Being poor in Sweden

After several years of studies, I finally graduated with my degree. 

I started my first professional job as a first-year engineer. 

Then I filed my first full year income tax return. It felt so good. Finally, I was earning a real wage from one and only one employer. 

Not so fast. Unbeknownst to me, the income tax department had renewed an outstanding, now over six years old, tax debt. I had received a small pension from my father after his untimely death ten years earlier. I never even knew of this pension. It had been paid out for five years, in my name, to my mother at her address. 

At Christmas break 1964 we arrived at my mother’s home for a joyful holiday with my family, we hoped. 

Among the Christmas presents for me, under the tree, was a pair of good quality winter shoes, much needed as I had suffered much cold from my old, leaky and totally worn out shoes that fall.

My wife had worked extra hours, in addition to being a full time student, and saved up money for those shoes.

I happily put them on and paraded them around the Christmas tree in front of the family.

My mother quietly left the room and came back with a few papers in her hand.

“If you have enough money to buy those expensive shoes, certainly you have the money to pay for this.”

It was the accumulated tax bill for the five years of my pension she received after my father’s death plus another six years of tax penalties, all on one statement. I had no idea of the existence of either the pension or the unpaid taxes.

It was a huge amount for us, far more than my wife’s and my combined monthly income.

My mother gave this to me at the same time as the rest of the family were opening their presents.

I swallowed hard but kept my calm for the duration of the Christmas holidays.

On return to work in the new year, I received a reminder from the taxation department (Skatteverket), this time addressed to my home. My mother had “corrected” the address.

I travelled to see the tax collector about an hour away, entered the office and started to explain my situation. I just didn’t have any savings to pay that enormous bill.

“Don’t you know that your taxes always have to be paid first?”

I literally went down on my knees praying for some sort of relief. He repeated the same sentence one more time.

My next few months' paychecks had 2/3 taken off, leaving me with what I needed to pay for the rent and nothing for any other expenses at all.

No money for food?

My wife was still living 100 km away at the university residence and we only met on weekends. My car for the weekly trip was truly held together with baling wire and Scotch tape.

I cannot really tell how she survived. There was literally no food in the refrigerator when I came, but she had access to subsidized lunches at her university. Those were not substantial, and only enough to carry you until dinner time.

I tried to limit my eating to the very minimum. It became a personal challenge to see how little I could eat before bedtime, and still be able to sleep all night.

I found that hard bread and cheese with tea grounded me best. I bought day old bread at the bakery and the cheapest cheese I could find in the cheese shop. Sometimes the owner added a free end piece, the last left-over from a cheese wheel.

We had a lunch room at work and I had coupons for that. The supervisor was a very strict lady. You were forbidden to ask for more than what was ladled out on your plate while you were in the line.

You picked your own boiled potato, though. I sometimes put an extra in the pocket of my jacket. That didn’t last long. The supervisor caught me and made me throw my potato in the garbage.

I was sooo hungry that evening.

This went on for several months. We both lost weight and I really worried about my wife’s health. She was down to 44 kg (97 lbs), a weight she had been at when I first met her as a teenager several years earlier.

My mother?

I never, even with one word, indicated to her how much pain she had caused, not once, for as long as she lived.

But – in truth, that changed my relationship and my respect for my mother, forever.

She often came to visit, but I couldn’t really forget the long forgotten (?) tax bill.

At her funeral about 35 years later I visited her, alone, in the funeral home where she laid in an open casket.

Only then did I tell her how much she had hurt me and my wife in our early years.

My mother didn’t answer.

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