3 'more or less' typical millenials? 3 CEOs and one poor guy? Really?
The WSJ had a similarly out of touch cross-section a while back http://www.wsj.com/news/interactive/WEALTH0105
Millennial men with different incomes
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#32I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
It definitely contributes to the resentment that a lot of people feel towards tech employees. Especially when you consider that the multi-hop public transit trip like that probably costs him 20-30% of his daily pay. Contrast that with: http://sfist.com/2016/07/06/heres_what_employees_of_google_a...
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#33I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
You should feel somewhat lucky, because your parents made a substantially bigger investment in you than you realize, through which you were allowed free time to acquire the technical aptitude to become a developer (or whatever else allowed you to become a high earner). Whether you want to keep feeling guilty is up to you, but you should definitely go thank your parents again! > When I read about the guy who takes two…
You mention parents twice when the comment you replied to never did. Why?
You're projecting that the commenter succeeded because of their parents, not in spite of them.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#34Does the $1.5M earner not add up to anyone else? His expenses are $6K a month ($72k a year, but call it $100k). His after tax income, call $800k. That leaves $700k unaccounted for - and he's talking about saving $15k for his kids college, or not being able to retire for 15 more years? I don't get it.
Also the part about not being able to pay off his 800k mortgage?
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#35I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
Why do you associate public transit use and not owning a car with low income? I make $100k+ and I don't own a car; I commute to work every day on public transit (with two transfers on the return journey, something a lot of people say high earners won't do) and I use public transit to get around whenever possible.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#36Does the $1.5M earner not add up to anyone else? His expenses are $6K a month ($72k a year, but call it $100k). His after tax income, call $800k. That leaves $700k unaccounted for - and he's talking about saving $15k for his kids college, or not being able to retire for 15 more years? I don't get it.
We can't know what he is thinking, but I can imagine him feeling stressed if he want's to maintain his life style has a few children and wants to retire very early. It requires a big big nest egg to provide an income of around a million for the 50 or 60 years that either he or his wife will live after he stops working.
Retiring in 15 years requires quite a bit of investment every year if he wants to roughly maintain income at retirement, and many people would hope to be better off over time. Depending on how much risk he is willing to take, he might need to invest as much as $400,000 per year!
For such an early retirement he might be seeking an eventual portfolio of as much as $30,000,000 before he retires. Right now you can't count on much more than a couple of percent above inflation return on investments without taking risks that he might not be comfortable with.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#37I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
> Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this?
Personally, I don't.
In life, luck is always involved. Some people are born with rare diseases. Some people are born with physical attributes that make them more desirable by their preferred sex. Some people are born as an ethnicity that gives them more social power than others. Some people are born smarter than others. Some people are born more susceptible to mental illness. Some people are born into very rough families. Etc.
I suppose I don't feel bad for having what I have because quite frankly, other people who may have less wealth than I certainly have life advantages over me to which I would certainly not expect them to feel guilty about.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#38I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
Unless you've got a scam-y job I don't see why you should feel guilty.
Nothing wrong with the top end of things. Would be good to have some kind of basic income in place to help patch things on the bottom end.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#39I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
Why do you associate public transit use and not owning a car with low income? I make $100k+ and I don't own a car; I commute to work every day on public transit (with two transfers on the return journey, something a lot of people say high earners won't do) and I use public transit to get around whenever possible.
If I made $100k, I'd move to a place where I didn't need my car any more. Good public transit is very convenient. Car maintenance is not.
Re: Millennial men with different incomes
#40I assume many people here are earning amazing incomes, >$100k. Does anyone else feel extremely guilty about this? When I read about the guy who takes two trains a bus and walks a mile to get to work, while trying his best to save just $1100 for a car, my heart breaks. The work I do is easy - I sit in front of a screen in my own house. When I go to a fast food restaurant and order from a woman in her 40s, who likely h…
My first job was at a Wal-Mart. My second job was at a meatpacking plant, because it simply paid better. My third job after busting my ass at home was doing web dev, back in the late 90s, in which I was hilariously underpaid. Today I'm a self-employed data warehousing and database performance consultant with no shortage of work and paying myself about what the Junkluggers guy does.
There's a way out if you bust your ass and do nothing but obsess about finding something better. Takes a while. Sometimes it takes 18 months just to stumble into an opportunity worth pursuing. Though if you don't put in the effort (and get a bit lucky), nothing changes.
One thing I definitely took away from that article? Holy crap am I frugal. I save a large multiple of #2 for retirement (Solo 401K and IRA maxed every year, with a bit extra on top in a taxable account), and spend about on par with #3. Granted, I've earned what I got so I don't squander it.
As for #4's commute, I've done similarly bad recently, albeit voluntarily. Walk to bus station, take bus one. Transfer to second bus, then walk two-thirds of a mile. About 100 minutes each way, and an average of 3 1/2 hours a day. I could save a wee bit of time with other options (not including car), but at 50-200% increased cost, so I maintained the frugal option even if it cost me another 30-40 minutes a day. Though it does mean that you tend to wake up at 5:45AM to make breakfast and then get to a client for 9AM, to then get home by around 7PM and hopefully have eaten and finished any chores by 8PM. You are beat. It's not easy to then put in extra effort to get other things -- like looking for a better opportunity -- done.