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Comment by rosalinekarr | Hacker News Reader

> Some have meagre savings (like $5.000 - $10.000) and use all of them to fund the trip (like year-long).

You really don't understand how bad it is these days. The average family does not have $2,000 in savings, much less 5 to 10. In fact, [the average American household with debt owes an average of $130,922][1]. Over $15,000 of that is in credit card debt alone.

Being broke is actually doing pretty well nowadays. We live in a world built on debt, where the financial sector makes up over 30% of the economy and almost everyone is beholden to large banks. In a few decades, we'll be right back to feudal system, if things don't change.

[1]: http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/05/08/the-averag...

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> The average family does not have $2,000 in savings, much less 5 to 10.

OP wasn't talking about an average family, but a single "decent programmer".

These are not very informative statistics about the 'average' American. First of all, they only represent those who have at least some debt, with no reference to what percentage of the population that is. Secondly, they are means rather than medians, which are likely skewed by a long tail of people with extremely high debt (especially because they are ignoring the entire half of the distribution with no debt).

[80% of Americans have some form of debt.][1] The average total wealth for all Americans is actually positive. [It's a little over $300,000.][2] But that number is really the skewed one, as it's significantly shifted by the 0.1% of the Americans [which own 90% of America's wealth][3].

As for the median, I can't seem to find that statistic, but I would argue that it's actually a less accurate picture than the average.

[1]: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/abigail-wilkinson/pew-69... [2]: http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-we... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i...

[3] says the top 0.1% own "as much as the bottom 90%".

Maybe this goes without saying, but the average family in North America lives well above their means. Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus for the wife and ginormous pickup truck for the office job husband, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc. when you can find everything you need for a comfortable material existence used on craigslist, cook at home, etc. It's possible if you have gainful employment and discipline. I didn't have either of these in my 20s. Now that I do, I'm focused on avoiding the seemingly inevitable "I deserve it" lifestyle inflation and "It's only $xxx per month" debt.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...

> Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc.

You really think that's how most Americans live?

no, most Americans live worse than that. They finance their entire life. The education, the house, the cars, the furniture, the food, the everything. If you want it all, and have the cashflow, you can have it all for a set of minimum monthly payments that leaves you with little actual cash in the bank and an increasingly large debt to pay.

It's the eternal blind optimism of Americans. What's the monthly payment? Oh, I can swing that! My salary is X and always will be, or higher! Never mind that these been a recession about every eight years during my lifetime!

[citation needed]

https://www.google.com/webhp?authuser=1#authuser=1&q=america...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/...

Your first link is about credit card debt, and your second link is about a family with no credit. You can't link the two. What point are you trying to make? You said this:

But none of your links actually back that up. If we're trading personal anecdotes, fine, but otherwise you're caricaturing the average family as struggling because of (I would guess based on your implication) stupidity and greed. This doesn't seem to match my experience of the "average" family, but it is common dog whistle language.

Not sure why I'm getting downvotes. I can't reply to the person below, but yes, this is how most folks live according to the stats and my observations. Everything is financed. Working from home in a suburban Atlanta neighbourhood, at least once per week I see a rent-to-own furniture truck unloading something at a neighbors home. I don't even own a TV because my priorities are different.

Have some stats that aren't from mrmoneymoustache.com? You may want to give this a read in the meantime: http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decision...

I don't know about the details of what you said, but one more thing I find important is that even if you could afford it you take away at least one year of saving for the future.

I try to work hard these days to pay off my mortgage early and save for retirement. Using my current savings and loosing one of my good years of income seems like something that should at least be mentioned.

I can't help wondering how many of these mid-career vacationers the rest of us will be supporting when they run out of money later in life.

Or how many of those didnt-vacation-and-now-I-spew-bitterness -and-lost-my-savings-anyway-due-to-buying-a-house-or-other-bs we mid-career vacationers will be supporting...

I'll play the odds.

I wouldn't. The mid-career vacationing types tend to do better than the "go-with-the-defaults" drones, and they have some life experience to shelter bad times too.

No, they aren't.

>You really don't understand how bad it is these days. The average family does not have $2,000 in savings, much less 5 to 10.

I'm not talking about the average family. I'm not about people on HN level jobs.

In fact, I wasn't talking about a family at all -- only singles or at most couples. A family makes it non practical for several reasons (though it still can be done).

On the average household debt. I'm always curious what these families financials look like. My guess is they made a few common mistakes (that most of america doesn't view as a mistake) starting with buying a house (150-400k debt) assuming that's counted towards the "average", followed by having kids. Tons of people have school loan debt and medical debt but if you look at it objectively it's not "how bad it is" but how financially illiterate people are these days.

I'm one of those "quit the job and traveled the world" types except I didn't travel the world, just did a healthy 6 month dose of travel but my friends and family look up to me like I did something they are completely incapable of and I might be because I had the self control not to have children and buy a home, go to bars regularly, eat out all the time, etc, etc.

I met tons of people who were doing the same with a lot less money then I had and they made the same sacrifices I did. Anyways, end rant. I agree debt is out of control and much of it designed but I also know people made a shitton of bad decisions with money.

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