Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common • Hacker News Board

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#151

Post by jseliger » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #87

leoedin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…

That's because all the surplus goes into rents. If your job depends on you living in a big city, then you need to pay a fortune to get a tiny fraction of the quality of life that your parents had and that you had as a child growing up. A lot of corporate jobs these days force people to live like rats in big cities.

A lot of corporate jobs these days force people to live like rats in big cities.

This is a problem with zoning: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B..., not with "corporate jobs." If we fix zoning, costs will go down. Los Angeles is instructive. In 1960, it was zoned for 10 million people: https://la.curbed.com/2015/4/8/9972362/everything-wrong-with.... Today, it is zoned for 4.3 million. Has our technology gotten worse since 1960? Have we forgotten how to build multi-story structures?

No: we've just made it illegal to build enough housing.

Seattle is also instructive. About two-thirds of the city is zoned for single-family housing only: https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/10/23/the-path-to-eliminate.... Allow missing middle housing, and prices will stabilize: http://missingmiddlehousing.com.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#152

Post by closeparen » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #134

49531 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll never have banks working in consumers self interest as long as they are profit driven organizations. Public banks tend to work better for actual sensible banking.

Banks don't want you to spend money. They want you to have as much in your account as possible. So it would be in their interest to encourage saving.

Pretty sure they want you to pay as much interest and generate as many interchange fees as possible.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#153

Post by throwaway10711 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

> “My husband is a Park Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and he had to sign his furlough papers,” one woman tweeted. ”We have a 4 yr. old and a 4-month-old, and we don’t know when his next check will come. Mortgage is due, Christmas 2 days away.”

Unpopular opinion. It's _really_ hard for me to feel bad for families that have or are expecting kids without consulting their financials first. I believe that one shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them or have more kids than they can afford, but saying this out loud is an easy way to make enemies.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#154

Post by kenmicklas » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

zozbot123 wrote: post #105

kenmicklas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bigger issue than lending is that if it's not funded with a land value tax then all the increase in income will be eaten up in rent.

The opposite is the case. High rent is a localized problem (mostly found in relatively dense cities) and UBI would go a lot farther in a low-cost-of-living area where rents are low as well. So, people who have no use for living in the city (not hyper-productive or anything) would gradually opt to spread out and rents would fall.

That's exactly the problem. It would encourage unsustainable sprawl to a massive degree.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#155

Post by nunez » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #27

perfmode wrote: post #6

Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…

I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…

> I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough".

This was a big reason that drove our move out of NYC. No matter how much you made, unless you were a billionaire (good luck with that), you were on a treadmill. Nothing you had would be enough. You could spend yourself broke trying to fit in, even if you make a lot of money.

Dallas, where we currently live, has this too, but it's a much bigger city, so you have to want to find those hotspots.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#156

Post by zozbot123 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

mAEStro-paNDa wrote: post #49

perfmode wrote: post #6

Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…

This is an extremely important point. Everyone deals with these kinds of intrapersonal conflicts and issues on a different breadth and scale, one way or another. It's this coupled with economic distress or anxiety, in addition to a massive income and wealth inequality, that produces the kind of conditions and struggle that people and families go through, like those described in this short article. Sure, there are var…

> For the former, anyone who uses such an argument has in some form or fashion accepted the belief that some jobs should not pay a livable wage...

What's a "livable wage"? The whole point of assessing whether people are "living beyond their means" is precisely to figure out if they're keeping their expenses within that 'livable wage' threshold. I think you'll find that most people with money-related issues ("poverty" in this context should be reserved for actual, true deprivation, which is vanishingly rare in the US! Social exclusion/marginalization is real, but it's a very different problem, with different ways of addressing it) are in fact not doing enough to keep their expenses in check.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#157

Post by metabagel » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:28 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #140

metabagel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I assumed both pairs didn't have anything sorted out until they were 30" I think it's the norm for people not to make much money in their 20s, particularly in southern California.

There is plenty of opportunity to make money in 20s though, so I can only blame a lack of research (assuming one knows how to read English and has access to the internet). If you’re smart, you can go the MD or STEM route and end up in tech or finance, or if you can get into a target law school that feed into well paying NYC/SF firms. If you can’t do that, then electricians, plumbers, and mechanics make a decent amoun…

"If you’re smart, you can go the MD or STEM route and end up in tech or finance"

These typically entail large student loans, which make it difficult to save much in one's 20s.

