121–130 of 305 posts
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What can the average person do about this system? It seems like it's only becoming more widespread.
Open a company. Try to avoid it. Understand why others do it. Then look for solutions.
Average people don't really have the resources or connections to open a company.
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> continuing to build a world where they are more and more necessary My grandmother can still, to this day, recount living in an apartment with no furniture except a mattress, with my grandfather who was employed as an engineer in New York. It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with a…
Ok, I earned approximately $18k when I was a research assistant, 20 years ago, and my possessions when I graduated were : 2 pairs levis, 4 t-shirts, 2 sweaters, 1 coat, 2 pairs shoes (trainers, boots), 1 formal shirt, bag of socks and underwear (I can't remember). I had a watch also. My dad gave it to me - I guess I had privilege. Ok, ok - I also had a car! Sort of - a citroen BX (look it up and marvel). I had gone o…
Discussions here are supposed to be conversations. Imagine someone insisting on reading the complete lyrics to Common People out loud in a real conversation. That would be awfully tedious, unless you're an Andy Kaufman and can get away with it.
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/andy_kaufmans_sublimely_...
I would also make the economic argument that a rich person that is still frugal is actively exacerbating income inequality. If Warren Buffett is indeed still paying only $3 for breakfast every day, that's giving a big middle finger to the economy. Money is half of the circulatory system of the economy. When it pools too long in one spot, it clots, and then a thrombosed clot can cause damage somewhere else. He really…
I think you're discounting the utility of an extremely wealthy person's capital as a vehicle for greater change. That is, Warren Buffet probably can't move the needle much through consumption of goods. Even if he replaced his $3 breakfast with a $300 breakfast it's just not going to have a huge net effect. Instead if he manages his finances carefully and leaves himself capital for investments then he's able to influe…
The title here seems very inflammatory. The article questions whether some actions (e.g. painting your own home instead of hiring someone to do it) are truly frugal. It goes on to say that the philosophy of frugality is a handmaiden for wealthy. Maybe so, but why would we discourage good spending habits? For example, choosing to eat one or more meals out each day versus bulk cooking is an option available to most peo…
I don't really like doing plumbing, but I've replaced quite a few faucets and toilets. Not because I wanted to be "frugal", but because I could not afford to pay someone to do it; if I didn't, it wasn't getting done. I didn't blog about it; I didn't tell everyone, "Hey, lookit me! I'm saving money!" because everyone else I knew was also doing their own plumbing because they were also broke.
(Now, of course, I could pay someone. But that ship's sailed. Besides, it's really hard to find good contractors.)
The McFrugals, according to the article, aren't talking to millenials or anyone else who needs to be frugal; they're talking to the wealthy, saying "all those people you think are whiney, spoiled kids, really are spoiled, whiney kids."
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> continuing to build a world where they are more and more necessary My grandmother can still, to this day, recount living in an apartment with no furniture except a mattress, with my grandfather who was employed as an engineer in New York. It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with a…
Mass produced goods including furniture is cheaper nowadays but everything else is more expensive. This includes essential things like housing and healthcare. Further the needs have also grown: without a car it’s impossible for most people to have a job
With housing, on the other hand, we are routinely seeing people pay upwards of 500% what people were paying for the exact same property a few decades ago with few or no changes, even with the effect of inflation removed.
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So, your proof that decline is a myth is that you can buy cheap, moderate quality, mass-manufactured furniture that didn't exist in your grandparents age? Something seems awry there.
My grandmother couldn't afford a chair. Most people today have reasonably furnished apartments, smartphones, some kind of vaguely functional computer with (low speed) internet access, and probably a car. Food went from being very expensive (people actually died of starvation not that long ago!) to being so cheap that obesity is a major epidemic among the poor. Since 1940, the percent of the US with a high school degr…
I make about 4X what my parents combined made as schoolteachers, yet my housing costs about 10X what theirs cost. In order to get that great price I had to move about 2 hours from work (and pay for the required transportation), compared to their 10 minute commute. I came out of grad school six figures in debt, whereas theirs was cheap enough that they barely had to finance it. They paid for reasonably priced doctor visits out of pocket, compared to my high deductible "healthcare plan" that still has me dropping $hundreds for a single X-ray.
But I have a cellphone so I'm a reckless spender.
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> continuing to build a world where they are more and more necessary My grandmother can still, to this day, recount living in an apartment with no furniture except a mattress, with my grandfather who was employed as an engineer in New York. It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with a…
It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. ... Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with about a months worth of wages. You do understand there's a difference between a month of wages and having a month of wages saved to spend, right? Considering most people live month to month... saving an entire month would take many people…
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Most young people do need to be more thoughtful about their money, though. And the economy as a whole is, by multiple different metrics, the best it’s ever been. It’s just that this greatness needs to be spread a bit wider. In the capitalist system with a labor market as tight as we’ve ever seen it this is addressed by getting another job for more money. Now is a good time to do it. You are responsible for your own s…
The economy is the best its ever been, but wealth inequality is the worst its ever been. The cost of living has gone up far, far faster than income has, while wages have stagnated or dropped, meaning people these days are earning less money and have more expenses than before. To hear someone who was making $10/hour out of college and bought a home for $40,000 say that the reason millennials can't buy a home today is…
Common talking point, not borne out by data.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682711 for references.
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Wages are rising at the highest rate since 2009: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/02/582641530... . And black unemployment is at historic lows a well.
Rates do not matter unless they are over big time scales. You have conveniently picked a year just past the banking crisis... Does the absolute inflation and purchasing power adjusted value even match 90s?
Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682711 for references. (Wages rising slightly faster than inflation over decades long period.)
Furthermore, the author doesn't fully explain how these two were "rich" before pursuing their journey to frugality aside from purchasing a home in Cambridge (which was a smart decision and is definitely possible with a dual-income tech salary in the area, assuming they didn't have debt to begin with).
There are definitely people that are able to live extremely frugally with sizeable salaries and achieve large goals/financial independence in a considerably short amount of time. However, like building a beach body, the question is always "How much are you willing to sacrifice to get it?"
For many (myself included), the answer is "not enough."