Pinched

What's left behind when people lose their homes

Cindy Reid — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:08:00 PDT

He is the man you never want to see pull up to your house. He has eyes that go flat when you offer excuses. Couldn't pay your mortgage? Too bad. A mix-up with the bank? Get yourself a lawyer. Paperwork says the bank owns your house now. Today is moving day.

Here comes the recession bride

Melissa Dalton — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:15:00 PDT

One morning in early January, I spontaneously proposed to my boyfriend on the living room couch. He was mid-gulp with his coffee. To my relief, he said yes as soon as he swallowed. Like besotted romantics everywhere, we couldn't wait a whole year to get married. So we opted for an August ceremony, giving ourselves just eight months to plan the wedding. Two weeks later, we had another, much less pleasant, surprise. I was laid off.

Excuse me while I stick my head in the toilet

Rebecca Golden — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:20:00 PDT

An unknown number lit up the tiny screen of my pink cellphone. Mindful of traffic, I pulled over into an empty parking lot.

Tales of an accidental grease monkey

Tobin Levy — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:18:00 PDT

It was only because of the recession that I moved in with a roommate, after more than a decade of living on my own. And it was only because of the roommate situation that I began renting a cramped office space in the garage of a hot rod and auto shop in Austin, Texas. There was a desk, a chair, Internet access. I’m a freelance writer. It was all that I needed.

Going down in the downturn

Tracy Clark-Flory — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:20:00 PDT

"Boob play," "pics of kitty," "topless housecleaning" and "hypno role play." The list, scribbled in a lined yellow notebook, is followed by a double-underlined figure: $725.

It's cheap -- but can you swallow it?

Sarah Hepola — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:30:00 PDT

The past few years have been an age of unprecedented food snobbery, a time of green markets and artisanal produce, when even casual foodies are addicted to "Top Chef" and restaurants list their heirloom ingredients like a wine list. From food blogs to best-selling books, food is not just part of a national conversation, it's also an aspirational lifestyle -- to eat organic is to live the good life.

How I learned to haggle

Amy Reiter — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:19:00 PDT

The other night, despite recent household budget cutbacks, my husband, kids and I threw a spontaneous (modest) dinner party, inviting two families we've recently become friendly with. Upon arrival, one of the men, who'd come straight from his Wall Street office, presented the five assembled children with small gifts: Sour Flush candies, packaged in little plastic toilets with lollipop "plungers." As the small people gleefully jumped up and down, spreading the sugary contents of their wee loos every which way, the rest of the parents looked quizzically at the bestower of the peculiar presents. "I haggled," he explained, with a shrug. "I wanted to see how low the guy would go."

Can we afford to eat ethically?

Siobhan Phillips — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:44:00 PDT

Last month, a report from England found sales of some organic food had fallen up to 31 percent. Ethical food advocates have been worrying about a similar trend in this country since the recession began: Just as the need for better food choices became more widely accepted, our economy fell apart, and consumers who once considered free-range, $5-a-dozen eggs a necessity may start eyeing the caged-hens carton for half that price. A recent National Review column argued that organic food was, in fact, "an expensive luxury item, something bought by those who have the resources."

Giving the recession the finger

Robert Lanham — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:35:00 PDT

As I was lying beneath a lustrous sun last week, with a top-shelf daiquiri in my hand, at a luxury resort that I couldn't afford in good economic times, I thought to myself: So what if we're on the brink of the next Great Depression? This was a good decision.

They shoot real estate agents, don't they?

Erica Ferencik — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:32:00 PDT

It's a terrible thing to come to terms with, but I am the reason the world is in an economic tailspin. Me, alone. All those foreclosures, short sales, bank failures, job losses, bailouts, plummeting stocks, the ripple effect into Europe, China, even Madoff: all my fault. Moi. That last house I sold at 253 Carrington Way? That was the tipping point, I'm convinced. I sold it for $657,500 in August 2005, and now Zillow is damning it at $537,000. I would weep to call the owners now and say, hey, want a market analysis? Sound like fun? I know, you'd rather shove shards of glass under your fingernails, I hear you.

