… median lifetime earnings for the typical U.S. worker stand at $1.7 million…
And Musk makes over 3.5x that amount in a single day.
Three and a half lifetimes of work per day, and nobody wants to do anything about the billionaire problem?
But you don’t understand. Billionaires earn their money. They’re superior to us. They make that much because they’re just much better people than the rest of us. If you stood next to Musk you would notice the heat radiating from his head as his massive Iron-Man like intellect dwarfs your puny brain. You should be in awe of his superiority and beg to have his children (even if you’re a guy). Clearly they should be rewarded for all their helping society and their taxes should be LOWERED, not increased.
The REAL billionaire problem is that we don’t have enough of them!
I feel like I read a same article like this every 3 months
It’s because you’re still sleeping.
“They call it the American dream, because you have to be fucking asleep to believe it.” / George Carlin
To put it in perspective… I inherited my mom’s house, retirement, life savings, car, etc. And I am still very limited in buying a new home where I actually want to live, bc of how outrageous prices are. Just imagine… almost 70 years of her life, and I can’t do what my dad and his first wife easily did at age 20 working as a restaurant manager. Insane.
Stop dreaming, start killing the billionaires.
Save up a million in 401k, investments and equity just to spend it all in a couple of years for senior care.
Considering the Earth is dying and society will probably collapse in the next 20 years, there’s no “retirement plan”. You either die in your work boots at 90, get shot in the water wars, or starve to death once agricultural zones turn to sand.
Buy the game you want. Tell that hot person you’re into them. See as much as the world right now as you can.
Sure, there’s a COL crisis right now in North American, but in 20 years we’ll look back at right now as “the good times”.
Wedding and engagement ring ARE WHAT?!? $35,000!!
The breakdown betrays how the folks who calculate the American dream are out of touch—many of my generational peers would never spend that much on a ring/wedding.
My wifes ring was about 1,500. Wedding was another 4k. No regerts at all.
Green Day came out with “The American Dream is Killing Me” . Perfect timing.
In the words of Green Day’s new song “the American dream is killing me”
Some costs might be lower or higher, depending on a family’s goals. For instance, some might pay for more than one-year of college for their children, while others might buy fewer cars.
Wedding and engagement ring: $35,800
One year of college for two kids: $42,080
Pets: $67,935
Average cost to buy a home, including lifetime mortgage payments: $796,998
Are you really buying a house if you never finish paying for it?
And you effectively never truly own the house, if you stop paying property taxes on it the city/county takes it.
Okay, this may be just a side note, but I hope they mean “wedding (as a whole) and engagement ring” because 35 THOUSAND for three rings is excessive.
Bridal jewelry worker here. I can absolutely confirm that, yes, you can indeed spend $10k on a ring setting and stone very easily. You can also spend $35k on a single ring if you got something from Hearts on Fire or Tacori.
Most of the cost comes from the stone and not the ring setting itself though. Like you can spend maybe at most like $5k on a platinum ring setting and another $10k+ on the stone.
Completely agreed, and none of this is directed at you. I’m responding to more of the overall sentiment in this post.
Jewelry and designer fashion is expensive very much on purpose. Yes, there’s an obvious quality element. That doesn’t mean that a Christian Siriano gown is going to last like a Carhartt jacket or that those Louboutin boots will outlast a pair of red wings. It’s wearable art, and it also makes a social statement.
We’re not even talking that level, though. The average cost for an American wedding is about $30k, so $35k all inclusive is absolutely in the ballpark. You can obviously get married for far less, but this article is talking about the reality of the “American dream” - which is really just a middle class lifestyle - versus various average expenses. The point isn’t that you can’t get married at the courthouse for $50, or even that you shouldn’t. The point is that people who subscribe to the concept of the American dream expect to be able to live an average lifestyle. Modest house. College for the kids. A “proper” wedding. Retirement. Leaving something behind. Those are increasingly moving out of reach.
You could hop over to Tiffany right now and find a nice necklace for $10k that would make a lovely Christmas present. That’s not what this article is talking about. It’s going beyond the basic “basket of goods” economists use to look at things like inflation and cost of living to include expenses that the average middle class family has traditionally expected. That’s exactly the approach many of us wish more people would take.
I spent like $1,000 on a ring. Of course she divorced me later on, probably because I didn’t buy an expensive enough ring.
☹️ If that’s legitimately the reason, you are much better off getting out of the relationship that “cheaply”…
Learn to invest and grow money ffs, don’t just squander your income. At the bare minimum understand compound interest. The earlier the better
The idea that workers can’t understand compound interest, as though it’s some crazy new idea, is a lie told by Capitalists to split the labor Aristocracy against the rest of the Proletariat.
Everyone knows that investing is good. Lying to engineers and doctors that they are somehow smarter and better than people who can’t afford to invest just because engineers and doctors often can afford to invest is just a way for the bourgeoisie to protect itself from a United Proletariat.
What delusional nonsense are you dribbling? You’ve created some side argument for yourself nobody is talking about
You’re blaming people’s struggles with financial goals on poor planning and financial literacy, and making it a personal failure, rather than a systemic one. The reality is that people already understand basic financial literacy, but simply don’t have enough income to meet basic financial goals regardless of budget.
“Have you tried being richer?”
More like have you tried using your income more effectively?
They guy with an extra 10$ a month invested isn’t in the same stadium as the guy with an extra 3k a month invested. 1 can retire, the other goes broke or in debt if they have car problems.
Okay grandpa. With what money? I only own a house due to inheritance.
Owning a house means no rent, most people blow 30% of their income on rent. Use that
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Understand compound interest, how money grows over time. Learn to maximise your interest rate on savings and minimise interest rate on debts. If you have enough savings for an emergency fund, start investing excess savings into investment options that meet your personal risk threshold. Low risk options exist with high average yields (about 8%) like low fee ETFs tracking S&P 500 or other market indexes. My superannuation fund (retirement fund) has an average annual return of 12% for the past ten years, yields higher than this could impart higher than average risk of negative returns. Starting as early as you can lets you reap the benefits of compounding interest, snowballing income. Note that as interest rates go up, stock market returns usually decrease. If buying US stocks, make sure you DRS them otherwise you don’t own them. I’m not a financial adviser, I’m just savvy with retail investing
This flow chart is Australian but should loosely apply elsewhere too
Right until that next market crash. Dad was really happy in 2007.
You lose if you sell during a crash. If you bought literally just before the GFC and didn’t sell, you would be up +313% on S&P 500. Buying at the worst time pre-GFC would have you negative for only 5 years.
Yeah I agree but if you planned to retire or planned to pay for a house or your kids college with that money you are SOL. Now you have to wait again on things that are time sensitive.
