THE OLD MAN Chapter 1 A Sensible Wife is Hard to Find

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Old Man Worried
courtesy Pickabay.com

The old man story is one that you can read about in part in your daily news paper or other media every day.  I call him the old man for I don’t want to identify him or the other people in the story.

As you might guess he wasn’t always old for he started out like most all of us with a mom, a dad, and an opportunity to make something out of him self.

As it happened he fiddled away a lot of his time and had to play make up in order to amount to something.  Upon entering the work force he struggled to find his niche but after a couple false starts he found his place in the world and prospered.

He wooed and won his mate who was only half of what he needed accordingly to some but “they” always have something negative to say about everybody.

Personally I don’t know if he could have done any better or not but they could have managed their life better especially at the latter stages.

At least they had some kids to help them when they got old and for that they were thankful.  The old man worked his way up the ladder and was a success.  He in one sense was too successful for he didn’t have time to do everything he should have.

He finally gave the responsibility of handling their finances over to his wife who wasn’t up to the task.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart enough but her failings were in the social area. 

The people that gravitated toward her were those who felt destined to solve the world’s problems with other people’s money.  They thrived on problems that didn’t exist or even needed solving.  They insisted in involving her in every cause they could dream up and eventually telling her how much she could contribute to the cause. 

In order to keep favor with her crowd she would have to meet their expectation when they would say, “Can we depend on you for a thousand dollars or can we put you down for five hundred each month”?

The old man was too busy to pay attention to her social calendar which amounted to going out with her friends two or three times a week which had a new “Fix it agenda” each time.

The mistake she made was she thought that since her husband made a lot of money and his pay went directly into the bank she could write as many checks as she wished.  When her balance was low she would urge him to go to the higher ups and demand more money.  The time came when he asked one time too often and they let him go.

His wife couldn’t understand how the company could get along without her husband and felt he would get rehired when they realized the mistake they had made.  But that never happened for they were in a downsize mode.

She exacerbated the condition by continued her association with her friends and writing checks.  The day came when her so called friends realized the old man had got fired and her checks began to bounce.  They needed to separate themselves from her. This still left a lot of people wanting to be paid in cash for the bad checks.

With an empty bank account The Old Man had no other option than to with draw funds from his retirement account and pay her debts.  He was able to keep their health insurance but they now had to pay for it themselves.

The doctor said the decline in her health and the stroke had been brought on by all the stress she had been under.  They had all different kinds of treatments they wanted to try on her but when the health insurance ran out they had no more ideas to try.

When she passed on the kids insisted that she have the most expensive funeral the mortuary could provide.  This just about emptied his retirement fund but the kids felt good about it even though they considered it was their inheritance that was paying for it.  The old man tried to get a job but he learned to hate the words “Over qualified” with a passion.

All he wanted was to put food on his table not to make a million a year.  He had to sell his twelve room house and buy a small two bedroom one.  After he paid all his fees and taxes he had enough money to get along for a while until he spent enough of it so he could qualify for the government’s free stuff.

When he was close to the amount he could have and get assistance he put his house in his kid’s name who promptly sold it and he had to move.  It was just a case of them needing the money for vacations and such.  He got a small room because his kids didn’t have space for him and besides they couldn’t afford to care for him.

One line of reasoning that made that more reasonable was “He should have planned for his old age.”

After learning to play the government’s freebie game he ended up in a two bedroom apartment and enough to barely get along.  He got free meals from different charitable groups which helped him greatly.  He saved enough money to buy a used overstuffed chair and a small TV.  

 

At last life was good until he met a woman at one of the free food places.  She seemed to fill a lonely spot in his existence and after some time she moved in with him.

To be Continued

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