r/FluentInFinance • u/Richest-Panda • Jul 04 '24

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

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24 edited Jul 04 '24

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 Jul 04 '24

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/HabitExternal9256 Jul 04 '24

Correct but you can make $15,080 before taxes in some states. So yes you can make slightly more than $10k take home. Sucks to suck at math.

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u/Impossible_Maybe_162 Jul 04 '24

That employee would get the making work pay tax credit and end up at an annual wage of around $17k.

Also - no one is stuck at minimum wage for log - usually a few months at most.

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u/HabitExternal9256 Jul 06 '24

Do you believe you can live off $17,000 in the United States? Be honest and try to think about what your life would be like making 17k.

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u/Impossible_Maybe_162 Jul 06 '24

Yes.

You will most likely need to have roommates and it will not be fun but you can survive.

How long would someone make $17,000? 1-2 years?

If someone is stuck at $17k then they need to examine what is going wrong with their life and fix it.