What if You're "The Rich One" In a Crumbling Community?

[Smashter]

I was inspired to read “Janesville” by by this forum . It’s a sad tale about how a once proud industrial town in Wisconsin grappled with massive job losses during the Great Recession.

The book has me wondering how I would react if the place I chose to put down roots, post early retirement, started to go down the tubes.

I ultimately see DW and I moving to the Midwest, probably back to Wisconsin, in a smaller town on the outskirts of a bigger city. This would provide a low cost of living, and we’d be close to DW's family. DW and I are not big on travel, and we both love the idea of putting down deep roots in an area and becoming intimately connected with it, a la Vicki Robin or 7WB5

I hope that no economic downturn would devastate DW and I. We’d be living the ERE good life, sheltered from the storms that buffet the rest of society. But, how will it feel if the community that we love goes into a deep recession?

Maybe there are too many unknown unknowns to form a real plan. I just wonder what it would feel like to be one of “the rich ones” as your community crumbles. I imagine I would volunteer, offer whatever expertise I could provide, and try to lead by example so that whoever made it through to the other side would be better prepared for the next downturn. My natural instinct would be to leave at the first sign of serious trouble, but if I'm as ingrained in the community as I hope to be, leaving will probably be a lot easier in theory than in practice.

[slowtraveler]

Joshua Kennon wrote a great article on a book about how the smartest in rural communities often migrate out but not vice versa. This creates deepening depressions in the small towns and separates the classes further as the smartest climb the ranks and cut contact with others. I think recession in these areas is inevitable.

[Laura Ingalls]

Smashter did you live in Wisconsin during the Great Recession?
I just started Janesville and so far have found it a tad melodramatic. I lived in a small and shrinking town there and have been back to visit a handful of times. Home prices are still way lower than pre Recession. There are lots of vacant houses. Rural Wisconsin is still in a recession in many ways and has been slow to see much recovery. However, it is not like you are going to be accosted by street children begging or anything.

[Sclass]

It’s a good place to be. I’ve gotten great rents during awful times. I’ve run businesses where I repackaged peoples excess inventory into marketable product. The inventory came from bankruptcy auctions.

We are all scared of downturns. But these can be great opportunities. You just want to be the opportunist and not the victim. If you’re already on the good side ride it.

I got really lucky in 2000 and 2009. My businesses were well positioned to benefit from the storm. This was business and not homesteading but same idea, I got to buy up things I needed cheap.

[Riggerjack]

Well, you wouldn't be the rich one. You would be the independent one. The one with practical, real world experience and skills, in a world that needs them more than ever.
The guy who inherited half the local telecom, or owns a large share of the land in the county will be the rich one. And he will stay or go by his inclination.

Nobody is going to form a mob with pitchforks and torches to "settle up with the rich" and start with the early retirees. Despite the fondest wish of PBS Documentary Makers.

Do what you do. Let others do the same. Wherever you go, things will change, some for the better, some not. You didn't expect to intimately join a community, only to have good things happen, did you?

[Sclass]

Nobody is going to form a mob with pitchforks and torches to "settle up with the rich" and start with the early retirees. Despite the fondest wish of PBS Documentary Makers.

Really why not? I’m actually a little worried about this scenario.

I lived in three neighborhoods most of my life. All three didn’t crumble. They did the opposite. Gentrification has its own set of complications. I cannot say what I like more. The nasty bastards who stole my battery as a kid or the new nasty bastards who keep asking me when I’m going to move my mom out of her place and sell it to a family who can actually afford it. (They want new residents to tastefully renovate the place).

My latest place is in a community of retirees. Young locals just cannot swing the mortgage on two salaries. So the youngsters are forced to live down the hill. I sense some bitterness at community gatherings given my apparent unemployment. I wouldn’t say the place is crumbling but the younger generation cannot move up market given their earning power. It feels like a form of decay.

[Smashter]

@LI, no, I didn't. I was in college in the northeast during the great recession. I agree the book was melodramatic at times, but I still enjoyed it for its attempt to look at complex topics in a nuanced way.

And I see where you’re coming from. When I visit rural Wisconsin, I don't see much hardship. DW's family is in a farming community that is doing pretty well. Her dad has worked at a cheese plant for 30 years and counting, and her mom has had the same administrative job with the state government for 30+ years. They both made it through the recession just fine, as did most of their small town. It seems that many years of being thrifty, and not buying multiple boats, snowmobiles and 4 wheelers (like the folks profiled in the book) pays off

I definitely don't think only good things will happen to me, and I know that life is full of obstacles. I guess I should not worry about it too much, and imagine ways I can thrive during the downturn as SClass suggests.

