A financial meltdown

It has become a rather realistic tragicomic comment to respond to the query, “Who do you work for?” with the knee-jerk answer of “CUC and the gas station.” Equally significant is the pain-filled chuckle that ensues from both the asking and answering parties. Indeed, the pricing decisions of both these organizations have pretty much defined the level of expenditure most of us on island incur.

You know you have hit bottom when you pay the water deliveryman in rolled pennies that you normally designate for the annual DYS penny drive. You know you’re on your way to bankruptcy when you ask your maid if she still has some money stashed under her mattress that you can use for 14 days because the last check you wrote will be $6 short. And the last time that happened, you had to answer to the bank’s automatic charges for an overdrawn account, as well as pay the receiving party’s fees to her bank for the insufficient fund’s charge she was levied when she deposited your check!

Then there are (is, if one is prudent) the credit cards. I could include the burden of loans but I do not have much asset that the bank would consider an acceptable collateral so, by default, I have been spared that danger-laced yet momentarily luxuriant avenue. Still, I’ve reached the national average of $9,000 per annum indebtedness, and in the absence of real estate to allow for a convenient refinancing, I am stuck in the proverbial high interest creek.

For those of us who had labored to instill financial responsibility to individuals and families, as well as small businesses and civil community organizations, the rule of thumb has been that one’s coffers should hold the equivalent of three months worth of gross income as minimum fluid asset available for daily operations. I had myself followed that rule save the last five years when it became evident that the Saipan economy was on a crash dive, income was not about to rise, promises of raises notwithstanding, and one’s circle of responsibility, intentionally acquired or inherited by default, kept expanding while the resource stayed constant at face value, and thanks to Mr. Bush and Iraq, declined in actual purchasing power.

Is it any wonder that the best and brightest amongst us, the young and upcoming, as well as the established and flourishing, have taken the Mosaic path of exodus, realizing that many a pharaoh of the political and economic realms are wearing no clothes, and they were not about to be bothered to be the ones to point it out.

It is a futile exercise to point fingers at who might be blamed. Nor is this telling using the example of one’s personal predicament an act of not-so-subtle exhibitionism. I narrate my situation to invite others to reflect on their own situation and perhaps, identify causes so that one might engage in objectifying underlying contradictions, rather than just comfortably wallow in the griping and whining that seems to accompany our current common situation.

That financial meltdown is happening at all levels of our island’s social life—from corporations to individual earners, agency budgets to publicly appropriated institutions, families to private enterprises—is a given. That our response stretches the gamut of delusions and denials on one extreme, to bureaucratic paralysis and snail-pace caution on the other, and a wide range of options in between, makes the current situation at once bewildering and challenging. As Shakespeare observed a long time ago, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” The adequate and effective response to our situation, like any other where we chose between seeing a dilemma or an opportunity, is a matter of attitude.

I came on island to serve as an executive officer of a service-oriented institution and when it became evident that my income and benefits will have to be borne by those who I represented but whose income is not even a third of what I would be receiving, that immediately presented a contradiction of ethical proportions. More so as I recently came from the mendicant processes of a secular-religious order whose level of sustainability was based on shared corporate funds at par with the poverty level of those we served. That did not allow much leeway for the commerce of much consumptive and derivative pleasures.

As the late Fr. Gary Bradley, S. J. used to say over lunch when he invariably picked up the tab at Coffee Care, “My congregation gives me more than I need, and it is only right that funds are expended to where they are best used.” It was a credit his ecumenical spirit that he would share his assets to the off springs of the Protestant Reformation.

It is no consolation that those who followed my feeble effort to establish an economically self-sustaining service delivery operation, had not fared any better. Given my professional background on all kinds of pedagogy, I segued into the public school system, only to encounter a bureaucratic shortsightedness that bordered into the criminal. First, I have a Masters degree that was not immediately recognized so I came in on the entry level of remuneration. Since PSS operated on two-year contract cycles, when my Masters degree was finally recognized, it could not be retroactive.

I then applied for a Standard Certification which was not immediately granted because I did not have a vellum that claimed I had passed a course in culture and classroom management. It did not matter that I was in the Board of the Humanities that did nothing but promote the humanities’ side of local culture, and as a former Peace Corps trainer, cross-cultural training was at the core in the curriculum; nor did it matter that I wrote a ‘how-to’ book on training for USAID and that my principal’s rating was tops on the rating scale. Being HQT and chosen TOY by my school did not count. But I mellowed and paid my dues, partially helped by the promise that once the paperwork was adhered to, that the benefits would be retroactive to the start of the contract period.

Silly me, on the above promise, I took out the plastic and procured a laptop and other electronic devices that I use in my classroom. PSS reneged on its promise. The slippery slope of credit card indebtedness followed. With $6 remaining disposable income after every pay period, it is nigh high to wrestle down the contradictions. Make that next week.