equally unusual choice.Until Peter was laid off from his job at Digital Equipment Corporation, he and Susan were juggling the financial, physical, and psychological stresses of a typical two-career couple with a new baby. Once Peter was home full-time while looking for a new job, it didn’t take long to realize how much easier life was for everyone in the family. Going against convention, they decided that Peter wouldn’t take another job. Instead he became a stay-at-home dad. Susan, an elementary school teacher, became the primary breadwinner, and Peter takes care of their two boys, now ages nine and twelve. One surprise they had not anticipated was just how much money they’ve saved with Peter working at home, especially on day care costs. Their choice has worked so well that Peter began publishing a newsletter for other stay-at-home dads and has written a book called The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook with Jessica Toonkel.

Of course, your own choices might be quite different from any of these. What’s increasingly clear is that we in the middle class can’t simply wait and hope economic forces, investments, or government policies will protect us.We must begin now to make new choices, and fortunately there are many possibilities, from making simple adjustments to major alterations. Like Tina, Katy, Rick, Peter, Susan, and many others you will meet in the following chapters, we need to start looking at our own discomfort zones and deciding what level of changes would be comfortable and attractive to us.

Consider, for example, your own level of discomfort with your financial circumstances right now.Where would you place your discomfort level on a scale of one to ten, with zero being none at all and ten being at absolute wit’s end?

How about your present quality of life? How much are financial, career, and lifestyle pressures detracting from your ability to enjoy your daily life? How uncomfortable have these pressures become for you?

Given the level of discomfort you are feeling, how much of a change might you be willing to consider making?

♦ A Little: Simplifying Your Life.Mini-sizing your current life to make it easier, simpler, or more secure, for example, spending less, paying off debt, making small changes in your spending priorities, moving to a smaller home in the same area, or deciding what’s most important to you and then rearranging your schedule(s) to put things first in your day, the way Peter and Susan have done.

♦ Quite a Bit: Redesigning Your Life.Making a more significant change such as taking a less stressful, more secure job; cutting back the hours you work to focus more on home, family, or community; telecommuting instead of driving to work; starting a full- or part-time sustainable independent career; or relocating to a lower-cost city or state, the way Tina has done.

♦ A Whole Lot: Transforming Your Life.Making a head-turning change, as Katy and Rick have done, something quite beyond what people customarily consider, such as moving to a remote location or another country, living and working on the land or off the grid, farming in your urban backyard, setting up a shared living arrangement with others, or living and working full-time on the road from your RV.

As you reflect on how much change you might consider, should you want to learn more about the forces creating the sea change we’re undergoing and how they might affect you, you’ll find a wealth of resources for exploring them further in the LEARN MORE section at the end of this chapter.

The challenge we face today. . . is how to engage in the global economy without decimating our own middle class . . . The logic of global capitalism as currently practiced is to drive down workers’ wages, weaken their bargaining power, and strip away their social protections in both rich and poor countries, while simultaneously encouraging . . . the excesses of debt-driven consumerism.

The Optimistic Progressive

Step Two to Securing Your Own Middle-Class Lifeboatsm:

Safeguarding Your Livelihood

The more we understand about the changes our economy is undergoing, the clearer it becomes that to safeguard our livelihood, we each need to have a reliable source of independent income that’s not dependent on having a corporate job, a corporate pension plan, reliable investments, or the continuation of Social Security benefits. This does not mean we all have to go out and quit our jobs, as long as we have good ones. Nor does it mean we should discontinue or cut back our retirement savings and investment plans. It simply means we need to have a full- or part-time independent income in the household to:

♦ supplement possible benefit or salary cuts

♦ offset rising prices

♦ reduce debt

♦ serve as a safety net to fall back on and build from should your job suddenly be downsized, eliminated, or offshored

♦ protect against changes in pension, investment, or Social Security plans

♦ supplement other retirement income when that time comes

On the other hand, if you’ve already been downsized, laid off, or outsourced one time too many, don’t like the jobs available to you, or find your salaried position too stressful, uncertain, and unrewarding, you may well be attracted to the flexibility, assurance, choice, and freedom of having a full-time independent income.

What’s important to remember in this economy is that in order to survive and meet their legal obligation, corporations must put profits first. For them, employees are costs, so when competition rises, they need to use every means to limit their costs. Our salaries and benefits are highly vulnerable in any company that must jockey to survive in a world marketplace where using the cheapest labor and providing the fewest possible benefits are rewarded.

