Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I'm reading "Janesville: An American Story." It goes through one town's experience losing a large factory during the recession.

The book is mostly about the personal stories of how it affected individuals who were depending on those jobs. It's been a good reminder of how fast things can fall apart financially and also a good way to understand the perspective of those who feel they haven't been treated fairly.

As a reader of the ERE site you will find yourself saying out loud "You were completely depending on this one job?" and "You only had a few thousand saved, had a huge mortgage, and every imaginable toy (truck, SUV, cabin, boat, snowmobiles, his and hers Harleys)! What did you think was going to happen?" I think you also might feel some empathy for people who thought they were doing things by the book and found out the hard way that they couldn't count on a lifelong, good paying job like their parents' could.

Here's a summary: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/book ... ml?mcubz=3.

Has anyone else read this?

I have not but I lived in WI at the time. I call the winter of 2009-2010 the "Winter of No Work" as most of my neighborhood was laid off.

Janesville was a boom town in the 1950s and several of my family members gave up the farming life 500 miles away to work and live there.

There is also a documentary.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/film ... anesville/