I suffer markedly from bag lady syndrome, the haunting sense that one of these days I’m going to end up living on the street. Sometimes I wonder where the hell it comes from. Really, there’s enough in the bank to support me without my ever having to lift a finger in paying work again…but I do lift fingers—all ten of them—in that cause. What am I so scared of?
Late last summer, Sandy L wrote a post at FirstGen American that threw some light on the issue: she suggests many women are subjected to verbal abuse that leads to negative self-talk. We convince ourselves that we’ll never amount to much, because we’ve been told so. Often.
Although my father was not a drinker like Sandy’s, I spent my childhood and early adult life watching my father manipulate my mother by exploiting the fact—and it was a fact—that she couldn’t take care of herself financially. When, as he did every now and again, he would tell her that if she didn’t quit spending “his” money he was going to leave her, he was abusing her.
Now, it’s true that neither of them would have seen it that way. My guess is, they both would have regarded the basis of his threats as ordinary reality. The most she ever earned, working full-time, would not have paid our rent.
Like most women in her generation, she couldn’t support herself on whatever tiny salary she might have been able to earn. To this day, it’s a fact that a large proportion of elderly women end their lives in poverty—even if they spent most of their years in the economic middle class. As the Great Recession was about to descend on us, among women 65 and over, 37 percent of those who were divorced or separated were living in poverty; 28 percent of widows lived in poverty; and 22 percent of single, never-married women lived in poverty. Think of that. Over a third of divorcees, over a quarter of widows, over a fifth of singletons are spending their “golden years” dirt-poor.
It explains a lot about why I live in fear of ending up in a campsite beneath the Seventh Avenue Overpass. I was brought up to think women—particularly me—can’t take care of themselves. As attitudes go, it’s a very difficult one to overcome, particularly when the reality of senior women reinforces it.
My father treated me like an idiot. He made it clear he thought I was stupid, strange, and incompetent. A Phi Beta Kappa key, a doctorate, and three books published through high-quality presses did nothing but confirm his suspicions.
And yes, I was a weird little kid. Like other girls in my generation, I was brought up to be a housewife and urged to get training as a secretary, “just in case” I should someday need a job if the real breadwinner was incapacitated, died, or abandoned me and his kids. My craving to grow up to be an astrophysicist was beside the point; “you can,” I was told, “always have astronomy as a hobby.”
How fortunate I was that his influence was counterbalanced by the women on my mother’s side of the family! Though I don’t buy into Christian Science, the worldview to which my great-grandmother and great-aunt subscribed, nobody espouses “positive thinking” more powerfully than do Christian Scientists. These two, who took in my mother as a teenager and partly raised her, lived together in a pretty little Berkeley foothills bungalow after my great-grandfather died. During the process of his dying, the existence of a long-term mistress in San Francisco came to light. As you can imagine, my great-grandmother, affectionately known as “Gree,” was in no hurry to remarry after having spent a lifetime laboring as a man’s house servant, and I suppose the effect must have reverberated with her daughter, my great-aunt.
Gertrude, said great-aunt, lost her young husband in the 1917 flu epidemic, shortly after her son was born. She became an executive secretary (today the position would probably be a middle manager) at Crocker-Anglo National Bank, and from then on her pay, which must have been fairly modest, supported her, her son, and her mother in a pleasant home and in a cozy enough lifestyle. She sent her son to UC Berkeley and had enough to help him purchase land and build a beautiful house in Kensington, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. He became a vice president of Standard Oil.
They didn’t live like Queens of Sheba, but they never wanted for anything. They each lived to the age of 94, and at no time could they have been said to live in poverty. When, late in her life, I asked Gertrude if she had ever thought of remarrying, she gave me a funny look and said, “Why on earth would I ever want to take care of another man?”
The object lesson I took away from Gree and Gertrude was that you can think yourself sick and you can think yourself well: positive thinking in fact is very powerful. So is negative thinking. You can convince yourself that you should be afraid, be very afraid, and you can convince yourself that you are or easily could be helpless.
Until my generation a lot of women were socialized to think like this. It was objectively true: most women were not allowed into the workplace and could not earn enough to support themselves. When, in 1966, I went into a bank and applied for an opening in its management training program—the very same kind of job my male classmates in all majors were landing with no problem—I was told the bank didn’t hire women into their management training program, but I’d be great in the secretarial pool.
The feminist movement of the 60s and 70s changed things for all American and European women. Because of it, the world is a different place for women. But in some respects, things haven’t changed so much. Even women of considerable wealth and accomplishment, the likes of Lily Tomlin and Katie Couric, have admitted to bouts of bag-lady syndrome. In the MSN Money article that reveals that gem, Certified Financial Planner Kathy Boyle observes that this widespread fear is not altogether unrealistic:
“Being single costs 80% that of a couple, and women are seven times more likely to be single and live six years longer. . . Given a 50% divorce rate and that the average age of widowhood is 56, there’s probably good reason to be concerned.”
