51–60 of 155 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem for a lot of the poor and middle class is their elected officials will not talk to them since they don't donate to them. Take Texas for example it is rare for the Texas Senators to actually talk to normal people anymore.
Also half of those people think that a bailout of the middle class would be communism
This measure strikes me as less informative than a measure of how much of Americans' spending is discretionary (i.e., not on "essentials" like rent, food, utilities, internet, transportation, clothing, etc.). One tricky piece, of course, is that "food", "transportation", "clothing" can include both discretionary and non-discretionary spending. (As in, you need to eat, but you don't need to get takeout every day.) Giv…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I find funny about comments like these is that there is clearly a subtle criticism of the very behavior that ultimately pays many of our salaries. People are encouraged to over spend at ever instance of their life. You go to buy a house, the mortgage company will try to get you spend to the limit of your ability. Every service out there today offers 0% loans to encourage consumer spending so that you can live ou…
I tried really hard not to come over as critical. I'm genuinely curious as someone that doesn't live in the US and is financially rather conservative. It wasn't meant as a value judgement at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But shouldn't a job paying 6 figures have decent insurance? Parent said he/she isn't from the US where this would be the norm. Here in the EU (Austria), in most cases you get no extra private insurance even with a high salary, just your public one, which in some cases may not be enough, especially if you optimize for quality doctors/therapists with short waiting times, which are all private, so you end up having to…
That's fair. I guess the interesting part is that many of the people in the US want public healthcare and generally think that the international examples cover everything.
https://twitter.com/BadEconTakes/status/1228143455399858176
A better way to understand our problems is that our medicaid and medicare programs are the most generous in the world - so much so that extending it universally is so friggin expensive.
> Even among those earning six figures, 42% said they were living paycheck to paycheck, the survey of more than 3,000 adults found. I know there are areas with extremely HCOL, inflation, housing crisis... However, sometimes I do wonder though what some people's budgets are like that they are literally unable to save any money (paycheck to paycheck) making >$100k. Do we know what part lack of financial literacy or sim…
We make 6 figures and live paycheck to paycheck... but only because I am socking away so much money into stock purchases, 401k, HSA, etc. This isn't a very good metric for determining financial health.
If you have a significant rate of positive saving/investment from income surplus to current consumption, you are not living “paycheck to paycheck”.
(perhaps) unpopular observation: as tough as the economy is, most people are just bad with money. I know so many people who would rather spend money on impulse than save it. It's not even necessarily their fault - why save if house prices are still increasing faster than you can catch up with? Is it any wonder young people generally just want to splash out on whatever keeps them happy?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem for a lot of the poor and middle class is their elected officials will not talk to them since they don't donate to them. Take Texas for example it is rare for the Texas Senators to actually talk to normal people anymore.
It's a hard problem. Texas has 27 million residents. And 2 Senators. If they spent an hour a day talking to constituents and spent 15 minutes with each one, it would take 16,875 years to talk to each one, once.
> Even among those earning six figures, 42% said they were living paycheck to paycheck, the survey of more than 3,000 adults found. I know there are areas with extremely HCOL, inflation, housing crisis... However, sometimes I do wonder though what some people's budgets are like that they are literally unable to save any money (paycheck to paycheck) making >$100k. Do we know what part lack of financial literacy or sim…
With what is left we have to have utilities, food, clothing, etc. There isn't much left at the end of the month, most of what is left goes into retirement accounts that I cannot touch for many years.
> Even among those earning six figures, 42% said they were living paycheck to paycheck, the survey of more than 3,000 adults found. I know there are areas with extremely HCOL, inflation, housing crisis... However, sometimes I do wonder though what some people's budgets are like that they are literally unable to save any money (paycheck to paycheck) making >$100k. Do we know what part lack of financial literacy or sim…
- $8,333 gross ($100k)
- call taxes 25% (this is aggressive) leaves $6,667
- housing expense of $2k leaves $4,667
- minus 2 auto expenses (used car average payment is $465) brings us to ~$3,400
- childcare (which: is not free even when your kids are in school) of $1,500 yields $1,900
- frugally feeds the family on $1,000 per month
- $900 remaining for everything else. This includes all the one-off incidentals (car tires, physician co-pays, etc.).
The astute reader will have noticed that I was generous in my tax, housing and childcare estimates. The more astute reader will note that I have omitted student loans, any healthcare or dental expense, vacations, etc.
This is obviously not an estimate for a HCOL area, this is what the math looks like in much of the country.
Edit: _The Two-Income Trap_ is a good read on this. IIRC it points out that most of the big costs are fixed, where financial gurus often tell people to cut the variable expenses (cut down on avocado toast, or make coffee at home). When obviously tweaking inside the $900 left over won't fix this budget no matter what.
Also worth noting that even if they could halve their housing expense, they still would only be in a position to put away $12k annually. Which, given what we know about unexpected expenses, would probably put them right at actual break-even and prevent them from taking on consumer debt.