German, here.
I failed my first college degree, and finally got one (a BSc in ecology) on the second attempt after 10 years of fucking around and procrastinating, with a grade equivalent to a C.
I’ve never had a full time job in my life, always worked between 24 and 32 hours a week, with 4-5 weeks of vacation per year and unlimited sick days.
I didn’t inherit anything.
And I am now 200x richer than 40% of Americans, with free healthcare and a decent pension set up on top.I realize I’m very privileged, but your country is just fucked.
your country is just fucked
We know.
And only the really wealthy have the means to leave the country.
seeing ot or pensioners and young guys and gals from the US in Cambodia living in the cheap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHMMMPpc7xI
Still have to have savings and an income to be able to do it, unfortunately.
Got 100k in savings?
Yes
Pension? In 2026? Wanna help me emigrate? Need a roommate? I’ll bring snacks!
No, in 2051, hopefully.
I’m an American with a pension but I work a state government job… for what it’s worth
Aged like wine
Trump/Epstein class: “They still have money we could plunder!”
I’ve never understood why people get so excited about tax refunds, but this provides some context.
Tax refunds act as forced savings for many people. It’s not a good way to save as the government pays no interest on the savings. The the people then blow the money immediately on major purchases or paying down debt buildup.
Personally, I always tried to make it so that I didn’t get a tax return. I always figured it cost me significant money in cash flow through the year. Always pissed me off to overpay in taxes when I could have used the money for critical things I needed during the year.
the government pays no interest
I can’t remember the last time I saw a bank pay interest, either. If you want to grow a principle balance, you need to invest it, and that gets real iffy when the demented gameshow host decides to manipulate the markets.
It seems like my 401k dips $5k every afternoon when Trump promises something insane, then bounces back the next morning when he doesn’t follow through.
Any halfway decent bank/credit union should be giving a decent interest rate given how high the national rate is.
For example Ally gives 3+% on savings accounts - https://www.ally.com/bank/view-rates/
If you have more than a few thousand in your bank you need to look at their financial offerings or consider opening a high yield savings account at a larger bank. My credit union has a few offerings which give 2-3% interest as long as you maintain a balance over a certain amount (usually 1-5k) but most of the account offerings that are more focused on being fee-free only yield about 0.25% interest. And this is all without dipping into actual brokerage and other more risky financial products
Basically it’s the difference between $10k earning you $25 a year or earning you $300-400/year
You can open a brokerage account like Fidelity and put the money in a 3-4% cash account(like spaxx). Takes about 10 minutes and it’s low risk. Can get your money any time like a bank.
This is the ideal way to handle your emergency fund, toss it in a high yield savings account with a different bank from your every day one, and then it’s harder to tap into if you have a mild inconvenience. Between the high yield savings account and CDs that I keep about 1/3 of my emergency fund tied up in, my emergency fund is earning me about $500/year. Is that a life changing amount of money? Of course not! But it is enough that I can basically never touch my emergency fund and it should hold its value a bit above inflation indefinitely. And as a bonus it’s all FDIC insured!
Not all tax rebates are due to the government over collecting either
I’ll be getting about $1600-$2000 just because I Used a certain amount of money towards buying my first home. It’s not money that I gave the government ahead of schedule, it’s money I wouldn’t have gotten unless I did certain things and filed certain paperwork.
Yeah, I knew the republicans were about to fuck over homeowners on the 30% solar tax credit.
Pulled the trigger and now I’m getting back 37k this year and the remainder next… worth it.
The goal otherwise should always be to not owe and not get shit back.
Below a certain income, an average lower-middle class family will generally get more back in tax refunds than they pay in income taxes. A family of 4 making 50k per year (fairly livable in much of the country actually!) might only pay in 3-4k in income tax but then receive 6-8k in credits for the child tax credits, earned income credits, etc.
