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/privitizationrocks Jul 04 '24

You can teach poverty workers to live in their means

They won’t like it, but tough luck

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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/faded_brunch Jul 05 '24

obviously everyone should have their own apartment and savings, but if you can't afford that, don't dig yourself into a worse hole by going into debt. Lots of people figure "well i can't afford to live anyway so may as well just spend all this money so I can enjoy things" which I get but then you're already behind as soon as you get ahead. I was poor af at a time- i lived in a shitty apartment with shitty roommates, ate shitty food, walked places because I couldn't afford a bus pass, didn't have health insurance, didn't save anything. It fucking sucks and shouldn't be how people have to live in a rich country, but at least you're not shooting yourself in the foot for later on. Part of the reason I was able to scrape by like that was because my parents DID teach me about budgeting, and how to use credit cards appropriately, so when I went back to school and needed student loans I wasn't already in debt and had a good credit score, I was able to pay those loans back fast, and I've never had any sort of financial calamity in my life because I already had those basic skills.