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Being frugal is for the rich

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Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#141

Post by nunez »

mikeash wrote: post #21
joefourier wrote: post #11

American salaries are difficult to make sense of from a European perspective. The referenced average salary of $36,000/year for millennials with only a high-school diploma would be a normal entry-level salary for a software engineer in most of Western Europe, and a very good salary for experienced engineers in Eastern Europe. Tax burden is higher here as well, and while the cost of housing is exorbitant many parts of…

American salaries are listed as pre-tax figures. Lower end jobs often don’t include health insurance at all, and those that do will usually require the employee to pay for a substantial portion of it.

net income is pretty close to gross income in income-tax-free states. everyone everywhere pays some form of property taxes, so that's moot.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#142

Post by FussyZeus »

I get so tired of these narratives that paint anyone who isn't wealthy as just lazy, and I especially get tired of millennials like myself being derided as just not willing to give up enough in order to succeed.

You know what, it's true. If you took a robot and gave it a ground floor job, that robot could work that job 7 days a week, 9 hour shifts, without missing a beat. It would never get sick, it would never need time off, it would just keep working. And it could eat really cheaply, just electricity really, but even if it needed food it could make and eat it's own meals, cutting spending down to pennies per. And it could do this for YEARS and have no problem at all doing so, and buy a million dollar house after doing it for a few decades.

BUT, and say it with me: PEOPLE. AREN'T. ROBOTS. No people are, regardless of which generation they're from. We get sick. We get diseases. We have car accidents. We date. We sometimes have children unexpectedly. We occasionally even, yes, get drunk. We want to go out and party, because you know, we're social animals, and doing nothing but going to work, coming home, and cooking and eating alone is fucking SOUL CRUSHING, and was never ever expected from any other generation to not be.

We're messy, emotional, unstable little things. We make bad decisions. We'll stress about our bills and then go do drugs with friends because it's the only way we can scrape ourselves together to go do it for another day.

The fact that so many politicians and so many pundits just "don't want to deal" with the messy emotional side of being a working student, or just a low-achiever, DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE MESSY EMOTIONAL SIDE IS NOT RELEVANT. To deny any of these things, to deny they exist, to deny they are absolutely warranted, and to deny that they should be allowed because again we are all people, messy little people, is to deny what makes us human, and therefore is to de-humanize the working poor.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#143

Post by pepelepuanteur »

vorpalhex wrote: post #32
qntty wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is the real motive behind the article: But here’s the thing. Regardless of intent, these Millennials are telling an older generation of elite Americans — the very people whose policies and financial decisions kneecapped the economy — what they want to hear: that everything is more or less okay, and young people just need to be more thoughtful about their money. And that’s a shitty idea to perpetuate. Bec…

> 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…

Whether or not a bad financial choice is a out of necessity is highly situation-dependent and the situation doesn't look great for the majority of millennials. I think this point sometimes gets lost among the HN crowd for whom a bad financial decision is most often a choice.

Things like the extraordinary rise in the cost of higher education -- which has become a near defacto requirement to obtain a livable wage -- should not be discounted. The example of student debt is particularly salient because it appears to materially impact the vast majority of millennials. Even those of us fortunate enough to be making six-figure incomes spend many years pouring money into debt instead of retirement or brokerage accounts. In most cases this setback leads delays in home ownership, starting a family, and retirement. This is a problem that cannot be remedied by teaching good financial skills.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#144

Post by mod »

gnicholas wrote: post #86
SolarNet wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have adequate public transportation (so car + car insurance + car maintenance). And our cities were never really designed to be walk-able or bike-able. While we have compulsory health insurance not dissimilar to the German system, most areas only have one or two providers (vs. 130 of Germany) whose prices have been going up like 30% every year. We still pay out of pocket for most medicine, dentistry, emergen…

I agree with much of this, but where is 2 mbps internet $80?

I pay $75/month for 10mbps upstream, 1mbps downstream DSL. That's the advertised speeds, I get lower speeds in practice.

I'm not complaining. I'm happy to have those speeds as I live in a very rural area (South/Midwest). I can stream netflix or youtube without hitches, almost all the time.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#145

Post by EnFinlay »

lhnz wrote: post #100
EnFinlay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally and vehemently disagree with you.

Why? He is fundamentally correct. If you are rich and decide to stop hiring people from your community to build extensions to your already large house, then the money is just going to be pooling in your over-sized bank account: potentially just being deployed by a bank to create profit for other rich people.

Although you are correct that money I don't spend remains in my possession, I disagree that there is any morale obligation to spend as much as possible. Overconsumption is not a viable solution to many problems.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#146

Post by specialist »

vorpalhex wrote: post #118
specialist wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your grandparents retire? At what age? How are they doing now? For comparison, when do you plan to retire? Now do the same run down for your entire cohort.

My grandfather retired at 67 due to failing health. He was primarily supported by his military pension, and to a smaller extent by a pension from working at a major grocery store. My grandmother only worked odd jobs, but collects a small amount of social security. She's still doing quite well and spends most of her time reading library books and painting (though notice both of those are extremely cheap hobbies). I'm…

"Please don't take my argument as..."

Ok. Peace.

"...average condition of people is better than it was."

My generation (X) griped about student load debt, which seemed crippling at the time.

No comparison with today's kids. Then pile on housing costs, rising insurance premiums, day care & pre school (for anyone choosing to have kids), ...

I despair for the millennials.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#147

Post by MaybiusStrip »

dlp211 wrote: post #114
nickthemagicman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a patently false statement. Inflation has been 3% a year for decades and wages have stayed flat. Your example of home furnishings has been improved by industrialization. Property value have skyrocketed, vehicle prices have skyrocketed, college, healthcare... Things you NEED have become way more expensive. Luxury goods have gotten cheaper.

Wages have remained flat when inflation is taken into account, i.e. real wages are flat, nominal wages continue to increase. We also have seen upward movement in median household income recently, and we should expect that trend to continue. So the idea of flat wages may be coming to an end. What hasn't remained flat is the wages paid to the top N% which has greatly increased and accelerated the wealth gap. It is this…

I would qualify: people aren't just dissatisfied because of the "unfairness" of growing inequality. The growth of the wealth gap has some very real ramifications, ie: on the distribution of power in politics.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#148

Post by kiliantics »

ikeyany wrote: post #85
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

What can the average person do about this system? It seems like it's only becoming more widespread.

Support businesses where workers are in unions or, better yet, support worker-owned co-operatives. Get involved in grassroots organisations in your community that are working on solutions to fight homelessness, poverty, gentrification, etc. and putting pressure on local government and businesses.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#149

Post by lghh »

T2_t2 wrote: post #93
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

> even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games console,

This isn't true for a lot of impoverished areas. Most of the students my wife works with at her elementary school do not have any of these.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#150

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

T2_t2 wrote: post #93
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

More entertainment, maybe, but "more" overall?

Would you rather live in a world with no smartphones where you afford a house/apartment, or one with smartphones where you can't?

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