401–410 of 920 posts
Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…
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Fellow former-poor here. It's the kind of thing that casts a shadow over your whole life. And in this industry, nobody is comfortable talking about it. Most of the people I work with graduated from school as guaranteed millionaires. I hear things get said by people that are so far from the orbit of my reality and I cringe. Reading the article was really eye opening for me because I hadn't thought of all of the life s…
> And in this industry, nobody is comfortable talking about it. Most of the people I work with graduated from school as guaranteed millionaires. This is surprising to me. I’m also a former poor. A lot of people I work with in tech come from generally “normal” backgrounds. Middle to lower class (in excluding h1b and green card holders). It just turned out for them that their passion and hobby (computers) ended up bein…
I feel the same way! I look around at my younger peers with such impressive pedigrees: Stanford, Ivy League, PhD’s, former founders, etc. and I think “wow, I’d never even get my foot in the door if I were entering today!
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Go read The Millionaire Next Door. You'll see that there are plenty of people like yourself who remain frugal after managing to pull themselves out of poverty. I'm suggesting the book to both validate your behavior but also give you some examples so you can perhaps moderate it if you still feel that's needed. I can give a single example from my life: my uncle managed to snag a liquor distributorship after WW II. It w…
It’s a good book, but the core point is more about how our perception of rich versus poor is detached from the reality of one’s actual wealth. It’s not uncommon for families with multi-generational wealth to also live frugal lifestyles. It’s also not unheard of for those who grew up poor to overspend their wealth at the first signs of success, because they’ve never known how to manage money at that scale. It’s import…
"If you have never been poor, you may not realize how awesome Small houses and Toyota Corollas are."
Very fair and great point, so I hope it's clear my next statement is not intended to refute this at all!
However, you could also say that if become or remain wealthy, you never forget how awesome Toyota corollas are.
European pro life tip: if you make 200.000/yr don't let anyone lend you money. Buy your car cash, no cc debt. Mortgage would be the only exception. I honestly find it crazy how most american are ok with living on someone else money and pay the interests just to have a current year car...
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> On the low end you're going to hit 300 to 500 dollars a month for the privilege of driving. How is maintaining a car costing you so much?
Gas and insurance alone can easily hit 300 of you drive enough. Say you keep it at 200, 100$ a month to fix minor things isn't unreasonable. But that assumes you bought a car cash, from my experience people tend to finance cars just because they can't get three or four thousand dollars together at one time. Then you're paying $400 a month
Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…
Very similar situation. I had a single mother and spent time with family and non-family members most of my life. I never had much and essentially grew up in a trailer park throughout my teenage years with an elderly couple that I called my grandparents but weren’t even related. They were kind enough to take me in. Fast forward to my 40s and I make a quarter million a year. Have a net worth of over a million, a quarte…
Wood and Raspberry Pis, comparatively speaking, are cheaper than table saws and oscilloscopes.
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New York requires annual car inspections that include emissions testing as well as a basic safety check (tires, brakes, head/signal/brake lights, horn, fluids, and a few other things). They "only" cost $20 but they put a color coded sticker on your windshield that is easily seen by passing cops, who will pull you over if you have the wrong color. Getting the inspection done is a bit of a pain in the ass, too, as beca…
>I see many orders of magnitude more cars engulfed in flames on the roads in metro Atlanta than I ever did in New York. Because cars in New York rust out structurally before much else can go wrong.
Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…
Go read The Millionaire Next Door. You'll see that there are plenty of people like yourself who remain frugal after managing to pull themselves out of poverty. I'm suggesting the book to both validate your behavior but also give you some examples so you can perhaps moderate it if you still feel that's needed. I can give a single example from my life: my uncle managed to snag a liquor distributorship after WW II. It w…
People want to be millionaires, not to stare at 7 digits on a webpage, but for the lifestyle it affords. This book just assumes the end goal is the number on a bank account.
I think the biggest threat to poor people, would be the ridiculous housing market. It's not just in big expensive cities, it's pretty much everywhere. Only places that are being spared, are those in destitute areas with some serious emigration problems - but those things happen for a reason (no work). In my country (Norway), the housing market has appreciated around 5.5% ANNUALLY, compared to annual wage increase of…
I have heard this referred to as the "financialization of housing" in articles I've read over the last few years. Google that term to find out more..
Basically more and more multinational corporations (structured as REITs and similar) have turned their eyes towards the housing market, buying up stock in major cities and wherever there is arbitrage opportunity...
And of course this means maximizing profits and minimizing costs, which is squeezing the average person harder and harder as rents go up more aggressively than before (which also drives up home prices etc)...
The idea of treating people's homes as "assets" to be bought and sold and optimized for profit is, personally speaking, horrendous..
But hey, capitalism, right?
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$100 / month on gas, $200 / month for a car payment, $100 / month for insurance. That's not even accounting for maintenance.
$1200 a year insurance? Seems a huge amount! Is this one of those things where it's for some reason more expensive for poor people?