sugar_in_your_tea
Mama told me not to come.
She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.
As a strict monogamist, the only paranormal sex I’m interested in is if my SO turns.
We have (had?) separate registrations for bars vs restaurants, and there are (were?) limits on how much revenue from each source a bar vs restaurant could have (bars must primarily derive income from alcohol, restaurants from food). I haven’t seen the little signs they used to have to place out front that signified whether the establishment was a bar or a restaurant, so I’m not sure if they changed the rules generally or just that one.
You can’t stabilize any finances if you’re taking out payday loans in order to pay rent every month
Oh, I 100% agree. But in many cases, taking payday loans is a symptom of other serious problems in someone’s spending patterns and not necessarily an income problem. Maybe the car payment is too high, or perhaps they’re paying too much for food. Whatever it is, that needs to get fixed to end the need for emergency cash.
If you’re in the lower middle class or higher, there’s no excuse for it IMO. If you’re in the lower class, you’ll need to get creative (government assistance, co-living, etc).
you can just sell the supercar or downsize your house or whatever
You say that, but in many cases, they still end up net worth negative. The problem here isn’t with income, but spending, and you’re not going to sell your way out of a spending problem.
I think income divided by local cost-of-living could be, maybe.
Certainly. Economic classes are very much location-dependent. If you live in NYC or SF, you’d need to adjust the numbers a bit, likewise if you live in rural Mississippi or something. And there are calculators available online to help with that.
most people who are struggling financially are not in those situations
Pretty much everyone will say that though, because people are pretty bad at noticing the excesses in their own spending. If you’re not standing out as being “weird” for spending so little, then you’re probably “keeping up with the Joneses,” because the average American is pretty irresponsible.
This is a pretty broad brush stroke to be sure, and I’m sure there are plenty who are legitimately struggling despite a conscious effort to cut costs. I’m just saying that many, if not most, people who aren’t “financially stable” could make room in their budget to get financially stable, but instead end up throwing a ton of money down the drain due to interest.
Perhaps. But this article has nothing to do with left/right ideology. So while they definitely seem to be socialist, I’m not convinced their frequent posting is politically motivated, I think they just have a curated feed, and that includes socialist stuff.
I consider myself pretty centrist and despise both the political left and right. I consider myself Libertarian, and this election has left me really scratching my head because pretty much everything both candidates are pushing for the wrong direction IMO (I don’t like tariffs, value balancing the budget, price controls suck, etc).
So I strongly disagree w/ OP’s political ideology, but I still don’t really have an issue with the posts they make. If I think it’s leftist noise, I usually just move on to the next one, but if it’s a high quality article, I’ll upvote.
my salary hasn’t kept up with inflation
Yes, that certainly is a problem. Salary increases tend to lag inflation a bit, so you’d either need to switch jobs or wait to get caught up.
That said, wage growth has exceeded inflation for the last year and a half or so, so hopefully you’ll get a yearly salary bump to help out. Our salary bump was higher than usual last year (about 5%), but still below inflation (8-9%), and I hope our salary bump this year will fix that (4% would be enough to catch back up).
But the fact that you’ve been able to stay financially stable despite high inflation means you’re probably closer to “The Millionaire Next Door” than the average Joe drowning in credit card debt. If you can stay out of debt and put money away for retirement every month, you’ll be doing fine in your 60s when you’re looking at retirement.
you can budget yourself from the top of one financial class into the bottom of another one
Sure, if you follow the average advice (save 10%), then yeah, one bump-up is essentially expected. But if you’re more aggressive, jumping up more than one level should be feasible.
This video talks about economic classes, and the portion I linked shows how you can go from $65k/year salary (middle middle class) to lower upper class by age 50 by just investing 10% of your income. So this is essentially middle middle-class to lower-upper class. If you do 40 years instead of stopping at 50, you’d have $3M by retirement age. If we account for 2% inflation, you’d have about $1.7M in today’s dollars, which is almost to upper upper class. If you bump to 15% of your income, you end up with $2.6M after taking inflation into account, which is in that upper upper class range. So with just a median household salary, you can have an upper upper class retirement.
$1k is enough for any one emergency
I never said it would definitely cover all emergencies, but it should cover most emergencies. For example:
- car issue - usually $400-1000 - my last FE strut replacement cost $800-900, and that’s on the more expensive end (certainly wouldn’t handle engine work though)
- washing machine/dishwasher/refrigerator dies - new one costs a few hundred, maybe slightly more (my fridge this year cost ~$1300, cheaper options exist)
- surprise funeral of a loved one - plane tickets/gas and a hotel for a couple nights should be under $1k
It’s not going to solve everything, but it’s a nice milestone that means you can weather most emergencies, provided they come one at a time. The goal here isn’t to guarantee that you’re safe from everything (nobody should stop at this step), but to protect you from most of the small things that would otherwise go to debt.
If we raise the bar too high, people will get discouraged and give up. $1k is a pretty decent goal and can do a lot of good.
