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Comment by iainmerrick | Hacker News Reader

His specific complaints seem pretty reasonable to me:

We haven’t taken a vacation in 10 years. [...] We have no retirement savings, [...] We eat out maybe once every two or three months. Though I was a film critic for many years, I seldom go to the movies now.

They're not destitute, but shouldn't most people expect to get at least some of those things more often than that?

The lack of retirement savings seems particularly bad, as the author notes they used their parents' savings to pay for their children's educations. Their children won't be able to do the same.

And as another commenter has noted, it's not just a "woe is me" sob story, the idea is that the author is representative of a secret 47%(!) who are ashamed to admit how badly they're doing. The comparison with impotence seems apt.

[Edit: spelling]

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It's a choice.

Is private schooling for children worth losing out on the opportunity to eat out as a family of 4 at a good restaurant every week (that's 250 per meal, so $1000 a month)?

Is funding your daughter's wedding (2000-10,000), worth skipping a vacation?

I think being middle-class is all about making choices between giving up luxuries of the body (e.g. resturant food), for luxuries of opportunity (e.g. schooling). If you are rich, you can have both your yatcht and private school. You can go to the country club, and keep a maid at the same time.

Being poor on the other hand is about making choices between necessities like "should we have water or power this week? pick one" or "should our food be nutritious or should we clean our clothes? pick one".

(that's 250 per meal, so $1000 a month) ... your daughter's wedding (2000-10,000)

Those numbers struck me as very strange. I've rarely eaten at places that are $62.5/head. But spending just $2000 on a wedding seems low. $10,000 isn't unheard of in the circles I travel in.

$250 per meal is certainly towards the higher end in most places, but my family of 3 does that, in total, almost every weekend. Figure $100 for dinner Friday night. Another $30 for breakfast Sat morning. Add in $50-$70 for lunch Sat and Sun and there you are.

We rarely eat out during the week, and we don't usually eat dinner out both Fri AND Sat nights, but the above is fairly typical for us. I don't think it is too atypical for our peers either.

maybe it's that new vegan place down the street? /s

The vegan place at my street costs $12per adult and $6/kid. And the menu is constantly rotated seasonally.

What planet are you living on where a wedding only costs $2,000, and no more than $10,000? In the US, the average wedding cost is $30,000 (http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/pf/planning-for-wedding-cost...) now. That being said I personally think that's ridiculous and I'll do my damnedest to try to keep mine under $5k, but I know it won't be easy, and there will have to be many things sacrificed.

If they're even wanting to have a modest wedding with 80-ish guests nowadays, I can't imagine paying less than $15k (which is why I'm going to try to make it less than 20 people for mine. Hell, I'd be happy with 2).

That being said, I wouldn't want to eat out at a $50/person restaurant with a family of four once every week. You could take them to a bbq or pita or chinese restaurant and they'd eat well for under $15 per person.

I don't really disagree with your main point, just your numbers seem to be bad estimates to me.

> What planet are you living on where a wedding only costs $2,000, and no more than $10,000? In the US, the average wedding cost is $30,000

The idea of spending $30,000 on a wedding seems insane to me, and it reminds me of the Dave Ramsey quote “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else."

> That being said I personally think that's ridiculous and I'll do my damnedest to try to keep mine under $5k, but I know it won't be easy, and there will have to be many things sacrificed.

My wedding (2 years ago, in the midwest) had about 100 guests and cost us about $5000 total (doesn't include the rehearsal dinner or the bar tab, which our parents covered). There were probably some things that we could have spent even less on, but it would have required us doing more things ourselves. A few things we did that might be different than the norm:

* My wife, mother, and grandmother made many of the decorations themselves

* The reception venue was less expensive because we had the wedding in April, because it wasn't during "wedding season"

* We had the grocery store make our cake for us

* We didn't pay anything for the ceremony location (there are many beautiful public venues that you can book for free)

* My wife chose a dress that was beautiful, but wasn't obscenely expensive. She also recovered about half of the cost by selling it afterwards.

Our "wedding" cost $25 at the court house and we had a reception later on for around $3000.

> If they're even wanting to have a modest wedding with 80-ish guests nowadays,

It's kind of funny. I've been to six weddings in the past five years and none of them had over 50 people.

I guess some people just have more friends and family or are under some kind of custom wherein they invite 2nd or 3rd cousins or minor acquaintances to their weddings.

My best friend's wedding was 40 people, total cost to the bride and groom $1000. Location: a beautiful beachhouse owned by his aunt. Food and the such done by the family, and everyone who flew in stayed in houses of relatives. Photography done by my wife, music by his brother.

