FEELING THE PINCH

U.S. CITIZENS HANG ON AFTER RECESSION CLAIMS WEALTH

ported last week. The new figures, showing U.S. citizens’ net worth has plunged back to what it was in 1992, left economists shuddering while sharpening attention on the pocketbook issues at the center of the presidential campaign. But for families across the country, the report, tracking the period from 2007 to 2010, confirms what they already felt in their gut and saw in their checkbooks. It is one more reminder that they’re not alone.

Most of the wealth was lost to the mortgage crisis and the drop in home values, wiping out equity many families counted on. But incomes and stock-based retirement accounts fell, too. In the 18 months since the Fed completed its survey, home prices have continued to fall in many cities, while stocks rose and then fell back to nearly the same level.

“There’s nothing in this report that makes me feel good,” says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and an economic official in the Clinton administration. Bubble-inflated housing wealth was a fiction whose end should have been expected, she said, but the drop in incomes is especially troubling, because it gives people even less flexibility and confidence to save for the future. “There are signs of improvement, but I think that everybody is scared.”

It’s not just plummeting wealth affecting the financial psyche of people in the United States. Incomes have been stagnating for years. But until the bubble burst, lenders and credit card companies gave consumers freedom to borrow and spend. No more.

U.S. citizens “were told they were much wealthier than they really were and they believed it,” says Robert Manning, author of the book Credit Card Nation and an expert on consumer finance. “Now they’re kind of hearing they’re a lot less wealthy then they believed — and they’re in denial.”

In New York, Michael and Patricia Jackson shared a bedroom made from a walled-in front porch, in a house cut into three cramped apartments. Then, on a visit to Georgia in 2000, they drove past spacious new homes and lawns in subdivisions promising affordability, and they began to dream.

By the time they moved in to their brick-face colonial in Marietta, Ga., four years later, even bigger dreams seemed within reach. The house in the new Hampton Chase neighborhood cost a little more than $200,000 and values were rising fast.

With $20,000 in equity and two paychecks, the Jacksons were financially secure. What they remember most, though, is feeling proud. Their daughter had her own room. Patricia loved the “humongous” master bedroom and bathroom. Michael devoted himself to the lawn that sloped down to a thick stand of trees, working hours in the heat with a relish he’d never felt as a renter.

“This is what we always wanted, was to live somewhere comfortable and to be part of the community as well,” says Michael, who is 53. “It made me a better man. I learned how to cut the grass. You know in New York you have one little patch of grass and you can take scissors and cut it.”

But in 2007, Patricia was cut from her job as a dispatch supervisor with a cable television company. Then Michael lost work as a contractor. They struggled to pay the mortgage. But they kept pace when their lender offered a forbearance plan that temporarily halved monthly payments, but added the balance to the loan, a fact the Jacksons say was not explained to them at the time.

They fell even further behind after getting into an accident on the long drive between New York and Georgia. Meanwhile, a foreclosure wave swept the metro Atlanta real estate market, sending home values down.

County appraisers recently valued the Jackson’s home at $166,000, but the couple say it probably would bring no more than $140,000. They are 11 months behind on their mortgage payments and, with penalties added, now owe $245,000 on the house.

Both found new jobs and the lender has cut the interest rate on their loan. But they are so far behind on the mortgage that the lender tells them they can’t qualify for government programs to help families stay in their homes. The Jacksons, who long ago shelved fantasies of vacation homes, now are desperate to convince someone they are worthy of keeping the house on Hampton View Court.

“We’re scared. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Michael says. “Right now, our main thing is to hold on to what we have. I mean, we’re holding. But the mortgage company, they have a grip on us.”

For 13 years, Michael Bobic taught political science to college students. Now he sells Star Trek collectibles on eBay and teaches a fencing class at the YMCA to help pay the bills.

The 49-year-old drives only when he has to, shops around to save 50 cents on a gallon of milk and hasn’t bought a restaurant dinner since losing his job as a professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College last year. “I’m incredibly cheap,” Bobic, who lives in Fairmont, W. Va., says proudly.

Once a week, Bobic spreads his gospel of frugality, teaching a money management class at Galilean Baptist Church in nearby White Hall. Growing up in Kingsport, Tenn., Bobic recalls that as his parents divorced and later remarried each other, their financial lives swung wildly. Their son learned to prepare for the financial uncertainties of his own adulthood by watching.

He tells his church class to do what he did — have an emergency fund to cover three to six months of expenses. When Bobic lost his job, he was prepared. Enrollment had been shrinking and he knew Wesleyan couldn’t afford an extra professor with two already tenured.

To get by, he took shortterm work doing title searches for a lawyer, until the twohour drive to Moundsville, W. Va., proved too much. Then he got a temporary job doing surveys for an opinion-research company. But a year later, his financial cushion is gone.

Bobic’s retirement account is gone. He cashed it out to buy a house in 2008 when he quit a 10-year job at Georgia’s Emmanuel College and moved to Fairmont, W. Va., so wife Jennifer could be near family.

Until he lands a job, Jenni- fer is funding their retirement, putting aside money from her job with the Social Security Administration. Bobic keeps close track of their financial well-being. When he lost his job, 42 percent of the couple’s income vanished, he notes. He’d limited the mortgage to 25 percent of their lesser income, but now it eats up 32 percent of the total. Even now, though, he’s working on a plan to rebuild.

Within two months, Jennifer’s car will be paid off, and they can start to replenish the emergency fund. Bobic, meanwhile, is hoping to land a teaching job at a university in southern West Virginia.

Moving there would mean selling the house and hoping to break even. Worse, he says, it would take Jennifer two hours from relatives now just 10 doors away.