I’ve never succumbed to the symptoms described in this article—refusing to think about finances or feeling unable to make a decision. And I don’t stash all my assets in low-income financial instruments (to the contrary, I’ve taken some breathtaking risks…). But I do worry a lot about money, sometimes to the point of obsessiveness.
Just as you can’t deal with money by pretending it’s not there or it doesn’t matter, so you can’t deal with it by obsessing over it. Best thing to do is get the advice of a trustworthy financial advisor, learn what you can about budgeting and wealth management, make a few basic decisions, and then revisit the issue no more than three or four times a year.
One night as I lay awake worrying over money, shortly after I had divorced my husband and set out on my own, I found myself asking the question, “Can I do this?”
Those are the words that coalesced in my mind, there in the darkness.
Then I heard my great-aunt’s voice, just as clearly as if she were sitting in the room. She said, “Of course you can, my dear.”
So it proved to be.
Ladies. Of course you can!
Image: Mikescottwood11. A chronically homeless individual inhabiting a bus shelter in Porter Square. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
this post couldn’t come at a more timely moment for me. The community college I work for feels itself on thin ice financially and I suspect there may be pressure for some of the old timers to retire before we had quite planned to. My husband, my sister and her husband kind of ganged up on me the other night to convince me to take early retirement (still two years away). My own thinking is why would a person retire early in a time when they tend to live longer and longer. For me, the reason to keep working is less about finances and more about staying mentally alert and socially connected.
@ Terri: Well, ask some of your retired friends about how busy they are. My friend SDXB, who chose to retire in his late 40s, said he was never busier than when he quit his job. Today he goes nonstop, doing things he wants to do: he dances several times a week, hikes — also several times a week, goes to concerts, attends a church, travels, socializes, volunteers, pursues hobbies, and makes an endless game of shopping for bargains. While I’m not as energetic as he, I also manage to keep myself so busy I have a challenge finding time to clean my house. Today I’ve GOT to knock off blogging to do the gardening!
I continue to teach at the community college because the money pays the mortgage on the house my son and I ill-advisedly purchased. But the other day I was thinking that if I won the lottery I would keep on teaching, because it’s fun and it keeps you in contact with young people. If I couldn’t get someone to pay me to do it, I’d probably volunteer. So, if you have enough to support you in reasonable comfort, don’t let concerns about what you’ll do in your free time stop you from retiring. You’ll find plenty to keep you busy!
Such an interesting post. My mother was widowed when I was 9. She had three daughters. Because she had gone to Normal School years before and because it was wartime, she was able to teach on an emergency certificate. Otherwise, we would probably have had to live with relatives – the 40’s era bag ladies. The mantra at our home was “you girls MUST be able to support yourselves.” It was not financially easy, but we all went on to school and became (of course) teachers.
Bravo! Bravo! Best blog you’ve ever written. Hit the nerve for most of us women.
Thirty years ago a friend said to me, “There ISN’T enough money to make me feel secure.” And boy was she right.
Another reason for your particular monetary fear is your father who also felt there wasn’t enough money to make HIM feel secure. I’m sure you absorbed that message also.
It would be interesting to revisit this issue in future blogs.
This is a great post… and I have such fears too. That somehow, through a combination of bad decisions or bad luck that I may fall to homelessness. My mother always said that without your own financial resources, you will never have a “strong spine,” especially in a relationship. It affects the dynamics of everything, no matter what love is there. That strikes me as a very realistic (but also a little pessimistic) way of looking at things. I think that’s why I can’t envision myself as a stay at home mom – I would be too afraid of the uncertainty.
This post hit such a nerve. THANK YOU for writing it!!!
First, I’m touched that one of my articles was used in such a lovely post.
Second, I ponder the nature vs nurture thing all the time and I think that no matter how crappy you are treated, if you have a role model that gives you hope (even if it’s not in your immediate family), it can be a life changing godsend. I’m so glad you had your aunts to show you that anything’s possible.
If there’s one phrase that I hate hearing my kid say (besides anything with the word HATE in it), is when he declares “I can’t do it.” Sometimes, it’s just that he’s too lazy to do something himself, like getting dressed, but other times, he really struggles with not being able to be good at something right away. Can’t is a naughty 4 letter word in our household.
Thank goodness! I thought I was the only one who has this “syndrome” I seriously worry about being out on the streets simply bc I am single and have no one to fall back on. I have a comfortable house, good job and a few dollars in the bank, but I still have this irrational fear. Thanks for your post, I feel better just knowing that I’m the only one who wories about this. And your great aunt is right, we can do this!!
