cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33704049
Wanted to add, “Fuck Cars!!”
Car payments for decades of one’s life are not the way to go.
I remember talking with some Americans a few years ago, they worked in the tech industry, so definitely on the upper side of the income range. And even they said they were feeling the crunch around 2022-2023. I can only imagine how it felt for the regular people.
Quite the contrast with the official numbers which claimed the American economy is growing. Let’s just say that the election outcome was not surprising.
Well the rich are gaining obscene amounts of money. So many of the large companies are pulling in record profits. So in that sense, the american economy is growing. The peoblem is theyre squeezing the rest of us for that.
60% of Americans living pay check to pay check for whatever reason. In 2008 this number was 40%.
There is no way to tell why this is happening. 🤡
Its actually up to 68% now.
Source?
Article:
Source Study:
https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PYMNTS-New-Reality-Check-February-March-2024.pdf
Oh hey, Forbes says nearly 72% of those living paycheck to paycheck have less than $2,000 in savings!
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-statistics-2024/
Yeah, this is what an economic collapse looks like, Great Depression 2.0, hold onto your butt, and good luck.
EDIT:
We also have a massive negative net worth problem.
Negative net worth means you have more debt than assets.
Because this is difficult to measure accurately, unless you are a credit bureau…we’ve got anywhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3 Americans with more debt than assets, ie, they are de facto debt slaves.
https://www.creditkarma.com/about/commentary/americans-have-a-net-worth-problem-and-its-not-positive
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/whats-your-net-worth-25-of-americans-say-theirs-is-%240-or-less
These are all from 2 or 3 years ago, I imagine its now closer to 1 in 3 than 1 in 10.
Every time you hear about ‘the economy’, replace it with ‘rich people yacht money’.
And it only works when ‘the economy’ is strong, rising, booming, zooming, etc.
Quite the contrast with the official numbers which claimed the American economy is growing. Let’s just say that the election outcome was not surprising.
Between that and Biden refusing to take action regarding Gaza, the election was forfeited in 2023.
Biden refusing to take action regarding Gaza, the election was forfeited in 2023.
Which is bizarre because Trump promised the extermination of all Palestinians.
“Don’t vote for Biden because he won’t stop genocide. Let Trump win because he promised to help genocide.”
Just ignore what I said about the economy and blame everything on people who are anti-genocide.
I only meant to point out that one weirdness.
But “the economy is bad” was another.
“Don’t vote for Biden because the economy is bad now. Let Trump win because the economy was worse than when Trump was last president.”
Being anti Genocide isn’t a “purity test” it’s a absic requirement. If a candidate for offices fails that and loses it’s their fault 100%
But the weirdness isn’t that Harris lost by not saying she would stop the genocide. It is that Trump win by promising genocide.
By making it bipartisan they removed it as an issue to differenciate cannidates
$150k household income is not enough to afford a house, middle class standard of living, children, and retirement savings since you don’t have a pension. at least in my area.
it’ll get you lower middle class, maybe.
I’m not saying these people should be having money issues, they need to budget appropriately. but what used to be possible 20 years ago just isn’t now, you need to choose one big thing to drop, whether that’s a detached house, children, expensive hobbies, trips, etc
there’s too much shifting of the goal posts for what middle class is, I think it has slipped too far downwards
Imo the entire concept of the middle class should be abandoned as capitalist propaganda. There’s the rich and there’s the working class. Anything else is a distraction to keep us from focusing on the rich stealing from the workers. Bezos owns a $500,000,000 yacht while thousands of his employees rely on government assistance programs which are funded by taxes he doesn’t even pay.
Owning class, working class and then you do have a mid point of worker/owner class. Their money comes partly from their labour but also partly from their wealth
Those at the midpoint still have to work to live, so they are working class. 🤷
At some point it’s more that they want the extra money than they have to work, and they own so they are also the owning class
If they don’t have to work to live, they’re no longer working class (Musk still works at Tesla, but clearly doesn’t need to). But I’m not sure what your point is. Are you saying that those who derive their wealth from the labor of workers but who can’t afford a yacht should be treated differently than billionaires? I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t have progressive tax rates, I’m only saying that an arbitrarily defined ‘middle class’ exists solely so that you and I are distracted by exactly these discussions, and provides no benefit to determining what is justifiable economic policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie ?
