BETWEEN US
Robert Love EDITOR IN CHIEF
Money Woes? Been There
Financial setbacks can hit without warning. Everybody needs a recovery plan
THERE IS AN old saying, which I have modified for our purposes here: Into each life a little financial rain must fall. By the time we’re 50 or older, who hasn’t weathered the storms of a job loss or a health crisis? Who hasn’t sat down with family at the kitchen table to figure out a path through a panic? Having spent my career in journalism, one of many fields that has been dramatically transformed in the internet age, I look back on my earlier self and see someone midway across a rope bridge suspended over a deep canyon. There were times when fire burned the bridge on one side and the rope frayed at the other, and at those times the race was to get to safety—or, as fate would have it, to the next canyon and bridge.
That’s the cartoon version, but yes, like so many Americans, I have been laid off or taken pay cuts so deep they felt like being fired. Three times, in fact. Then, too, there was the fire that drove us from our home for three years. And each time there was little choice but to figure out how to bounce back. I sat down with my wife, and we planned. We treated finding a new job for me as a new job. I wrote a detailed plan of action for myself while my wife went to work on our budget, figuring out how to split a penny three ways. I looked up old colleagues for freelance assignments or, as it’s now called, gig work.
In this issue, we look at three other Americans who faced significant financial shocks and had to bounce back after 50. In “Shock! Betrayal! Disaster!”, you’ll read about the ways that illness, marital issues and natural disasters can upend a well-planned financial life. And you’ll learn how determination, savvy and a new perspective can help people recover.
Executive Editor George Mannes manages to find the drama and humanity behind stories about money and investing.
The feature was put together by George Mannes, our money and finance editor. George has been writing about investing and personal finance for more than 25 years, and he takes the challenge personally. You may have seen him in these pages and in the AARP Bulletin recounting his first-person money adventures: working as a volunteer tax preparer, trying to sell his old coins or intentionally ruining his own credit score to discover how you can avoid doing that to yours.
Luckily, George’s credit report is on the mend ... and as you can tell from where you’re reading this, I managed to find steady work again. I’m clocking my 11th year as editor in chief of this publication.
I hope that your financial skies stay mainly sunny—and that even when they’re not, the advice and inspiration in our story can be your umbrella in a storm.
