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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. She is currently on leave.
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Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero � all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
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How do you feel?

By Megan McArdle

Feb 11 2009, 3:26 PM ET Comment

Laura of 11D reads the article I linked below and asks "What would make you feel poor?"  She lists things that I either don't need (summer camp for the kids), or have already given up in the wake of our temporary household retrenchment, and I definitely don't feel poor yet.  Looking back to the years when I had, after taxes, loans, rent, and utilities, about $400 a month to work with in Manhattan, I'd say the things that make me feel poor are more along the lines of:

  • Clothes that don't fit, and no money to replace them
  • Something broken you can't afford to fix
  • Going without protein because it's too expensive
  • Regularly attending events solely because they offer free food
  • Having to tell friends that you can't afford to hang out with them (not "Can't go to Cancun" or "No" to a Broadway show, but "I can't meet you for a drink, because I can't afford a drink".

What would make you feel poor?  Or, turn it around--what threshhold would make you feel totally safe?


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