Struggling to stay in middle class

A report released earlier this week told us all what we probably already knew: The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

That’s pretty apparent, but it got me thinking about what’s happening to those families smack-dab in the middle.

So I spent some time this week with Casey Harris, his wife and their four children. The family’s income is somewhere around $40,000 a year, well above the poverty level and well within the boundaries of the “middle class” income range.

Harris is the office manager at Manna Inc. in Bangor. He is 36 years old, and he graduated in May with his bachelor’s degree in mental health and human resources.

“I knew I needed to get my degree in order to provide for my family – and don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Manna doesn’t pay me well, but we simply can’t seem to get ahead,” he said recently. “That’s why my next step is to get my master’s degree.”

Harris’ wife, Sheri, just left her job as a certified nurse’s assistant to take a nighttime job cleaning offices for a cleaning service. The new job pays 50 cents more per hour and offers her more hours each week. She’ll work at night so she can be with the kids during the day when her husband is working. She’ll be driving an hour and a half to clean offices as far away as Bass Harbor.

There’s no room for day care in the family budget.

Their two teenage daughters, Bethany, 15 and Britney, 17, contribute to the family income. Bethany baby-sits, and Britney works 20 hours a week at Ross Manor, a Bangor nursing facility.

Together the girls pay the cable bill and the Internet service fees. They buy their own clothes, and Britney is always ready to lend her parents extra cash when it’s needed.

Both girls help out with the two younger children, Daisy, 4, and Jack, 19 months.

The last vacation they went on was in the summer of 2004 when they went to Storyland in New Hampshire, where they shared a house with two other families to save money. A big celebration would involve dinner at Bugaboo Creek. They have two cars. One is paid for.

They have one credit card that they rarely use.

It just seems to me that it was not that long ago that a family income of $40,000 wasn’t so bad. But do the math.

An income of $40,000 a year translates into about $3,300 a month. The Harrises’ heated apartment costs them $1,100, and groceries for a family of six cost about $800. That leaves $1,400 a month for gas, a car payment, car insurance, the electric bill and all of the incidental costs that come with four children.

There’s not a lot of saving going on.

While it may sound bleak, an evening with the Harris family is anything but. Britney may well be the most generous and level-headed teenage girl I’ve ever met. She likes her job at Ross Manor and still manages to get her homework done. She uses her study hall at school to volunteer in the classrooms of developmentally disabled students. It’s clearly her passion.

There is no trace of bitterness or self-pity when she tells a visitor of her biological mother’s death 10 years ago in a tragic car accident in Richmond. Britney was 7 and Bethany was 4, and they were both in the car.

“We are truly blessed,” noted Sheri, as Jack crawled onto my lap to scribble in my notebook. “We do know that. We don’t feel sorry for ourselves, and we certainly know there are people who are worse off.

“But it just takes a lot to keep up these days. We are always behind, and that really weighs on you.”

Sheri Harris has grown to despise the grocery store. I can understand that.

“Every time they swipe that [debit] card. God, I just hate that feeling as I wait to see if it’s approved. We live on the edge each week, and I’m never sure if it’s going to go through,” she said.

They are not poor, and they certainly aren’t rich. The government classifies them as “middle class.”

I don’t know if there is a study saying so or not, but I think the Harrises would tell you that the middle is getting squeezed pretty tight these days.