This is a true story.
My income today is 9% lower (in pure nominal terms) than it was a full seven years ago in 2006. Furthermore, if you would compute my expected lifetime income path like our dear “leaders” in DC do, and you would have suggested that my income each year since 2006 “should” have increased at a rate of 2% per year, so that at least in real terms my income was constant, or even better at 4% per year which is much closer to what government programs budget for, then my income today is either 20.9% or 30.9% lower than I expected it to be (at the 2% assumption and 4% assumptions respectively).
In 2006, we had zero kids (first one came in Feb of that year). Today we have two. And we put them both into Catholic schooling. And despite the cruel and crushing blow to my income (over a 20% cut!) not only is our family fine, we are far happier today than we were in 2006, and this includes losing basically our entire life savings on a house we bought in Massachusetts during the time we worked there.
My wife has just started working, so of course the pain of our sequester is starting to be eased.