Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to buy $5 lattes unless they have already socked away 15% of their income into a retirement account, have at least 6 months of salary in a savings safety fund, and generally live about 10% below their means or can manage to articulately justify it to internet strangers as somehow having gotten a lot out of it while homeless.”

― Anatole France's great, great, great grandchild

I've seen pieces that indicate that poor people spend on average like $90 per month on lottery tickets and other forms of gambling. If they invested that instead, they would have a meaningful nest egg. I think that's a brilliant thing to point out.

So, certainly, it can be reasonable to suggest that sometimes poor people can make better choices than they are currently making and it can, in fact, meaningfully improve their lives. But most such arguments really boil down to "The beatings shall continue until morale improves." because we simply don't approve of poor people having any bright spots in their dreadful, miserable lives.

It's generally disingenuous to act like if poor people just give up a few small luxuries, they, too, can invest their way to being millionaires. This is generally not true.

I see it as malicious behavior to act like poor people can save and invest their way to wealth with a little self discipline, like giving up their coffee. Doing so is the rare exception. It is not how most rich people got rich by any stretch of the imagination.

>It is not how most rich people got rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Have you read the Millionaire Next Door?

I suppose it depends how you define "rich" these days, but the data in that book seems to indicate that most US dollar millionaire households are dual middle income workers who live below their means for decades and actively save and invest the difference.

Most poor people are poor because they have special needs and/or are responsible for others with such. They can't reliably work a full time job or doing so comes at a real cost and they are constantly working at just being able to show up at all.

From what I have read, most rich people are business people. They got there by growing a thing of value. They own the local gas station or, these days, they got into YC and got VC money plus assistance figuring out how to grow a business. There is also the standard trope of "He got rich the old fashioned way: He inherited it."

As a teen, I expected to be part of a two-career couple. I didn't know I had an undiagnosed genetic disorder. I didn't expect to have two special-needs children. I didn't expect my husband's career to be antithetical to me developing a career of my own.

An awful lot of things have to go right for two people to both work consistently for decades while living below their means, including marrying someone who is on the same page with you in that regard. My ex and I not being on the same page about money was a major bone of contention in the marriage.

Money is usually one of the top two issues in bad marriages. Then divorce tends to do an excellent job of seriously damaging one's finances, even if they were in good shape beforehand.

I have two adult sons that still live with me. I keep saying "If we each earned X amount per month, our financial problems would be solved! We could sock away money like crazy, buy a house, etc!"

So far, we haven't figured out how to get all three of us working full time and hitting X amount per month.

Not everyone is able bodied. Not everyone has marketable skills. Sexism, racism and so forth are alive and well and have very real impacts on the lives of a lot of poor people. Etc.

It's really rather insulting to probably most of the world to act like all you have to do is marry the right person and both of you have long and successful careers and both of you be on the same page about money and live below your means. It's not that hard!

While the divorce rate in the US hovers around 50 percent.

Historically, yes, if you got a job and kept your nose clean and yadda, your job provided you with retirement and medical coverage, etc. A lot of people these days are working for the gig economy with no benefits and making pathetic amounts of money.

I'm always interested in learning what actually works and how things actually get done. But most of the arguments here amount to victim blaming, and don't confuse me with the facts.

So it might be time for me step away from this discussion. I'm really finding the subtext of a lot of it quite infuriating.

I hear you, but I think the $5 latte advice is aimed at the two middle income earning households, who have stable jobs but still think they are poor because they have poor impulse control when it comes to spending. I don't think that advice is generally meant for the actually poor.

We have more income inequality here lately than in The Gilded Age. Lots of middle earners are being squeezed by a combo of high medical costs, high housing costs and high transportation costs because it's nigh impossible to live without a car for many Americans.

This is why we have expressions like "The 99 Percent" -- because a stable, secure middle class lifestyle that you can reliably build a secure future upon has largely gone extinct.

If we are going to find a way out of this mess, it won't be by acting like "The 99 Percent" need to stop being undisciplined slobs pissing away potential trust funds for their children because they spend too much on coffee.

When millionaire rock stars end up in rehab for the umpteenth time, we don't try to insist they don't deserve to be wealthy. They just need to make the right noises about how drugs are bad and they are working on it, but, wow, it is hard to beat an addiction.

When poor (say, homeless) people have an addiction, the narrative is always that their poverty is due to moral failing and they just need to try a little harder, have some self discipline and quit the drugs.

Even when the drug is just overpriced caffeine.

It's not victim blaming to say saving money on discretionary purchases might improve your financial status and therefore quality of life. This is true regardless of disability status, life situation, etc. If you don't think that's the case, and the discretionary purchase is worth the cost to you, then the advice doesn't apply and you can ignore it.

Having two middle incomes in a household is a luxury that many households don't have. By definition, half of people have incomes below the median. Assuming random pairing of couples, 25% would have both people making below median incomes, but in reality people tend to pair up with people with similar incomes, so in practice it is even higher than that.

Thank you for this.

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