Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

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I think what's especially twisted about this situation is the two-sided nature of it.

If you come from wealth, it's easy to get into a good school, and your parents can subsidize you while you're launching your career (or outright create a career for you).

If you don't come from wealth, and you get to a city, and you start making over $200k, it's hard to even take advantage of it.

Instead of having parents to subsidize me, I have parents who are pretty broke and in bad health. How can I justify buying a modest house in my area (for $1M), when my parents are piling up debt, struggling to pay rent, and barely able to buy groceries?

Flip that even further to people who come from really poor countries like India. I can't imagine if my parents were working $1 an hour -- how could I pay $3k in rent? How can you invest thousands of dollars in yourself when your parents don't even make that much in a year?

But if you don't make those investments, you're never going to get ahead...

It's not just that wealthy millennials have a huge advantage, but coming from a poor family has a HUGE disadvantage in terms of social mobility as well.

> How can I justify buying a modest house in my area (for $1M), when my parents are piling up debt, struggling to pay rent, and barely able to buy groceries?

Is this a moral conflict, i.e. you don't feel comfortable spending that much money? Or you're actually giving so much money to your parents that you can't afford to buy a house?

I think it's a moral conflict, but not because of the price strictly -- but because of where that money could be used instead.

For example, my down payment could buy my Mom's house, my Dad's house, and my brother's house. The conflict is -- how can I spend that much money on myself? Instead, I could retire both of my parents, and set my brother up for success at the cost of continuing my current life as usual.

It doesn't seem like a huge burden to me to continue my life as usual. And it would be completely life changing to the rest of my family (the people I care most about) to allocate my money in a different way.

On an infinitely smaller scale -- this is similar to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. How much money should you invest now to help people in the future vs giving people money now?

When I was 20, I was giving my family 10s of thousands of dollars a year. The cost of that was that I delayed my career advancement to the point I could be making an extra $100-200k per year now. Sure, I'll get to that point in 2 years time.

But was it really worth it to spend $30k to pay for some weddings and refrigerators and medical expenses 8 years ago to miss out on $300K+ in earning potential over that time period? No. Definitively.

Is it worth it to give my family $200k now when I hope to turn that into a million+ in 5 years? I don't think so. How do they see it? Well, they want the $200k now. Maybe that type of vision is why we're in different situations. Who knows?

It's a very personal choice on how you allocate money. My grandfathers worked in a steel mill and a coal mine. They scrimped and saved for my parents and their siblings to have a better life. My parents were the first generation to go to college and became teachers. They scrimped and saved to give my generation a better life. I'm saving to give my kids a better life. If they needed it, I'd also step up and give money to my parents; fortunately, they don't need it.

If I were in your situation, I'd want to secure my own family's housing and retirement at least as much as your parents' housing and retirement, so as in many things, balance is going to be key. But if you truly value changing their lives at the expense/delay of your own, there's nothing stopping you from doing it and obviously nothing wrong with it. It's a very personal choice.

> But was it really worth it to spend $30k to pay for some weddings and refrigerators and medical expenses 8 years ago to miss out on $300K+ in earning potential over that time period? No. Definitively.

Where exactly are you investing $30,000 that returns more than 100% / year for 8 years?

It's not about "investment".

The opportunity cost of doing things when you're at a low wealth level is enormous.

The obvious example would be to consider the gap between being homeless with $0 and being homeless with $5K.

Your earnings potential just essentially went up by an infinite amount because now you can rent an apartment, get a job, perhaps buy some study equipment like a computer or whatever, and suddenly that $5K can be well north of $50K.

This isn't stock index tracker stuff, this is home economics.

My only guess would be education.

I'm still making the poor choice. I had kids, started raising them in a small town and missed the boat on going out west or wherever to follow they money. About $60k is average software developer pay around here.

I finally break 6 figures and my kids are almost graduated into college. If I left them behind after the divorce I could literally blank check pay for their college.

But I'm deciding to be their dad instead of chasing the money. But 3 more yesterday the last one graduates and I'm ready to go do machine learning and all the fun stuff. So. Sick. Of. Web sites.

I would recommend you let your family be. There earlier stuff in your career was health problems you said and people come first. The houses you talk about now are like gifts. They don't have immediate need so you can get them something better in the future.

And just how hard is it to reach your level btw? I've been programming twenty years... Is it hard to get a job after 40?

Don't think 'if I didn't spend 30k on my family I'd be making six average adult wages more per year' is very common or very realistic to expect.

And if you are making huge amounts of money it's completely reasonable and rational to spend it to actually increase happiness and opportunities, given that one cares about people around them.

In a way, it's easier to support parents in a poor country because everything is cheaper there. Give them $1000/month and they will probably live better than you.

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