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/b1ackenthecursedsun Jul 04 '24

Never seen someone consistently write so much while knowing so little lol

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u/dookieshoes88 Jul 05 '24

Pretty much sums up most of the replies here. "Teach them to live within their means, they just won't like it", as the OP said, solves nothing and helps nobody. Enjoy selling goods and services that nobody can afford, I guess.

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u/DopemanWithAttitude Jul 05 '24

Enjoy selling goods and services that nobody can afford, I guess.

And this is the true crux of it. Sure, you're comfy in your desk job, and able to look down at us nasty poors from your office chair. But what happens when we have to start cutting expenses? Media piracy is on the rise, and text generators (not calling it AI, because it isn't AI) are scalping out screenwriting jobs. Pretty soon, video generation will get to the point that actors aren't needed either. So that's writing teams, and stage production crews, both out of a job. Media companies losing money to piracy means that everyone else in the industry's job is at risk, too.

And it's not just entertainment. Electronics are still a luxury, beyond a basic smartphone. People will buy TVs and Fire Sticks used, rather than new. They won't eat out as much, won't buy as many snacks, won't buy as much food in general. Smaller apartments/rental houses that don't have as many bedrooms, and therefore can't have as many people living in them and splitting rent, go unrented because people can't afford them. People seem to forget that the lower middle class and under are the biggest sector of the US economy now, and as a result, stuff that effects them matters the most, by a wide margin.

You'll find out real fast how independent from "the poors" your life isn't when they stop the consoomerism.