Taking in the trash

Katharine Mieszkowski — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:57:00 PDT

Kristan Lawson's legs are dangling out of the mouth of a Dumpster, as if he's being eaten alive. Inside, the scavenger is grabbing loaf after loaf of freshly baked bread. This isn't just any bread; it's rarefied artisanal bread, the kind of baguettes and ciabattas that are displayed as impulse purchases in their own tempting wooden stand near the checkout at posh grocery stores, because shoppers just can't resist them, despite the eye-popping prices.

Pinched: Tales from an economic downturn

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:43:00 PDT

Last fall, Salon launched a series called "Pinched: Tales From an Economic Downturn," about the ways the economy is affecting our lives. We aimed to create a mosaic of our common experience in crisis -- dispatches from across the country about how we navigate through this disorienting fog and the unlikely cultural shifts (and gifts) that occur as we do so. The series went on hold during the election and Obama's first months in office, but we're bringing it back today, with a story by Rosecrans Baldwin about yet another increasingly common experience of our cash-strapped times: moving in with the in-laws.

How I ended up living with my in-laws

Rosecrans Baldwin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:42:00 PDT

My father-in-law has ear hair like a wolverine. It fans out from the auricles, wafting from the ridge lines like cilia, like gray feathered plumage. Most men who grow hair along their ears get it clipped by the barber, but my father-in-law, a pulmonologist at the University of North Carolina, has let his ear hair grow free since the 1980s. When there's wind, it waves. It's his freak flag flying an inch and a half long. He'll never cut it. "I'm like Samson," he says, chuckling. "It's the source of my power." People who know him say they don't notice it anymore, and after months of sitting next to him at the dinner table, I don't either, except as a symbol of achievement: He's so accomplished, even his ear hair is mythic.

Dirt cheap

Steve Almond — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:49:00 PDT

Until a few years ago, I hadn’t given much thought to my food budget, beyond the basic “Do I have enough for fries?” But getting married and having a kid and buying a home with money you don’t technically possess will do wonders for your budgeting habits. As will having the sort of wife who occasionally shops at Whole Foods.

The cost of leaving

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:48:00 PDT

My marital separation would be so much easier if I were in a better income bracket. Then again, if I were in a better income bracket, maybe my husband and I wouldn't be separating at all. I could rattle off all the reasons why the man that I promised to love forever is not sleeping next to me tonight. I can list all the heartaches we've endured over the last two years. Or I could cut to the chase and tell you that this is a story about money.

Our cupboard was bare

Heather Ryan — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:41:00 PDT

We only had to do it once last summer. Only once because when friends got wind of what was happening, they sent gift cards to Albertsons and Safeway, money even. I'm a writer, so I'm supposed to know how to say difficult things, how to blend the mundane with the significant, how to tell a story, how to make the sad at least bearable. I started e-mails in which I blathered on about my love for Mary Jane shoes, or my obsession with Neko Case, hoping to find a moment where I could say, "By the way. Last week? I took the kids to a soup kitchen." I wrote e-mails about Cuba and the welfare system and the crumbling middle class, yet none of them landed in an in box with the admission that I had taken my kids one Tuesday in July, drove downtown and walked into a soup kitchen to eat dinner -- parking far enough away so that no one would see we actually had a car.

Perspire to retire!

Heather Havrilesky — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:37:00 PDT

Recent gloomy talk of recession has given way to even gloomier talk of stagflation, that dreaded combination of rising prices and slow growth. But until a few weeks ago, I'd remained calm about my financial prospects. "Let the Chicken Littles of the world worry!" I told myself. "I'll just cut up my credit cards -- once I pay them off -- and then I'll sock away plenty of money for the Even Greater Depression. We'll be a family of scrappy but satisfied bean eaters! Our neighbors, with their updated kitchens and their enormous home equity lines and their brand-new cars, may gawk at us now, planting tomatoes and splashing our feet in the baby pool instead of going to the movies or shopping at the mall. But soon, they'll be packing their stainless-steel appliances into their covered wagons and heading east to look for work, while I smugly stand here, doing dishes in the 100-degree heat of my un-air-conditioned Los Angeles home and feeling proud that all of our penny-pinching finally paid off!"