Thanks for the rent, Mr. President

My $600 check arrived this week. If all those billions are going out, I guess I’ll take a piece. But my check equals about one week’s pay, or a little more than a month’s rent. So there’s no long-term benefit right now. At least I need less money now, since I don’t buy gas or put on work clothes every day or pass 47 stores on my way back and forth to an office.

When I began writing about stimulus checks in early May, I didn’t think I’d be so very happy to see mine. I didn’t like borrowing against our future for a few $$$ now. My check still will start out in the bank, as planned. It just might have to come out sooner.

According to these guys at How I Spent My Stimulus, I’m among a quite a few who are forking over America’s future for rent. I did not think to buy a Berretta, though with today’s Supreme Court’s ruling, perhaps now I can.

The good news: I’m hardly alone. The bad news: I’m hardly alone.

While I was figuring out how to set up this blog yesterday, the New York Times was busy analyzing this print news biz: “The industry will not bottom out for another three or four years, analysts predict.”

Three or four years?  

Termination Date: today

I got unemployed. I’m a reporter, mostly for print publications, and I’m hardly alone given the immediate state of the economy (which I wrote extensively about in the last few months, in fact). I’m now adding to the numbers of unemployed workers in Illinois, which measured 6.4 percent in May, per the folks at IDES who track these things and dole out unemployment benefits. I have a college education, including a masters degree, I am accustomed to working unpredictable hours, and I never expected to find myself in this situation. And so it goes. 

My friends are getting unemployed, too: One from a prominent Chicago-based bank, one from a Philadelphia firm of architects, others from newspapers. We’re mostly in our 30s, and we’re shaken to think about the mammoth task of figuring out what seem to be new economic rules that differ greatly from our parents.

I read lots about economics – I’ll read anything about debt, student loans, credit cards, mortgages – so at least I’m prepared with a skill set of living on the super cheap.

But it’s not good. Illinois is taking a bigger unemployment hit than the national average – 6.4 percent in May, compared with about 5.5 percent nationwide in May, and 5.4 percent statewide in April. A whole percentage point in a single month feels gigantic. Wish I could find statistics of journalists who find themselves out of work, too.

That and more to come right here, starting today, my termination date.