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Comment by eulers_secret | Hacker News Reader

It is well-known that if you're in the USA you can lose your job at any time, for no reason at all. At-will and all.

People need to plan for that happening, and not just assume it can't happen to them. This example employee should have thought "Hmmm, I should wait some years and save a good amount extra just in case".

I wish it weren't this way, but this is the reality of the world. Yes, it means moving slower and buying a house later (and for more money) - or never at all, but it isn't going to change and our hands are tied.

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In the USA you can't out save the housing market unless your making 10x+ the median salary. A lesson I've repeatedly learned. I worked for a number of bootstrapped startups, and purchased houses far under what I could have borrowed based on my salary because I always wanted to have a good solid year+ of runway should I face an unexpected layoff during a downturn.

That has turned out to be some of the worst financial decisions I ever made. While my contemporaries were buying house for 4-5x+ their salary and over time those houses doubled, tripped in value, my house also doubled and tripped in value, but now the difference between the houses I could have purchased and the ones I did, are now in the millions of dollars (aka I have to find 2+ million to upgrade to a house only slightly better than the one I own). Meaning if I want to move up in the housing market to a house I could have purchased a couple years back for just a slightly higher percentage of my income is basically out of reach.

So a lot of people complain about what it takes to get their foot in the door, but the spread between houses has massively widened as well. Just 10 years ago 1.5 million would have gotten a house in the top couple percent, now that number is probably closer to 7-9 million. So even if your salary doubled or tripped, unless you purchased at the max of your previous salary its like starting all over in the housing market.

(and just to make this post longer, this is largely the result of interest free money, a few years back I realized that steady state interest one pays should always be just slightly higher than inflation. Anytime the inflation != interest rates happens it throws things out of wack. AKA while people are complaining about the current rates, if inflation is 8-9% the fed should have immediately reacted with 7-8% rates, which would have massively hammered the system, but apparently no one at us fed/etc has really studied control systems enough to understand that adjusting rates every couple months will never result in a stable system, especially if they fail to react to changes strongly. Their current strategy entirely assumes that inflation/etc slowly rises or falls.).

On the other hand, the people who bought in the aughts were caught underwater with the 2008 crash in home prices. When using leverage to make investments, the lever always works both ways.

I could easily have been a billionaire today if I'd made different moves (like buying all the MSFT or AMZN I could when they went public). I know a billionaire who did just that - he borrowed every penny he could and put it into MSFT at the IPO.

Of course, I was also urged to buy bitcoin when it was $500. I didn't. Shrug.

Where i live (Austin TX), I would have upgraded to a bigger house from my first if they had actually gone down in value. That was actually my plan and part of the reason I bought a cheap house in ~2005. But, the federal government stepped in too soon and made it clear to the banks that they were going to support the market. So outside of a few obviously overspeculated markets a lot of places just stopped going up in value, they never went down or if they did it was single digits.

I placed multiple offers on foreclosed houses (as did a few other people I know) none of us got them because the banks refused to sell them for less than the previous mortgage amount. They let houses sit vacant for 2-3 years until the market was basically recovered in ~2011. One of the ones I bid on, was listed for X, I bid that, was the only bidder and 6 months later the bank counter offered for X + 25%.

So, individuals got screwed on both sides, the people who lost their house, and the "savers" who were denied the deals they were waiting for.

(edit: Just to add to this, basically in auction terms the banks all set a hidden reserve price equal to the previous max while simultaneously listing them for far less than the reserve. It create an optical illusion of the housing market being cheap and full of unsold houses, while people who were actually underwater felt trapped because they would have to take a hit selling the house, and people trying to buy houses couldn't actually buy any without buying the "overpriced" ones being sold by actual individuals. A few people got lucky and bought at below market rates from individuals who had owned them long enough to be able to afford to sell at these lower prices, but those were pretty competitive even during the slowest part of the market. I was regularly outbid (I think it was something like 12 times), despite bidding over listing on them.)

