How is the Middle Class on Long Island surviving?

How is the middle class on Long Island surviving? I want to know. How is everyone managing the tax burden, the oil and gasoline bills, housing costs and basic necessities? Some years back, my husband agreed to a 2 hour commute to NYC for work so that we could purchase an affordable house way out here in Suffolk County. We deliberately made sure that we were not going to be house poor. To that end we locked in a low rate fixed mortgage and spent years fixing up the house ourselves to limit renovation costs. We even replaced the boiler and put in new windows to save on heating costs. We spent frugally and minimized our credit card debt. We even replaced our aging (more expensive) vehicles with cheaper vehicles. We didn’t take fancy vacations, in fact, we barely took any. Those we did take involved driving and staying in modest accommodations. We wanted to save for a rainy day since my husband works in an industry riddled with debt and constant layoffs. We wanted to save for college for our children. We didn’t want them to be saddled with the debt that we still have all of these years later.

Over the next few years, the cost of heating oil and gasoline tripled and our taxes increased significantly. Now food costs are on the rise, our house prices are falling and our savings invested in the stock market are decreasing in value. I still see people shopping and spending all around me. My daughter wants designer clothes because all the girls at school are wearing them. I want to ask these mothers how they are affording it all. Maybe I did something wrong and missed the boat somewhere. Maybe because I moved here in this decade that my housing costs are higher than those who grew up out here. I figure there has to be an explanation. My inquiring mind wants to know because our quality of life is going down not up despite everything we have done to achieve the opposite.

All I know is that I am starting to think harder and harder about suburban life and whether the taxes, commute, and everything are worth it. Don’t get me wrong, I like it out here. I was always happy to be living in vacationland, knowing that I didn’t have to leave the Island in the summer if I didn’t want to. Knowing I had all the amenities to have a great vacation right here at home. That was part of the allure of moving out here in the 1st place. We didn’t need to go anywhere else for a summer vacation especially when people were clamoring to vacation out here. The biggest downside to all of this is now more people are going to be sticking around or coming to vacation out here this summer since it is too expensive to go anywhere else. That may upset my pleasant world a little.

Nevertheless, I need to be enlightened by my fellow middle class dwellers and maybe together we can make some sense of all of the rising costs and what we plan to do about it.