[Sylvanfan]

The last two years have pretty much ruined me financially. When I first started working full time in the mid 90's, I thought the Chief Draftsman had a crappy life. He made like $23 an hour, drove a 92 Dodge Spirit, lived a a pretty modest house and his wife worked part time in retail.

Fast forward to today and I realized the other day..he was better off than I an today. Income wise we're the same, I make double what ge did, but that's a terrible wage in today's world. I fooled myself thinking for a few years in the early 2000's when my wage increased that I was doing better. My wife has an okay job but she makes less than I do so by CP standards the two of us together are still a good 75k short of what most individuals on this site claim to make. In the past 18 months with all my costs increasing by about 30% for housing, food, insurance and other basic expenses and our income staying stagnant, we are losing ground big time. If we don't downsize or find much better jobs, we're going to start bleeding out in a couple years. So yeah, I'm in a bad spot financially and I'm not intelligent or creative enough to figure out how to turn things around.