Doug Economic Profile

Etienne Oliver's Economic Profile of Doug

 

Doug, who is 59 and in his first year of retirement was kind enough to allow me to interview him. He grew up here in Portland in South West, and though he has moved around Oregon and the country a little for his education, has spent most of his working years in Portland. He labels his childhood as good, but considers himself to be happier than his parents. His parents divorced and his mom, who was in a single parent situation with five kids, spent everything on her children and rarely focused on her own economic needs. Doug also mentioned that since he was the youngest of 5 children, that he was protected by his siblings and mother the most from his father, who often tried to threaten the older kids and their mother with causing them to go bankrupt or stealing their salary. Because of this friction, he thinks he is both happier and more economically successful than his parents.

Doug went to the University of Oregon in Eugene, the University of Wyoming and UCLA Berkley during the first part of his adult life. At the beginning of figuring out his career, he went to school to become a Youth Pastor, but changed to education in animal behavior. Doug finally settled and attending the Police Academy in Portland to then serve on the Portland Police Force for 27 years. He has also been married 3 times and lived in 3 different places here in Portland during each marriage. He is currently living in Wilsonville and rents his apartment with his wife.

Doug credits a lot of his economic well-being on having a government job. Working for the government allowed him to retire with what he says to be a very livable wage of $54,000 annually. This is considered the median income for almost all states and he is debt free, though he did qualify for the FAFSA for his son who just finished his first semester at University of Oregon. Doug would classify himself as mid-middle class, or possibly between the mid-middle class and the lower-middle class, but does not consider himself the lower-middle class.

Retirement was an easy transition for Doug to make, mostly because of the benefits from his government job, such as healthcare.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S121000A144NBEA

Doug was joined the police force around 1989, which, in the graph above, you can see when the benefits supplied from a government job really started to increase.

He has been conservative with his financials, relying on his government job and retirement benefits, and says he has only made one serious financial mistake. When he first was hired by the Portland Police, he was hired during a hiring freeze, and although he had a temporary government job in a mailing room, decided to make a rash decision. He took out 18 years’ worth of retirement saving and bought a Porsche. If he had not done that, he thinks he would have a retirement income of 84,000 instead of the 54,000 he has now. His economic dreams are to stay debt free and maintain is social/economic class, but fears from a catastrophe like a house fire or cancer that his retirement funds will not cover. Despite this, he has saved well for retirement and is comfortably living and working on a bucket list at the moment, that includes road trips and following the PGA and NASCAR across the country.

His economic advice to young people is to be fiscally sound, start retirement savings early, to stay debt free, and while you are searching for a job, to try and find one that will help you retire. He also thinks that a house is not a good investment and no longer fits the live style that many working people, especially young working people, have.

One of the things that impacted me the most from the interview is when he said “Don’t buy anything that depreciates when you take possession of it”, which happened when he bought that Porsche. I think this advice really sums up his economic history and views; he would rather play it safe and rely on the government and economic systems put into place to ensure his economic wellbeing. I think his economic view really connects with his social views. He mentioned that part of the reason why the police force and having a government job really worked out for him was because he was hired during a transition and when the government still cared and took care of its’ citizens. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/08/
portland_is_where_young_people_go_to_retire_economic_renaissance_in_portland.html

In the graph above, you can see the increase of local law enforcement employees started to really increase around the time he was hired.

Even though he has some financial fears, it is mostly fear of the collapse of the system put in place by the government, that has changed in his view. Doug said that even if the system did collapse and he was hurting, it would be no worse than anyone else, because the government and system would have failed us all. I think this view speaks a lot to his conservative upbringing and the culture of his generation. Overall, it was an interesting interview to have and to see Doug's economic experience and how it was affected by his work and now how he is handling the finances of being retired.