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Comment by OroPla | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Didn't you live way below your means so you can save up money for retirement? I've got enough money saved to get away with being jobless for about a decade.

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Not everyone's had the luxury of saving for years and years. Some people just got into the industry (remember 'learn to code'? not to mention recent graduates), others had to work their way up through lower-wage roles (e.g. contracting) just to get to a place from where they could hope to save. Other people have family to take care of and can't just throw everything into their savings.

Even back when I had to make do with $400 a month I was saving. Live out of a van to save on rent if you have to. There's always a way to live below your means and save.

Of course there are exceptions, but I don't expect those to apply to anyone commenting here.

Since that time living out of a van has become a crime in a lot more places.

Live out of a van with children? Is that what you're suggesting people do? That's monstrous. You would rather put the weight of the world on a poor family's head than one iota of responsibility on the ruling class.

A bizarre perspective - you seem hung up on the virtue of saving but totally disconnected from the material implications - even if you saved 50% of your income for a year at that time, you’ve finished with $2400 in the bank - how long is that going to float you? About a week in my case.

It’s plainly true that for a significant number of people, even those who satisfy your moral sensibilities around money, they won’t have had sufficient time at sufficient incomes to have enough saved for a significant period of unemployment to retrain.

If you burn through $2400 in a week, there are lots of opportunities to make changes in your life to make do with less. I'm currently living off $240 a week and that includes going to a fancy restaurant, so I could cut that number down even more if I had to.

You have no idea what my circumstances or expenses are, and in fact they’re irrelevant. You seem still to have a strange inability to see beyond your own circumstances.

You told me your expenses are $2400 a week. I told you that it is easy to get this number down since it's unlikely that you have to pay $2400 a week in life extending medications.

I'm not the GP but I will answer the following on their behalf:

It's usually best not to make assumptions about other people's personal circumstances.

Living out of a van is illegal here and good luck getting a job with no permanent address

And do you feel comfortable drawing all that down so that you're left with nothing at the end of the decade?

Is that in cash, so if the stock market drops 80%, it's still true?

If the stock market drops 80% and stays there for longer than a year it's Great Depression 2.0. Retraining won't do jack shit. There'll be breadlines, governments paying people to dig ditches and build trails in national parks.

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