Trudy Richmond lives in subsidized senior housing in Burlington. She’s highly educated and worked all her life, but at a certain point, Trudy determined that she had too little money to pay for a comfortable retirement, and too much to qualify for services that might make her retirement more comfortable.
In this episode of "What class are you?", Trudy talks with reporter Erica Heilman about how she negotiated a comfortable retirement for herself.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Trudy Richmond: I value intelligence. I value education. So I am the educated class. But because of my age and because of my economic status, at this point, I'm seen as an old poor person. That's my class. But that's not how I see myself.
I live in downtown Burlington, real close to Church Street, which is lovely. It's a government-subsidized building. It's not like part of Champlain Trust or anything like that. It's for people that are older, or it can be for people that are disabled that also have a financial need. So it is subsidized a bit by the government, and I pay my rent based on my income and my expenses and blah, blah, blah. So I'm living among people that don't have any money. Basically that's our common denominator, and most of us are older.
Erica Heilman: How have your feelings about money changed as you've gotten older?
Trudy Richmond: I thought about quite a while ago that I'm going to have two options here. I can either get into the 2% — and my odds of that are like zero — or I can shoot for the bottom. I do not want to end up in the middle, because there's nothing available to help you, and you're on your own, and you've got just a little bit beyond nothing.
So I absolutely made a choice. I said, what can I get if I'm on the bottom? Because I'm never going to make it to the 2%. I mean, how is the game played? You can get subsidized housing, you can get food stamps, you can get insurance, you can get health care. I can get transportation.
How do I feel about that? I didn't make the rules. This is the game. So I will play it, and I will be good at it, and I will win. So how do I feel about money now? I don't need a lot. I've got a beautiful apartment. I don't go without food. I have wonderful medical care. I'm good, but I planned this.
Erica Heilman: You're highly educated and curious and engaged intellectually, and you don't have any money. Do you feel judged?
Trudy Richmond: If I articulate what I just articulated to you, that I'm choosing to play the system? Oh yeah, there's a feeling … There's a like, "Oh, you're one of those." But I paid my time. I paid my dues. I mean, I've been a good person. I've never asked anybody to pay my bills or any of that. I've always had a job. I've been a licensed clinical psychologist working with wonderful psychiatrists. I have cleaned bathrooms. I worked at TJs. I've stocked shelves, and I've kind of liked it all. It's all paid my bills. I just, I mean, I always knew that I could not work hard enough, fast enough, long enough to acquire enough to know that I was going to be OK in every circumstance. I mean, that's impossible. So why try?
Erica Heilman: What do people of means or enough means that they didn't have to shoot the moon for the bottom to get services? ... What are some small daily experiences that people have no awareness of?
Trudy Richmond: If you haven't experienced it, you can't understand. You have no idea. I might as well be speaking Chinese or Swahili or something right now. You cannot understand what I'm talking about. I mean, that's the whole problem with the whole upper class. The upper class that runs our government, that runs our society, they're well-meaning. They don't know. They don't understand what it means to not have milk for your coffee. I mean, they've never experienced that. That's not in their awareness, just like I have no idea what it's like to go into a store and buy a $2,000 pantsuit. I mean, I'm not a bad person.
Erica Heilman: You would look great in a pantsuit.
Trudy Richmond: I would look excellent in a pantsuit, but I'm also great in jeans and a T-shirt. Here's an interesting thing, Erica, that when I moved in, when we moved in here, this is the first place I've ever been where nobody asked you, "So what did you do for a living? I mean, who were you prior to walking in this door?" We don't know what each other has ever done. The thing that we seem to value here, and I probably extrapolate this to other places like this, is if you have children that come to see you, that's a big thing. If you've got grandchildren that you can show pictures of, that's huge. It's like you become filtered through your children or your grandchildren, like you don't exist.
Erica Heilman: There can be a way that in places where old people live, there's kind of an arts and crafts and sometimes a kind of infantilizing element to it. What does that have to do with class? Or what are the class elements in that?
Trudy Richmond: If you look at the activities offered at the pay-for-it-yourself, got-a-lot-of-money kind of places where old people live, you're going to have yoga, you're going to have choruses, you're going to have talks, people coming in and giving talks. You're not going to have a whole lot of pipe cleaners and tissue paper. That's because they think, because you have no money, you probably aren't going to want that. You're probably not going to want to lecture on anything. Let's give you bingo. Let's give you pipe cleaners and tissue paper.
I would love to have a choir here. I would love to have music here. I mean, I'm a musician. I would love that. But, you know, you go and you look at the activities offered to these upscale places — and that’s good for them. I mean, that's lovely. They should have that. But so should I. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to get more and more and more people that feel like me, as the disparity gets bigger and the upper middle class, they're now middle class, they're now low middle class, and you're going to have a whole lot of educated people with no money that are sitting around that don't want to play bingo. That's where I kind of see this going. It's going to get more and more like this.
