261–270 of 390 posts
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Several hundred? Yes. “Thousands”? Not very likely for most people to be plural thousands per year.
Hundreds in ~2% cash back yes, but thousands by not building a strong credit score. All your major financial purchases will cost more if you're not using 1 or multiple credit cards.
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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…
This is exactly the problem. It all comes down to what is more rewarding to you - buying or financial security. Much of the buying in today’s world seems to be driven by the desire to portray status and success to peers. What’s particularly unfortunate about those who fall into this trap is the fact that they’re essentially giving what little real wealth they possess to people who actually have real wealth (business…
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> the number of disruptive students that prevent any learning is vastly less. The evidence doesn't really support that, though; students in a “bad” district don't have worse performance than students with similar background in a “better” district (whether because of distraction or any other reason), “better” districts just have more students with backgrounds which are correlated with educational success, of which the…
The OECD report (this one: http://www.oecd.org/education/school/programmeforinternation... ) would like you to believe that student background does not determine student performance. They do find a correlation, but it varies substantially between countries, suggesting that other factors are at play. According to that report the important factors are student and teacher discipline and school atmosphere, and on can eas…
Most comments in this thread are about learning to budget/control finances. I would just like to point out what I call "The IT bubble". We all make money here. Most of us make good money. Our social circles are filled with people making money. Most people do not have this privilege. Below a certain threshold there is no such thing as budgeting/finances. It's just survival. You're not gonna budget because you can't sa…
If it takes 80% of your income to live at a base level of hierarchy of needs, you need roughly doubled income to be able to actually save money, and have it not be wasted away on this or that random emergency, which is going to be more frequent.
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Better: not being paid enough is a sufficient condition, but it is not required. Of course rich people can have such problem, but if you think low wages and the lack of universal health care and free education is not the main issue you are lying to yourself.
I'm not sure lack of healthcare and low wages _is_ the main issue[1]. As the parent comment points out, it seems like that would lead to a pretty different pattern of this phenomenon. It seems to me that there's a couple broad categories that can lead to paycheck-to-paycheck living: 1) Poverty, at the level where spending on a reasonable floor of basics (food, shelter, education, leisure) leaves little for savings. T…
This is spot-on.
It's worked for me -- I didn't have a solid handle on my finances when I moved out of my parents' place, so I lowballed and found a place I knew I could afford even with a pretty pessimistic view of financial discipline.
Nine years later I'm living in the same place, and I've gotten a raise every year, so I'm making quite a bit more than I was back then. Driving an even more economical car. Eating better -- buying groceries instead of eating out all the time.
I could fritter it away, let my ISP bleed me dry with a $162 cable+internet+whatever+modem plan when the $30 plan works just fine and I bought my own modem. I could shovel $95/mo to Verizon, but I'm on Ting and I use wifi whenever possible, and my bill averages $26 and I own the phone.
I could send $8/mo to Hulu and $15/mo to HBO and $11/mo to Netflix and $13/mo to Amazon and $10/mo to Spotify and $10/mo to Pandora and.... how many more are there?! But I don't feel like my life would be improved by having all those. (I do Spotify, but none of the others. In the event that I feel like rubbing my nose in a pile of TV, there's this thing called broadcast.)
I feel like there's a never-ending stream of these things, with their pundits on the morning show and Weekend Edition making you feel like you're missing out on life if you don't watch at least one show on every such service. And Disney+ is coming...
To me, it's that incremental monthly spending that inexorably, insidiously, increasingly, gobbles up every spare dollar the middle class can scrape together. I've been literally counseling my friends on how to talk their cable providers into a lower rate.
Many of them didn't know that was possible.
Cancel your shit, people.
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It's human psychology. Below a certain level, your mind will simply talk itself into spending your available money to make you happy. You don't need that car. A car half the price would have been plenty good enough. But you did it anyhow. You don't need fancy breakfast cereal that costs twice what the generic stuff at Aldi costs. You don't need all those electronics and toys. You don't need to eat out that much. If y…
I decided in college that a 40 hr workweek wasn't the optimal amount for me. I've since learned that for white-collar jobs, employers really really want full-time employees[1]. My way around this was: consume as if I made ~half as much and take extended sabbaticals. The final piece in the puzzle was ACA exchanges, as I can now get stable (though expensive and high-deductible) health insurance while unemployed. This o…
My ideal doesn’t change when my income rises, I’m just finally able to pay for the things I’ve wanted all along.
At least, that was true before. I guess I’m finally at a level where something remains for saving.
Most comments in this thread are about learning to budget/control finances. I would just like to point out what I call "The IT bubble". We all make money here. Most of us make good money. Our social circles are filled with people making money. Most people do not have this privilege. Below a certain threshold there is no such thing as budgeting/finances. It's just survival. You're not gonna budget because you can't sa…
> At least here the problem isn't financial illiteracy. The problem is that they (a) make way too little to live off and (b) worker protections have eroded past any sane point. This is the crux of the reality that many face, yet is often ignored by pundits. Raving about budgeting is missing the point: you can't budget what isn't there in the first place. When there is something left over to budget, saving $20-$50 a m…
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The problem is not a "twisted form of capitalism". The problem is us . In the 1950s, a family could live on one blue-collar salary. You could probably live on a single blue-collar salary today, too - but you'd live like people did in the 1950s. You would eat out very rarely. You wouldn't have college debt because you wouldn't have a college degree. You'd only have one car. You'd have only one TV for the whole house.…
I actually think capitalism is the problem. It's the best form we know to organize a society, but it has the serious problem when money tend to stick or gravitate towards bigger chunks of money. I'm making well over 300k and can afford a decent house that I'd have to pay off my entire life. What if I had 30M and was too lazy to start a business? I would just buy 30-40 nice houses in my area and would rent them. 10 ye…
Not even 200 years ago, most people exchanged labor for food. Currency was not used, as you most likely lived on the farm you worked for. There was no form of advancement to be seen, but also no rent, student loans, medical bills, child care etc. There was also no Whole Foods or freedom of speech. But how much farther have we really come in 2018? We have more things, but if you stop working, you will starve or go ill…
Living in a completely unsustainable capitalism system, I am surprised how much we're stuck in our own little bubbles. Personal finance shouldn't even be a thing. We have the capacity to provide every basic need to everyone, but we choose not to, in order to make very few people extremely rich. Oh well, it's not like anything will ever change (at least while I'm alive)
This is why capital is free to go where it may find the most benefit to it, but human beings are not.
Priorities.
We are mostly tech people here, right? Given that, I have a suggestion. We should all be smart, compensated well, etc. If you worry about things like this, study what's been said by Warren Buffet, Jack Bogle, and Ray Dalio. These guys have won the game and explain clearly how anyone (yes anyone) can slowly accumulate wealth. It really does work. The site Bogleheads.org is full of helpful ideas and people that will gu…
Not really, if housing costs are crazy. And I'm talking about rent, not even buying.