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The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#91

Post by geebee »

Clanan wrote: post #65
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a subreddit dedicated to this idea, although I warn you it's largely terrible. http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should y…

As a parent I've found that "kids are pricey" can easily stem from financial illiteracy as well. It's easier than people think to have kids and not blow the budget. Don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, limit eating out, buy secondhand clothes (which are usually in great condition), etc. We always chuckle when our friends talk about how expensive their kids are, right before mentioning their three cross-country trips. F…

I'm not going to disagree, since your advice is good. If you're having trouble financially, don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, eat out all the time, or buy expensive clothes.

But keep in mind, in SF, a 3br house or apartment south of 280 (a bit blighted in spots, but far safer than its reputation) starts at 800K, and really, unless you're at the outskirts and buying a property in need of considerable work, you're probably going to shell out over a mil. Child care is easily over $2k a month, so 50K a year.

So at least in SF, you're probably looking at about 90k+ on housing and child care. Health care is another huge cost, but it's hidden.

What percentage of that is really spent on creature comforts like expensive travel or christmas gifts? New clothes? You're a parent, you've seen what things cost at lower cost spots like Old Navy or payless shoes. It's not a big expense. I do a lot of hand-me-downs (I have 2 kids myself), but in the end, I'd estimate very generously that clothing costs about 0.5% of the yearly budget.

Now, one could certainly reasonably say that living in SF is a financially illiterate thing to do (though if this is the case, then many of the employers claiming a shortage of software developers are actually claiming that there is a shortage of financially illiterate developers, since these companies are generally located in SF or Silicon Valley).

But is Boston, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, or LA really that much better? I think it just goes from impossible to difficult.

The reason I mention this is that I believe the middle and working classes in the US are eroding, and while some of this can be self-indulgence (look at the way some people treated houses as piggy banks, for example), I wouldn't write off middle class struggles as financial illiteracy or excessive self-indulgence.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#92

Post by dionidium »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #47
fweespeech wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should you choose to do so. That is really only true for households above the median income. So "most" is not a factual statement. About ha…

If you can only save a few thousand a year then you fall firmly into the "living above their means" category in my personal opinion. Having children you cannot afford is a common way that lower income people live above their means, even if it sounds crass to word it in that way. My anecdotal experience working alongside lower class workers is that most of them run into trouble through trying to live a middle class li…

> Having children you cannot afford is a common way that lower income people live above their means

Poor people will never stop having sex, or wanting kids, or desiring a drink at the end of the day, because it just so happens that you don't lose basic human desires when you're poor. A lot of talk about financial literacy is really just moralizing about behaviors the lecturer would never dream of giving up himself.

It's a dead-end conversation, because, again, humans are always going to do the stuff that humans do.

But this entire thread is doomed because it stems from a claim that most people who struggle do so because they're living above their means. It seems to me that most people who struggle do so because they don't have as much money as the people who don't struggle.

EDIT: Dear HN, can we make > start a quote, already? Look at how many people in this thread alone have used it in that way! I do it all the time and usually edit it back out.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#93

Post by kidsthesedays »

bigtunacan wrote: post #74
kidsthesedays wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that most is silly. Certainly many though. Consider: When I was single I lived a very very very comfortable life on $22,000 a year (cash, not income). I put that much in my checking account and everything else in savings and investment. This was after I spent several years putting the majority of my pay on loans to become debt free and paid off the $60,000 in student loans and a very small car loan. If someon…

There is no way around it; kids ARE expensive. The bulk cost of raising kids is not all of the unnecessary things, even with all of the crap kids have today compared to prior generations, that is all incidental costs. The real costs of kids are the necessities. Child care, clothing, food, medical & dental expenses. I live in the midwest and send/sent my children to a daycare that is extremely price conscious even for…

This is what confuses me, when I was growing up there was poor kids childcare that I went to that was dirt cheap. Don't they exist anymore? Our (lower income) city offered free summer camp and I went to a variety of after school programs. Sure you can't do that with babies though (I don't think).

The vast majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs or thrift store or sometimes sales rack stuff. My mom and her sisters and brothers passed around garbage bags full of their kids' old clothes for the smaller kids and clothes were passed on to coworkers and friends. Several kids all wore clothes until they fell apart. I was allowed to have one pair of shoes (only from Payless) and I wore them either until they didn't fit or until the next schoolyear came. My parents didn't spend hardly anything at all on clothes.