Although members of the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labour of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie. Examples can include shopkeepers, artisans and other smaller-scale entrepreneurs.
children? when we’ve hit the climate crisis tipping point? no thanks, i’d rather not bring people into this world who are going to die a painful death from a climate related catastrophe.
It feels like the whole world has been an externalized cost for the very rich.
Well that’s just living beyond your means. We really need to teach financial responsibility in schools. But we won’t, because then people might liberate themselves from bondage and then who’d work all the service jobs that white collar types want to abuse?
Here’s how America “works”:
Fuck you, there is barely any public transportation, and anyone who uses it or some non personal csr transist system is literally hated by most of society.
Oh and of course, cost of housing goes up exponentially as you try to live closer to where jobs actually exist.
Also, cars are all wildly unaffordable, and most places won’t even consider hiring you if you don’t have one.
seriously. car payments crushing people? understandable to an extent, cars are required for most americans. credit card debt? thats a personal issue.
Ehhhh I wouldn’t be so sure
It’s really easy to fall into when you’re month to month.
You just barely scraped by on the rent and essential bills. Now you have $36.29 to make it through the next 2 weeks.
But hey, you do have that credit card with a few thousand available. You need to get food for the house and $36 ain’t gonna feed the kids. You’ll be frugal. Maybe $200 or so. You’ll pay it off next month.
But next month it’s the same story. Minimum payment it is.
And next month
And next month
And then you need emergency dental surgery
And then…
hi there I’m somebody struggling with credit card debt who is considered extremely frugal with purchases
the bulk of my credit debt was incurred when I was forced to pay several months of rent using my credit card during unemployment that resulted from a mental health crisis
not everyone with credit card debt got those balances buying “frivolous” things and even many of those who did were buying those things as self-medication along the same lines as abusing alcohol, drugs, food, etc. (not an excuse, but still a reason to empathize)
a lot of people I know with large credit card balances have them because they were forced to put uncovered health expenses or astronomically large copays onto the cards in order to not severely damage their health or outright die
just a friendly reminder that the elite weaponize the working class sentiment of “some people are so much more lazy/irresponsible with money/etc. than I am!” to keep us at each other’s throats shaming each other instead of sticking together as a community
If anyone’s situation improves, look into converting credit card debt into a personal loan. The interest in some cases can be a lot less.
Usual disclaimers. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and not financial advice.
I just keep balance transferring it to new cards with promo 0% APR for some months
the balance transfer fees are significantly lower than card interest for sure (not sure about personal loan interest, I’ll have to check my bank)
every time I do this I hope that this time around is the time I finally pay it all off before a new crisis arises that I have to pay for. sigh
You’re only one bad hospital visit away from that same thing
I qualified for a needs based preschool for the kid. The cutoff was 11k a month. They consider anything less to be struggling. It seemed laughably high, but it must be based on what they’ve surveyed.
Credit cards and car payments must be part of that. We have neither type of debt and get by with a fraction of that need cap! But the average car I see around here is either a new F150 pickup or a Dodge Charger, neither of which come cheap.
120k per year is like, 80th percentile in the US.
Yeah, this is California in particular and I think it’s the median income.
POV: You’re a USian on disability benefits who is just assumed to be able to survive on 12k a year whilst being literally disabled and unable to do most things healthy people can. And now people with 150k a year, 10 times my income, are complaining. 👁️👄👁️
There’s room for all of us to be angry. I think it’s reasonable to complain if you work 50 hours a week for that income, have to be away from your family, who also need to be housed and clothed and to eat and care for their health, and all you have is scraps left over and aren’t saving much, if any.
When you make $150k, you usually have to live in a preposterously expensive area and have your entire life structured around your job. You eat better meals and have a better car so you can work better, and if you don’t you’re fired because someone else will. Student loans are how you got there to begin. It costs a lot money to work.
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Disability benefits? That’s not real. I think you’re thinking of “bureaucratic dead ends”.
