Broke is the New Rich Says HuffPo

Fitness coach Penny Hoff has come out of the closet as a broke person in the pages (I'm old enough to remember when magazines had pages) of the Huffington Post.

Today, we are a statistic; we are one in every six families in the country. We are no longer the upper middle class. As a matter of fact I saw a frightening chart the other day that put our family of five under the poverty line. We are poor. Shocking to me, but nothing new in 2011.

But something unprecedented happened since last Wednesday.

In the words of author Gene O'Kelly, not only have I let go of something precious but I've also gained something precious, and that is the palpable sense of being carried by my community when I couldn't walk through this letting go process by myself...

This week, I have been given the gift of community and friendship that almost (almost) eclipses the loss that I will feel leaving this street and this house.

I should also mention that releasing the bondage of all my "stuff' is very similar to the experience of shedding unwanted pounds. We start to feel what it feels like to be free of unnecessary weight that we didn't know was weighing us down until it was gone. Finally, we can breathe.

So if this is the way it feels to be Broke, then I am the Richest Broke Girl in all of history. Bring it on.