Are journal writers generally poor? Or at least not very well off?

I realize that this is a massively indelicate question, but on the other hand, when I read many journals or journal forums and the subject of money/income/cost comes up, it seems that the majority of journal writers have money issues: Don't have enough to make ends meet, or worried about making this payment or that, or are wanting things they can't afford, etc. It leads to the impression (which may not be borne out in fact) that as a class, journal writers are more economically strapped than not.

My own best guess on the matter is that, yes, journal writers generally seem to have less cash than they seem to need (or at the very least want). As far as I can tell, some of the reasons for this might be:

1. Journal writers tend to be young, and younger people typically are at the beginning of their (hopefully) upward income spiral;

2. Journal writers tend towards creative professions, or reside in academia, neither of which are typically financially renumerative, at least in the early stages;

3. Journal writers often live in urban areas, where costs of living are higher, leaving less cash for other things.

I certainly don't want to imply that a lack of income (for whatever reason) innately connotes something negative about journallers as people -- having been poor more often than I have been not, I would take exception to such characterization. But as I said, I do seem to notice a lack of cash as a theme in much of journallers' writings, so it bears some examination.

So: Are journal writers generally poor (or not well off)? Why do you think this is (or is not)? If you think it is something that's true, to what extent does it shape the character of the "Journaller Community"?

(Please don't feel the need to discuss your own income in specific numbers or such -- I'm not fishing around to find out what people make. I'm just trying to get a general feel for the subject.)

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

Answers

I can't speak for others, but I journal to express myself, not to make cash for my efforts. While I don't make as much money as I'd like to (can anyone honestly say that they do?) I make enough to easily cover living alone, car payments, etc. in a metro area.

I don't think it's fair to generalize journallers as being young, urban, and poor. I mean, does it follow that if you DON'T keep a journal that you are old, rural, and rich?

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

Sprite responds:

>I can't speak for others, but I journal to express myself, not to >make cash for my efforts.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting that people write journals for their income potential. I'm talking total overall income (or lack thereof), not income specifically derived from writing journals.

>I don't think it's fair to generalize journallers as being young, >urban, and poor. I mean, does it follow that if you DON'T keep a >journal that you are old, rural, and rich?

Of course not; the generalization of the former does not automatically assume a generalization of the latter. However, I can say that having read journals for a number of years now, that the a large number of journals I've run across are written by people who are young and urban, and who seem not to have a whole lot of cash to toss around.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

I'm a college student living off of student loans and scholarships. I do managerial jobs with the university theatre, but that pays roughly $150/month.

So, yeah. I'm poor.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

I am 60 years old, near the top of the salary scale, for what I do (technical writer). I own a house, my kids are grown. I don't have much put away for retirement, from having worked contract work, for years.

I don't expect to last long enough to draw a pension, where I work. The workforce rebalancing, or old rollback will get me.

I have a 401K, I'm even vested in it, but I expect to have to spend it to make the mortgage payment between jobs, when I get sacked. They can save a lot of money letting someone like me go and hiring someone fresh out of school.

This has less to do with me than with how corporations "grow," or make more and more profit, quarter after quarter. They make it by screwing the customer and exploiting the help.

I am new to the web, but I have been self-publishing pamphlets and books since 1975. I have written many more than I could afford to publish. Paying more attention to my own writing than to the work I'm being paid to do has kept me hopping, as I have been let go, from this job and that. Plus, over the course of that period I have weathered three recessions. One so bad we lost our house and went belly-up.

The reason I put off getting my own web site as long as I did was I didn't want a co-worker to be able to look me up in a search engine and rat me out to the bossman. For having an attitude.

I didn't make any money self-publishing and I'm not making any money off the web.

A scholar advances knowledge, but he also contributes to the development of his discipline and serves the community he lives in.

The web is a tenuous, a contentious community to serve. But there you have it. Noblesse oblige.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

noblesse oblige? Huh?

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

Can't reach your dictionary, Joy?

noblesse oblige: the obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

I have an online journal and I don't consider myself to be poor or in the need for money. I write for the pure fun of writing and to better the skills that I have as a writer. I am in the camp of "if someone else comes over to read it, fine. If nobody ever visits me, that's fine, too."

