A Mindless Salute to Drumpies

I am a "drumpie," and damn proud of it. I see the other drumpies at Starbucks and JJ’s and Dunkin Donuts. Are you a drumpie? If you live somewhere outside a major city where you honed your career,  odds are it's likely.

Downwardly Retired (sub)Urban Mobile Professionals. That's who we are.

I spoke with my friend Steve the other day, and we were talking about our year. I told him my income was greatly curtailed in 22 and it was worse than the previous year. Steve said his year was worse, and he lost 15 percent of the value of his IRAs, and I told him to wait a minute; I lost 18 percent.

He said, "Yeah, but I’m helping my daughter who has a kid in private school, and it's costing me tons of money a year," and I replied, "Well, I had to extend the line of credit on my home equity loan," and he countered that he got a rate 2 points higher because his portfolio had shrunk.

Pretty silly and vapid concerns in a crazy world, but I digress.

I miss the old times when we would argue about whose car was bigger, whose house was fancier, whose vacation was more exclusive, or whose watch had more gemstones. Those were the days, my friend, and we did think they would never end - but they have, and we can blame Trump or Biden or the pandemic, but the fact is, we are now trying to under brag each other.

They say misery loves company, and I am so happy hanging with my fellow drumpies that I can cry in my beer. We drumpies don't expect anyone to feel sorry for us. Well, maybe we do. None of us, from executives to factory workers to farmers (yes. My morning group is very diverse) everyone in between, ever thought this would happen. We are now learning what it's like to tap into our life savings and, in some cases, sell our homes.

And through it all, we are living in a town that seems to have forgotten it. Our Scottsdale Chamber of Horrors announced it would unveil a plan on how it intends to market Scottsdale to the rest of the world.

It got me thinking that we have so many wonderful marketing opportunities right under our noses. We have slogans to show the world we are in more dire straits.

Scottsdale: Home of the $22Martini.

Scottsdale: 28,000 New Homes at $1.6M. No Waiting.

Scottsdale: Want to Enjoy a Drunk Bender? Let Us Host Your Bridal Party!

And my favorite:

Scottsdale: My Family Just Exhausted My College Funds, Got Arrested for Misappropriating My Moolah, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt!

One thing about us drumpies, though. We wouldn't think about living anywhere else. There's something about being poor in 116-degree weather that's better than being penniless in 23-degree, snow-laden Chicago. We earned enough through years of hard work to have the right to live in Paradise, and we're not going to let a little thing like money keep us from living out that dream.

We have shown that we will take whatever job is available and pursue any career path to support our families and support our way of life, and that's why we have tossed aside pride in favor of survival. We will bitch and moan about our lot in life because, for each one of us who has lost our nest egg, there's some arrogant guy who will try to out-depreciate us. We drumpies must unite. We must put on our Tommy Bahama golf shirts, go to our windows, throw them open, and shout, "I'm more miserable than you, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

I told a journalist friend I was writing this and told him I had to limit my columns to 650 words. He said, "Yeah? I have to limit mine to 600 words and have it in by 5 p.m. the week before!" I told him I had to have mine in by 4 p.m. two weeks before and do my own spell check. He conceded; I won this round.

Chillin' with my homies? Not for me. I prefer hangin' with my drumpies.