The system is designed to keep everyone living cheque to cheque
Felt that when the UK started talking about the cost of living. I remember someone on TV crying about how they couldn’t afford food on their £35k salary. This was several years ago too.
At the time I was having to live off £8k in apprenticeship wages.
I know this is going to go against the “everything is terrible” narrative. But unpopular opinion - these people are just dumb. If you are making 150k per year and struggling to pay your bills, then that is your own fault. Live somewhere cheaper. Buy a cheaper car and learn to do your own repairs and maintenance. Cook your own food. Dont rack up credit card debt. And dont have kids if you can’t afford them.
I’m sure some people in the comments will all be like “no, no, you dont understand - it’s impossible to save money even at $150k incomes!” Bullshit! There are people who manage to get by on minimum wage. Or on $50k per year. Or hell, on $100k per year. I managed to retire at 31 and never broke the six figure mark. Now, I’m a cheap bastard and basically dedicated my life for 8 years to giving my cubical the middle finger - but if it is possible for me to do that, then yes, it is completely possible for people making $150k to not go deep into debt. It is absurd that I have to not only say this, but defend it against delusional doomers who just want to say that literally everything is hopeless and no one can ever get ahead.
Yeah, no. You know all the brand spanking new lifted pavement-princess pickups you see everywhere? Those were bought on credit. You know how DoorDash and McDonalds continue being profitable despite being absurdly expensive these days? They can do that because people keep paying them! Or the shopping malls that continue churning out shit fast fashion clothing that will disintegrate in 6 hours? Lots of them are packed on the weekends!
Straight up: outside of some very unusual circumstances, if you are bringing in $150k and still can’t keep up with your bills, You. Are. A. Dumbass.
I agree except the reason they are making $150k is because they aren’t living someplace cheaper. Move to cheap rural and there’s no job. Companies are forcing back to office even when it makes no sense.
Our housing shortage is a serious issue, and we should work on resolving it.
But at the same time, this is still not a real reason. After all, many people live in these same places with lower wages and still don’t go into debt.
Again, there are certainly people out there for whom it truly is not their fault. Like, they’re underwater on a house they bought in SF when prices were at their highest and have to stay there to take care of their ailing mother who can only see one specific doctor in the whole country - or whatever. And while these cases are tragic, they are not the majority.
The majority of these cases are going to be people who made a conscious choice to live beyond their means, who are unwilling to tighten their belts and give up their luxurious lifestyles. Yes, there are outliers. But most of these people are, like, suburban moms working as project managers in Omaha who are driving their new Buicks to Starbucks every morning. Sorry, but I don’t have sympathy for these people. Buy a used Toyota and brew your own coffee, it’s not that hard!
@blarghly @miss_demeanour This kind of animosity within the working classes (including the relatively privileged middle class) is exactly what the oligarchs want. If you’re busy casting aspersions at couples earning $75k each in New York City who probably don’t own a car much less a pavement princess and are struggling to
keep up with the bills their parents were easily able to afford, you’re looking away from how a handful of billionaires are dismantling the country and trashing the planet.I don’t think the oligarchs even think about us that much.
Anyway, you are doing the thing where you make up a sympathetic scenario to excuse people for being terrible at personal finance. I’m not saying outliers don’t exist. And I’m not saying that increased income inequality and the diminishment of the middle class isn’t a problem. I’m just saying, jesus fucking christ, admit when people could improve their circumstances by just making better choices.
You say you spent 8 years sub six figures to retire at 31. Can you list your savings rate and what you live on now? Did you just directly build a large nest egg or did you get lucky with investments?
Id like to give your advice its due, but if you were able to randomly retire because you gambled and bought $1k of bitcoin in 2012 and held it till 2020, it may not be that correlated to most peoples lived experience.
I don’t think @[email protected] is expressing animosity so much as frustration. These people’s lack of financial resiliency is why they can’t afford to have class solidarity. If everyone was a FIRE sort of person like blarghly (full disclosure: and me), then things like general strikes would become much more feasible.