It’s even more important to remember, though, that our situation in this economy is by no means hopeless.We may feel totally dependent on having a job with benefits, but that’s because we have forgotten that it’s possible to support ourselves independently.Having a self-sustaining independent income, or what today would be called being self-employed, may be unusual in today’s job-based economy, but it’s been only in recent history that the majority of adults have sold their labor for a wage. As recently as 1820, for example, most people supported themselves by selling the product of their labor. At that time three out of four Americans were farmers. Each family produced what was needed for household or local use. Even the typical urban worker was a self-employed artisan or craftsperson working with others in the household to produce and sell what they needed.

Only after the Industrial Revolution did most of us lose control over our own means of production from a farm, workshop, or store. Only then did we begin to forego our independence by selling our time and labor as a commodity instead of using or selling what we produced ourselves. By becoming self-employed, full- or part-time, we regain the security of owning our means of production and can assume greater control over what, when, how often, and for how much we work.

With this goal in mind, in Part II we will identify and profile more than fifty sustainable careers that can be done independently or in a job. These careers fall into three sectors that we believe have the greatest potential to remain secure or grow in demand as the new economy evolves:

1. Careers providing basic local services that cannot be outsourced. Chapter 2, 27 Basic Local Services, focuses on hands-on or face-to-face careers needed within local communities. In many ways these will become the most stable and dependable income sources in the new economy because they cannot be offshored, yet people will continue to need and want them. Also, as the costs of oil and gas rise, communities will of necessity want and need to rely more on local products and services.

2. Virtual careers providing niche products and services via a high-speed Internet connection or other means of telecommunication. Chapter 3, 13 Nichable Virtual Products and Services, describes careers you can pursue by serving clients and customers far and wide through computer and/or telephone technology. These careers offer a great deal of flexibility, allowing you, should you choose, to move to a different part of the country, including smaller communities, remote areas, or even another country, while still having access to customers from large population areas or even a worldwide market.

3. Careers addressing new needs arising from the emerging economy.

Chapter 4, 14 Products and Services for New Economic Realities, features careers, including green careers, that address new needs resulting from the six forces we’ve described above— from globalization and dwindling natural resources to a shift in social responsibility and rising costs of essentials.While some of these careers may be less established at the moment, they will probably provide the greatest income potential in the future as both the general public and businesses go about adjusting how they live and work to new economic realities.

To identify the fifty-plus careers we selected from these three sectors, we evaluated dozens of possible careers using a Durability Scale based on eight criteria for choosing a sustainable living career today and in the years to come. We then narrowed down the many possibilities in terms of two factors: first, how well does this career fit into present and emerging economic realities, and second, how well does it fit our personal needs for a simpler, saner, and less harried lifestyle. A final screen included those that scored highest in their likelihood to provide a dependable income while also strengthening one’s community and, in turn, society. Here are the eight criteria we used:

Criteria for a Sustainable Living Career

Economic Reality Fit

1. Strong income potential in an established and stable or a new and emerging field that can be pursued as a self-employed individual (if one chooses), in both good times and not-so-good times

2. Resistant to offshoring, that is, it can be done locally or remotely via telecommunications in a specialized niche

3. Not unduly dependent upon discretionary income, that is income remaining after paying for products and services one considers a necessity

4. Not easily replaced by technology

Personal Reality Fit

5. Low start-up costs if the career is being pursued independently

6. Low overhead costs for needed materials and services, including the ability to obtain needed materials, supplies, and help locally and little need for travel or other uses of costly fossil fuels

7. Readily barterable that is, things others want or need but dislike doing, complain about, or don’t have needed resources or skills to do themselves) to reduce dependence of producing high levels of income that require overworking

8. Reasonable stress level and flexible hours

Each career profile begins with a set of mini-charts describing how well the career meets these criteria. To further help you evaluate the viability of these careers,we’ve provided a Durability Rating in each profile.Using a five-point scale, this rating summarizes at-a-glance our projection of how strongly we believe the career will continue to reflect the above criteria in years to come.

In the profile for each career we explain:

♦ What makes it a good choice for the new economy

♦ Income potential

♦ What it involves

♦ Who it serves

♦ What skills or training are needed

♦ What to watch out for

♦ What people who are doing it have to say about it

♦ Other resources you can turn to

As you explore these careers, you will notice there are many meaningful opportunities to apply experience and expertise from existing jobs, trades, and professions in new ways and venues, as well as many newer, emerging, or more cutting-edge opportunities for those who are ready to engage in more pioneering pursuits. None of the careers we’ve included require advanced degrees or other extensive education.Many such professions and trades, however, are now and will continue to be sustainable for years to come. This is particularly true of professions and trades that involve a hands-on, local service, such as nursing; legal services; practicing allopathic, homeopathic, and chiropractic medicine; mortuary services; various medical ancillary services, such as phlebotomy and mammography; plumbing; hair, nail, and facial care; the construction trades; psychotherapy; pharmacy; and dental care.

