Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 131 posts

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#111

Post by Shared404 »

medvezhenok wrote: post #101
Shared404 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reduce expenses to live within your means, or figure out how to earn more money. This means "stop having social workers". You can only reduce expenses so far, and the easiest way to earn more money is to get a new job.

Unions & collective bargaining is another option - depending on the profit margins of the companies involved. Basically, if social workers collectively refused to work for the current pay, either social work would be eliminated (unlikely), or pay would rise - either through government subsidies, or at the expense of profit margins.

True. I wonder if social workers would find themselves in the "not allowed to strike" group of government employees.

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#112

Post by luxuryballs »

codekansas wrote: post #81
luxuryballs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh I bet they’ll get the check exactly as they are owed it will just be worth a fraction of what it would be worth today in terms of what you can buy with it

Social security payments are inflation-adjusted actually. It's more an issue of solvency. The trust fund backing payments is projected to run dry in the mid-2030's [1]. Solving this either means raising taxes on working-age adults or lowering payouts; the UK is a good example of the former, where working-age incomes have recently fallen below pensioner incomes [2], and no politician wants to be the one to bite the bu…

“inflation” adjusted but by what metric? CPI? lol

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#113

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Beaver117 wrote: post #74

Yeah we can save, but can we ever afford a house? 1 bedroom condos go for a million dollars in some cities. >So just don't live there There's only so far away from the jobs you can go.

There's people paying their rent with a McDonald's job.

My point is there are jobs in low cost of living areas, and even when they look like a low paying job it might be more then enough to live in that area.

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#114

Post by [deleted] »

mrguyorama wrote: post #80
fnfjfk wrote: post #24

The woman who is not thinking about retirement savings but is doing Barry’s, yoga, and ClassPass feels like she has the opportunity to make better financial choices, unlike some of the others that are just clearly in poverty. Those class-based gyms are stupendously expensive, $30 or more per workout. Compares unfavorably with a regular gym membership or buying running shoes or a bike, depending on what you’re into. L…

This is such a stupid take. Guess what, those little expenses DON'T add up. It turns out pretty much no small transactions you avoid to save five bucks here and there can't actually compete with costs of rent going up 80% over the course of five years. I live so frugally I have an entire years worth of cash in my bank, despite only making $65k (underpaid even for an area that has low SWE pay and a company that openly…

[deleted]

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#115

Post by _gmax0 »

burkaman wrote: post #54
timr wrote: post #18

The first example is a junior level social worker -- that's fine, but come now: we all know that social work is not a high-paying industry. The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it . Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author. The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis…

This feels a lot like the lectures these people are tired of. "Why didn't you pick a higher-paying career, why did you go to college if you couldn't afford it, why not cut out all unnecessary expenses and stop seeing your friends". Yes, all these people could probably make different choices to save a bit more money, but a) min-maxing life like that sucks, and b) most people constantly giving this advice didn't do tha…

I can confirm that this does suck.

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#116

Post by sedivy94 »

KronisLV wrote: post #49

I am currently in my mid/late 20s and living in Latvia (Eastern Europe). After getting my Bachelor's and Master's degrees from a local university, working for about 5 years with gradually increasing salaries/hours (started while studying), saving and/or investing on average around 50% of what I make, I have about 50'000 Euros saved up. It's better than some of my peers, worse than people in the more wealthy countries…

I am overjoyed to hear that you are able to take sabbatical to upskill. That is a dream of mine… unfortunately I’m burned out from the slog of living paycheck to paycheck.

28 y/o. Worked three jobs prior to COVID. All three jobs evaporated in the same week. Moved from Midwest to California seeking opportunity. Now I’m serving a low-tier IT role making 55K in SoCal and it’s… really depressing honestly. I feel like I’m stuck here.

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#117

Post by [deleted] »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #89
timr wrote: post #18

The first example is a junior level social worker -- that's fine, but come now: we all know that social work is not a high-paying industry. The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it . Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author. The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis…

I think you laid out nicely why I stopped paying attention to both NYT and WaPo. They might be the best newspapers in the country and the "paper of record" but there's way too much of this shaping the story to a desired narrative rather than the facts that happens. It's sad, because there are so many stories out there in the world that need to be told. Each of the examples you gave has way more interesting subject ma…

[deleted]

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#118

Post by timr »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #109
timr wrote: post #18

The first example is a junior level social worker -- that's fine, but come now: we all know that social work is not a high-paying industry. The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it . Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author. The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis…

My radical opinion is that social workers should be able to make rent and be able to save for retirement.

Well, you're more than welcome to employ some!

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#119

Post by timr »

yamtaddle wrote: post #38
timr wrote: post #18

The first example is a junior level social worker -- that's fine, but come now: we all know that social work is not a high-paying industry. The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it . Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author. The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis…

The article may suck but every dataset I've seen supports the notion that average-net-worth-at-same-age took a sharp dive with Gen X, was even worse for Millennials, and is yet worse than that for Gen Z. IOW each generation has saved less than the Boomers when they were the same age, and the effect's gotten worse with each new generation. Perhaps unsurprisingly—and, maybe even explaining most of the effect—home owner…

I actually agree with you. The problem is that you're doing a better job of making the case than the NY Times writer, who resorted to citing anecdotes that mostly contradicted the lede and tried to hide that fact.

Re: In Their 20s, Struggling to Save and Tired of Being Lectured About It

#120

Post by eyelidlessness »

timr wrote: post #18

The first example is a junior level social worker -- that's fine, but come now: we all know that social work is not a high-paying industry. The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it . Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author. The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis…

> The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it. Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author.

> The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis of the article), but sends "the majority" of her paychecks to her family.

I’m simultaneously thrilled that I could pay 13k in medical bills in a recent family medical crisis, and very well aware that every time I’m able to do that kind of thing I have exactly the same savings of basically fuckall as I’ve always had. I’m similarly thrilled that I was able to pay off all of my outstanding debt after a few months not really recovering from burnout, again with approximately dick in savings. Neither of these achievements I feel bad about, but neither of them give me any kind of security in the sense people mean by “savings”.

Granted I’m 40, so I’m just resigned to probably making do until I don’t. So at least I don’t have 20 more years of that understanding to make do with people telling me I’m better off than I am.

Post reply on HN