On another note, in any major city in the US, a software developer is making above the local average income and has no reason to not have a “go to hell fund”.
If you have above average income, most likely you will have above average outgoings, including on things you can't instantaneously cut like housing costs, car finance and school fees.
The only way I managed to create savings is by earning like a wealthier person but living like a less wealthy one, but there's a social cost to this course of action.
I’m 48 now and I learned a long time ago after my first job to always live in a position of f*^k you (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI). I believed in living like that from 1999 when I was making $60K a year, for the next 20 years when I was bumping around as your bog standard journeyman CRUD Enterprise developer and after that when I pivoted slightly to get into BigTech.
You are seeing the consequences right now of what happens when you let lifestyle inflation happen.
We also had a house built in 2016 and purposefully chose the cheapest floor plan and even that was 3000 square feet (builders won’t build small houses)
I think it's become a matter of pluralistic ignorance [0], especially in the last few decades. Norms have a way of sticking around longer than the social consequences for not following them.
If you earn good money similar to your peers, your social opportunities will often be commensurate with those earnings.
If people know you earn less you may find them sympathetic eg suggesting cheaper social options. But if they know you earn as much as or even more than them, they may not look upon you so happily. They feel in a way cheated that instead of spending your money on time with them, you save it for future-you. Kind of selfish, it could be argued.
Isn't that natural by the definition of saving up? That you'll have less money here and now, because you are saving for later?
> but there's a social cost to this course of action.
Only if the people you hang around spend more money than you. There can also be social costs to earning and spending more money than people around you.
Of course it doesn't mean you should do all that in lieu of saving, but it's nonsense to claim there are never any social costs to living a lower or higher lifestyle than your friends.
“I won’t be able to go on $x vacation with you all. I will have to catch you next time”.
I work for $BigTech remotely in a lower cost of living area. Our income is much higher than many of our friends. We purposefully choose places that are affordable.
I was just planning a trip with my cousins (we grew up together like siblings) and everyone without small kids and responsibilities was talking about going to all inclusive in Mexico for a week. My being the only person reading the room - knowing that one of my cousins had twins in high school and knowing her situation - I suggested a much cheaper option.
On the other hand, my wife and I have had to say no to vacations we would typically go on with friends because they just weren’t in our budget because of the combination of expenses we are having transition to our digital nomad lifestyle and the drop in the value of my unvested RSUs in the River company.
The things you can do as a married couple with an established social circle are quite different.
Not to mention if you have costly medical conditions or past medical debt to pay, if you have college debt to pay, if you're financially supporting your parents, if you are paying for past judgments, alimony, or child support... There are a lot of valid reasons for not being able to save, despite having a high income, that have nothing to do with living like a wealthy person.
The median household income in the US is $70K
People often also incur substantial costs, almost being wiped out, in moving from poorer countries to places like the US, where they hope to make up the difference and more later on in the new country. If they're laid off just a few years in that could be too soon to have rebuilt their savings.
Nor is it reasonable to demand that everyone live as though they're only earning $70k. Saving is good and should be encouraged, but let's not pretend everyone is in the position to be able to save up 6-12 months of income.
And most of them would probably be here on an immigrant visa for the first decade (?). I specifically said that I understand why they wouldn’t be able to quit.
> Nor is it reasonable to demand that everyone live as though they're only earning $70k. Saving is good and should be encouraged, but let's not pretend everyone is in the position to be able to save up 6-12 months of income
It’s not a “demand” and the result and risk that you take by thinking you are above living below your means should be apparent by what’s happening at Twitter.
Since 1996 - the day I entered the workforce as a developer - the number of days I spent worrying about “burnout” after 3 years, a decent resume and savings, was 0. When the pay/bullshit ratio got too high I left. Yes this was in 2000 during the dot com boom, 2008 during the recession and 2020 during Covid.
1: https://www.marketwatch.com/picks/heres-exactly-how-much-ame...
The reason is because Twitter is the most interesting company in the entire world to work at right now.
Not everything is some monetary math equation, of the best dollar per hour rate you can get.
I want to work on something interesting and right now that is Twitter.
If I want to rest and vest, I'd go work at Google.