I am a 19-year-old graphic design artist. I've owned my own business for about two years now and it is going wonderfully. I make on average about $850 per week after taxes are taken out of the check (that is after running expenses are taken out, too). I also am a full- time student with no outstanding student loans so I think I am pretty well off (perhaps more so than the average journal writer, but that isn't my claim to make).

I personally don't want money for what I write online. I have two personal domains with professional hosting and those cost me quite a bit of money each month but that is my hobby so it all evens out. So I don't think I would turn to keeping a journal for money.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2000

I have a journal. The first thing you'll notice is that I'm *NOT* an artist.

I work for ConservativeFinancialCo. where I make entirely too much money for what I actually do.... If they'd listen to me, then maybe they'd be getting a deal, but since all I basically do is quietly code <p&rt; tags, they're getting jipped...

But I digress. I make good money doing something non creative in corporate america.

I do, however, live in the city (Houston - the 4th largest.) Thankfully, Houston is *reasonably* priced, but living in the city is still more expensive than the burbs.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

>

See, I told you I was overpaid.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I know what noblesse oblige means. I was questioning the context in which he used it.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Well, as of Monday I'll be earning slightly more than twice the average income for somebody my age, so I suppose I'm fairly comfortable financially at this point.

However, it's still not enough for me to afford a shiny blue iBook, a VW Beetle and a Smeg fridge, but at least I've got something to aim towards!!

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Noblesse oblige is very often used ironically. I hope that's how Jack meant it...

As for John's original question: Everyone I know is "poor." People just tend to spend as much as they make. In a lot of cases the problem is not so much that the journaller isn't making money, it's that they spent it.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Surely most people, no matter how much they earn, would like to earn a little more; perhaps journal-writers just have a better forum in which to complain about money-problems and fantasise what we'd spend our fortunes on? Hell, it's always a good topic if you've had a dull day...

Oh yeah - I've got the VW beetle, but can I join the queue for the iBook and the Smeg fridge, please?

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I keep an online journal, I'm pretty young, I live in a mostly urban area with a generally high cost-of-living, but I wouldn't have described myself as cash-strapped in the two years since leaving college. I'm very shortly about to become cash-strapped, though, because that's the price one pays when one leaves the technology field for graduate school. It should be fabulously exciting. I do a little bit of freelance writing, not regularly enough that I could depend on the money, but enough that it will help with the little pleasant luxuries in life.

I do see, though, that a lot of my friends (all in the same age range, all in technology, all making between forty and seventy thousand a year) have ridiculous problems managing money, though. I've been saving money, because I knew I was planning on going to grad school, but my friends are instead doing things like buying expensive electronics and whatnot.

The thing is, it's an understandable spending pattern. They've got every reason to expect that the tech field will be able to provide them with some kind of job, and they've got no one depending on them financially. It's maybe not an -intelligent- spending pattern, and it's not one I would feel comfortable with, but it's not likely to lead to imminent disaster.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I don't know about that "noblesse oblige" thing, Joy & Tom. Jack, sometimes you make me question Wittgenstein's proof that there can be no private language.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Speaking for myself, I am young, and sort of live in an urban area (though I don't really consider it "urban", it is more expensive than the rest of NC). But I totally am not in a creative or academic field. And my salary proves it...

Mainly when I bitch about money it's after realizing "did I spend that much on a computer?" or "my insurance bill is HOW MUCH after that accident?" or "well I have $5 to tide me over till my next paycheck..." You know, just complaining because I can, not because I am like about to go hungry or something.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

Of the journalers I read, all seem to be fairly comfortable - they have pretty good jobs, own houses and cars, seem to pay their bills okay. This is similar to my own financial level. A couple appear to be so much more well off than me that it's a look into another world (one of the reasons it's interesting.) Nearly all complain about money from time to time, usually "god damn it, I really didn't need to spend $600 on the car" type stuff.

I tend not to read journals by starving students, for no particular reason, so my view is probably skewed.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

1) 2) and 3) of John's characterization pretty well fits me (although some might say that 31 isn't all that young any more... but I did take a few extra years getting through the academia part). Most people we know seem to be living more like grown-ups than we are; we're still living a kind of studenty existence.