[IlliniDave]

I grew up a short way downriver from Janesville. All the towns on that river have had their ups and downs. Janesville will bounce back, I'm sure. I drove through the edge of Janesville this summer. The recession certainly didn't shut down the entire city.

I'm planning on moving to a city that never really got over the rise of the rust belt in the 1970s. If it weren't for my parents I'd probably pick a very small farming community. That's another place where you'll find mostly people in decade/generation-long economic decline. And the closest town to my cabin is a small city that has its roots in mining and lumber that has a declining population (in 2010 the population was about 65% of the 1980 population, IIRC) and therefore waning economy. I guess I'm kind of used to economically marginal or depressed areas. Sounds awful but there's an advantage to ERE-ing in such a place if you are FI enough that you don't have to rely on income/benefits from traditional employment. You don't stick out so much relative to your neighbors (lots of people need to be frugal, many are under- or unemployed), no crazy real estate bubbles, etc. Only you can answer how it makes you feel, but you probably won't see ragged masses lined up outside soup kitchens and things like that. I find kindred spirits in people who get by without a big money spigot in their lives, and I tend to be the helpee more often than the helper.

[Laura Ingalls]

@LI, no, I didn't. I was in college in the northeast during the great recession. I agree the book was melodramatic at times, but I still enjoyed it for its attempt to look at complex topics in a nuanced way.

And I see where you’re coming from. When I visit rural Wisconsin, I don't see much hardship. DW's family is in a farming community that is doing pretty well. Her dad has worked at a cheese plant for 30 years and counting, and her mom has had the same administrative job with the state government for 30+ years. They both made it through the recession just fine, as did most of their small town. It seems that many years of being thrifty, and not buying multiple boats, snowmobiles and 4 wheelers (like the folks profiled in the book) pays off

I definitely don't think only good things will happen to me, and I know that life is full of obstacles. I guess I should not worry about it too much, and imagine ways I can thrive during the downturn as SClass suggests.

There are Wisconsinites in genuine hardship. I would recommend the book Evicted. I do think that many of the people that got foreclosed on in Wisconsin had situations with no margin for error not just complete zero documentation liar loans. DH and I lived in another larger community more similar to Janesville in size. In our neighborhood there we were pretty median income in the small town we were “richer” in comparison. I found very little impact personally but my grade school age son sort of liked being the big fish in the small pond. I think he’s better off in his bigger high school

[Farm_or]

Great points, most of which I can relate to. It is very dependent on your own outlook. We live in a county aptly named by the French explorers as "bad times". It really cracks me up how they were able to coin this place that long ago.

Nonetheless, there is a small segment of people with expendable income, there's a small middle class, but the majority are poverty line level.

Cons: it's difficult to do business, crime is above average, schools are below average, real estate is generally not a good investment, and you have a difficult feeling for fitting in.

Pros: cost of living is way below average, you needn't try hard to keep up with the Joneses, and drastic changes don't happen.

[Gilberto de Piento]

It seems that many years of being thrifty, and not buying multiple boats, snowmobiles and 4 wheelers (like the folks profiled in the book) pays off

This is a big part of the problem. Bad times can happen to anyone but many of the people in the book set themselves up for it. I had genuine empathy for some of the people who lost their jobs and were in a bad place but also had some disgust at the people who thought they could live large forever. They had lucked into a $30 per hour GM assembly line job and were shocked when that job dried up and they could no longer afford the big house in town, the cabin up nort, a 4x4 Chevy truck, a Suburban, a fishing boat, his n hers Harleys, snowmobiles, atvs, and every other brand new toy you can think of. Even after things went bad it seemed like people were trying to figure out ways to keep the party going rather than taking it as an opportunity to give up some of the toys. The stories about the high school kids who were working multiple jobs were especially troubling.

[Fish]

My wife and I started working a couple years before the recession hit and we were fortunate that our jobs were never at risk. But it hit a lot of our friends and family, who either lost their jobs, remained perma-underemployed, and/or could not find work. I think those fortunate enough to have had a steady income or heeded Jacob’s warning probably have fond memories of the recession, being able to take advantage of significant discounts in the price of durable consumer goods, and buying stocks and real estate at 50% off. We did our fair share of that.

