Sunday, October 23, 2011

Dropping Out of the Middle Class (Denver Edition)

An Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts

Many who started in middle class find lifestyle slipping away. (Denver Post, 10/23/2011)

ExcerptSpillman knows that too well. In her peak earning years before the recession, she was making more than $60,000, most from her work as an adjunct faculty member at Westwood College.

But two years of unemployment, broken up by part-time and temporary positions, have left her with a fraction of her previous income and destroyed her credit.

Since June, Spillman has been looking for full-time work again. She lives with her sister in Parker. The car she shares with her son, who lives in Aurora with his father's parents, is falling apart. The two of them haven't taken a vacation since 2005, and she has unpaid student loans and medical bills.

"I am not hopeful for my future at all," Spillman said. "But for my son, I am hopeful. He is the only thing that keeps me going."

Things weren't that way growing up. Spillman's father was a property manager at the Cheesman Realty Co. for 35 years and her mother a secretary
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