I am married to someone who makes a good living, though, so I think I've got it pretty sweet. We don't have much extra cash to throw around like some of our friends who are buying houses, indulging in expensive gadgets, and think nothing of flying off and staying in hotels for vacations... but then again, we're in better shape than a lot of people in this country. The main difference being that we are likely (I hope!) to make more money and increase our standard of living as time goes by, rather than get further into debt and a cycle of poverty. I've seen poor and this ain't it.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I keep a journal, and I'm young and urban, and lots of people on my salary (I'm an arts administrator and writer and do web design on the side) would consider themselves poor. Sometimes I have cash flow problems, but that's not a problem with how much money I make, it's a problem with spending money I don't have on luxuries. I don't consider myself poor, though. I have no debt and I have respectable savings for somebody my age (I actually just wrote an entry all about this).

Perhaps part of the perception here is that it's generally not considered socially acceptable to brag about how much money you have, so when money does come up, it's usually in a negative way. All those journallers who are comfortably well off (and if you pay attention to some of their jobs, they are out there) just don't talk about it, I'd guess.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I strongly agree with Joanne on her last point. People with money learn pretty quickly that advertising that fact tends to breed envy and resentment (or at the very least, distaste) among those less fortunate.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I also think that money is a huge part of all of our lives, journals or none. There have been days at the end of the month where I'll feel strapped, and that is likely to come out in a journal entry. I think that unless you have a huge nest egg, most people who live week to week feel poor, even though the term is relative.

It's like saying that all married journallers have horrible in-laws. It seems to be the case based on what we read, but after a while you realize its just the author's interpretation. When I read about a journaller feeling poor, it's usually in a context that makes me believe they are just anxious about finances at the time, as we are all prone to be now and again.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Stasi, you are so cute. :)

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Well, I write a journal, and I'm young (22), and I'm urban (Tulsa). Oh, to be a statistic...but yeah, I'm poor. But just as soon as the world notices how insanely talented I am, I will be rich. Any day now.:)

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

of course i am! all california journallers are. its true!

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

Well, I fit two of John's criterion -- the urbanite and creative profession ones -- but I'm edging into my late thirties, so I'm not all that young, which I suppose makes my financial distress all the more unbearable to me, which is why, I suppose, I write about it in my journal.

And frankly, if I made a lot of money, I'd sure as hell be telling y'all about it. Hoo-weee! I'd be running pictures of me in my Smeg fridge with my iBook! I'd load it all onto my fleet of VW Bugs (in a rainbow of metallic colours) and drive up to your houses to show you how much money I made by opening Quicken on my iBook and frightening you Americans with the Canadian tax rate! I would! I swear!

Actually, I suspect that the hype about the economy we keep hearing neatly ignores the apparent fact the nobody can have a house-and-car-and-family-and-vacations anymore without two incomes, and even then the stress of keeping up the mortgage and trying to save for college and renovations and retirement and medical emergencies makes money a ubiquitous topic. For a brief, freakish period in the west, a husband could make enough in his job to keep up all of these obligations. My brother-in-law, a fireman with over twenty years' seniority, told me that he had more discretionary income when he was a Sears delivery man, nearly thirty years ago. Frankly, it's anecdotal evidence like this that makes me think that perhaps fewer people DO have the lion's share of the wealth, while the rest of us work like pigs -- and sweat like them at the end of the month -- trying to keep up our economic obligations. It takes a lot more to be middle class these days.

(Of course, the key to my argument here is that we're assuming that the lifestyle of choice is one that westerners could only afford for a brief post-war period of economic boom, and that at no other time in history did so many people assume the status of the upper-middle-class to be their right. But that's another topic entirely.)

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

I agree with just about everything that's already been said. In particular I agree that it's considered gauche to talk about how well off you are. On the other hand, when conversing with friends who may have less than you do (or with anyone else, for that matter), it's also considered rude to talk about your money troubles. All that aside, almost everyone has (or thinks they have) money troubles, and I guess online journals provide a unique forum in which we can bitch. So I suspect online journalers are no more or less strapped for cash than most folks (most of us seem to own a computer, at the very least); we just have a place to talk about it.

As far as my personal situation goes, I agree with Rick -- what seemed like minor money trouble when you were 22 starts to get really old when you're 30. Five years ago, I made more money than most of my non-lawyer friends, but thanks to some big debts and the fact that there were two of us living on that salary, we were broke all the time. Fortunately I was at a time of my life when I thought it was kind of cool to live in a shitty apartment with bullet holes in the window and crack dealers in the alley. I would have shopped at thrift stores no matter how much money I had, and I was so thrilled to have a guy cooking me dinner every night that I didn't even care that it was always, always, always spaghetti or Top Ramen or macaroni and cheese.

