More Young Adults Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck in the US
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
It is cool for young people to doom over money and spend all day looking at much richer people on on social media. Main character syndrome.
Yes, I agree with your sentiment that its "different" than being "poor" but that's the media for ya.
The guy making 250K a year isn’t worried about not being able to put food on the table. But maybe he has a monthly car payment that is more than the person making 28k a year pays per month in rent.
But that’s only because I’m automatically investing 70% of my paycheck so I never have more than a few weeks of expenses in cash.
I can imagine getting very biased results depending on how to survey is worded.
In my case, an unexpected expense just means I take a short term margin loan against my portfolio (at an insane interest rate) until my next paycheck.
The point of my comment was that wording of survey questions can result in biased results.
I don't think you're grokking the common definition of "paycheck-to-paycheck", or are willfully ignoring it to make a point (and doing so poorly).
The point I’m trying to make is bias in surveys
Woe is me, after paying for my eight children's horse riding lessons, getting an opera house named after me, and paying for the handmade rigging that my yacht's crew say urgently needs to be replaced, I'm barely making ends meet! Why won't Biden do something about the outrageous increases in the cost of helicopter fuel?
Am I living paycheck to paycheck?
That said even if someone in a low CoL area is pulling 250k, it's not "horseriding lessons eight kids and a yacht" money, not unless the individual/couple in question is drowning in debt.
Don't get me wrong, $250k isn't a "struggling" salary anywhere but it's also not past the threshold where one can stop being responsible with money and blow it on wealthy people things on the regular, especially if that's joint income from a couple with kids.
Sure, you could live one hour away from work to save money, you can stop drinking, you can only cook at home, you could ride a bike, you could buy used clothing, etc etc. But life is short if that stuff annoys you.
There's of course lots of room to argue about what the likely take home pay on $250k is, but many of the arguments involve choices that sort of undermine the claim that someone is living paycheck to paycheck.
I posit that it is not normal for a young adult in SF to have a family of four.
Consider the cost different with cooking your own meals and eating out for every meal. Lifestyle choices make a big difference in living paycheck to paycheck for many (not all).
No single person making that much money is living paycheck-to-paycheck unless they're doing something really wrong in terms of personal finances.
do you live in a major city, or have any experience living in one?
it took me about five seconds to find a $2300 2bedroom apartment for rent in brooklyn. it's more optimal to rent this and roomate with a friend for split rent, but if you absolutely have to live alone you can probably get down to $1800 for a studio.
But god forbid you do anything in life but eat and pay rent. Most people buy clothes, furniture and go on vacation.
I'm sorry you feel poor. There's recent Bloomberg article titled, why 300k feels like 100k, outlining the insane cost of living of cities like NY and SF.
No need for 'trust fund kid' attacks, which by the way are based on incorrect information. Do you live in NYC?
I lived there until last year, paid $1600 for rent in an unattractive area, coffee around the block cost maybe $2.50 but I mostly brewed my own, and I ate out for maybe $30-40 per meal on average, when I ate out. I did plenty with less than half of that money and saved about half of my take-home during that period.
I didn't mean to label you specifically as a "trust fund kid", but I truly cannot believe that anyone who doesn't come from money (and thus hasn't developed a sense of financial responsibility as a child) would be capable of wasting that much money, even in NYC. In what world is it normal to spend hundreds of dollars a week eating out every single day?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/homes/manhattan-rentals-march...
Also your lifestyle depends on your age and relationship status. A 25 yr-old who eats out once a week and lives in Bushwick or the Bronx is a different category than a middle aged person who's in a relationship and works long hours.
Basically there is no end in how much you can expect others will ease your life if you keep paying them to do stuff for you. And sorry but paying half of your net income just to rent some space is pretty big financial mistake, in Switzerland they wouldn't even consider you to rent such a place (normal limit is cca 1/3rd but if you wan to save a lot its better to keep it in 15-20% category and no it doesn't come with 1+ hour of commute).
Back in the real world, so something around 99% of mankind, real financial problems look very different.
There's been an insane lifestyle inflation amongst Millenials and Gen Zs. If people model their day-to-day after some social media influencers and that causes them to be financially irresponsible, then why is this news?
Financial literacy isn't hard if you are actually inclined to learn it. All the information and budgeting apps is out there, free, just a few keystrokes away.