However, the part that I remember vividly was another favorite store or restaurant shuttering its doors every month, and the emotional drain of offering sympathy to those with less fortunate job situations. Even if you don’t experience financial stress directly, it still creeps into your life somewhat if you have a heart. And my least favorite part, the crumbling infrastructure, public and private. Things like deferring road maintenance and reducing library hours and other basic services impact everyone regardless of income or net worth. And what if you locate yourself close to a grocery store to live car-free and then it goes out of business?

You might be “the rich one,” but the environment outside your four walls reflects the community’s prosperity or lack thereof. Really, you’re all on the same sinking ship when the community crumbles. Money or ERE skills doesn’t make you immune. It just means you go down last. My preference is to avoid a disaster area if it’s foreseeable, because the recession is not anything I would care to experience on a protracted basis.

[7Wannabe5]

@Smashter:

One of the things that struck me while reading Vicki Robin's memoir about her experiment with living locavore, was her emotional response to realization of dependence. Her experiment with locavore eating differed from many other accounts that I have read, because she wasn't attempting self-sufficiency; she was mostly dependent for food on a friend who was an organic market gardener. Therefore, she was rendered vulnerable and grateful by the experience.

I am by innate temperament independent, and due to being first in sibling birth order (with no brothers and a mentally-ill mother), I was early conditioned to taking the lead. So, I did not consciously learn the skills associated with being a good follower until I was well into my 30s. To best function within the context of a community, I would suggest that you will want to take on leader and follow roles within your community in addition to modeling independent self-sufficiency at household level. (Nod indicating absolute agreement with IlliniDave's reference to finding himself helpee more often than helper.)

One thing I have been thinking about recently is the difference between a personal social circle and a community. The Native Americans in my region had tribes, clans, and smaller independent units, and they often traded over a significant distance with other tribes. External trade was not necessary for survival, so the smallest functional unit was the tribe, because inter-clan marriage was prohibited (for obvious reasons having to do with incestuous practice quickly leading to decay of any isolated human population.) This is also why, in entirely different setting, affluent young ladies in Jane Austen novels were sent to London or Brighton to find peer (or better!) husbands, and also why rural-located young gentlewomen featured in other novels more likely to be banned, had affairs with muscular males belonging to classes less gentle.

So, healthy food acquisition, healthy mate acquisition, and mutually beneficial trade will determine differing personal-social-circle and/or healthy community boundaries and population sizes. For instance, if wish to eat sushi, I will either have to trade at some distance in order to acquire rice, or attempt some likely to be terrible invention of recipe making use of mashed potatoes as substitute. It has also been my experience that if I wish to "converse" with humans likely to appreciate my sense of humor, I must include some British females over the age of 40 in my social circle. Therefore, it is unlikely that complete unification of my personal social circle and trading range with my community or human-powered-travel range would result in my ideal lifestyle. The trick is to find the best balance or the distribution of highest long-term utility.

That said, my simple answer to your inquiry would be that you should try to locate yourself in a community that has a reasonably high level of resilience. For instance, some industry, a military base or university or political center, some tourism potential, some agricultural base, some commuter population, and a pro-active Chamber of Commerce engaged in vigorous promotion of acquisition of bubble-machine for upcoming town center festival. IOW, not a mining company town in the middle of an ugly piece of desert .

[Jason]

I am currently reading Janesville. I think this article presents the conditions that one has to marinate upon as they decide whether to enter a community that is trying to phoenix itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/busi ... v=top-news

[SavingWithBabies]

I haven't read the book yet but I have family that live in Wisconsin. If you go far enough off the beaten path, there are places that never have a housing boom. Where the local employers sometimes chase off other big companies to prevent their employees from being poached (and prevent the community from growing). Look for towns around 12,000-15,000 in population, ideally being a county seat and at least 45 minutes from the next major city. It's important the town is off the beaten path so not near an interstate. Ideally, it's not really a place to go unless you live close to it -- no reason to pass through. Maybe it has a big hospital and that is one of the top employers (you'll want that hospital as you get older).

These places exist in Wisconsin. Things don't change much. But the people like it that way. And I've lived in those places and I grew to like it in some ways too.

In such a place you would be fairly safe from being the "last rich (wo)man standing."