Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common • Hacker News Board

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#51

Post by crankylinuxuser » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

spoonie wrote: post #19

I think housing costs are a big part of this. Things are almost perfectly stacked in favour of current property owners: oppose any new housing development near you which keeps land prices and rents high, while those wanting to buy or rent can’t or don’t vote and can’t as easily encourage more building as current owners can discourage it. And it’s so simple (not easy, but simple) too: build more to reduce housing cost…

There is no one part here. It's what many of us (with little power) have been saying for quite some time.

1. Minimum wage and poverty level are not increasing in relation to the power of the dollar. (1) (2)

2. Welfare of all sorts have been cut since the '80s with Reagan's attack on a felony fraudster [Welfare Queen] (3) (4)

3. Zoning regulations actively kill and impede lower rents and booming cities. (5) (6)

4. Employer-linked medicine harms and kills people, via lack of medicine and through monetary lack of means. (7) (8) (9)

5. The citizens have been sold a bill of bad goods with the "Debt Sentence" of educational debt. (10) (11)

The problems are numerous, and these cards have been stacked against us. Any one of these could topple, and take out multiple areas/people/economies. And just like the Great Depression, not even the banks getting together will be able to save us. Many of these are laws that would have to be changed at the local/state/federal level, which I do not see happening in 20 years.

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(1) https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-higher-the-federal-...

(2) https://talkpoverty.org/2016/09/13/poverty-rate-just-dropped...

(3) https://www.newsweek.com/trump-plans-slash-welfare-spending-...

(4) https://timeline.com/reagan-trump-healthcare-cuts-8cf64aa242...

(5) https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/3/how-zoning-is-h...

(6) https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/05/25/modern-zo...

(7) https://www.marketplace.org/2017/06/28/health-care/how-did-w...

(8) https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/poor-healthcar...

(9) https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/05/01/this-is-the-no-1-...

(10) https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/08/27/how-u-...

(11) https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/student-loan-debt-ba...

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#52

Post by wonderwonder » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #38

leoedin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…

Huge difference between living paycheck to paycheck because you struggle to afford basic necessities and living paycheck to paycheck because you took out too large of a mortgage. In one case you have an asset to sell if needed.

Agree in theory, but quite often that asset is not sellable as its underwater. End result is a foreclosure and/or bankruptcy. If the underlying behavior is not changed then people can spiral into further debt that they cant get out of as they already spent their once every seven year BK ticket. If people don't know how to budget you get trapped.

But yes I do fully agree, I would much rather be broke with a large income than a low one.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#53

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

There is a way out. Use cash.

My wife and I struggled with this, we do well and found our expenses increasing with our income.

Our solution was to take a small windfall (tax refund) to bootstrap two months of basic expenses, and dump money from direct deposit into a specific account. We did that to get current.

That eliminated many dopey expenses (Starbucks, shiny things in the grocery, etc). It’s harder to spend money when it’s in your hands. I have a no debit card policy, so we setup a dedicated credit card for things like gas that cash is onerous for.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#54

Post by fromthestart » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

vailprogrammer wrote: post #36

fromthestart wrote: post #20

From the executive summary of the Federal Reserve report linked in the article: >When asked about their finances, 74 percent of adults said they were either doing okay or living comfortably in 2017—over 10 percentage points more than in the first survey in 2013. >Individuals of all education levels have shared in the improvement over the past five years, though the more educated still report greater well-being than t…

> sob stories about people who spent half their lives pursuing 3 uneconomical degrees, had 3 more kids than they could afford, in cities with some of the highest costs of living in the world, and now complain that they're living paycheck to paycheck. So the person who .... - never attended any sort of college, but did graduate high school - is single and childless, in fact have no family at all as their parents died…

There will always be those who are unlucky and downtrodden. The point though is that media like these focus exclusively on this negative minority and exaggerate the negativity of the status quo.

My parents are first generation immigrants who fled the Soviet Bloc and built their lives here by living within their means, and making practical decisions, like getting degrees with some probability of return on investment.

They came here with nothing and it took them 30 years to find their way into the upper middle class. I have little sympathy for people who consistently plan poorly and make bad decisions by placing immediate satisfaction over long term financial security.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#55

Post by vailprogrammer » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

spoonie wrote: post #19

I think housing costs are a big part of this. Things are almost perfectly stacked in favour of current property owners: oppose any new housing development near you which keeps land prices and rents high, while those wanting to buy or rent can’t or don’t vote and can’t as easily encourage more building as current owners can discourage it. And it’s so simple (not easy, but simple) too: build more to reduce housing cost…

Not sure why you're being downvoted, maybe its some SF NIMBYers? Anyways, your second sentence brings me an interesting idea. What if someone built a website with links to easily email local representatives (kind of like the Craigslist webmail links, maybe also with a message body filled in), so that people could quickly and easily send in complaints about housing/zoning restrictions? This idea partially inspired by the Airnoise button: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792029

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#56

Post by imustbeevil » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

leoedin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…

Except when it is. Generalities aren't helpful to the single parent working retail. Expenses aren't always optional.

In the vast majority of cases having a child is optional.

This perfectly illustrates the problem the GP brings up. People have no concept of what agency is.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#57

Post by 49531 » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #28

As someone who didn't learn the very basics of personal finance at the optimal point in life, I feel like it should be part of our standardized education. I'd like to think that would make things at least marginally better. Another thing I'd love to see, would be for banks to fundamentally reorient themselves to be their customer's advocates/financial guardians, instead of being yet another party encouraging people t…

You'll never have banks working in consumers self interest as long as they are profit driven organizations. Public banks tend to work better for actual sensible banking.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#58

Post by kurthr » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #27

perfmode wrote: post #6

Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…

I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…

Which is why without tight controls on lending/debt Universal Basic Income will just lead to similarly desperate outcomes subsidized by the state.

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#59

Post by opencl » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

spoonie wrote: post #19

I think housing costs are a big part of this. Things are almost perfectly stacked in favour of current property owners: oppose any new housing development near you which keeps land prices and rents high, while those wanting to buy or rent can’t or don’t vote and can’t as easily encourage more building as current owners can discourage it. And it’s so simple (not easy, but simple) too: build more to reduce housing cost…

How many places does this really affect? I see people in California complaining about it constantly. It is certainly not a problem where I live.

Take a look at the NAR's housing affordability index[1]. Basically 100 means the median family income is exactly enough to quality for a mortgage on the median home price, higher is better. If you look at the HAI by metro area there are a very small number of places where the index is below 100, and almost all of them are in CA. The vast majority of cities seem to have reasonably affordable housing.

[1] https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing-stat...

Re: Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common

#60

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

perfmode wrote: post #6

Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…

[deleted]