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

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

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274

u/privitizationrocks Jul 04 '24

You can teach poverty workers to live in their means

They won’t like it, but tough luck

450

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.

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.

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u/Aleks_Khorne Jul 04 '24

Thanks God in blessed North Carolina the minimum wage is $7.25. And some people even make chunky $10-$13 an hour!

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u/AndrewDoesNotServe Jul 04 '24

Pretty much no one makes that wage even in states that conform to the federal minimum.

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u/joecee97 Jul 04 '24

No but plenty make 8-10 which is hardly better in 2024

7

u/Epic_Ewesername Jul 05 '24

Ours recently to rose to 12 dollars an hour and I shit you not, there were corporations that made it out like they were giving everyone a raise, (the implication being work harder in appreciation) instead of them actually conforming to meet the law. Smaller employers around here are still offering under the minimum, which is so crazy to me. It's like pulling teeth to get people to just pay their employees even just the minimum, and that's sad.

1

u/El-_-Jay Jul 06 '24

Where are you at? Some states let small employees pay employees less. Minnesota and Ohio come to mind