181–190 of 421 posts
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We had a babysitter recently charge us $21 for 3 hours. It blew my mind. I insisted that we paid her $40, which still seemed insane. Someone earning $7/hr makes $280/week. I can’t imagine trying to get by on that even with no dependents.
Isn't the thinking that these jobs are supposed to be for teenagers, which has their income supplemented by their parents?
Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow. You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow. Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation. Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who…
I think this is an excellent comment. What makes me very sad is that during the past 14 months the divide between those who own assets and those who don't has reached gargantuan proportions. I mean, in my raging inferno of a housing market, over the past couple of years home prices have easily doubled. So a 400k house from 2018 now sells for 800k. Yes, if I want to move to another house in my area I'll pay similarly…
In California you may well have doubled your annual property tax bill.
The financial planning bit is meant to come before one has a list of expenses to "figure out" (like home+leased car+children).
"Just don't have kids" is, IMO, one of the most incredibly insensitive approaches to this problem. It reminds me of all the people telling gay people to "just don't have a relationship". Having an entire class of people who work hard but are too poor to raise children is a failure of society - not a failure of financial planning.
What we are talking about here is having kids when you can’t afford them. This is mostly due to a nation-wide lack of education on the subject and rising cost of living.
It does not make sense to have kids before having a stable job/house/car. Adoption/abortion is a much better option at that point, as politically incorrect to say your whole life and income-generating capacity will be ruined.
This country has so much opportunity and no one seems to take advantage of it, it is very strange.
I filled out the fafsa and had to get tax returns from my parents because they were poor immigrants, spammed a bunch of local organizations to get scholarships. This was not easy but it was taking personal responsibility for my situation and I managed to graduate debt-free.
Contrast that to the predatory-lenders (colleges) that let 18 year olds take out 50k in student loans, which can and will perpetuate the cycle of intergenerational poverty, but for some reason that isn’t really talked about because the reality is that not all college degrees are remotely equal.
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> I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. It depends on where you live. I lived in New York City for years. If you had a family, it would be hard to live there as on 6000€/mo, unless you had been living in the same apartment for decades. The median cost of a 2-bedroom apartment there is 3000€ a month, taxation is high (federal, city and state taxes), food is wildly exp…
Hard to live on 3000EUR/month after housing?
Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow. You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow. Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation. Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who…
In an electronic circuit, if you have an unlimited supply of current, you don't need to hoard electrons in big capacitors.
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> The other thing is that there's a saying along the lines of getting wealthy being mostly the same for everyone What does this mean?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
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All the kid free couples out there beg to differ.
Wrong. There are people who chose to not have kids and don’t deny that. They chose to give up this part of humanity on their own. Other people probably rationalize this differently because they can’t admit to themselves they’ve given up anything.
Much better to be able to FIRE by 35 instead haha.
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I see what you are saying; coming from Europe, I'm frequently astonished how much "Socialist", "Leftie" or even "Liberal" in USA is a dirty word of political death.
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Cheaper housing => longer and more expensive commute. Or worse job opportunities. Then people tell you to move where the jobs are. Which has really expensive housing. The free market tends to flatten this stuff out
The free market caused this situation in the first place.