Changes

©2013 by LeeZard

NOTE: The following is the preface for a book unwritten. As many of you know, I am hitting the road (in two weeks!) to seek the personal stories of people across America about how they were changed by The Great Recession. I think the changes are significant and all-encompassing. I will be writing the book - and blogging - along the way.

---

This book is about a road trip. No, it’s not just another “On the Road” book because this was not just any road trip. I was seeking answers and I needed to talk to Americans across the country to find them.

While the Great Recession is in our collective rear-view mirrors, its affects are not. The recovery for many has been slow and, as I suspected when I started my trip, nonexistent for others. What I do know is the recession changed everything. It changed the way governments govern (and pay to deliver their services), the way businesses, large and small, conduct their business and, most importantly, it changed the way families finance their lives. This trip was about chronicling these changes through the stories of people across the socioeconomic spectrum of this great land.

The idea for the book germinated as I experienced my own dramatic changes. The Great Recession altered my life forever and in ways I never imagined possible. It is appropriate, then, for me to start with my own story.

Throughout my career, first as a broadcast journalist and again as a marketing/public relations professional, I experienced varying levels of success. The one constant, however, was that I continually maintained a comfortable lifestyle; I could always pay my bills while also enjoying a few simple luxuries – and one BIG one.

Following my 2005 divorce, and subsequent sale of our house, I fulfilled a lifelong dream and made the most extravagant purchase of my life, a used, cherry condition 2003 Porsche Boxster S. It was midnight blue with a lighter blue convertible top and saddle tan leather throughout. The 256 HP engine, mounted behind and below the two seats, howled at the top end like a jet engine. With the mid-engine configuration, the Boxster S is one of the best handling cars in the world. It sparkled on the road and in my heart.

Honestly, I am not an extravagant man. I never went in for all the “toys” that go with middle-class success. The Porsche was the one exception and I never regretted it.

In January 2007 I made a series of decisions aimed at improving an already good life. I left a long-standing, comfortable position for a new challenge. Safeco Insurance, a Fortune 500 company and Washington State’s largest insurance carrier, hired me as their Media Relations Manager. Not only was it my first high-level job with a major corporation, it would also pay me more money than I’d ever earned in my life.

Shortly thereafter I rolled over my retirement account, nearly $250,000, into a down payment on a beautiful townhouse along the Green River in Kent, about 20 miles from Seattle. The manager of my retirement fund agreed it was a good move; the fund was earning about 9 percent annually while housing prices were racing ahead at almost 15 percent. Indeed, life was good. Then, it turned worse than bad.

Like dominos, my good decisions began to fall, each one knocking down the other. A few months after I closed on my townhouse the real estate bubble burst and values began to slide. Not too long after that, The Great Recession became official. In December 2007 a series of record storms swelled rivers throughout the region and the Green River’s Howard Hanson Dam began to leak.

The earthen Howard Hanson Dam was built in the mid-20^th Century to control catastrophic flooding in the verdant Green River Valley. When it began to leak at the end of 2007 the Army Corps of Engineers warned the threat of catastrophic flooding had increased threefold. My home value no longer slid; it began to plummet.

Finally, in January 2008, the last domino fell. Immediately after I started at Safeco in early 2007 I heard rumblings of a possible acquisition by a national insurance company. Almost one year to the day after I was hired, Safeco began eliminating “headquarters positions.” Mine was the first job axed. Safeco was eventually taken over by Liberty Mutual.

I know how to job-hunt. I have a very strong resume and I interview well. There was one problem; I was 61 years old. Even as I made it to the final round for several jobs, the term “over qualified” began to sound to me like “too old.”

Over the next 18 months I went from sitting with my ass in a tub of butter to losing my Porsche (sob!), watching a pile of unpaid bills take over my desk, losing my health insurance and, finally short selling my townhouse one week before the foreclosure hearing. It sold for $140,000 less than I paid. I’d never faced poverty in my life and now I was about to be homeless. The good news is I am blessed with amazing people in my life, including one very special woman who took me in and gave me a home.

The best news is I refused to feel defeat or despair. After a fruitless three-year job search I started a small business with limited success. It was at that point the germ for this book began to blossom. I was certainly aware of the dramatic federal budget cuts and those at the state and local levels but I began to wonder about the personal toll left in the Great Recession’s wake.

So, I hit the road.