Love in the Time of Layoff: Can You Afford the Stork?

“The economy’s so bad we had to lay off one of our kids,” comedian Jonathan Katz recently joked.

Pretty funny. And absurd. But what about laying off the stork? Now there’s an idea…

During the Depression, the birth rate plummeted and there are several indicators —a recent uptick in vasectomies, a spike in condom sales, and buzz about pregnancy postponement on mommy blogs, health, and news sites – that this recession’s also affecting family planning.

The reality is kids cost a lot. We’re talking six figures. The Department of Agriculture estimates that families making $46,000 to $77,000 annually will spend more than $200,000 on children through high school. And that’s bare-bones—it doesn’t include college tuition. The Wall Street Journal estimates families earning $118,000 a year will spend $800,000 (on the low end!) through age 17. Of course, some prospective parents also need to factor in the up-front costs of adoption or in vitro fertilization. Madonna may be snatching up babies in Malawi, but she’s the Material Girl. What about the rest of us?

So how do you actually assess whether you can afford a baby or not? Can you really reduce a child to a financial calculation? They’re questions my new husband, Jay, and I have thought a lot about…

Love in the Time of Layoff: The Fortune Within

“Snake eyes!” said the doctor, rubbing the ultrasound wand back and forth and rotating the monitor so that both my husband Marco and I could see. I had no idea what he meant, but apparently Marco got it right away.

“Holy shit!” said my mild-mannered husband, whose freedom to accompany me to all the appointments was the upside of his having been canned earlier this year.

“What!” I asked, feeling left out and propping my head up to get a better view.

“Twins,” the doctor translated. “There are two of them in there.”

If Marco’s response was the grounded one, mine was whimsical. I burst into peels of hysterical, uncontrollable, womb-rocking laughter.

Snake eyes, I learned later, is what you say when you’re playing craps and you roll two ones. The pair of pips resembles a pair of eyes, and snakes signal treachery and betrayal. When you roll snake eyes, the lowest possible roll, the implication is that you might lose. But in this case, we had won.

Lose Your Job, Swap Your Wife?

If you wondered what the real bellwether of the economy might be, well, it’s sometimes hard to tell – maybe it’s “Wife Swap”?

Back when the economy still appeared to be in okay shape, “Wife Swap,” the ABC show about, yes, swapping wives, featured a couple where the husband was a venture capitalist. The episodes taped last fall.

Now, as the economy has gone all sucky, the producers of the show are taking a new tack: Let’s find some people who’ve really been screwed in the downturn. Is that you? Are you married and count yourself among the “victims of this tough economy”? Then the show’s producers want YOU…

Love in the Time of Layoff: Coming Home Again

On Tuesday, my husband found out that his freelance work with the firm that picked him up three days after the Layoff is now drying up. Yesterday was his first day “back” at home.

“So, does this make you, like, laid off times two?” I asked in a lame appeal to mask my panic with humor.

“Nah, it’s much better,” he said. I asked him to explain.

Turns out, there are Layoffs and there are layoffs. Technically, of course, this latest downsizing of my beloved doesn’t count as a layoff at all, since Marco hadn’t been on staff at that firm. When his supervisor told him there was no more work for him right now, there was no sense of betrayal, no dark questioning (why me? why not him or her?), nothing personal. Other freelancers had been slowly disappearing. He knew things had been winding down.

When You Can’t Afford to Break Up

My older sister Catherine warned me.

She had picked me up from the airport a week before Christmas in 2006. As the dusk gave way to dark and the Texas horizon rolled out before us, we rode in silence—until I confessed. I had come dangerously close to cheating on Nathan (some names have been changed), my boyfriend of four years, with a friend of mine. Everything was confusing save for one devastating confirmation: I wanted to break up with Nathan…

Pluses of the Pinch

Spring’s here, so even in the face of endless lay offs, the mortgage meltdown, and the tax collector’s knock, I’m convinced there’s something worth celebrating. Maybe it’s because mom always said, “When you’re upset put on a smile, think of something you’re grateful for, and soon your expression will be genuine.” An annoying exercise in fakery perhaps, but it often works.

So, with an acknowledgment to mom, let’s review some of the changes that have smile-inducing side effects:

The Tour de France-Style Commute
People have less money to spend on gas/parking/tolls/trains. In New York the MTA is threatening another fare hike. But bike commuting is booming—up 35 percent over 2007, according to the New York City Department of Transportation.

Pluses: It’s scenic, it’s free and since it’s a commute-workout combo you can save even more money by ditching your gym membership. (If you’re jobless, substitute “commute” for “errand running.”)

6 Things You Shouldn’t Say to the Newly Laid-off

When she was laid off from the job she loved at a media company last fall, one marketing executive went for drinks with her friends to drown her sorrows and find a little solace. She and three-quarters of her department had been fired — and on top of that, she had just signed a lease renewal, including a rent increase, on her Manhattan apartment.

“Don’t you have six months of rent saved?” asked one seemingly well-intentioned friend. The marketing executive nearly fell off her bar stool.

In the hours after a friend or family member is laid off, the last thing they need is…

Love in the Time of Layoff: A Security of Her Own

I’ve always harbored an entrepreneurial impulse. With Marco still freelancing a few months post-layoff, and with dreams of starting that family underway, I’m starting to plan. And plan big. The nester in me craves a far steadier financial environment in which to raise our imaginary kids. Sure, I wish financial stability would just drop in my lap, but that dream is about as realistic as the stork.

I’m starting to realize that, given our respective industries, if financial stability is going to happen any time soon, it might be up to me.
The entrepreneurial itch and I go way back. While still in graduate school in the late 1990s, I took a leave of absence and followed the siren call of the tech boom. I put dissertation writing on hold and went to work as a content strategist for a start up in Silicon Alley. While the start up tanked, it was a good effort. I learned much. I like to think of that period as this English major’s MBA.

Out on the Street: Sushi is a Privilege

Each week, “Joe the Trader” chronicles his experiences with life after Wall Street.

As I was watching Federer dismantle Safin in the Australian Open in January, my 10-year-old daughter sighed.

“Oh Daddy, I guess since you don’t have a job we won’t be able to go to the US Open this year. I sure hope you get one soon because that was fun.”

She was referring to the weekend I was able to bring my three children and girlfriend to a luxury box, courtesy of Royal Bank of Client Entertainment. While my lady and I drank Veuve Clicquot and enjoyed watching Rafa and Venus play, the kids focused on finishing their Ben & Jerry’s ice cream bars before they melted in the late summer sun. Yes dear, it was a bit of alright. For now, no more US Open, no more Yankees tickets, no more ski conferences. I sure hope I get a job soon too.

Biological Clocks Don’t Stop for Recession

When Marco got laid off in January, friends who knew of our family-launching plans asked us whether we’d continue or put things on hold. I just turned 40. Marco is seven years older than me. Our biological clocks are not in sync with the dipping of the Dow.

Sure, it occurred to us for half a second that this might not be the wisest time to be spending my grandmother’s inheritance on fertility treatments not covered by health insurance, but it’s expensive to adopt, too. And we really, really want a child.