And for a lower-middle class family that tends to be the biggest amount of money they see at any given time. They’re only bringing in about $2500/month after taxes, retirement contributions and insurance, and that’s got to cover all living expenses. Recieving a nice big check each year tends to be the best way to be able to make a comparably large financial move, often paying down debt that’s built up over the year, maybe buying a new car (I know I did that one year, put the entire tax credit into a used car, and that was the very first car we owned outright!) or if it’s been a good year that money can be spent on fun stuff
The other side of the coin is that for the overwhelming majority of people who’s earnings are coming from their jobs, the amount of money that gets withheld for taxes simply isn’t enough to make enough money in interest to be worth while. If you pay $300/month in income taxes (not unrealistic) it would take 4 months before you’ve got enough to buy the smallest short term CD you can, then that 9 month CD for example will only earn you about $30 before you cash it in in February to pay your taxes. Basically in order for placing your tax money into safe investments to pay enough to be worthwhile, your tax bill would need to be so large that you’d already be paying quarterly anyways and already have much bigger fish to fry than worrying about your tax withholdings not earning you interest.
Just-in-time economics.
Savings? Lucky them. I have debts…
Wow, I had no idea that Americans were that poor. And here I thought I was poor.
most Americans aren’t poor. median net worth is 135K for a 35 year old. that means 50% of people at 35 have more than that, and 50% have less.
the rich ones however, are incredibly rich, but they think they are also poor. The poor ones, are also extremely poor. nobody thinks they are rich and have enough.
my sister has 50 million in wealth. She doesn’t think she is wealthy, she thinks she is struggling middle class. all her neighbors are multi-millionaires and think they are poor and struggling. they are just ‘normal hardworking folk’. they think they work harder than the people living 5 miles away where the median net worth is 50K are lazy degenerates.
I have about 500K in wealth I’m 40. everyone I meet thinks I’m broke and poor as dirt. but i live in a rich place where nobody thinks you are ‘stable’ unless you have 5million in so in wealth.
Thats insane to me how anyone could make over 200k and not feel rich. I feel super rich and between me and SO make like 180k. I still feel like I have it way too good.
No kids tho. That helps. But really we can buy mostly anything we want and go on vacations. I own a few cars, all over 15 years old, fix em myself. That saves car payments. House is 50 years old and has old appliances and stuff that we have to fix on it often.
What we dont have that I know other people in my life do (probably the ones who think they’re “poor”),
4 wheelers/side by side by sides
A huge shop
A huge camper
Big bro trucks that were 80k new
A vacation home
2 week long trips to resorts
Snowmobiles
Boats
That shit adds up. Ive never gave a fuck about keeping up with the Joneses. I havent bought clothes in over 10 years. Ive maybe bought new clothes less than 5 times ever in my life. Besides shoes.
All this said, fuck rich people. Everyone deserves to live. There’s hundreds of thousands of empty heated buildings just sitting there empty that folks could at least live in to not freeze.
The issue in america is people think "the left " wants to take all your money. Yeah we dont care about the piddly shit. We want to tax the fucking billionaires. Drump is the one raising taxes on the poor. But Americans are idiots.
Their wants exeed their income. It’s that simple.
I’m content with a 20K Honda Civic, they want a 100K car.
And frankly, a lot of ‘poor’ people in america… they are poor simple because they are spending way more than they can afford. Tons of 200K income people are driving 100K cars and think a 50K car is ‘below’ them.
Yikes. Yeah that’s definitely an issue.
I don’t get it. The more money I get the more I enjoy donating it. Seriously, the rich are mentally ill.
I have my deductions set up where I always owe $50-200 when tax time rolls around. Those fuckers are not getting all of it upfront.
Yep. Better for you to get a free loan(tax bill) than the gubmnt getting the free loan(tax refund)
This is the way
This has been true since $500 was worth $1000, iirc
Gotta pump those percentages up!
Signed: The billionaires.