Things have gotten better since then, but for a while it happened so gradually that I sometimes didn't notice it. I paid off some of the debts, got a raise, got a fast lesson in financial responsibility from Scrooge McBoyfriend. But then we bought the house, and everything went to hell for a while. We got a great deal -- we bought it cheap, at a low interest rate, blah blah blah -- but we still underestimated how much more we were going to be putting out every month. We had planned on the house payment being twice what our rent had been, but the reality was more like three times as much.

When I took down xeney.com last spring, it wasn't because of a snit or even boredom. We were broke. My car needed major work and I'd been withdrawing $500 a month from my quit-my-job fund just to make the house payment. I had lost my most lucrative paid writing gig, so every month I was scrambling for freelance articles to fill in the gaps. Jeremy was working a crappy student job, going to school, and fixing computers for people in his spare time. We finally sat down with our budget to knock things off the list in order to get the money to fix the car. Cell phone: gone. Cable TV: already gone. Dinners out: oh, long gone. Internet access and web hosting: history.

And then Jeremy got a new job, and everything changed. I still forget sometimes how much better everything is now, and then at other times I step back and realize that we really aren't doing as well as we could or should be. In terms of salary, together we are right there in the middle of middle class, I guess. I'm a long way below the minimum salary range for a lawyer with my experience in this town, but that still puts me ahead of a lot of people and probably pretty near the average for a college educated person my age. I guess I make a pretty solid state worker salary, maybe even middle management. It's good enough to pay the mortgage and put some money away and keep us well fed.

I guess part of the reason we often feel like we don't have any money (and by "we" here I mean all of us, not me and Jeremy) is that we all have different priorities, and we can look at someone making the same or less money who has nicer things, and it rankles. I just got a kick ass new fridge, but I forget about that when I'm watching another fuzzy episode of Buffy on my nine year old TV and trying to adjust the rabbit ears so I can get it in color instead of black and white. I have a house with a big yard and a savings account and I don't eat Top Ramen anymore unless I want to, but some days I look at my 12 year old Buick with the busted out grill and no air conditioning (thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking care of that one) and no rear view mirror and windows that won't go up and down unless you tweak the wires and 180,000 miles and a perpetual cough, and I just want to cry.

But as I said, it's all choices. Jeremy and I have discussed and decided we can't afford the following: a stove, a new car, cable television, a new computer for me, a baby, a new TV, a cell phone, a daily newspaper, eating out more than two or three times a month, and clothing from any store more expensive than Target or Delia*s. Plenty of people who make much less than we do have one or all of those things ... but, like us, they're probably complaining about whatever it is they don't have.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

It's true that nowadays nobody can have the house & car & vacations without two incomes. My parents both always worked, so that seemed normal to me, but I realize that to a lot of people, this is a betrayal of the American Dream or something.

However, that means that the couples I know who have a house & car & vacations, and one of them doesn't work, I feel like, wow, they're really rich. And maybe my envy colors how I feel about them.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

I fit one of the 3. I'm young. We live rurally and I actually don't work (okay I write for Bella, but it's not much money). We are broke though (before anyone screams at me to get a job, I'm disabled and trying to find work I can do from home.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

I just wanted to give a plug to a journal entry that was plugged above: Joanne's investment advice is really, really good. You should read it.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

Strictly for the record: I ain't poor.

Oh, I'm not rich either; it's harder and harder to be rich these days, what with the gap between rich and poor increasing every time you look sideways at it. But I have not characterized myself as poor since a time when I was living in a $100 as-is condemned apartment with no plumbing and stealing food from my employer to get a bit of protein. That was a period when I woke up from my lifelong insomnia on hot nights, counted my change, and considered it a prosperous week if I had the dollar to buy an iced tea at the diner down the street. (It was also the period when I wrote my best poetry to date, lending credence to the starving-artist theory, but that's neither here nor there.)

My mother barely had the money to raise two kids, and we ate some of the strangest things that poverty and imagination could concoct ... but she could pay her mortgage, so she didn't consider herself poor. And I can pay the mortgage that I have just recently assumed, so I don't consider myself poor either.

Karen's little dig aside (and I'll get you for that later, my pretty), I am not even well-off. Yes, my partner and I did just buy a house, and yes I can afford the occasional junket across the country - but to me, what this means is that I have moved into a bigger category - bigger expenditures (I got handed a $900 surprise home expense on Friday) to go with bigger salaries. I still end up with $100 to $200 left over after all the bills are paid each month, which is the same way it's been for the last ten years.

