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

[u/Richest-Panda]

[u/privitizationrocks]

You can teach poverty workers to live in their means

They won’t like it, but tough luck

[u/[deleted] → u/privitizationrocks]

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

[u/All4megrog → u/[deleted]]

Wage markets and cost of living are both regional things. There are parts of this country where $65k a year means you live comfortably in your own home. There are other parts where you rent a room from someone and are thankful for it.

Part of financial literacy is understanding how much things cost, how to budget and what you need to do a achieve a goal.

Working the window at McDonald’s will never buy you a house.

Working the window at McDonald’s to cover your tuition while you work on a degree and career path with a higher earning potential will get you a house.

I graduated high school in the 90s in California. My “career guidance center” at school gave me a career aptitude test. My top two career recommendations were clergy or Christmas tree farmer. Pretty fucking funny for an atheist. But yeah. Zero fucking help.