Hi, if I may be allowed to inject a male perspective . . .
I believe emotional and psychological insecurity plagues both genders.
Your post seems to imply that only women have the feeling that they might wind up poor in their old age. Not true. Many men have the fear of winding up as homeless bums sleeping on park benches.
I don’t disagree that past cultural assumptions often limited women’s incentives and abilities to make money from working.
The same situation put the entire responsibility for his family’s finances on the man’s head. Granted, not all men took it seriously, but most did. Many men have worked very hard at jobs they hated to support their wives and children. They keenly felt the burden of being the sole breadwinner, and so feared being laid off or fired.
Yes, some women are poor in old age. But many older women do quite well collecting Social Security and pension checks as wives and widows.
I’m not saying there’s not economic injustice, only that’s it’s more complicated than you describe.
Besides — and maybe this will comfort you and maybe it won’t — most homelessness is about more than simple poverty.
I spent over 30 years as a claims representative for a government agency. I can assure you that the vast majority of homeless women (and men) have as much income as people who sleep under roofs at night. It’s just they choose to spend it on drugs and alcohol, or they’re simply insane.
An elderly homeless woman who, along with her retarded daughter, were a common sight in South St Louis years ago, once told a friend of mine that she couldn’t stand not to sleep outside. And both women received government checks. Eventually some agency did pick them up and force them (against their will) to receive the help they needed.
investing books
@ Richard Stooker: Interesting comments! And in fact, the text mentioned in my post did concern a man, not a woman, who feared destitution. He, however, was not elderly (yet)…apparently his concern was whether his family could get by if anything happened to him.
The pop-psych buzz on this alleged “condition” would have us think it afflicts mainly women. However, it’s hard to imagine how men also could not have their moments of wondering how they’re going to get by in their dotage, especially if they haven’t saved well or if they work in low-paying jobs with few benefits and low or nonexistent pensions.
In good economic times, it absolutely is true that many, if not most, of the homeless are alcoholics, drug users, or mentally ill (all of those probably fall into the latter category).
When times turn bad, though…well, that’s another matter. The year 2010 was the first time in my entire 66 years when I did not have enough cash coming in to cover the base cost of running my home, gassing up the car, and putting food on the table. That happened because I lost my job at a time when market conditions dictated that I avoid drawing down funds from my vastly depleted savings. I earned $85,000 in 2009, which allowed me to set aside enough in an FDIC-insured bank account to cover a year’s living expenses. If I had been earning the median wage in Arizona — around $43,000 — I would have been out of luck. Though my home is paid for, the house I’m copurchasing with my son is not; we would have lost that house. My part-time income plus Social did not cover my expenses over 12 months, and so I would have spent at least some of that time eating cat food.
One of my students, a middle-aged woman with no evident mental health problems, lost a $70,000-a-year job. The best job offers she found paid $10 a hour. She lost her home and everything she had. She was living on student loans, going back to school to retrain for some other line of work, presumably much lower-paying. She wasn’t homeless at the time, but she had been. Who would have thought a middle-management worker earning 70 grand would be thrown out of her home?
Obviously, that’s happening now to men as well as women, with 22.5% of mortgages underwater during third-quarter 2010, 67 percent in Nevada, 49 percent in Arizona… With figures like that plus a real unemployment/underemployment rate pushing 20 percent, it really is something to think about.
Very interesting post…you know, since I retired from my last full-time job, I have had much more time to surf the internet. I read several blogs regularly, including yours, and scout out others to see what’s out there.
I find myself more interested in those blogs written by those around my own age who have had some real and considerable life experience–financial tips and life advice from those under the age of twenty-five I take with that grain of salt…that being said…
I don’t think people concern themselves ENOUGH about where they might be headed financially. The way most people manage their finances, those in my family for instance, makes me afraid for them even if they seem oblivious.
In my own family I have extremes of wealth. One brother supports himself collecting cans in Las Vegas while another died young leaving no will and an estate worth 10,000,000. But he suffered from the syndrome you write about and he was afraid to spend money for that very reason. He drove a twenty year old car and, for the last ten years of his life, wore the same outfit just about every day of his life–a white T-shirt and black polyester pant, black socks, and sandals.
His fear of losing what he had made it impossible for him to enjoy what he had.
So, as the previous poster remarked, this is not a condition unique to women. But given some obvious social dynamics and financial realities, I think I understand your perspective.
But if people are worried, they are probably have every reason to worry if their finances are anything like the norm. The national savings rate was actually negative during much of the last decade and has only recently gone into the positive range as people start to panic.
But it is still not enough to finance retirement–less than two percent last I read. More and more, working well into old age will become common place and not from want but from need. As a nation we fiddle when we should be making hay.