***
I know, I know. A Dad shouldn't let his kids buy sweets at the corner store very often. But sometimes at night, everyone needs a little special something. Around my house, we all get the Sunday Night Blues. Occasionally, a quick trip to the corner seems to boost the spirits of my little guys.
My own emotional dip is less easily elevated. Lately, though, I've taken to eating a big bowl of vanilla ice cream with fresh raspberries on top. That seems to help a bit, except when I buckle my belt the next morning.
Mainly, the way I work out my feelings is to write. Like you, a great deal of contradictory information always seems to be engulfing me, twisting me this way and that. My fate, for the past three decades plus, has been to spend my nights worrying about money. It is terrifying to consider that I need about ten times as much income each year as my parents did 50 years ago. Or that my rented apartment costs me more money in one year than their suburban house cost them to buy!
Or that by the time my younger three head off to college, the cost of a four-year degree at a good university will come to at least $50,000 a year. The concept of coming up with an extra $600,000 for those 12 years of undergraduate study is unimaginable.
One of the benefits of the Democrats taking over in Congress is that they promised to pass legislation that would bring some relief to working families trying to help their kids go to college. Ted Kennedy and other Democratic leaders say they will increase Pell grants and decrease the interest rates due on government college loans. But, as any recent graduate (or parent thereof) knows, government loans are increasingly hard to get, and grants are almost impossible for most students, no matter how well they perform in high school or how high their scores are on the SAT.
Therefore, private lending agencies have entered the picture, and there is no talk of them following the government's lead in lowering interest rates -- au contraire, these private lenders charge whatever the market can bear.
What the market seems to be bearing is not always what an individual young person or her family can bear, however. When will baby boomers with children be able to retire? What kind of lifestyles will we be able to afford when we cannot work any longer? How will we afford health care and prescription drugs?
The bad news behind the answers to all of these questions has been obvious for years to those of us driven to investigate such things. But usually we just don't want to think too much about it. That kind of thinking creates monster headaches.
***
Thus, when considering little matters like the sweets from the corner store, I say, "Why sweat the small stuff?" Soon enough it will be hard to get them to smile those big smiles, as they begin to comprehend the economics of life in a city like San Francisco.
As much as I love it here, it's possible that the time will come when it is no longer practical to stay. Already my three older kids have moved to other places. On the other hand, since this is the city of booms and busts, maybe one of us will hit a jackpot of one kind or another, and my kids will actually be able to live in the city where all six of them were born (two in the late seventies, one in the eighties, and three in the nineties...)
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