If you want to live a un-average life, you need to have un-average priorities and sacrifice. Few on HN should be living paycheck to paycheck.
Check out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover for a starting model. And yes, you'll have to sacrifice now to benefit later.
But you have to understand that consumerism is pushed down our throats from all around starting at a very young age. Dave Ramsay doesn't just come into your consciousness like advertising does, and unless one is close to someone who is very anti consumerism and advertising you will likely be subjected to an onslaught of messages aimed at your subconscious that you are completely ill-equipped to fight.
I think many people in these comments are speaking on behalf of the general population who does not have the luxury of taking a year off.
This comment of yours drips with privilege.
Edit: I was introduced to dave Ramsay's work in my 20s by a close friend who was wealthy and had businesses and homes. He volunteered with some organizations to provide financial literacy classes. I was lucky to have been given that reference.
When you fly, the emergency briefing tells you to put on your own mask before helping others. In lifeguard training, you're taught to keep yourself afloat before the victim.
If you don't have your own finances in order, your opinion on others' finances is just noise and about as valuable.
Not necessarily. It's called empathy. And your lifeguard story makes no sense.
This is also biblical - take the splitter out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of another's eye (paraphrasing).
You (and everyone else) really do own your financial life. There can be curveballs-- a catastrophic illness, for example-- but for the vast majority of people, having money or not is really a series of personal decisions made over a lifetime.
> Most people pay $100+/month for cable, eat out multiple times per week, have thousands of credit card debt, and an unexpected $400 bill would ravage them.
There's also a cohort that might not earn a lot but is financially responsible, frugal and makes modest gains towards big goals e.g. education for kids, home ownership which can take almost a life time. There's a big spectrum from being poor due to being financially irresponsible and being lucky enough to be in their 20s, debt free and paying off a mortgage instead of rent (with help for college, down payment etc from family to have a healthy head start). Not everyone who doesn't have the means is in such a place because they are lazy or is financially irresponsible. Simply stating that most people are a certain way without evidence is just disingenuous and judgemental, perhaps exposes a bias more than anything.
Congrats. That's awesome and it's what we should strive for. Sacrificing sucks but doing it now so we have to do less of it later (or later generations have to do less) is powerful. Your parents setting that example for you - and you passing it down - is exceptionally valuable too. I grew up in similar financial circumstances without learning those lessons until much much later.
> There's also a cohort that might...
Yes, there are cohorts in all circumstances. That's why I said "most" and not "all."
I know plenty of people with no cable, no Internet other than their phone, living paycheck to paycheck... This idea that poor people just need to stop wasting their money is propaganda used to justify starvation wages
It creates a simple fairy tale that financial success or failure rests solely on the individual.
It allows people to ignore wage stagnation, inflation, rising costs of critical goods and services, rising inequality, and fundament structural inequities with society.
Here's a more in-depth academic paper that provides data beyond unsourced colloquialisms if you're interested.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol82/iss4/8...
It allows people to ignore that their choices are by far the biggest factor in what happens in their lives, and instead allows them blame society and take no responsibility.
People can make good/bad choices but the amount and types of choices a person even has available to them, is very dependent on pre-existing family success/wealth.
Jeff Bezo's kids will have more choices/opportunities than a middle class kid who will have more choices/opportunities than a poor kid.
Starving Syrian Refugess have very minimal choices or opportunities.
So your average middle class or poor person has some choices but is much more at the mercy of their ENVIRONMENT than Jeff Bezo's kids who can bend the environment to their will with money.
Your heels seem pretty dug into your belief's so there's a good chance I'm wasting my time by talking to you but whatever.
Looking at the comments here, it seems like people cherry pick anecdotes or statistics to support their beliefs about the distribution.
"65% of Americans are still paying for cable TV."
"According to cable cord-cutting subscribers statistics for 2018, the average viewer in the US can save up to $104 per month by taking the plunge."
Ref: https://techjury.net/blog/cable-tv-subscribers-statistics/
"According to Zagat, if you are like the average American, you go out for lunch and dinner 4.9 times each week."
Ref: https://us1035.iheart.com/featured/sarah/content/2018-01-09-...
Average credit card debt in 2020: $5315
Ref: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/consumer-credit-...
What are the demographics by age, geography for the people paying for cable tv, going out for dinners 5 times a week and that have $5k of credit card debt. You seem to be assuming they are all the same people, and you are assuming that correlation is causation.
Besides, even I indulge -
The link you shared about cord cutting statistics, if you read through the link, its making the point that cutting the cord was on the rise and in 2018 increased by 32.8% compared to 2017. In 2018 alone 33M people canceled their TV subscription. Seems like your data suggests people are increasingly doing what you want them to do, cutting the cord and saving money.
The link about people going out for lunch and dinner, it actually doesn't have any data in it. It appears to be a blog by a private citizen.
The link you shared about credit card debt, well that actually says that average credit card debt reduced by 14% from 2019 to 2020, while the avg fico across all generations increased. Seems like another trend that you wanted people to do. Surprisingly it also says that while avg credit card debt reduced from 2019 to 2020, student loan debt increased the highest of any debt category, by 9%.
Should I be concluding that people have been cutting the cord and saving money on cable tv, reducing credit card debt and investing in education? Or are we just cherry picking statistics to support a belief without really looking at the data.
I have a strange feeling that your sources are as poor as your ideas.