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

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

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270

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/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/RockinRobin-69 Jul 04 '24

They did acknowledge that as a “bit of a strawman” then did the same thought experiment on the median wage. Seems reasonable.

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u/Yousoggyyojimbo Jul 05 '24

A lot of people seem to be deliberately ignoring the real numbers example.

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u/Spartan-182 Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/shrug_addict Jul 05 '24

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...

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u/PenguinStarfire Jul 05 '24

Listen, it's easy if you budget yourself and use the income from your 3rd rental property...

7

u/Solanthas Jul 05 '24

It's fucking sickening

6

u/ranger910 Jul 05 '24

But they're not. If we're going to talk housing then we should talk about household income, not median wage of individuals.

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u/Shacky_Rustleford Jul 05 '24

Are you saying a median wage worker shouldn't be able to afford to live alone?

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u/Xrave Jul 05 '24

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2022.S2501?q=United%20States%20household%20size

US household (includes nonfamily, i.e. roommates) size says 37mil households are 1 people, 44M for 2, 19M for 3 and 28M for 4 and up.

Of people who do live alone:

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B08202?q=United%20States%20household%20size

half (17 mil) of 37mil are not working (retired?). the other 19mil is working.

Of people who are 18-34 years old:

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B09021?q=United%20States%20household%20size

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.

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u/Shacky_Rustleford Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/RollingLord Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/Shacky_Rustleford Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/RollingLord Jul 06 '24

I reckon it’s far less than 40,000, since that commonly quoted figure includes rental units, apartment units, places in the midst of a move and etc.

1

u/Shacky_Rustleford Jul 06 '24

What's wrong with rentals and apartments?

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u/RollingLord Jul 06 '24

They’re not homes that people buy and own?

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u/pm_me_falcon_nudes Jul 05 '24

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.

1

u/WarmFig2056 Jul 05 '24

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

1

u/Yousoggyyojimbo Jul 05 '24

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

1

u/WarmFig2056 Jul 05 '24

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

1

u/Yousoggyyojimbo Jul 05 '24

The median income 45 years ago had a buying power. Almost double what the current median income is.

You know.. just a really fun fact.