explains what he's been doing with all that oil
How do people who make around $100k/yr struggle, assuming normal situation?
- Thread starter Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Zardnaar
Deity
Probably won't find to many examples of that. And there's probably other factors eg 7 kids to multiple women who have their own income.
One idiot I went to school with has 5 kids to several mothers, drug habit they may or may not have kicked and only supports 1-2 of the kids depending on who's got what at any given time.
Think he's kicked the booze not sure about the pot and pills. Believes in various conspiracy theories. Runs his own business I suspect launders some of his drug money.
You, uh, don't have kids, do you?
Zardnaar
Deity
Adjusted for inflation we had a fraction of $500 usd per week.
Rent was dirt cheap though $45 a week 3 bedroom house. Crap house crap town.
Family over the road was making around $1000/week 30 odd years ago but wife blew it all.
I'm not talking about the economics of New Zealand however many decades ago. It's literally irrelevant.
Food costs, for me personally, are not the expensive part of having kids / dependents.
Zardnaar
Deity
Rent was also cheap in USA back then.
If you're in any of the worlds hot spots (Sydney, Seattle, LA, Vancouver, Auckland, Melbourne etc) you might struggle on 100k with dependents.
People are doing it on less generally they have property from years ago or are cramming to many people into their accommodation to keep costs down. In crap suburbs.
Or are in a lot of trouble.
Struggling on 100k might also be relative eg you actually have a few kids.
No kids you would have to be bad with money or have addictions pretty much anywhere. Might not be living the high life but should be comfortable.
30-40% in tax, similar amount in rent and yeah.
There's a reason I keep banging on about rent and economic stress.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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No, but I'm also thinking about just the very basics and nothing else.
Depend on which country you live in your employeer could be paying you much more, some countries have huge hidden cost for employees, USA maybe is one of those with least hidden cost so if your salary is $100k in USA the company maybe pay like $115k-130k for you and you get maybe $70k after tax. In Sweden if an employeer pay same amount (using OCED purchasing power converter) you maybe get like $50k after tax +$15k invested into retirement and the salary number will look lower because the hidden costs are higher but behind the scene the employeer pay the same amount. That is why it is so tricky to compare stuff between countries.
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You really shouldn't struggle financially, if you're earning $100k a year. If you do, then you've probably made some bad decisions, taken too much debt, invested badly, home is too expensive, had a medical emergency with no universal healthcare available where you live, or something else.
I make roughly half of that and I don't struggle with money - and I live in Scandinavia, which isn't exactly cheap on living expenses.
I make roughly half of that and I don't struggle with money - and I live in Scandinavia, which isn't exactly cheap on living expenses.
Clothes are basic. Childcare is basic. Very basic. That's why I asked.
To be clear, I don't think make people at all, if any, would be "struggling" on $100k. But it depends what we mean, in an economic system where living paycheck-to-paycheck has been normalised through unchecked rent, stagnation of wage vs. productivity, and the weakening of collective bargaining.
If someone's been on $100k since they left college, that's different from someone who gets there after a decade working professionally. Which is different again if you're stuck renting vs. someone handed you a house. Or if your (rich) parents pay for other things, and so on.
There isn't a one-size fits all answer to economic precarity (if that's a word). $100k is a lot of money, but saying "you shouldn't be struggling or <insert character value judgment here>" is a pretty useless lens to be inspecting the issue through.
It's funny that it's mostly people paying for themselves and nobody else being the most judge-y about it, too.
(for the record, I don't make $100k either lol)
Pretty much everyone I know that is probably making six-figures that has a significant-other, that SO is making maybe half of that. In both cases my salary estimates based on what I know they each do for work.
Farm Boy
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Water soluble lubricants are usually recommended...
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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Not seen anywhere that this is the case, especially if living paycheck to paycheck also mean not saving anything towards retirement. Overconsumption or living beyond means yes, work full time and just being able to afford the basics and nothing more, no and I also posted real wages here before which indicate growth between 1996 to 2022, not stagnation.
Clothes in many cases seems to hardly cost anything nowdays, childcare is basically free or really cheap in Sweden.
The only really expensive thing I say in Scandinavia is taxes, rent, house prices, food don't seems particular expensive compared to other countries of similar development and things like college, childcare and healthcare is cheap. I could probably make the downpayment of appartment or even a house in the area I live in after like a year of saving most of my salary.
Did you break it down by profession? Region? Gender?
"real wages have gone up" is a very shallow analysis of the well-described and ongoing problems with wealth inequality in the US (and other Western nations).
"the only thing I can think of is people are bad at money" is really coming across as a predetermined conclusion. You're asking questions, but you don't seem that interested in answers that contradict what you already believe.
For example:
We're not discussing Sweden. C'mon, you made this thread. How many times are you going to pivot to a different country?
I'm in the UK. Kid's clothes are not cheap (in particular school clothes), and that's with all the parents trading secondhand stuff around. I'm assuming the US is similar, at least in some places.
Heck, I'm assuming it's similar in Sweden, and that you just don't see it because you don't have kids. I could be wrong.
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EgonSpengler
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I know millionaires who talk like money is tight, so I have no trouble believing that someone making 100k would say they're "living paycheck to paycheck" or whatever. Doesn't mean I have to believe them, though.
p.s. The "50-30-20" thing is a fantasy, at least for most people here in the US. I think for a lot of folks, something more like 80-20 or 70-30 is probably more common. I'm a 70-30 person, myself, and I think I'm doing okay.
p.s. The "50-30-20" thing is a fantasy, at least for most people here in the US. I think for a lot of folks, something more like 80-20 or 70-30 is probably more common. I'm a 70-30 person, myself, and I think I'm doing okay.
