181–190 of 323 posts
On the "travel freedom" category - just want to say we live in extremely unusual times when it comes to travel and there's little reason to pay out of your savings to fund travel at the present moment. In the US we've been living in the Golden Age of travel and credit card rewards for the last decade. I started churning cards in 2012 and have not paid in full for personal travel since. It's become slightly harder to…
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What has this offered to your country? Why doesn't it have it's Amazon or SpaceX? Why is the Linux Foundation here? Why are the salaries in the most unregulated or frontier markets the best in the US and not in Europe? Mandating a week off for everyone doesn't seem to give the space needed for poorer people to become as wealthy as they might deserve. What can be done?
It's not obvious what can be done. Efforts to distribute the wealth (post WW2 style) will most likely lead to capital flight, and you guys have a gargantuan mass media machine devoted to making sure this kind of thing does not happen to begin with. America is experiencing advanced regulatory capture and the solutions were needed decades ago. My personal conjecture is that you're in for a long period of degradation fo…
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As someone at that age, I think this is completely incorrect, not to mention ageism. Dismissing the last 30% of your life as un-interesting is something I'd expect from someone without much life experience.
You take it out of the context and then accuse me of pushing ageism, well done! The context is that we compare a life where i) you save one third of your income and then start to flash money when you are 55, and ii) you spend one third (or less) of your income on things that matter like finding significant other, having a family, making trips with your friends and family. You cannot avoid spending 1/3 of your income…
You're defining the cashier by their job/role, as well as how they spend their money on saving for retirement. Textbook classism.
My anecdotal reply would be that I've made it to this golden age, I've earned far less than the average, saved more than the average, and still have a wonderful, interesting life ahead of me. I've married, raised a family, and had memorable trips with them.
Your last sentence is really indicative of how you view wealth and money; for many, becoming a millionaire is about stability and being able to provide for your loved ones, not to become someone that people "give a fuck about."
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It can give you the breathing room to actually _do_ something that can change your status and allow you to have a decent shot at "own the means of production", though. I've probably had hundreds of conversations with people who will say "well, not everyone can afford to move town" or "not everyone can afford to take a week off work" or whatever else. That's an enormous handicap - you're basically a slave to your curr…
"not everyone can afford to take a week off work" even if you can , financially, it's often hard to do so mentally/emotionally. if you're taking time away from work, that means no income - whether you desperately need it or not may be immaterial to the mental state you've built for yourself.
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A bit confused by this - you're now not actually buying anything that produces anything. I guess you could argue it produces more money, but you have no control over those things - you can only choose what you invest in, but have no control over how those things perform. Otherwise then savings is owning the means of production, given that you're still making money with it.
You own companies (stock) that produce things. It is true you have no active involvement or control over the business itself (unless you reach activist investor levels), but this is often a positive thing.
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What has this offered to your country? Why doesn't it have it's Amazon or SpaceX? Why is the Linux Foundation here? Why are the salaries in the most unregulated or frontier markets the best in the US and not in Europe? Mandating a week off for everyone doesn't seem to give the space needed for poorer people to become as wealthy as they might deserve. What can be done?
It's not obvious what can be done. Efforts to distribute the wealth (post WW2 style) will most likely lead to capital flight, and you guys have a gargantuan mass media machine devoted to making sure this kind of thing does not happen to begin with. America is experiencing advanced regulatory capture and the solutions were needed decades ago. My personal conjecture is that you're in for a long period of degradation fo…
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It's entirely possible for a wage earner to become a millionaire in the USA. Anybody with a middle class income can do it. It's not even complicated or hard to figure out. The problem is that it requires discipline and living under your means. The first step is to eliminate debt and don't make stupid purchases. Debt includes credit card, personal loans, car loans, and mortgages. Stupid purchases are things like expen…
Yep. "The Millionaire Next Door" should be required reading for high school students.
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Yup. I see this kind of logic in personal finance discussions all the time but it's bullshit. There simply aren't any spending decisions you can make that will change you from not wealthy to really wealthy. Those things can just move you from poor to middle class at best, or to a better level of middle class. Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (lik…
> like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon Google says cardiac surgeons make $400-800k, assuming that's true a very talented engineer at FAANG can easily match this (staff or senior staff level) without being mired by an additional 10 years of school. I personally know engineers making 7 digits in liquid compensation. Obviously these are not your average engineers, but it's doable if you're the 1% (to be good enou…
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No family? Also if we were talking about the US (which the article was) then you have to factor in healthcare, average of $200 a month for the insurance IF it's sponsored (mostly covered) by their employer. If the grocery worker is living in any major city then rent is bare minimum of $600 a month for the privilege of living with at least 2 other flatmates or around $1000 for a pretty small apartment. So this person'…
And don't forget about almighty inflation.