The Pay Cut
2025 opened with a 30% pay cut.
I had just reached a point where I was financially comfortable. Not own-a-home rich, but wealthy enough I could save for retirement, not think about grocery bills, take vacations and buy toys.
Then investors got spooked, and every tech company started to do mass lay-offs. Half-a-million tech workers in North America lost their jobs. By the end of 2024, my workplace had already done two rounds of cuts.
I expected a third, and so I found a new job. Sure enough, a month later, there was another “reduction in force”. My old manager and teammates were let go. By that point, over half the people at my previous employer had been terminated.
The Dilema
That new job’s lower salary squeezed me: it’s not as if rent, groceries, gas and insurance had gone down. The principle casualty was my monthly retirement contributions. The thing is, I don’t expect I’ll ever make a comfortable salary again. This has me scared anew about how I’ll make ends meet in old age.
In the twenty years I’ve been living on my own I’ve seen rents close to triple. I was paying $900/month for a three-floor townhome in 2007. In 2026, I pay $2,100 for an apartment a third the size.
Projecting what rents might cost when I’m 65, how can I possibly save the $6,000 a month it might cost for a one bedroom apartment?
The only way out is home ownership, but that too has been out of reach: every year throughout my thirties I saved for a down payment, and and every year the prices of homes would increase so much that I ended up further away from my goal.
The goal posts kept moving faster than I could catch up until that last job, when I finally collected enough for a down payment. Only then prices were so astronomical that the it was the mortgage that became unaffordable. Forget condos: rundown mobile homes an hour away were way out of my budget too.
Buying Now
I don’t expect things to improve.
Friends and I are talking about living in Home Depot garden sheds on remote vacant land. My ex’s mom, who couldn’t afford to move out of a bad living situation, opted for MAiD.
Whatever the housing situation, I know my old age will be lived in poverty. What makes life comfortable then? The things that go in a home: books, art, plants, candles, etc.
If I am to get more of those things, I need to do so now, as the cost of all things is skyrocketing.
Books, Art & Typewriters
So that’s what I’ve been doing: prepping for poverty.
My home is already full of cozy trinkets – blankets, sculptures, coffee table books. More recently, I’ve been replacing items with durable counterparts that can last ages.
Take the kitchen: I’ve substituted my non-stick pans for the stainless steel variety, same with my plastic kitchen utensils. I have an old-school kitchen timer and a scale that use AAA batteries.
I have a few rules: if it has batteries, they must be replaceable; if it is app-enabled, it must not require it to work; if it is multi-function, see if there’s a suitable single-function alternative; if it’s electric, see if there’s a manual version. I make exceptions where appropriate for the sake of convenience.
Here’s an example: I drink espresso. Most people I know who do own a Breville Barista. It’s a beloved machine that does it all for around $1,000. It also lasts less than a decade in kitchens; either because servicing it is too costly, or because they’ll move on to the next thing. Being multi-function, there’s a lot of ways for it to break.
By contrast, I bought a Cafelat Robot. It requires no electricity, is easy for me to repair, is a work of art in itself, and most importantly makes top-notch espresso. It does one thing, but does it well, and it’ll be there making espresso for me when I’m 80.
The Future is Bleak
I graduated right into the Great Recession and the introduction of the smart phone. The recession depressed my wages for a decade, right in time for the 2020 pandemic.
Over my career, I’ve watched the demise of job safety, pensions, weekends, and affordable housing. Sacrifices made as people were made to compete with automation and outsourcing. Now AI is eating away at the jobs that are left.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that future technological advances under capitalism will only make it all worse.
But, as the world falls apart and I end up destitute, my friends and I will be able to gather around the fire and I’ll have my little shot of espresso.