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Friday, Oct. 03, 2008

Regular folks tell how they manage

On Thursday, the country waited.

It was the day the U.S. Congress sat divided, one house saying yes, the other saying no, to the largest bailout imaginable of Wall Street and some of the country’s once most venerable financial institutions. And the day we all sort of sat around and waited to see what would happen if one side, or the other, ruled the day.

It was a day to pause and reckon where Kentucky is, psychologically. A day to gauge our collective mood, take our collective pulse. Because, from whatever the vote is today or in coming days, we’ll need a starting point from which to judge whether we are up or down, coming or going, in the woods or out of it yet.

So we spread out to ask Kentuckians how they were doing. We talked to businesspeople, students, retirees, professionals, homemakers, ordinary folks. Most told us of small but real changes they were making to their daily lives to accommodate tighter budgets. Some told us things were getting worse; some were more optimistic. The picture is neither totally bleak, nor totally benign. But, as of Thursday, it’s us.

UNCERTAINTY TROUBLES RETIREES

Raymond Gibson has enjoyed two careers in his 80 years.

He was a successful mining engineer first. But it was his second career, as a United Methodist minister, that truly defined his life.

"You hear some people say they don't like their jobs," said Gibson, who along with his wife, Alice Jean, lives in a retirement community on Lexington's south side. "But I was a pastor in different churches for 45 years, and I absolutely loved what I did, no matter where I was working."

What Gibson, 80, doesn't love now is what has been happening to his retirement funds in the recent stock market decline and the general economic downturn. He said he checked on his account at his brokerage firm earlier this week and "kind of got sick to see how much it has gone down just in the last few days."

"As a retiree, what little I have is really on the line," he said.

Gibson said his finances are not severely threatened at this point, and he thinks he is "pretty well invested."

Nevertheless, he fears that if recent economic troubles continue, "it could wipe me out."

He knows other retirees facing similar fears. Gibson said one of his retired friends recently took a job parking cars to supplement his income from his shrinking 401(k).

Juanita Pruitt, 76, was thumbing through a copy of American History magazine at the Lexington Senior Citizens Center on Thursday afternoon, and worrying over the history she's now living through.

"The interest rate has gone down, and that decreases my monthly income," she said. "I live on Social Security and my retirement check, and if Social Security and my company go broke, I'll be passing the tin cup."

Pruitt, who retired from the Southern Bell Telephone Co. in 1997, moved to Lexington from Kansas City about six years ago to be near her daughter and grandchildren. These should be good times for her, with her family close by. Instead, she finds herself fretting over developments on Wall Street and in Washington.

"Seriously," she said, "I think that if things go from bad to worse it eventually will affect the way I live, the way I shop, and the way I eat. It will affect my travel; it will limit my vacations. It might even affect my coming down here to the senior citizens center if I can't buy gasoline for my car."

Pruitt said she's already cutting back on non-necessities. She sometimes buys used clothing from Goodwill. She eats out less and is more careful about grocery shopping.

"I pass up a lot of things in the grocery store that I would like to have," she said. "It's like a tornado coming. You don't wait until it hits to prepare for it. You prepare ahead of time."

Truby Chapman, 59, and his wife Linda, 58, have been selling items from their home, driveway and garage, near the Knott-Perry county line, for more than three years. These times are the worst they've ever seen.