$50 for a student to shovel your drive? When Jennifer McCann moved to the US, she didn't expect life to be so expensive. In her second 'Letter from Connecticut', she explains where the money goes
It is late winter in Connecticut. Snow is falling, temperatures are plummeting and heating-oil bills are arriving alarmingly frequently. On the one hand the snow defines the season, bringing snowmen, sleighing and skiing. On the other hand it's wet and cold and messy. Around our way the snow mixes with grit to turn an ugly black, compounded by all the SUVs and minivans whizzing by. It also takes an hour and a half of vigorous shovelling to clear our driveway and footpath, as we have neither worked out how to use a snow plough nor felt like paying a local high-school student $50 (€40) to do it for us. And then there are those heating bills.
Our €60 a month direct debit to Bord Gáis is a distant memory. Our bills hover around $400 (€330) a month - a third more than last winter. This is for an average suburban house, of about 200sq m (2,200sq ft). If we were trying to heat a McMansion - one of the supersized houses with large open spaces and vaulted ceilings that seem to be all over Connecticut - our oil would cost about $1,500 (€1,250) a month. Forget about gaz-gazzling US cars contributing to the energy crisis: US architecture plays its part, too.
Matthew, our seven-year-old son, missed the school bus this morning. It was a domestic calamity. From his perspective it meant he missed out on the morning chatter, the Yu-Gi-Oh! card trading and the gentle easing into the school day. Worse, he ended up being late, which he hates. No wandering over to his table with lots of other delayed children: being more than seven minutes late means a trip to the school office to get a late pass.
From my perspective it meant I had to clear the car of ice, dress our two girls, rush breakfast down everyone, drive through town and then return home, half an hour later, to a chaotic kitchen, unmade beds and laundry everywhere. How did I do this every day in Dublin? Why doesn't Dublin have a US-style school-bus system? It increases everybody's efficiency, takes traffic off the roads and means school starts promptly, instilling in American children a punctuality that, it seems to me, they carry through life.
A comprehensive school-bus system, in which each national school was obliged to get all of its pupils to and from their day's study, would never work in Dublin, of course. The scheme is highly organised over here. The start times of our town's nine public schools are staggered, so just a handful of buses are needed. If you're at secondary school you will be collected at 6.40am. If you're at elementary school you will be collected perhaps an hour later. If your child forgets to get off at the right stop, a simple phone call will get the driver to loop back.
The scheme's success is down not just to military-style organisation. The school-bus system works primarily because you must send your children to whatever school your street's bus goes to. Moving half a mile often means changing school. Imposing such a system in Dublin would be tantamount to infringing our constitutional rights, wouldn't it?
I'm toying with getting a part-time job. I think I might enjoy it, and, besides, lots of American mothers work - two-thirds, to be exact. As in Ireland, enormous mortgages and the general high cost of living demand two incomes. And, also as in Ireland, many mothers have great careers that they have no intention of abandoning. Then, unlike in Ireland, there are college fees.
If we wish to send our son to college for four years when he is 18, it will, when all is said and done, cost us about $250,000 (€200,000). Add the girls, a few years later, and the figure climbs towards $750,000 (€600,000). And, no, this is not for an Ivy League college. Tuition at any half-decent place costs about $30,000 (€25,000) a year; the Ivy Leagues cost more like $40,000-$50,000 (€35,000-€40,000).
It doesn't stop at money. Life choices, such as how many children to have, are influenced by the cost of college. In the teenage years, family life can become preoccupied with getting into the right college, with would-be undergraduates pursuing activities that should help their applications: sought-after colleges are as interested in students' involvement in community service, sports and other extracurricular activities as they are in academic achievement.
Fees aside, there's a lot to be said for this system. It's easy to bond with your children when you get involved in something like the National Charity League (an organisation for mothers and daughters); teenagers learn the life-long value of volunteering as they, say, help to build houses for the underprivileged; and a high-school education encompasses much more than just passing a final exam.
I have just put down the phone on what I fear may turn out to be my very own stalker. Telemarketers seem to know no limits in this country.
Sunday evening, 9pm: why, somebody's on the telephone trying to sell windows. Saturday morning, 8am: oh, it's someone with information on the latest alarm system. Monday afternoon, 2pm: what do you know? Somebody's trying to entice me with an interest-only mortgage over 50 years.
Enough is enough. Today I cut the conversation short. The phone rang again immediately. Naturally, I answered. Big mistake. "Ma'am, you just hung up on me." "I didn't really. I just told you that if this was a telemarketing call I wasn't interested. Then I hung up." "This isn't a telemarketing call. I'm trying to give you some useful information about our life-insurance products." "I would call that a telemarketing call. Does your supervisor know you are calling me back?" "Lady, why are you in such a rush? What's your problem?" It looks as if our next purchase will have to be a caller-ID unit.
Still in college-fees mode, I headed off today for an interview with an agency that specialises in placing part-timers. It was depressing. The interviewer started with: "I'm sure we will be able to help you, but first let me give you some background. We've been around since the 1980s, and then we had no problem finding part-time positions for our candidates. But that was then, when the economy was booming, and this is now."
Did she have any idea how much trouble I had gone to, to organise a babysitter for the children, buy a suit and find her office in the middle of a concrete jungle, all in the expectation that I would meet her and hear good news?
She continued: "The economy is not good at the moment. It seemed to be finally picking up after 9/11 in the early part of last year, but since then we've had hurricanes, oil prices going up and the car manufacturers talking about laying off thousands, not to mention continued uncertainty in Iraq. Employers are nervous."
It seems that it's not just employers who are nervous. Despite some good economic indicators, such as unemployment at only 5 per cent, there does not seem to be the sense of brash consumer confidence that is so apparent in Dublin.
"Also, I must tell you, many organisations in corporate America still dislike the idea of flexibility and part-time employees."
Hmm. Reminds me of my part-time experience of corporate Dublin.
We have just discovered Costco. Costco is a middle-class alternative to Wal-Mart, except that it's much cleverer. Think Superquinn crossed with Aldi, add a smattering of Power City and Smyths, merge the lot into a big warehouse and you'll get the idea.
A monthly visit to Costco is what all good US housewives seem to do. The idea is that by stocking up with soap, toilet paper, shampoo and cereal, and by filling your freezer with catering packs of meat, dairy products and pizza, your wallet will, in the long run, reap the benefits of bulk buying. My husband, like lots of other clueless husbands when it comes to groceries, even believes our weekly shopping bill is heading for a mere $50 (€40). I remain to be convinced. I can't help thinking that we will end up eating too much, using more kitchen roll than necessary and viewing the likes of sirloin steak as a dietary staple.
Costco is expanding - it has more than a dozen stores in Britain- so you never know when it might arrive on your doorstep.