Medical costs obviously are high (unless you are in the military)

I never even felt deprived or anything either. Not being able to pick out my clothes wasn't even a big issue for me.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#94

Post by peter303 »

jasonkester wrote: post #25

It seems a lot more possible these days, both socially and economically, to go into "partial retirement" at around age 30. Developers can pull this off without much effort. 2-20X the pay for our work, little expectation of company loyalty nor stigma for resume gaps or job hopping, crazy skewed market to ensure that a new contract is only a Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter update away. Why would anybody spend their 30s not t…

If you get a good job and continue to live the "student lifestyle", that is fairly frugal and single, you can probably save boatloads of money and take time off. If you want to raise a family or like spending money, that wont work for you.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#95

Post by megaman22 »

jxf wrote: post #10
nhaehnle wrote: post #6

You have to wonder which of those trends are "secular" (in the economics sense) and which are indirect causes of high unemployment. The article already hints at this: Apart from the young cohort (until mid-20s), the rise in men going to school is probably less about an increased desire for education and more about an inability to find work. More men caring for their families may be a good thing (increasing equality b…

> And is it really plausible that more men are disabled today compared to 15 years ago? Yes, that seems plausible to me. For example, there have been a number of combat operations the intervening 15 years; if someone left the military due to injury, they would be counted in the disability figures, but not in the employment ones. NPR did a big story on the factors behind this a while ago: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for…

The numbers of disabled combat veterans are a tragedy, but they are really a drop in the bucket compared to the wider population. The numbers of people that have some medical condition that would allow them to work a job, if such jobs were available, is where the meat of that increase comes in. Then you have the perverse incentives by which someone on the low end of the pay scale can take a job, and be much worse off than if they stay on the dole, due to various other support programs getting cut off (free health care, fuel assistance, SNAP benefits, etc).

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#97

Post by Dirlewanger »

Clanan wrote: post #65
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a subreddit dedicated to this idea, although I warn you it's largely terrible. http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence Basically the only reason most people struggle financially in the US is due to their own financial illiteracy and living above their means. If you manage not to fall victim to either of those then you can save a substantial portion of your income towards a very early retirement should y…

As a parent I've found that "kids are pricey" can easily stem from financial illiteracy as well. It's easier than people think to have kids and not blow the budget. Don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, limit eating out, buy secondhand clothes (which are usually in great condition), etc. We always chuckle when our friends talk about how expensive their kids are, right before mentioning their three cross-country trips. F…

"right before mentioning their three cross-country trips."

You do realize that those are luxuries you are not taking because they're going to other priorities i.e. your family? It has nothing to do with not having kids and being financially irresponsible. Kids are very expensive and have incredible amount of all kinds of risk attached to them.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#98

Post by [deleted] »

caseysoftware wrote: post #61
learnstats2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on or below median income (i.e. "most people") live above their means, because they have little choice.

Some portion of them, yes. But something as simple as cutting cable can save $500+/year, usually over $1k/year. And to someone who is below the median, either of those numbers is non-trivial. Exclude a few other optional behaviors and the numbers shift more positive pretty quickly. Examples: smoking, iphone plans, pets. Someone doesn't have to go without those things forever but cutting out all the non-necessities fo…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#99

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #59
zzalpha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, alternatively: the erosion of wages in the face of rising inflation has placed a reasonable lifestyle out of the reach of many people. No longer can a household function on a single income while owning a home and raising a couple kids. Unfortunately society demands such a lifestyle from folks in order to be deemed a "success" and so people life beyond their now eroded means because they only alternative is to giv…

I don't mean to assert this is an optimal scenario, but it is the one we've all been placed in. What choice do we really have but to try and live according to the circumstances we were born into?

>What choice do we really have but to try and live according to the circumstances we were born into?

We can also work to change those circumstances for future generations.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work, and What They Do Instead

#100

Post by caseysoftware »

bruceb wrote: post #87
caseysoftware wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers are there to support it. I don't believe it's getting widespread coverage because it's considered anti-feminist to believe that women want to find a man to marry or have kids. Look at how Joss Whedon was thrashed for having Black Widow even suggest that. Check out "Men on Strike" by Helen Smith. She highlights the trends and proposed a number of theories to explain it.

"...it's considered anti-feminist to believe that women want to find a man to marry or have kids." Where is this said? Straw man runs wild.

Let's test this. Tweet something like:

"I believe most women want to find a man to marry and have kids"

and please share your responses.

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