By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
All my bills are paid. I have $200 for the next two weeks. Every chance I get, I will be writing to make money. I have a very good full-time job as a writer. My debts are the usual suspects: credit card stuff from COVID, a car note, engagement ring, and life. My biggest expenses are my two kids, and they’re not babies; they’re 10 and 13 and eat a lot. Vices? I buy used books and drink a lot of coffee. I quit the bottle two years ago. And yet, I go to therapy to help solve the anxiety that comes from the crushing weight of finances. I have nightmares about going bald or my teeth falling out, about becoming homeless. These happen when payday looms.
I left a family party with the kids. Some people can’t pull a burger off the grill without it becoming a coal-encrusted artifact. We opted for Burger King. Two Whoppers, one Double, and a large fry were nearly 28 dollars. I’m currently in Chicago, my hometown, visiting, and to fill my SUV it’s nearly sixty dollars at $5 a gallon. My electricity in my house this month was $400. How is any of this sustainable? Groceries are up 33%, and relief is nowhere in sight.
I do everything adulthood asks of me. And yet, when disaster strikes, I wind up taking out predatory loans. To date, I’ve taken three to fix my car. We had money saved for vacation, and guess who’s radiator broke? This guy. It was $1900. The problem isn’t that Burger King costs too much. The problem is that every routine expense feels like a serial killer popping out of a closet. A tank of gas, a utility bill, dinner for three—none of these should qualify as financial emergencies. But when there’s no margin left, ordinary life begins to feel like a series of small hurricanes that wreck my mental health. My oldest loves to have a late-night coffee and donut at the diner; I love spending time with them because we’re at that weird teenage phase where we speak two languages, and now I can’t because I gotta hustle.
The cruelest part isn’t that I can’t afford a donut. I can afford the donut. What I can’t afford is to stop working long enough to eat it with him. Every quiet hour becomes a calculation. Could I pitch something? Finish an assignment? Pick up another check? My kid is becoming a teenager while I’m trying to monetize the time we have left together. If I spend $40 on some coffees, a grilled cheese, or two desserts, I have to make that money back. That’s what frustrates me into tears.
Remember the DOGE dividend—the promised reward for that “government efficiency” they were bringing us? No checks were ever authorized. But Amazon recently reported receiving roughly $600 million in tariff refunds. Corporations receive relief in nine figures. Working people receive another opportunity to refinance the radiator.
I don’t want a yacht. I don’t need a second home. I want the electric bill to arrive without making my chest hurt. I want to buy my kid a coffee and a donut without wondering whether that twenty dollars should be held back for gasoline.
All my bills are paid. I have a good job. I work whenever work is available. By every traditional measure, I’m doing fine. So why does survival still feel like something I’m failing at?
The American economy doesn’t have to make you homeless to take life from you. Sometimes it does it twenty-eight dollars at a time. Sometimes it takes your evening at the diner.
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