Pondering the Blue Book Value of a Middle-Aged White Guy

They almost never go up in value after they leave the lot.

When I was a kid, my stepdad lost his job as a middle manager at Keuffel and Esser, a defunct company best known for making slide rules. As you may remember, slide rules were computers for dirt poor kids in the 1980s. I never really understood what the company did or what my stepdad’s job was there.

But suddenly, after playing the archetypal role of 20th century breadwinner for much of my young life, he was on the couch every day for several months. He was in his mid-fifties at the time and just a couple years removed from buying a house with my mother. There was a mortgage and a snotty stepkid. An early retirement was not in the cards.

My stepfather found another job as a data entry drone that he held for years, but he never fully recovered from the mid-life blow to his career and identity, although he rarely talked about it.

The last two decad…