@blarghly @miss_demeanour Certainly there are many examples of middle class people who are living beyond their means and the planet’s at the same time, but their overconsumption is child’s play in the grand scheme of things. We can encourage people to consume less (I certainly share your disgust with car/monster truck culture, fast fashion and fast food) without insisting anyone struggling in this shit society is a dumbass.
managed to retire at 31 and never broke the six figure mark.
How does the math om that look like
Long ago, there were two brothers who grew up side by side in a small villiage, wishing for something more. The elder brother left home first, recieved good schooling, and became a high-ranking bureaucrat for the king. He wore the finest robes, lived in a great house, and had many men to do his bidding, though his brow was furrowed with worry and frustration. Many years after he’d left home, now fat and with the first streaks of grey in his hair, the elder brother happened upon a monk sitting beneath a tree on the outskirts of the city. The monk sat next to his bedroll, his clothes in tatters - but the bureaucrat was shocked when he saw the monk was his own brother, who seemed to have barely aged over the many years since they’d last met. “Brother!” the aged bureaucrat exclaimed, “oh how many years since I’ve seen you! And to find you in such a wreched state! How have you come to be here?” The younger brother replied, smiling - “why, brother, I walked here. I carry my bed roll and my rice, and where ever I find myself where the sun sets, that is my home.” The elder started, confused, and said “My brother, truly you must turn your life around and rise above this terrible existence you have found yourself in. Why, just follow my example - if you learned to serve the king, you would not need to live on mere rice!” The younger replied with a cheerful smile, “Ah, but brother, if you learned to live on mere rice, you would not need to serve the king.”
I recommend the book Early Retirement Extreme, and the Mr Money Mustache blog.
real life is not an adventure game, bro. i see what your koan implies but you’re just being an asshole by responding like this.
Eh, I read the little parable when I was a teenager or something, and that is essentially what led me down the path I followed. Figured it might be helpful to others.
the problem with using buddhist koans in the current year is that the main users of them today are andrew tate and his cadre.
Well… fuck those guys. I’m gonna keep using my parable. There are nazi punks. I’m not gonna stop listening to punk music just because some nazis like it.
Also, that wasnt a koan, btw. Koans are paradoxical riddles.
while i do appreciate the “why should i change, he’s the one who sucks”, you gotta think about the optics at least some of the time. if you have to explain it every time, how many people do you think left before you had the chance because of first impressions? people who have had enough bad experiences to not want to take the risk?
koans can also be fables, ending on a vagueness designed to be meditated upon in order to learn a lesson.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/
TL;DR: have a very high savings rate. For example, if you can cut your spending to 1/3 of your income, you can retire in about 10 years.
Now tell me how a guy making under 100k per year 2015-2025 accumulates enough calital to retire
🤷 I don’t know anything about that guy’s circumstances (what country he’s in, what he’s invested in, etc.) beyond what he wrote in the thread. All I know is that his claims aren’t as implausible as you’re trying to imply they are.
(I could take a guess that his monthly spending is probably $2k, give or take a few hundred, if that gives you some idea of how it’s done.)
Right and I am assuming that it is impossible…
Assume 90k US mid cost of living city. 63k net, let’s say he can make it work on 40k.
That’s 23kx10=230k
Let’s say he is investment guru. That’s noe 350k
Now tell me where in us you are “retiring” on this cash
I think the maths there is that 63k income then you spend 21k on living expenses and you can save the rest. Then you retire in a decade.
But I think mortgages might complicate this, in a good way. If you are paying a mortgage that is a repayment you can expect to stop paying at some point, so your living costs will drop when that happens.
$63k net
You’re not paying $27k in taxes when you’re maxing out your 401k, IRA, and HSA and thus lowering your AGI by $34,800. In fact, between that and the other deductions and credits, the taxable income would be closer to $40k and total tax owed would be more like $5k.
“Mak[ing] it work on $40k” means he has roughly $45k/year ($3750/month) to invest.
Let’s say he is investment guru.
Absolutely not. Dipshits who think they’re “gurus” lose their shirts. Let’s assume the guy put it in SPY (an S&P 500 index ETF).