250K is higher than average (and median) income in every single area of this country, including places like LA/SV and Manhattan. It's ok to not feel sorry for these people. They'll do just fine, regardless of what they answer in some survey.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-average-salary-by-age-in...
No, it's not $70-80k. Median in that age range is $52k (numbers are from 2022 Q3).
why produce surplus value if you capture none of it?
https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/lifestyle/article/3194858/l...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/20/the-last-gener...
i asked in the parent comment if this is a normal thing? my parents were immigrants, so they don't have the experience of growing up here. it's always been an uphill battle. perhaps i've inherited that mentality but i wonder if americans of previous generations were also 23 and cynical, never thinking it possible to afford building a comfortable life?
That number has gone up recently, and many people who don’t know what productivity is actually measuring like to comment on the fact that the increase is productivity hasn’t been met with an increase in wages. But that increase has been driven by technology, and the people who are responsible for that increase in productivity capture the value. The people who sell the technology, not the people who sell the labor.
How does that work, timing-wise?
Like my partner and I are in our mid-30s and both have parents who own houses, and with good luck with their health there won't be anything to inherit for several more decades.
https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/estate-tax-and-lifetime-g...
Obviously that's more beneficial to people with a lot of assets than to someone with less, but for instance, a parent might choose to gift the house they live in to their children well prior to end of life care being a consideration (of course that will be very situational; do they want to stay in that house, do they have a good relationship, etc., etc.).
Medicaid won't consider the primary residence when examining assets to pay for care, but it may try to capture some of the estate after death.
Buy a house outright or just afford the down-payment? Those are 2 very different things.
https://qz.com/millennials-are-just-as-wealthy-as-their-pare...
So of course there are young people that are not doing well financially, just like there are people of other ages that are not doing well financially.
I'm single with no children living in a cheap house in Ohio. I also don't have any debt beyond my mortgage. My 401k is maxed out. Roughly 25% of my net income goes into my savings, which I only touch for things like a new roof. And I still can't manage to secure my future retirement.
i grew up in a modest home. when my parents bought it, it was worth ~100k. not much has changed, we added some stone to the porch and an outdoor kitchen. it's worth nearly a million now. anecdotal? possibly, but certainly not a rare case. on average, how am i supposed to afford a home if the trajectory for a normal suburban life is that prices more than 2x every 20 years? [0]
even so, i find that year after year, i'm losing trust in the future of this country. 23 and entirely jaded. i cannot find it in myself to invest any energy in building a future here. mostly, i'm cynical and scared. i find that most of my friends are the same. was it always like this? is losing faith in your country a rite of passage into adulthood? does it get better over time? will i ever make enough to feel safe? etc.
It's the era, it's not you.
Is it just ego?
1950 Median home value (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $79,063
1960 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $104,166
1970 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $112,941
1980 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $147,879
1990 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $157,169
2000 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $179,331
2010 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $263,604
2020 Median home price (inflation-adjusted to 2020 dollars): $336,900
[0] https://better.com/content/how-much-home-prices-have-risen-s...
That’s exactly what the winners of our class war want you to think. War of attrition. They want everyone to give up and stop trying. Spend all your money, stay dependent on their crumbs, perfection.
If you’re really able to just hold on to that money and squirrel it away without spending it frivolously then it’s hard to imagine it not being enough.
In my experience, workers know exactly what to do to improve their situations, but are denied that agency over their lives. And that's what poverty is - having no agency over your life. The smallest step above slavery.
My experience has been one of endless struggle over a lifetime, starting in the late 90s when the Clinton administration lifted the separation between savings and investment banking with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, turning the US into a giant game of Monopoly again like it was in the 1920s. The Dot Bomb, Housing Bubble popping, Great Recession, even our descent into global authoritarianism, is all theater. The real kicker is that it was by design, to rein in Gen X and the hippies before them to prop up moneyed elites in the capitalist class. Hurt people hurt people, down people stay down. Exploited people vote against their own self-interest.
There's no money for workers because you invest and expect a return for doing nothing other than having money. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. The really sadistic part is that there's infinite money available for construction, or giving tax breaks to companies moving to a new city, pork barrel projects, etc. But no small business loans for 2 person startups. No Uber-like system for industry roles so that people can work at-will. No affordable health insurance, no retirement provided for jobs under about $50k, no affordable college, few worker-owned co-ops, etc etc etc.
The answer is the same as it has always been: tax the rich. All other answers are platitudes.
This is the UK, but I think it's fairly normal.