Want to help the economy? Don't work.

Now, I might be totally off on this thought, but it's something that has been swirling around my head for awhile. I have several friends who are out looking for jobs, but don't have much experience and are being beat out of minimum wage job by people who have been forced to seriously downgrade their skills. I have one friend who just lost a receptionist-type position to a women who had been a lawyer's clerk/personal secretary for more then a decade.

I'm starting to wonder how much the two-job lifestyle is hurting our country. And I don't mean in the 'traditional roles' versus 'modern roles' way. I'm not arguing about people spending time with their kids, or volunteering at charities or anything like that. I'm speaking strictly financially. People have access to lots of credit, and therefore purchase lots of stuff they can't afford. Then both parties are up to the hilt in debt, and the family cannot afford to NOT have both parents work. But now you add extra costs to the situation. You are now buying 2 lunches, filling 2 cars with gas, paying the daycare of the younger kids, and all sorts of other expenses. Both parents are busy and the amount of fast food and eating out skyrockets. Instead of helping your finances, you might actually be hurting them. In my job previous to this one, I figured out (as I was quitting) that between gas, food and daycare I was actually losing about $75 a month from working, and that doesn't even include all the pizza and take-out we ate because I was too tired to cook a real meal.

It makes me wonder how many families would actually benefit from one or the other parent quitting their job. Things like health insurance and such make it a bit more complicated, but the theory is the same. It's cheaper to cook from scratch, or even semi-homemade then to eat out. 1 tank of gas is obviously cheaper then two. No daycare/babysitter also saves a heap of cash. Not to mention, if a large chunk of the general public did this, there would be a HUGE letup of pressure on the job market.

I'd like to know what everyone else thinks on this. I know it's not realistic, but I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar experience to this, or thinks I'm just bat shit crazy.

Quote of the Day

"Consumer credit is not the economies life blood, it's the cancer"

-Peter Schiff, author of Crash Proof, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Find the hope!

So once again the all to common news article has appeared about a parent killing their children, spouse, and then themselves due to money worries. We have been hearing about so many who have lost all hope and resorted to death to leave their worries behind.

Granted I know how money worries can cast a dark shadow over life. I know how it feels to wonder where the next paycheck was coming from. Luckily we have remained fairly steady through this downward economic time. We lost about half of the hub's retirement fund but we are young enough to be able to bounce back probably. Hubs has remained employed and we are moving and able to use the housing trend to purchase our own first home. However we had some very very lean years in the beginning. Where Hubs worked 2 jobs and I worked 1. Never though did the hope fade that we would be able to make a better life for us and our children.

The biggest problem with the current economical trend is that so many are loosing their hope. Hope is the one thing that can get us through rough times. This will pass, a new day will dawn, we will recover. We will learn from this and make better choices in the future. We can and will be okay!