According to https://www.stoculator.com/ (which kinda sucks, but was the first calculator I found that could both do periodic investments and use actual historical stock market returns instead of assuming a fixed rate of return), $1 initial + $3750/month invested into SPY starting 10 years ago would be worth $971,047.99 today. That’s within a rounding error of $1M, which is how much you need for that $40k annual spending at a 4% safe withdrawal rate (SWR).
Now tell me where in us you are “retiring” on this cash
To the same place he was “mak[ing] it work on $40k.” His spending in retirement doesn’t have to change, and thus neither do his living circumstances.
- You can’t touch 401k until retirement, max 401k contribution is 24k per year
- HSA is only good for health expenses and retirement, max per year is 8k. So 32k is max you can put into tax sheltered accounts at that age.
But even if we assume he got 1m you are talking about all locked up in tax sheltered accounts:
How is he living on this money between age 30-65? Taking penalties on withdrawal?
Also, even if he got 1million in cash, 43k is the rate on tbills, but that will be taxed so it closer to 35k cash to spend.
Where in the US can person live a decent quality of life on 35k with out owning a home outright?
Note that while you are living on 35k your million nest egg is being eaten by Inflation. How is that supposed to last 30 years before retirement?
The math does not work.
Interesting. If the chart there is right (big assumption, interest/inflation will impact it a lot!) I could retire in around 30 years, but that is about the same time my mortgage is paid off which is by far my largest expense and is more than everything else combined. So presumably earlier retirement should be possible as less money is actually going to be needed at that point.
Also expecting my mortgage rate to drop soon, but tempting to reduce the number of years to pay it off instead and keep paying as much as I am now.
If the chart there is right (big assumption, interest/inflation will impact it a lot!)
It’s based on an analysis of historical stock market returns and already takes that stuff into account.
Basically, in order for the assumption to not hold, the market has to be so fucked that the correct investment strategy would’ve been ammo and freeze-dried food instead of stocks to begin with. You’re really talking about weird stuff like “sovereign risks,” like maybe the US becoming a fascist pariah state and destabilizing completely, or fucking with the Fed and causing Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation, or something like that. The risk is never zero, but it’s incredibly unlikely (…right? 😬)
but that is about the same time my mortgage is paid off which is by far my largest expense…
Also expecting my mortgage rate to drop soon, but tempting to reduce the number of years to pay it off instead and keep paying as much as I am now.
Having a mortgage or not doesn’t matter as much as you think it does, once you consider things like opportunity cost and time value of money. You could pay off your mortgage at the cost of investing less and then have smaller withdrawals from that smaller account balance in retirement, or you could invest more instead of paying extra on the mortgage and make larger withdrawals from a larger account balance in retirement. Six of one; half a dozen of the other.
Basically, it cancels out if mortgage interest rates and investment rates of return are equal, give or take risk tolerance.
If your mortgage is at today’s rates (close enough to the 7% expected return of the stock market) then I guess you might as well pay it down for simplicity’s sake, but if you’re like me and have a 3% mortgage from a decade ago you’re better off keeping it and enjoying the 4% arbitrage.
Yeah… 6.99% on the mortgage. I am hoping we will be able to get it a fair bit lower soon.
What this article fails to mention is that all houses within 2hrs of the San Francisco Bay Area are close to a million dollars plus at least 1k a month in property taxes. With insufficient public transportation cars are a necessity
Yeah public transit in the bay area is famously trash. You just need one more lane.
Move to sacramento and spend six hours each morning on the commute so you dont have to use amtrak like some cucked little bitch who likes to sleep and read.
I was curious what this might look like, so I ran some numbers. It would be easy to hit this in a high cost of living area where rent will easily run 5-6k per month, but what about a medium cost of living place? I assumed a family of 4 with both parents working for 75k each and a 20% total tax rate (FICA, federal, state). All of this is based on what I know of typical cost of living items in the US.
After Tax Income (monthly) 10000
Housing 2500 Child care 1500 2 Car Payments (25k each) 1000 Groceries 800 Medical (incl. insurance) 800 401k (6% deduction) 750 2 Student Loans (30k each) 700 Utilities 400 Auto Insurance 300 Total Core Expenses 8750 Leftover for Discretionary 1250
So, you’d have 1250 per month to cover clothing, auto fuel, dining out, pets, fun money, subscriptions, activities for the kids, gifts, etc. You could easily run that to zero or below every month.