"If you can’t do that, then electricians, plumbers, and mechanics make a decent amount starting very young."

These are good options, but realistically there are only so many of these jobs to go around. They also require vocational training, which costs money, or the good fortune to obtain an apprenticeship.

"If you give up your 20s in SoCal, you better be doing something to hit the ground running fast with $150k+ "

Most people will never achieve that salary in their lifetime (speaking in real terms).

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#158

Post by extra88 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

throwaway10711 wrote: post #153

> “My husband is a Park Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and he had to sign his furlough papers,” one woman tweeted. ”We have a 4 yr. old and a 4-month-old, and we don’t know when his next check will come. Mortgage is due, Christmas 2 days away.” Unpopular opinion. It's _really_ hard for me to feel bad for families that have or are expecting kids without consulting their financials first. I believe…

I vaguely agree with that sentiment but I don't understand why you chose to bring it up in connection to a government employee not getting paid because of the government shutdown.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#159

Post by nunez » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

spidey1 wrote: post #18

perfmode wrote: post #6

Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…

How do you manage this conflict? I think a lot of us suffer from this at different scales. I've always found it difficult to work on things that will pay off in the future, even if I plan something I just don't seem to be able to carry through a long term project to the end unless I'm in an environment where there's accountability such as deadlines on projects at work. I'm very prone to instant gratification, which i…

The way I "managed" it long-term was by creating a spreadsheet of all of the things I really want (like, spent years wanting) and their costs, adding them up, buffering it a little and saying "that's my target number, and I'm sticking to it." Last time I did this, I calculated that $5M is my number. This would generate about $200k/year with 4% return and withdrawal rate. Everything I do in my career is centered around getting to this number before I'm 45, so that I can decide whether I want to retire or not then. (I probably won't, but life isn't static.)

The way I manage it in the short-term is the two-week test. If I want a thing, and that thing is >10% of my remaining disposable income (which I budget every two weeks), I tell myself "if I still want this in two weeks, I will buy it or start saving for it then."

Example: I really wanted the custom truly-wireless IEMs that Bragi makes. However, they are $599; not a cheap purchase at about 50% my two-week disposable. Instead of buying them outright (I could, but that would affect disposable income for going out and stuff), I sat on it for several months while I tried other headphones. The urge to get them didn't go away, so I got them. What would have been an impulse purchase became a planned and extremely-worthwhile purchase.

My self-control isn't bulletproof, however. Our five-year old vacuum stopped working the other day. I tried repairing it several times, all to no avail. I got tired of having dirty carpet (our apartment is all carpet except for wet areas), so I went to Best Buy and got a new one. While I was there, I saw a Bissell Carpet Cleaner that looked really useful, as our carpets haven't been cleaned since we moved in three years ago. Both combined were about $500, but I impulse-bought it because dirty flooring drives me nuts. While I'm really happy with this purchase (there are few things more satisfying than seeing all of the gunk in your carpet vacuumed up), it was definitely impulsive, and my more responsible self should have waited on it.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#160

Post by zozbot123 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 8:34 PM UTC

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #28

As someone who didn't learn the very basics of personal finance at the optimal point in life, I feel like it should be part of our standardized education. I'd like to think that would make things at least marginally better. Another thing I'd love to see, would be for banks to fundamentally reorient themselves to be their customer's advocates/financial guardians, instead of being yet another party encouraging people t…

> As someone who didn't learn the very basics of personal finance at the optimal point in life, I feel like it should be part of our standardized education.

It's not limited to personal finance, although that's part of it). Our education system does a terrible job of teaching folks about what makes our society tick (social sciences are essentially ignored) and how people should strive to act in order to best cope with it (basically, adopt middle-class values to the best of your ability. Don't eat that marshmallow!), while wasting untold amounts of time and effort on ridiculous bells-and-whistles that nobody will ever have any use or even appreciation for (like, what did author X really mean when they used that particular simile at page of work Y?) Keep it simple, FFS!