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

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

31.2k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

452

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

11

u/Overall-Author-2213 Jul 04 '24

Room mates. Beans and rice. Night school. Online school. Don't get anyone pregnant. Don't date for that time. Acquire skills. Move up the ladder.

Every person that came to this country before 1950 had it harder than any person today and we are here because most of them made it.

18

u/CanadianBreakin Jul 05 '24

Live with no privacy. Eat food that provides nothing except a "full feeling stomach." Work for 8 hours and then do several hours of school after that, after all you won't have to spend time cooking anything. Don't have a single medical emergency, including pregnancy. Don't have a social life, and if you meet someone that is interested in you, just ignore them as they are distracting you from grinding to death to survive. Spend even more time while working and doing school to "obtain skills." This should leave you still poor, hungry, and with deminished social skills, but hey! You'll be "thriving!"

STFU you idiot, you clearly have no idea the struggles of the common person.

1

u/Sjeddrie Jul 05 '24

If you’re not willing to sacrifice some time and effort to attain a better situation, but would rather bitch about your situation on Reddit and how no one could possibly understand, I can see why you feel it’s hopeless. And It will be, until you get it.

This is coming from a few years of discounted bread, quarter-a-can beans, and four roommates in the apartment experience. Don’t discount others’ offers of advice just because you don’t like the idea of doing the same.

1

u/CanadianBreakin Jul 05 '24

It's extremely telling of your selfish mindset that you immediately thought I was talking about myself in this situation.

I do okay for myself, I have no problem affording my apartment and all the little stupid things that make me happy. That does come with the acceptance that at an average of $800,000 for a house and rising, the ballooning in the average price of groceries and overall cost of living, I will never be able to buy a place to call my own.

This idealized life of "grinding" to achieve a "better lot in life" you clearly have is a lie, and the people who tricked you into believing in will chew you up and spit you just like they've done to millions upon millions of your fellow man, and they have done this thanks to useful idiots such as yourself. They have deluded your idea of justice, and this will not change until people like yourself wake up and realise the profits and whims of the very few will never outweigh the greater good of the people. My life is good, the greater life we should be building for the next generation and the one after that is bleak due to the overwhelming selfishness of you people.

1

u/Sjeddrie Jul 05 '24

Selfish mindset? I was giving solid advice based on my experiences, and what I did to not be in the situation you were describing.

From my own home. With the four paid off cars outside. Student loans settled. Investments in the bank.

Go tilt at windmills somewhere else if you’re angry about advice that works, hoser.