Now, there may be some room to cut in this budget, like not funding your retirement and giving up your 401k match or living in a much smaller home. But I would also say some of these numbers are very generous. Rent could be over 3k, most people don’t have a 25k car loan, if you own your home you can get hit with random major repair costs, and probably most parents would laugh at my estimated child care cost.
I think a key takeaway here is that kids are really expensive. Aside from the child care costs, most people with kids will want a little more living space than is doable in an apartment and kids go through food and clothes like crazy. You could probably chop at least 2-3k per month off this budget if it was a couple living in an apartment closer into the city core, with shorter commutes and maybe even options for public transit, biking, or walking.
Childcare is closer to 1500 per child, FYI, at least in Jersey.
It’s $500/week/child near me.
I have friends who quit working. Two kids in daycare, you got a clear 30k take-home to make it work, and if you’re barely making it work with that, on top of killing yourself, that income stream just doesn’t make sense. It’s dumb.
I had a friend who was the director of a YMCA daycare, and I have no idea how they kept functioning. I crunched numbers and they barely had enough to pay their teachers. She made jack shit. It was crazy. And we still paid a fortune to go there.
Yeah, I was guessing that one might be way worse than that. When my kids were born, it was cheaper for my wife to quit working than to pay infant rate child care, but that was a long time ago.
About 38% of all new jobs created in the five years before the pandemic paid above-average wages, VantageScore’s data shows. But this year that share has fallen to 7%, signaling that companies are creating fewer white-collar positions. That poses a challenge to higher-income Americans who suffer a job loss because it may be tougher to find new employment than in previous years.
I feels like this is very important as it actually the reason why they’re struggling on repayment, because technically they aren’t making 150k per year but 0 per year.
But the financial management criticism still sound.
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Amazing. Class war between poor and middleclass while billionaires laugh all the way to their private jet
if you make $150k but live in a HCOL area and have kids, and perhaps one or two expensive medical conditions in the family, maybe some student loan debt and a mortgage, congrats you’re paycheck to paycheck
I literally know someone like this.
It’s not about the numbers. Working class is working class.
If a median new car is 50k and used car is 30k that’s a out 1k or 600 per month note alone.
Insurance is 100-200 per month plus gas and maintenance prolly another 200-300 per month so for a single adult to “drive with dignity” it costs 1k to start
Now double it for a couple and household is 2k on vehicles alone.
Makes me wonder if high school kids still get cars like people did pre covid lol
This cost structure doesn’t make sense. When suburban family has to run a fleet of 3-4 cars
Insurance is way more than $100-200 a month. For my partner and I (both women with fairly clean histories since we don’t drive much) to insure a 2020 Fit, it was about $2500 for 6 months. That was the cheapest we could find for basic coverage.
We ended up fleeing to Canada and importing the car. Insurance costs went down to almost 1/3 of that, a little under $2k for the year
I own and fully paid off the car fwiw
Edit: exact amount was $2493.00, after discounts
1 car two driver 2500 per 6 month… You must be from Boston
Close, NY
What does fairly clean histories mean, honestly? Over 400 a month is crazy high. Did you make claims on minor issues that should have just been handled outside of insurance, i.e. dont just factor in deductible cost but monthly increase on your premium after a claim is filed in the future? Were you getting multiple small traffic citations? One big one? Etc.
I had one claim probably 7+ years ago after a chunk of metal fell off a truck and fucked up my car tire and bumper. I was not at fault. My partner has zero. We’re both in our 30s and have been driving since we were young, but we had been car-less for a few years prior to buying this one.
I’ve had to deal with a lot of profiling bullshit before but nothing that affects insurance. Nothing stuck either, just a lot of going to courts to clear my name.
But other than that, idk. Parking tickets, maybe?
Sorry you had to deal with all that profiling bullshit in the past that just sounds so infuriating and down right disrespectful, hopefully where you are at now you dont have to deal with that as much if at all.