"I was also urged to buy bitcoin when it was $500. I didn't."

I was doing a data science project for a class in 2013. Instructor wanted it implemented and internet visible, with encouragement for users to "vote with bitcoin". It was around $14-$15 at the time. I passed on doing the project...

But remember that for everyone whom you remember for doing the correct thing, there are probably dozens more who did the opposite, such as borrowing every penny they could to put into pets.com or some 'stable'coin. Success is generally hard unless luck intervenes.

Of course. I wasn't willing to take anywhere near the risk they were, and so I don't begrudge them their profits.

The federal reserve is screwed no matter what they do. Reduce interest rates? Lending increases so much the value of money is inflated away to nothing. Increase interest rates? The music stops playing, the borrowing stops, the economy grinds to a halt and enters a recession.

>Yes, it means moving slower and buying a house later (and for more money)

The latter is not necessarily true relative to other countries and showcases people don't understand the long term influence, or lack there off, of various contract structures.

The US has at-will employment dangling a sword of Damocles over your head 24/7. Well, here we have temporary contracts not getting extended to permanent, and the status of a 'permanent' contract being the only way to open doors, which employers will royally abuse to lower other benefits.

US or not, the premise remains the same. Don't be reliant on a party not looking out for your best interests.

The entire US is not at-will employment. And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff...

Minus Montana, every state is at-will employment of some sort or another. And, I think Montana may even have it in some form now.

> And companies with strong employee unions do not have this issue of suddenly and without notice firing their staff...

Lots of people don't work at a place with a union, and don't have access to unionized employment due to industry, current geography, etc. Also we're seeing a huge anti-union push by a lot of interests right now, recently notable being Starbucks.

At will employment works both ways. You can quit at any moment to get a better job.

And yet, the norm is that employees give notice while companies give nothing.

As the WSJ reported a few weeks ago, companies often find out an employee had quit when the company noticed that they'd stopped showing up for work. Sometimes they disappear with accrued pay being owed them, and don't leave a way to contact them to give them their pay.

Companies doing layoffs often give 2 weeks notice in the form of a 2 week severance check and escorting them out. This is for good reason - very few people are productive as a short timer, and some are even destructive.

I'm not saying companies good employees bad. I'm saying these things cut both ways all the time.

I tendered my resignation once and was met at my desk in an hour. They brought two boxes, watched me pack. They interrupted me while writing detailed status for customers on each of about 5 projects I was working on. I hit the print button, and was escorted to the conference room. They offered a severance package if I agreed not to discuss why I was leaving. I handed the status package I'd printed to my (former) manager. He glanced at it, and recommended they double the severence. Best summer ever. I looked for work, and was paid to deliver sailboats offshore.

The reason people are met at their desk, watched, and escorted out is now and then an employee will be tempted to steal company equipment, and worse, commit some form of sabotage in their anger.

As usual, a stinker here and there ruins it for everyone.

Things only work both ways when they are symmetrical relationships. In almost all cases your employer is in a stronger position.

I've been an employer and an employee. It is symmetric. Employees can and do negotiate, and if you do something they don't like, they walk away. You cannot make them do anything.

If anything, it's the employee with more power.

Employees have special rights. For example, meeting payroll is the first priority of any employer. Any disruption on that and the state will hammer the employer into a pulp. Employees have all sorts of legal advantages in pressing frivolous lawsuits against employers. I've had lawyers from BigCorp tell me they just settle the frivolous ones, because it's far cheaper than going to court, especially with the court heavily biased against them. The suing employees know this, which is why they do it.

Employees can walk away at their whim. They can walk away if they don't like the cut of your jib, or because they don't want to work for a woman, or for any racist reason they feel like. An employer cannot.

Employee candidates can ask any question they like of the potential employer. Not so the other way.

Well if you are lucky enough to live in Montana instead of the other 49 states….

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