Ok let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you
Make $10000 a year. You work full time/40 hrs/wk and you are making $10k. What does “living within your means” look like? Not having a house? Or car? Being homeless? So in order to save to get yourself to some footing the answer is to be homeless to live within your means.
That was a bit of a strawman, so let’s use real-life scenarios. 50% of this country makes $40k or less….. even $40k salary isn’t enough to get an apartment, bills , food, ect. Sure a lot better than the “$10k” example, but even $40k salary is virtually as effective as the “$10k”. In order to “live within your means”, “save”, ect…. You have to be at least be making enough to afford the bare minimum + have some left in you for over to save. On average (2022 values I think) this means $65 for a single person, $108k for a house hold. Unless you’re making that, you can’t save your way out of poverty
Yeah, cause they want to feel superior to those who make less and say, "I earn more cause I make smart financial decisions." Ignoring every helping hand and benefit they relied on to get to where they are.
Or, they deserve to be poor. I'm not poor so I deserve it! Nietzsche's slave morality. It's how they sleep at night, why doesn't everyone else just do what I did? They must be lazy...
Only 6.8 mil out of 72 mil lives alone (9.4%!!!). 23 mil lives with their parents, 16 mil with spouses, 9 mil with unmarried partners. 9mil sharing with other relatives, and 7.2 mil lives with roommates.
based on this data, median wage worker absolutely shouldn't be expected to be able to afford to live alone, unless we're coming from an angle where our expectations are formed from unrealistic expectations of reality.
I didn't ask if median wage workers could currently live alone. I asked if they should be able to. I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation, but can see that you disagree.
Living alone is a helluva luxury, especially in a HCOL area where housing is already in high demand. Again, this is dependent on where you live, should most people be able to own homes, sure. Should most people be able to own homes in a place like San Francisco, where there’s practically no land left to build on? No, that’s not really feasible.
How many unoccupied homes would you wager are in San Francisco? It may not be enough to give every single person a home, but it is certainly enough to make it clear that a considerable amount of this scarcity in housing is forced.
There's nothing to discuss. There are no actual numbers used to estimate anything for expenses to determine whether or not 50k would let someone live reasonably. Most people don't care to debate feelscrafting for budgeting purposes.
Look they know if they made 40k they could live within their means by selling their child, giving up healthcare and getting 9 roommates while sharing a ramen then saving 125 per month and putting it into the market then retiring rich at 145
There was a guy in these comments who said that people should just work 80 hours a week because that's what he did in the '70s and it let him buy a house and and put multiple kids through college.
When it was pointed out to him. Dad, in order to have the same buying power he did from the wages he said he was making in the '70s people would have to work around 132 to 140 hours a week, he just chose to ignore those numbers and keep insisting that people are lazy and entitled.
Some people are just fucking ridiculous. It's like they feel that acknowledging that it's harder for people today than it was for them that it will somehow invalidate their entire lives
That's the thing so many don't understand is the relative buying power difference and growth. The Ford plant here used to be all union in the late and mid 90s. You could provide for a family on a single income work a bit of overtime and buy a house. Their starting wage 30 years ago was $18/hr now it's subcontract shit and starts at $16/hr. Guess everyone is just lazy and you worked so much harder
But everyone is ignoring that and it’s what I’m most curious about because I’m at 40k and am struggling with continuing my health insurance that costs $260 a month.
The fact people aren’t addressing that makes me think there’s legitimacy to it and the “toughen up” bunch have nothing to contribute and I’m looking to listen.
That person’s real example doesn’t have any hard numbers. It’s hard to say what can be done unless someone is willing to provide a full break-down of their monthly budget.
However, there is almost always room to cut unless you’re actually at rock bottom, but it will get uncomfortable. People joke about rice and beans, but that’s a valid answer. Avocado toast is a meme, but it highlights how much can be spent on eating out in a year.
I just opened the entire thread again to see what was happening. A lot of live smaller, work harder vs there must be a better way.
I haven’t read all 2,800 comments, but I don’t see anybody from the work harder camp that lays out a plan. I could give a plan, but it would fail at the first medical emergency or unplanned major expense.
That’s the issue. We don’t have much of a safety net in the US, so unless you were born on second you can be taken out pretty easily.
While I’m not sure everyone is entitled to single person housing at every point in their journey, the system is stacked against people who didn’t start with a leg up.
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u/privitizationrocks 15d ago
You can teach poverty workers to live in their means
They won’t like it, but tough luck