"Rich" is a matter of perception, right? The thing is, so is "poor." I've lived in neigborhoods where "poor" meant you lived in a cardboard box. I don't like to toss "poor" around casually.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2000

Hee. I wasn't even thinking of you, C! Don't send the flying monkeys after me...

Besides, I would very much like to own a house and stuff like that, and hope to, someday. I don't begrudge you the fact that you're able to do so before I am :)

And if/when I do, I promise not to drop my house on top of you.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Read what Joanne has to say about money. She's right.

I've been poor and now I'm not poor (not rich but getting by okay) and it is better to be not poor.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

I think that people tend to write about things that are foremost in their mind, and for many of us, finances are an issue - not because the writer is poor, but just because it happens to be an issue at the time. Oh heck, Stasi wrote it the same thing above, and much did a much better job of it too (and here I am, another California journalist).

As for me, I'm definitely not poor - not by a long shot. I did the starving student thing for eight years but now that I've got the job I'm in, I'm finally at a point in my life where if I want something I can just go out and buy it and I don't have to budget for it. It's a novel feeling, being quite comfortably solvent.

Of course, I'm in the process of building a house, after which I shall be exceedingly poor, and highly in debt. Does that count?

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Of course just when I get to feeling comfortable I read something like this - an article that asks if a couple who have a million dollar (US$) nest egg can afford to retire. The answer is "maybe" -- if they control expenses, actively manage their money for growth, and have an assured source of medical coverage -- but it is an iffy question about whether or not they will outlive their nestegg.

*sigh*

Oh well, the man and woman in question are sixty years old. I'm only fifty-seven, so I've got time to add to my savings. Actually, since I have a fifteen year old who still has three years of high school ahead (plus a daughter who will be a college freshman next month) I have a very long way to go before I can consider retirement.

Maybe Bill Gates doesn't worry about money... but he doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) keep an online journal so I guess he doesn't count. All the rest of us worry about money to some degree... it's just a question of the timing of our concerns: some worry about being able to buy a six pack and a pizza this weekend and others of us worry about being able to buy a six pack and a pizza on any given Friday in 2020.

Still, as I noted yesterday, you should read what Joanne has to say about money. She makes a lot of sense.

Jim

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Wow, everybody's recommending me. Thanks!

The article Jim recommended is interesting, though the 75 - 80% figure (which I've read in a number of different places, it's one of those rules-of-thumb that apply often enough to be useful) assumes that you save on: "Social Security payroll taxes, work-related expenses, and mortgage payments (if your house is paid for)". I find it fascinating that they include mortgage payments in here, as this isn't usually included, or not in the stuff I've read - in what universe are mortgage payments less than 20% of your expenses?

The other thing they missed was the cost of savings. Either these people are still saving money, in which case they've got $1 million plus x (where x is the amount they save every year), or their expenses drop by x.

It's still a really useful article. And a great argument for starting to save when you're really young.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Joanne, I've read your article and it's got a lot of good stuff. What's your situation now? Are you going to retire in your 40s? (not demanding proof that you know what you're doing, just curious.)

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Almost definitely not, Lizzie, but I hope to be able to go from working three jobs (right now I have a full-time office job, 40 hours a week, and I do freelance web design 5 - 10 hours a week, and I write 5 - 20 hours a week) to just writing, full-time. I need some security to do that. Some people can take that leap without a safety net, but I want the net. So I'm saving like crazy. I hope to be able to write nearly full-time and just do some web design on the side for extra cash by the time I'm 35 (I'm 26 now), and I think that's realistic. It does assume I remain single and childless, though, so when that changes (see how optimistically I use the word 'when'?) I'll have to rethink budgets and timelines.

My co-worker who could have been a millionaire at 42 obviously saved more than me, or picked better investments. But if I stop putting in money now, I'll be a millionaire (for what it'll be worth by then) by the time I'm ... hmm, 68. I don't intend to stop now, though, and with what I'm scheduled to contribute over the next five to ten years, I could be a millionaire by around 50 or 55. For what it'll be worth by then.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Oh, dear. I've just been gauche, haven't I? Should I confess that I paid my rent with my credit card last month, so you won't all hate me?

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000