Well I’ve done what I can.
Weekend of stress doesn’t begin to describe it.
How close am I cutting it? Thirty-six hours close. Waiting for the banking system’s wheels to turn, and hoping that they outrun the obligations.
Yeesh.
This is what happens when you suddenly have to buy a car and have about six hours to do it. Things go sideways, particularly when you’re already counting cents.
If the next twenty-four hours go smoothly—if the money is recorded as in before the money goes out—then all will be well, and I will soon have some breathing room. Not a lot, but enough, maybe, to get by.
But for the next 36 hours, I am on a knife’s edge.
It’s not supposed to be like this at 41 years old with an advanced degree, a good job, and no housing bill to worry about—but in fact that’s how it is.
I don’t know how a lot of other people are making it.
At all.
It is damned hard to make it in America.