This is Rumble's Trip. I'm Erica Heilman.

I value intelligence. I value education. So I am the educated class. But because of my age and because of my

economic status at this point, I'm seen as an old poor person. That's my class. But that's not how I see myself.

That's Trudy Richmond, and this is the first episode of the seventh season of What Class Are You,

which is a periodic series that I make for Vermont Public. I started it back in 2022.

I wanted to talk with people about growing political and cultural divides without ever talking about politics or cultural divides.

And I didn't know how to do that.

Then one day I decided to drive around and ask people what class they were.

And what I found was that as dumb and as maybe even offensive as that question is, people

have a lot to say about it.

So today, Trudy Richmond, Trudy lives in subsidized senior housing in Burlington, Vermont. She's

highly educated. She's worked all her life. But at a certain point, Trudy determined that she had too

little money to pay for a comfortable retirement and too much money to qualify for services

that might make her retirement more comfortable. So in this show,

we talk about how she negotiated a comfortable retirement for herself. Here's Trudy.

I live in downtown Burlington, real close to Church Street, which is lovely. And it's a, I don't know

how, it's a government subsidized building.

It's not like part of Champlain Trust or anything like that. And it's for people that are older,

or it can be for people that are disabled, that also have a financial need. So it is subsidized

a bit by the government, and I pay my rent based on my income and my

expenses and blah, blah, blah. So I'm living among people that don't have any money, basically. That's our

common denominator. And most of us are older. How have your feelings about money changed as you've

...