We're rich!

We are so not rich

New Jersey is no longer the highest-earning state in the country, which is a sentence that would have devastated me if I had even a single ounce of emotional energy left for symbolic victories at this point in my life.

Massachusetts beat us. Median household income: $99,858 to our $99,781, according to the Census.

We lost by $77.

Seventy-seven dollars is, at this point, what I spend at Target without remembering what I bought. It’s what disappears between “I’m just running in for a few things” and the total that pops up when I tap my card.

The headline says we’re the second-richest state in America. On paper, that should mean breathing room. It should mean that two adults with three kids who both work constantly are not looking at the next thing on the horizon -- in our case, adding a 16-year-old to the car insurance -- like it’s a hurricane forming off the coast.

But that’s the disconnect. The numbers say one thing. My life says something else entirely.

Here’s what life feels like right now. Not dramatic, not tragic, not “we’re struggling,” because we’re not. Just a steady pace where both of us are always working on something. There’s no clean line between work and not-work anymore, just the glow of the computer screen and the low-grade sense that we should probably be doing one more thing, because if we let a day go by without answering the email, finishing the thing, taking the call, the math will stop working.