Planning is a privilege
By: Nicole Castillo
Tags: Trauma, Planning, Covid 19, Stimulus Package, Poverty

Like many Americans, I have spent the last few days refreshing the news, waiting to learn whether or not a second stimulus check will be included in the Covid-19 relief deal. Will it be $600, $1200, will my student loans come due in February or April? I’d like to make a plan.

Americans wait, while Congress seems to be gambling with our lives. I wonder — have we failed to communicate our needs to the right people? Is compromise between political parties a naive dream? Do our legislators even care?

For some, $600 to $1200 might take the edge off a strapped budget. Maybe they’ll be able to pay a small bill. Get ahead on a debt. Buy a few items they’ve been needing. Perhaps they will sock it away in a savings account. For others, it might mean half a rent payment for a bill long past due, maybe enough money for food for a month, or just enough to cover needed prescriptions. It’s an absurdly small amount of money, and yet we are forced to watch the spectacle of whether or not it will be granted.

When COVID hit, Americans reengaged with conversations about savings. An economy largely dependent on loans and credit, now started to talk about the virtues of having three to six months in savings. We were given the advice to stop paying down debts and start saving, just in case the pandemic went on.

In some cases, the shutdown resulted in decreased spending on commuting, entertainment, and travel. We learned that many were in fact able to save, and that credit card spending declined. In the right light, it might have looked like we were becoming a financially prudent country, contributing to the mythology that severe hardship fortifies and builds character. And while these ideas will always find an audience among bootstrapped mentalities, the truth is much more sobering. During the pandemic, the rich indeed got richer, while those with the fewest financial resources, those who had already been facing the trauma of poverty — were harmed even greater.

The pandemic has been a disruption for most people. We’ve had to alter plans, change our routines, sometimes drastically, over and over again. I’ll admit that there are days when life has felt like a timeless chaos of weeks blending into months. If only I knew what was going to happen next week, or even a month from now, I’d feel better. The pandemic has shown me that the ability plan can be a privilege.

For many Americans, chronic poverty impacts one’s ability to think long-term — to make plans. The survival of now is all encompassing. If you are constantly worried about how you are going to feed your family and pay your rent, you likely do not have the mental bandwidth to plan. The pandemic has stripped many people’s ability to work more hours, get an extra job, to stay afloat, and make ends meet. Now they cannot be certain what the government will do, if anything, to help.

Most parents know that one of the most important resources they can give their children is consistency — the sense that things are secure enough for them to build a footing of their own. The spectacle of whether or not Americans will receive direct payments is disorienting, unnecessary, unjust, and dare I say, traumatizing. Months from now we will emerge from this, resolved that we will make better choices should another pandemic befall us. I’m not sure I will ever forget how fragile our economy felt, how fickle and random our legislators acted, and how insecure we made the most vulnerable feel.