An affluent society is one in which all people’s material wants are easily satisfied.

Marshall Sahlins, Stone-Age Economics

Step Three to Securing Your Own Middle-Class Lifeboatsm:

Safeguarding Your Quality of Life

While a dependable, independent income is essential to safeguarding a middle-class lifestyle, it alone is not sufficient to preserve our way of life. A middle-class way of life is about more than having money. It is also an emotional state of mind, not having a certain amount of income or material possessions. People with incomes under $35,000 a year to over $350,000 a year consider themselves to be middle class. One in five of those earning more than $100,000 a year report living paycheck-to-paycheck, and a 2007 survey by Discover Financial Services found that 18 percent of them could only continue their current lifestyle for one month or less if they lost their income. So being middle class is about both feeling economically secure and having what we consider to be a good life, or at least being able to look forward to a good life in the future through our continued best efforts.

Surveys show that most of us are still surviving financially, but the physical, social, and emotional price of keeping up with ever-rising costs of having a good life is taking a toll on our sense of well-being. This can be equally true even with an established independent income that protects us from corporate, stock market, or governmental whims and from changes in technology or globalization. If you’re working morning, noon, and night with no end in sight to make ends meet, it may look as though you’re in the middle class, but you will feel more like you’re in the overworking class. To safeguard our quality of life, we also need ways to circumvent the continual demand to spend more and more of our time and energy working to make more and more money. So people are finding ways to live that cost far less, freeing them to work less, and allowing them to do the things they consider the good life.

In Part III of Middle-Class Lifeboatsm we feature innovative and imaginative ways people are adjusting how they live to better suit their personal needs and values in view of the uncertainty and changing nature of the economy. Some, for example, are seeking a life that’s more family-centered. Eric Mack was traveling to 150 business meetings a year for his work. This left him little time to be with his wife, Kathy, and their four young daughters. Even moving his work home didn’t help because he was always on the road. He and Kathy decided on what was, for them, a better way. They moved to what we call a nearby faraway place, a small mountain village an hour from a nearby urban area where Eric could afford to take on fewer clients, work fewer hours, buy a larger home, and homeschool their daughters.

Others are tired of working hard at jobs they don’t enjoy just so they can live a high-maintenance lifestyle. Carolyn and John Grace, for example, were successful Boston lawyers making what they refer to as lawyer’s money, but summer vacations to Swans Island, Maine, with their four children showed them a simpler, slower, more pleasant way of life. By saving and learning a new craft during evenings, they pulled together the resources and knowledge to move to Swans Island, where they became vintage blanket weavers using wool from local sheep ranches (www.swansislandblanket.com).

Still others want to retire, but they can’t unless they find a less costly way to live.When Chris and Al Kocourek married, Al had already retired, and they lived in different East Coast cities. They wanted to relocate somewhere they could retire without the cold winters, humid summers, and high cost of living. But they also wanted the cultural sophistication and quality of services available in Manhattan or Santa Fe, just without the high costs. Their solution was to move to San Miguel,Mexico. There they enjoy what for them is a near-perfect climate, seventies and eighties during the day and fifties at night, a walking city of galleries, and a wealth of cultural events and lecture series. They also have the benefit of excellent health care services. Here they pay for needed medical care out-of-pocket for far less per visit than their monthly health insurance premiums in the United States, not to mention the co-pays that were an additional cost.

Nine Off-the-Map Lifestyle Choices for Increasing

Satisfaction and Lowering Costs

1. Eliminating Stuff That Drags You Down

2. Moving to a Small City or Town

3. Nestling in a Nearby Faraway Place

4. Living Abroad

5. Living Rent-Free

6. Traveling the Land or Sea

7. Bringing Country Living to Town

8. Living Off the Grid

9. Living with Others

Whatever the motivation, many people are stepping out of convention and innovating more rewarding ways to live. Again, as we mentioned, the choices individuals and families are making vary in how much change they are willing to undertake. Not everyone wants to fundamentally change their way of life as these couples have. Some like Gail Sullivan of Baldwin, Georgia, simply want to simplify their lives, putting them on a diet, so to speak—cutting back or getting rid of the things they don’t need or even want anymore.

Gail went through her entire house and purged anything she no longer needed. It has been very liberating.My things no longer own me, she told us. It’s like reclaiming my life for what’s really important.

Whether you’re interested in tweaking, redesigning, or overhauling your life, in Chapters 5 through 13 you’ll find nine popular choices people are making to live better for less. You may not have heard of some of these options; others you may be aware of but never considered.We invite you to explore each of them.You may be surprised at what you’ll find appealing once you see how others are approaching and enjoying these choices.