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Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-re...ty-for-a-new-era#story-of-haves-and-have-nots
Here is about the issue, which for USA seems to be that significant productivity growth have only really happened in certain sectors, in particular IT sector while most other sectors have not seen much productivity growth at all. Construction even declined in its productivity.
Yes that seems really hard to believe.
I know what relatives have said about the past like 1950, 60s, 70s and that during those times people was far poorer than today. Like worse of than poor americans are today and they do say that poor americans are really poorly off, so thing living in a time where that poverty would be considered realtive good.
I hope for sure not that the saving part is a 0 here.
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Productivity of a sector is not the same as the productivity of workers themselves. We're working more, and working harder, generally, for less of a return. The wealth is being captured up(?)stream. There are more have-nots. Less money "trickling down".
I think I'm the only person who mentioned living paycheck-to-paycheck (could be wrong, on mobile), and given that, I'm not sure it's an accurate characterisation.
I was talking about the system we operate under (capitalism, to be clear) and how that manifests for anyone with a regular wage (which is anywhere from the poverty line to the low six figures, generally). Renting vs. owing a house alone is a huge shift in how far money goes, and rent often being uncontrolled means that I know veteran games developers (who get paid less on average than in software) struggling to pay rent because of where they need to live to be within a commutable distance of the studio. Just for a specific example.
And again, these folk aren't likely to be on six figures. But you also here these stories in tech, particularly when companies (like Twitter) fire people on a whim and deny them things like health insurance, or hold your visa effectively hostage to ensure some company nonsense or the like. And six figures in that context will evaporate quickly, particularly if you have any health concerns whatsoever.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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I'm working pretty little, get free cakes, candy, drinks and such at my office, 30+ days paid vacation and had no overtime the last year, standard 8 hour job.
Living paycheck to paycheck to me mean you are completely unable to save money after basic expense and will never be able to retire, I've talked to people in that situation and it is very sad. Think being so poor you can't afford healthcare and such, live with several roommates and work more hours than I do.
Kouvb593kdnuewnd
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I live in Sweden but I do work for an american company, people working in USA get 20-30 paid vacation days and maybe total compensation of like $250k at the senior developer level but that is in expensive location so I don't know how it look in all offices. They call this market based compensation or something, so I assume that may be like the standard at tech companies.
sophie
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Generally speaking, poverty is heavily correlated with net earners per household. If you are the sole earner in a family with a large number of members who don’t work or cannot work, then that single income can get stretched too thin and you wind up in poverty.
The core non-earner categories are:
child
retiree
long-term disabled
student
child-carer/homemaker
unemployed
Many of these categories are temporary, and this is borne out in the data, which tends to find people are generally not chronically impoverished, but usually live in poverty for stretches of time that pass, typically as one or more dependents move out of a dependency category (e.g. a child starts school or finishes college).
The biggest population group in poverty tends to be parents, specifically with one or more children in the 1-4 age range (i.e. after parental leave but before fully state subsidized schooling). Countries with poor parental leave or with fully subsided schooling which starts later tend to have a more pronounced poverty problem.
The average daycare cost for the state of Washington is somewhere in the area of $310 per kid per week. If you are a sole income earner making 100k a year and you have two kids going through daycare, you’re looking at somewhere around $30k/year just for childcare (i.e not including food, clothes, diapers, etc.). That’s 30% of your income just in childcare. If you have a car payment, and/or high rent, and/or medical or student debt, then your effective available income is going to be pretty small even though your gross income is high. That would of course increase even more, say, if your spouse was long-term unemployed or chronically disabled, or if your or their parents were living with you and also had chronic healthcare or hospice care expenses. You can very quickly get into the effectively living in poverty range. Even without the extra dependencies, you are still extremely precarious: one missed paycheck, one car wreck, one major health emergency for you or your kids, and you are facing serious, long term financial crisis.
I know it’s a classic lib move to ascribe any financial hardship to individual personal moral failings. But generally speaking people who are poor are poor because of structures mandating discrete crises necessarily translate to protracted suffering. The countries with less poverty have less poverty because they provide interlocking systems of welfare that help alleviate the crises and remove the necessity of suffering.
The core non-earner categories are:
child
retiree
long-term disabled
student
child-carer/homemaker
unemployed
Many of these categories are temporary, and this is borne out in the data, which tends to find people are generally not chronically impoverished, but usually live in poverty for stretches of time that pass, typically as one or more dependents move out of a dependency category (e.g. a child starts school or finishes college).
The biggest population group in poverty tends to be parents, specifically with one or more children in the 1-4 age range (i.e. after parental leave but before fully state subsidized schooling). Countries with poor parental leave or with fully subsided schooling which starts later tend to have a more pronounced poverty problem.
The average daycare cost for the state of Washington is somewhere in the area of $310 per kid per week. If you are a sole income earner making 100k a year and you have two kids going through daycare, you’re looking at somewhere around $30k/year just for childcare (i.e not including food, clothes, diapers, etc.). That’s 30% of your income just in childcare. If you have a car payment, and/or high rent, and/or medical or student debt, then your effective available income is going to be pretty small even though your gross income is high. That would of course increase even more, say, if your spouse was long-term unemployed or chronically disabled, or if your or their parents were living with you and also had chronic healthcare or hospice care expenses. You can very quickly get into the effectively living in poverty range. Even without the extra dependencies, you are still extremely precarious: one missed paycheck, one car wreck, one major health emergency for you or your kids, and you are facing serious, long term financial crisis.
I know it’s a classic lib move to ascribe any financial hardship to individual personal moral failings. But generally speaking people who are poor are poor because of structures mandating discrete crises necessarily translate to protracted suffering. The countries with less poverty have less poverty because they provide interlocking systems of welfare that help alleviate the crises and remove the necessity of suffering.
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