Save money on your wedding, spent it on your honeymoon.

> I wouldn't want to eat out at a $50/person restaurant with a family of four once every week.

I like exotic food with ingredients and cooking conditions I can't replicate at home, so $50 a plate it is.

> I don't really disagree with your main point, just your numbers seem to be bad estimates to me.

Right :)

That's really the issue at heart. Everyone makes choices that X is worthwhile, and Y isn't worthwhile. Some people choose no luxury at all, save all their money and cash out at 35 to retire.

What planet are you living on where a wedding only costs $2,000, and no more than $10,000?

Oh, come on! When a friend decided to get married, he and his fiancee went downtown and got married by a judge. Just the two of them. They fed each other french fries at the nearby McDonald's. They're still married 30 years later.

And, partially as a result of that frugality, they recently had the enviable problem of how to invest $1,000,000 cash, when they sold their big house after their kids grew up. They're currently living in a simple 3 bedroom, 2 bath tract house because they don't need more.

Another friend also got married downtown by a judge. I was there as best man, there was also a maid of honor. That totals 4 people. That was 1990. They're still married.

Weddings don't have to be expensive.

I think being middle-class is all about making choices between giving up luxuries of the body (e.g. resturant food), for luxuries of opportunity (e.g. schooling).

Maybe so, but that definitely didn't used to be the case, which is pretty much the thrust of the article. Its other point is that the scale of the problem is hidden because people are ashamed to talk about it.

Why do you think that it didn't used to be the case that people had to make choices about what luxuries they wanted to buy? I think that people have always had to make these kinds of choices.

I'm thinking of the middle class of my own parents' generation. They did not have to worry too much about choosing between restaurant food and schooling.

There are always going to be luxuries that you can't afford to indulge in regularly. That's what a luxury is!

Colleges and restaurants didn't used to be luxuries. I didn't fully appreciate that they now are, so this article is eye-opening for me in that respect.

(I'm from the UK where the college setup is different from the US, but it's moving in the same direction, a decade or two behind the curve.)

I don't know about the UK, but 30 years ago in the US 20% of the population graduated from a 4 year college. Now it's 30%. Access to higher education is becoming easier not harder.

Similarly, more people are eating out in restaurants more of the time.[1]

I think you have a rosy view of the past that isn't supported by evidence.

1. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/americans-...

I have a rosy view of the present, maybe!

The big question is how well the middle class is doing today. They did pretty well in the past and the expectation was that things would continue getting better.

(Edit to clarify:) I figured that things are actually still pretty good for many people, but this article's claimed "47% of people can't easily find $400 in an emergency" seems to fly in the face of that.

I'm not sure about college since its different in every locale, but as for resturants I think its more that the menu and clientelle changes which pushes up the price.

In my neighborhood, some restaurants are $20 a meal. These places have been in business for over 15 years, and serve decent quality food but only staple ingredients with spices.

The newer resturants that have openned serve fresh imports from another hemisphere away, and start at $50 a plate.

So there's a choice at least here---you can get $10 sushi with tilapia, or you can go get $35 sushi with blowtorch cooked kobi beef.

As I've gotten older, I trend more towards the Kobi beef place myself... and I think that's how it is with most of the middle class. Cheaper choices do exist, but we consider them 'below our standards for a night out' especially considering that age+experience leads to better home cooking.

Maybe so, but that definitely didn't used to be the case

What makes you say that? I talk to my parents and my grandparents and they all had to sacrifice for their family.

I can't think of a single time in history when people generally had so much disposable income that they didn't need to worry about money.

Neal Gabler is teaching at Stony Brook Southampton, so I assume he lives there. The high school doesn't seem that bad, dare I even say above average: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/d...

I'm not sure where he might have sent his kids for K - 8. In any event, people generally move out to Long Island suburbs for great schools. He could have just as well made the sacrifice of using that money for private schools instead on a house in a district that met his standards of schooling, which would have had a much lower NPV via a 30 year fixed mortgage than paying for private school annually. Plus, his house would likely have risen more in value.

It sounds to me like the author might just be a tad more financially illiterate than he should be given his lifestyle.

Southampton is one of the wealthiest towns in the world. He probably thinks he is poor because all his neighbors drive new Lexus SUVs and Tesla's.

>>shouldn't most people expect to get at least some of those things more often than that?

Spend $100K on a wedding, and then save $15 on a movie a week/two-weeks to make up for the remainder of your life.

Why would you even get into this situation?

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