Step Four to Securing Your Own Middle-Class Lifeboatsm:

Safeguarding Your Ability to Afford the Life You Seek

In Part IV, Chapter 14, we describe some new—and some not-so-new—ways people are finding to make sure they have what they want and need without relying so heavily on making lots and lots of money. Today we tend to think we need money for just about everything and anything. But in past times, money was only one of many ways folks were able to attain the wherewithal for a good life.

Nine Cashless Ways to Extend Your Income

♦ Do It Yourself

♦ Helping Out

♦ Co-ops

♦ Lending and Sharing

♦ Exchanges or Swaps

♦ Regiving Networks

♦ Bartering

♦ Time Banks

♦ Local Currencies

Over the past few generations, we’ve become convinced that cashless alternatives like making or trading for the things we need are somehow not as good or prestigious as paying hard, cold cash. But such a belief can turn us into wage slaves and handcuff us to lives of white, blue, or pink-collar drudgery that may provide lots of material things but leave little time or energy to enjoy them. Chapter 14 invites you to explore some new alternatives for the role money plays in your life and how you might live just as well, or better, with less of it.

Throughout the book, you’ll meet lots of people who are making novel choices and you#8217;ll discover:

♦ What these choices involve

♦ Pros and cons of each

♦ Practical steps for making such a change

♦ Mistakes to avoid

♦ Resources for exploring more

Finding What’s Right for You

Be it a sustainable career, a new life choice, cashless alternatives, or some combination thereof, you♦ ’ll find many possible middle-class lifeboats in the pages that follow. But are they right for you? As with any career and life choice, they each have their pros and cons, so as you read about them we want you to put them to the test. Ask yourself:

♦ Is this something I could enjoy? If not, will I have a hard time motivating myself to follow through on my intentions to make the proactive and protective changes I want to make?

♦ Does this choice call on my natural abilities? It is easier to succeed at something you can do well naturally without a lot of strain and irritation.

♦ How much preparation, training, and resources would I need to make this change? Would I be willing to, even energized about, obtaining new skills and knowledge if need be?

♦ Am I up for the degree of adventuresomeness this change calls for?

♦ Do I have the contacts and positioning I need to move gracefully into this change or, if not, am I willing to make contacts and break new ground to carry out this change?

♦ Does this option truly fit my values, desired lifestyle, and life goals?

♦ Is this choice suitable for where I live now? Would I need to relocate? Or if I want to relocate, is this choice one that would narrow or expand my opportunities?

In the chapters that follow, we have aimed to provide you with sufficient information to determine the answers to questions like these.

Is the Information in This Book Readily Available on the Internet?

Much of what you will find in this book is available on the Internet. We have provided frequent links where you can find out more. But there is also a ton of other information on the Internet that we didn’t include. The advice, suggestions, guidance, and data we’ve provided carefully distill information from the Internet, along with insights gleaned from thousands of interviews for our books, radio, and television shows and face-to-face conversations, as well as dozens of trend publications we’ve amassed over thirty years. It took three years to synthesize the ideas and information you’ll find between the covers of this book. It’s intended to save you many hours of research and help you avoid many mistakes.

Finally, while it’s important for you to put the options you are considering to the test, it’s also important to give them a chance.When a choice seems attractive or appealing to you at first glance, resist the urge to automatically discard it just because it’s unfamiliar, unusual, or seemingly impractical.Many things that would have been impractical and unusual in the past will be quite realistic in the uncertainty of the new economy. Take some time to imagine what your world will be like as globalization, automation, multinational corporations, and rising costs of utilities and basic services reshape your priorities and those of your family, neighbors, and community. Then explore the potential of the options that attract you in the context of the forces that are changing our economy.

We believe you’ll find the key information you need to conclude, "Oh, that sure isn’t for me! or Yes, I’m ready for something like this!"And we’ve included plenty of resources you can turn to for advice on where to go next in pursuit of options you’d like to explore further. Should none of the options we describe be quite right for you, chances are they will spur other ideas for how you can create, alter, adjust, or otherwise fashion your own middle-class lifeboatsm for safely riding the waves of today’s sea change.

LEARN MORE

Books

♦ Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005.

♦ PowerDown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World by Richard E. Heinberg, The New Society Publishers, 2004.

♦ Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It by Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006.

♦ The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan, Free Press, 2005.

♦ The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts, Mariner Books, 2005.

♦ The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin, Tarcher Putnam, 1995.

♦ The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt by Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook,Yale University Press, 2000.

♦ The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement—and How You Can Fight Back by Jacob S. Hacker, Oxford University Press, 2006.