Slowly but surely, my income is weakening. I used to be able to regularly put about $300 a month into savings a decade ago, if I stuck to ramen and minimized going out. Now I am treading water - not enough to save, just to sustain my lifestyle. I am expecting my ABLE savings to become completely worthless, if I don’t spend them or convert them into a currency that isn’t American.
Retirement doesn’t exist anymore.
I see it every day and I’ve been there.
It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that this is skewed towards young adults and seniors.
I was the young person with next to no savings and facing a nearly impossible situation of “saving” anything. Lots of us leave home in our teens with nothing or close to it. Then it’s a struggle just to get all the pieces in order, and all the while, the pieces you already managed to get in place break down, get stolen, need fixing, need replacing, and so on. That first step of just keeping your head above the water is not easy, especially without support.
And then towards the later years, peoples’ health fails them. They find it harder to keep a job and harder to make the same money they did when they were younger. Healthcare is expensive, even with insurance. Husbands and wives pass away, leaving you with the financial fallout. Even if you saved, the true costs of inflation come when you go to buy food and medicine and even when you need to pay someone to fix your car – regardless of what the official numbers are.
Granted, “cash savings” means even people who are otherwise relatively well off in terms of assets fall into this category. So, it’s also not a great assumption to assume that all these people are in difficult/dire situations.
Overdraft fees were a normal and expected part of my budget until I was 30.
Lots of us leave home in our teens with nothing or close to it. Then it’s a struggle just to get all the pieces in order, and all the while, the pieces you already managed to get in place break down, get stolen, need fixing, need replacing, and so on. That first step of just keeping your head above the water is not easy, especially without support
This is so much the struggle of one’s 20s, you’re spending so much money acquiring the stuff you need to live and replacing it as it gets stolen/broken/doesn’t make it through a move. I remember when it was a big purchasing decision to buy a vacuum cleaner for my second apartment. We still have that vacuum cleaner and use it regularly, so that’s a hundred dollars or more that I haven’t needed to spend for years, but I had to spend that when that vacuum cost multiple months of discretionary budget, budget that could’ve gotten sucked up by a repair or a medical bill or replacing something else that got ruined or broken.
But this also all happens at a time when you aren’t making a lot of money, so if you do it right, you hit your 30s already owning some nice stuff that you’ll have for a long time and with a career making good money so suddenly your savings can start balooning pretty quickly as you spend less and make more
Oh stop with all the greatness America
That tracks with my experiences. It’s partly lack of money, but it’s partly financial irresponsibility. A lot of Americans are so used to crisis and struggle that they treat every windfall as a treat because they think that their savings slowly fading away or getting eaten in a few chunks is a problem rather than evidence of crises they didn’t have to suffer through. Add in the fact that their lifestyles rise to match their income and there’s no room for savings.
That’s not enough to resolve the big stuff, a low earner isn’t buying a house on saved tax returns. But a medium income household might be, and a low income household may be setting themselves up for disaster by buying too expensive of a car because they can afford the payments.
Too few Americans understand that living paycheck to paycheck should be seen as dire financial straits. The goal should be a few months expenses in savings, and if you can take a lifestyle hit to get there you should. My wife and I live in a studio apartment because we were worried about draining our savings too quickly while unemployed.
It would take well over a decade for a medium income household to save up enough money for a down payment on a house with their tax returns. And that’s assuming it was placed in a safe investment the whole time like in CDs or bonds. The housing market’s just too expensive. I can see the appeal of people using up their money when they get it if it means saving might take an unbearable amount of time, not that it’s in their best interest to however.
That greatly varies by location. Especially if you can find a house right outside city limits.
