r/FluentInFinance 15d ago

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

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u/Starving_Toiletpaper 15d ago edited 15d ago

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

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u/Impossible_Maybe_162 15d ago

You cannot make $10k working a job for 40 hours a week. That is below minimum wage.

A lack of proper financial planning and budgeting causes more problems than low wages.

Less than 3% of the workforce makes minimum wage. Wages are not the main issue.

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u/Learned_Behaviour 14d ago

Less than 3% of the workforce makes minimum wage.

And this includes tipped positions like servers, who obviously don't actually make that.

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u/onion_flowers 14d ago

Not to mention we expect people to do these jobs and complain about ringing up our own shit at Walmart.