As for the insurance rate, the only things I can think of is maybe being without a car for some period just increases the risk profile in their algorithm for deciding the rate. I’m not sure about the statistics for this, but maybe they also correlate having many parking tickets with people who have more accidents. I.e. there may be a study that shows people with more parking tickets tend to get into more accidents or something.
I did not get cars for my kids, that is so far out of reach. With the first two, I couldn’t even let them get real drivers licenses, the insurance increase was gonna be too much. With the second set, I got an electric bike for my commute and let the one going to university use my car if she would drop off the younger one at high school and even that - one teen driver no additional car- raised our insurance by $400 a month. She paid half of it and one of her sisters paid the other half, it’s down to extra $150 now she is 21. Remember - that is without adding another car, just the driver.
When I was in high school my mom kept like 2 cheap big beater cars for us (one sedan and one Suburban back when those were more like trucks) and she drove a new little red Supra. I think to buy a Suburban, a Supra, and a sedan this year would cost $170,000. If the first two were older that’s still an enormous expense, like an unimaginable expense.
High schoolers don’t l. Driver’s license acquisition rates are going down too, since they can’t afford to have a car
I can currently find a bunch of used, decent Toyota corollas in the 7-10k price range. Liability insurance should be like $50/month.
Your estimates seem quite high to me.
I have no.accidents and I pay triple that for legal minimum liability
That’s wild. I pay less than $500 a year for like $100k in liability insurance. Maybe I’m just old and have a good record.
Do you have tickets?
One, red light camera. Must be my zip code
$50 a month where? People here spin signs saying $30/month insurance but that is not insurance. Actual liability coverage here is hundreds a month. $200 would be low.
Oh, I just checked and I was wrong. I pay $61/month to Progressive for liability on a >20 year old small pickup truck in California. $100k per person, $300k per accident, in case I crash into a pile of Ferraris or something.
The liability is $50/month but uninsured motorist insurance is most of that additional $11.
I’m paying for insurance in case I get hit by someone who doesn’t have insurance? Ridiculous.
Our uninsured motorist is almost 1k every 6 months, plus bodily injury even more, the property damage coverage is not as expensive as the people damage insurance (which makes sense). It’s like a vicious circle - insurance is high for uninsured but then as it costs more, more people get uninsured.
Wow, that’s expensive. I’m a cheap ass. I’ve always had cheap, old Toyotas.
I can see how it’s nice to have a more modern car but I just can’t justify all the expenses. I’d rather retire sooner.
Yeah if I can keep the 2014 Honda going I will. Was going to keep its predecessor, the Civic but someone ran me into a phone pole and totalled it, in 2014.
Partly because it’s manual and that’s hard to find now, but I love it and it’s paid off and I don’t drive a lot.
this guy was the 1k beater, 5 years ago
good job at reading
Even about 25 years ago, $1000 would get you a car without major cosmetic damage but it’d have a couple hundred thousand miles on it. You can still get that for around $3k today. I see them on craigslist right now. Where I live, minimum wage has increased 2.5x since then.
There’s your beater for roughly the same number of minimum wage hours worked.
Tell 'em, boy
Only 3 718$ payments left on my car and I paid off 4/5 credit cards. Turned them all off to. Just being slow with my Best Buy credit card.
Not to detract from the statement being made but many people will sign away all their money regardless of their income.
Yeah, this seems like part “things are bad” and part “I’m bad with money.”
More income means more spendy spend
I would rather use it to pay off the mortgage and cut back on hours worked
We don’t make this much but do make enough it seems like we ought to be easily comfortable (two good salaries, cars paid off) but -
How did we get here? Nobody comes out the gate making that much, we each started out making little to nothing, then went to school, had kids, got school debt and a credit card for the monthly deficit, paid off the school debt, the credit card still paying on so long after. It’s still the deficit debt, for emergency situations that come up. I funded HSA so those are not usually medical now but dogs, car repairs, house repairs. We are making progress but it’s dead expensive and slow to do so.
Basically those people making so much and credit card debt may be paying off their path to making so much.
And I know better than to complain, having been in much worse situations.
Skill issue. Bought a house recently and our combined income at the time was a little under £50k. Honestly not even struggling, my bike cost £600 once and that was over a year ago.
