Confessions of the Working Poor

Jeni Gunn is 51 and lives in a rented basement suite on Canada’s Vancouver Island. She’s worked gigs for three decades and, after raising two children as a single parent, her retirement savings fits in a piggy bank on her dresser. Gunn makes enough doing private investigative and crisis planning work most months to cover her basics, but very little more. She’s got to chase her gig employers down to get paid, often for work that’s physically arduous. She often turns down social time with friends, and most other extras because she just can’t afford it as a member of a growing class of Canadian society called the Secretly Poor.

Limiting my social activities saves me a lot of money, but the effects of isolation are brutal. I’ve been living by myself for more than five years now. There are times social anxiety creeps in, and I pump myself up by high-fiving my reflection in the bathroom mirror: “You can take the dog to the park! Don’t forget pants!” I worry about the statistics related to the effects of social isolation in adults, which can cause increased risks of developing dementia, heart disease or stroke.

While I’m congratulating myself for remembering to put on pants, my peers are discussing plans to gradually slip into retirement, downsizing from 40 hours a week to 12 and eventually closing the door to the “work” parts of their lives forever. Their future plans may include travel or the purchase of a chrome-trimmed motor tricycle. Meanwhile, my focus is on manifesting a solid retirement gig, ideally something that relies on my wellspring of charm. When that runs dry, I’ll toddle off into the woods to perish from exposure or fox bites.