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where do you live that closing a house is 5K? closing costs are typical 4-5% of a houses value… so you bought a 100K house? like, what, 20 years ago?
closing costs for a condo in my state are going to run you 15-20K.
first time home buyer programs in my state are capped at a 72K income… on which you could afford a about a 1800 mortgage… the cheapest mortgages you can get are going to run you closer to 2500-3000. so by the time you can afford that mortgage, you need about 125-150K income…
I bought a 100k house 4 years ago with about 13k in down payment+closing costs. Yes I live in a smallish town and that comes with some compromises, but it is an option that exists for people. With the subsequent boom and then normalization of house prices my house has gained about 40k in value, so where I closed with a purchase price of ~120k, it’s now showing a value of around 160k (and peaked around 180k a year or two ago)
There’s also plenty of large and major cities with home values of around 200-400k if owning property is your long term goal. Quite frankly if that is your long term goal there are options. Maybe you buy a fixer-upper and invest a bunch into repairs and renovations over time. Maybe you have a friend or two you can have join you in a purchase to increase your buying power. Maybe you buy a duplex/multifamily home with a friend or 3. Maybe you buy a duplex/multifamily home and rent out the other units to strangers. Maybe there’s a nice place where you can still commute into your city where home values aren’t outrageous. Maybe you know someone who aready owns a house and you can convince them to build an ADU for you to rent, or even come to an aggreement to finance the ADU and later subdivide the lot so you can eventually own the property. Maybe you get a property that can be a business like a wedding venue or a museum or a hotel? Maybe you up and leave and move halfway across the country or halfway around the world. Maybe you sell everything, leave everything behind and go buy a small house in the country and drive a school bus or start an organic greenhouse or run a shop. Options exist especially at your income level. You just have to be willing to take a risk
It doesn’t exist for the vast majority of the population.
Most of the USA population lives in major cities. 80% of it is urban.
I already own a condo. Stop pretending like what you are talking is available to the majority of the population, it’s not, by definition.
Going forward, the only people who will be able to afford homes are the wealthy, who are in the top 10% income and wealth brackets. Everyone else will be renting from them. You can’t scale any of what you are talking about, all you are saying is ‘a minority of people will have to go to extraordinary techniques to own property’.
Unless housing prices collapse worse than 2008, and nobody wants that either.
Just because some of us are ‘successful’ doesn’t mean the vast majority of folks are systematically denied the possiblility…
I went to Harvard. 50% of the slots at Harvard go to legacy or other pre-approved admits. I was a poor kid… the vast majority of people from my background, don’t even go to college, let alone really the top tier ones. Because the wealthy of stacked the deck systematically to advantage themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The idea of ‘working you way up’ is rapidly diminishing to the point that Gen Z kids only have a 10% change of ‘bettering’ their wealth/income, and most of them are dependent on parental wealth to keep them in their existing income class.
I’m not pretending that shit isn’t bad, but doomerism isn’t going to help anything. I’m trying to inject some hope in because if you can’t build a better future if you can’t imagine a better future. At the individual scale there are always options other than renting forever, and some can be really brilliant options for the right people
There is doomerism, an there is economic reality.
I’m talking about the economic reality. Like the fact more than half of millennia home owners had financial assistance from their parents to purchase a home.
Most people under 50 cannot afford to purchase a home solely based on income alone. It’s a hard, cold, fact. And it gets worse for those under 40, and worse still for those under 30.
You can whinge on about fantasizing, I am going to stick to hard cold facts.
Another fact, we have underbuilt housing for 35 years. and we are still underbuilding it, meaning this problem will only get worse and worse unless we start constructing 3x the housing units we currently do.
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ok so it was a decade ago, when housing values were like 1/3 of what they are today…
hence it seems very out of touch.
in 2017 I was making like 50K a year and houses were 300K. Now I make 150K and houses are 750K. lol
I make more than 85% of people in my city…
mere mortals can’t afford homes anymore unless they get windfalls or work their way into jobs that have top 10% incomes.
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the average doesn’t matter. what matters is the median income to median house price ratio.
yes, in some shitty places, with really low incomes, that nobody wants to live, housing prices didn’t skyrocket… but that’s not true for desirable areas with good economies.
i can go buy a mansion in Louisiana or Mississippi, but why would I want to live in a state where the qualify of life is on bar with African countries?
