The death spiral of an American family: After generations of stability, the Ramseys face debt and a fall from the middle class
LINCOLN PARK, Mich. — Dave Ramsey Jr. walked into the funeral home with $60 in cash, hoping to settle one more of his father’s outstanding debts. He followed an employee into a private bereavement room, where she took his final payment and said she’d look in the storage room for his father’s remains.
“You know I don’t like it in there,” she said, standing at the doorway, looking at the empty oxygen tanks and the blackout curtains. “It’s not like you’re going to find anything that’ll help.” They owed $681 to Verizon, $11,760 to Honda, $522 to Downriver Pain Management and $12,479 to the cardiologist who’d signed Dave Sr.’s death certificate.“Told you there’d be nothing,” Kristal said, tossing each bill aside, until she stopped at a fluorescent green envelope with cheerful typography. “Leave a lasting legacy for those you love,” the envelope read, and she handed it to Dave Jr. Inside he found a handwritten note addressed to his father.
“This is ridiculous,” she wrote, as her shift wound down. “Next time I give you money for ME that I work for, it better go toward me. Now I got to sit here and look dumb again.“So then tell me how am I going to get home, because I’m not waiting and looking dumb again.”She waited, and waited, and then the shift was over and the other employees were heading out. She stood against the wall. She moved toward the doorway.
Nobody was calling his lawn-care business in the dead of winter. He couldn’t get to any construction sites without a car. He stood outside the garage and scanned his small yard for moneymaking potential until he noticed the large wheelchair ramp the Department of Veterans Affairs had built a few years ago for his father. It looked like it was made from decent quality aluminum. If he could take it apart and sell it for scrap, he guessed it was worth a few hundred dollars or more.
Dave dropped his gloves down into the pile of aluminum, stomped out the cigarette and walked into the house. Kristal was sitting in the living room, going through another box of Dave Sr.’s papers.“I think I found something,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
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