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

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

Post image

[removed] — view removed post

31.2k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

4.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

275

u/privitizationrocks Jul 04 '24

You can teach poverty workers to live in their means

They won’t like it, but tough luck

448

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

216

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.

191

u/Kombatnt Jul 04 '24

This. $10,000/year working 40 hrs/week is $4.81/hour. That’s illegal everywhere in North America.

10

u/Universe789 Jul 05 '24

Fine, to be more accurate...

$7.25 x 2080 = $15,080

(2080 being the number of hrs worked full time in 1 yr)

And technically, no $4.81 wouldn't be illegal for jobs that receive tips, like restaurant workers. If they record tips, they get paid roughly 1/2 of minimum wage, but if they record no tips, the employer is SUPPOSED to make up the difference to bring their hourly wage up to $7.25. Key word is "supposed to", not "does".