My Low Wage Life- Will Lynch

Like many of the students at Santa Clara University and even though the beginning to this proposal has been beaten to death, money has never been a huge issue for me or my family. My father has been an expatriate living overseas for the past thirty years. We have always lived extremely comfortably and I never really thought much about money. I keep finding my self feeling guilty every time I pick up and read the books that we have been assigned for this class. I read about people who are in such desperation for things that are so within my personal means that it sometimes seems farfetched and unbelievable that they can’t afford these things. It is very easy to push these unpleasant thoughts out of my head and retreat back into my comfortable sphere of affluence where this invisible world of poverty can’t affect me much. My meals will keep getting served and things around me will “keep on keeping on”.

What I am slowly realizing however is that I can’t remain in this sphere of affluence and not think about money forever. I come from a rich family, yes. Are they rich enough to support me for the rest of my life at my current lifestyle? I don’t think so. Not to mention the fact that even if they were, they most definitely would not support me for the rest of my life. At some point in the near future, I won’t be living off my parents and needing to be making money on my own. This is what my older brother said was the hardest part about leaving home. What I do know though, is that my brother and I will always have a safety net. My parents helped my brother buy his first home, they financed him through more than four years of college, and he still has a credit card from my parents to use “during emergencies”. My brother’s dog was hit by a car and needed emergency surgery. He didn’t have the money to pay for it, but luckily he reached into his wallet and pulled out his “emergency” credit card.

My brother and I have never, and will never live the low wage life. We will always have the safety net of having parents who will be there for us in times of desperation or near-desperation. Of course my brother does not take this safety net for granted; Tsunami (my brother’s dog) wouldn’t be around today without my parents because there was no way my brother could have afforded to pay for the surgery on his own.

People, who live the low wage life however, aren’t blessed with the luxury of having this safety net. Things would change if I didn’t have a safety net, to the point where I can barely imagine what I would do.