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So, why will people not respond to "live within your means"?
There is always another excuse on deck. If you offer a rational suggestion, then there is another excuse and on and on. It comes down to not wanting to sacrifice any one thing. I have tried to help people with budgets but they won't give anything up, or try to make changes that would help them. Sometimes you must realize you made a mistake and need to go backwards to move forward. Some people just think they are too smart and refuse to listen to ideas or suggestions they did not think of.
I doubt you've been alive long enough to understand.
Did people waste $180 to $250/month on cable/satellite TV?
Did people waste $100+/month on telephone?
Nope.
Did families in the past buy cars on a 72-month loan? A 60-month loan? A 48-month loan?
Nope. You put 10% down and financed it for 12-24 months, then drove it for 7-10 years.
....buying a smaller TV for $400 and then taking the $3,000+ you saved and buying Certificates of Deposits, continuously rolling them over, while using the interest to buy stocks/bonds?
Well, some is true - some less so.
First of all, a regular land-line telephone (and some of us needed a 2nd line for a fax and with many people in the house) was $150 a month PLUS - through Verizon, etc. in 2005. With inflation that would be $200 a month now.
Unless one is a fool, they stream TV. I know a lot of middle class people and almost none have new iphones - they have 6s or Samsung or last years Google.
A couple in a household will therefore spend
$100 for two lines
$50 for internet service.
$20 for two or three streaming services.
-------
$170 in 2018 dollars
And they will still end up much lower per month than JUST THE PHONE BILL from before.
Scratch that one off your list.
I take exception to your vehicle thing also. It as very typical for middle class and above to buy a new care every 4 years. Upper middle class often did every 2 years. Cars were not as reliable and didn't last as long.
Average vehicle life now is close to 11 years. In 2005 it was 8. A decade before it was 7.
Average single ownership is about 6 years (that means older cars may have 2 or 3 owners, but still).
100K miles was a RARE thing. We used to be really happy (1970's) when a vehicle hit 70K...time to get rid of it if it lasted that long!
I won't fact check your other stuff, but you are far off on these two.
Folks who buy 4K and Plasma TV's for a couple grand....who aren't wealthy in the first place....well, they don't deserve discussion.
I think this is more the case in lower COL areas. People pay a premium for 600 sq in Boston. Heck, a parking spot can cost more than a single family home in the mid-west. I know plenty of families holding up in 12-1500 sq foot, 3 bd, 1 ba homes in the metro area. So, I don't think it's necessarily house size.
It's those who don't work drawing unearned income driving up inflation. It's a cultural shift away from producing to leaching and it's not sustainable.
Faulty premise. If they worked, they'd be drawing even more money in addition to their unearned income, thereby driving housing prices, etc., up even further as they could afford to pay more.
Women should work just like the men. The days of a woman staying home is way over. It takes two to pull the load anymore. Some women make even more than their husbands. Women are smart and they know this.
$500-$3000+ televisions? Who? No one I know. Yeah, we've got a few flat screen TVs. They were like $200 each tops and we haven't replaced them in years and probably won't for years. You can get a flat screen TV pretty cheap at Walmart, you know.
Smart phones vs. "flip phones"?? Are you serious right now? You can get a very basic Android smart phone (a Go Phone) for like $20. That's what my teenagers have had. Who is buying a $600-1,000 iThingie?? Not us!
VACATIONS?? ROFL-FREAKING-MAHAAAOOO! Oh god. We haven't had a family vacation in....*thinks*...seven years. No, not even to the local Howard Johnson with a pool.
I drove my van for 14 years.
And some people talking about 3,000 square foot homes, or 5,000 square foot? What the hell? What kind of rich people are you talking about? At my most prosperous, with the benefit of my ex husband's VA loan (otherwise we'd have NEVER owned a home) our house was 2,798 square feet and oh my god we thought we were living in the lap of luxury in that house. Now I rent a 1,800 square foot townhome, and before that I was in a 980 square foot apartment. Still feel like I'm doing ok.
5,000 square feet though? I mean lol what? Do you even have any concept of how big a house that is? I mean surely anyone who lives in a house that big is doing really well and damn well knows it.
No it is not just out of control material greed that is making it hard for families to get by. One of the main things is the cost of education, and the notion that you MUST have a college degree or you're just a bozo burger flipper who shouldn't be allowed to live life like and independent adult with any dignity. We are starting to get a LITTLE attention focused in on the trades, but not enough. Everybody thinks they need college, we're often told we do, and it costs such a fortune that it tends to put people in debt well into middle age. The inflation of college costs is psychotic.
Then there is housing. There are more empty, vacant homes than there are homeless people in this country by far but damned if we'd let anybody have anything without paying that pound of flesh for it and damned if we're gonna lower the costs by even a tiny bit either. Rather have a house sit empty, or more likely put it through property management and make it a rental. Hell, who can afford to buy anyhow? People are too busy paying off their student loans to try and save up a down payment on a house, and you can't buy a house without one unless...military.
Don't get me started on the military.
They will never have to draft anyone again. Just have a great big class of desperate people with no better prospects, you will never have a shortage of volunteers. We can wage war on the whole world forever, so long as there's a GI Bill and a VA Loan in it for our soldiers.
Yes, those at the top are hoarding wealth and siphoning off enough of the value of American productivity that it's affecting society. Yes, they were able to do this partially due to women joining the workforce, but there's a whole lotta deregulation and cronyism that had to happen, too.
And the other end of the Great Scam...is debt. We can cut our teeth on student loans...but like what if you can't pay your taxes? The IRS says you should consider getting a loan. With people not able to make enough to create savings to cover any kind of emergency, the ONLY way to handle an emergency is to borrow. So middle class folks are stuck forever paying off the last crisis, rather than preparing for the next one. Dental work? Car trouble? Victim of a crime? Job loss? Illness, accident or injury? Kid needs glasses? I am sitting here listening to my coworkers sometimes talk about how they paid for private tutors or private schools for their kids, they got their kids cars, they put their kids through college. Must be nice. Not this single Mom. The next generation of my family will have to take on debt to get started. I can't help.
And you know it's crazy because I earn almost six times what I did when I entered the workforce 22 years ago. When I consider what I make, I feel like I'm doing really well, or I should be. Yet somehow it is never enough.
And I track my finances meticulously, not a penny moves though my life without it being logged in a spreadsheet and categorized to within an inch of its life. 78% of what I spend is what I consider "strictly necessary." Bills, groceries, gas. The other 22% is like, books, art supplies occasionally, fast food for us once in a while, celebration of holidays. I don't think that's wildly out of line? Maybe it is.
But $3,000 computers (HA) and 3,000 square foot homes and TRIPS??
I mean. Seriously people. What?
Women entered the workforce as they should have years ago to have choices. However, that effectively doubled the supply of workers thus allowing employers to pay half of what they would for labor previously. Supply and Demand. Labor like money, raw materials, etc are just a COMMODITY like anything else.
Faulty premise. If they worked, they'd be drawing even more money in addition to their unearned income, thereby driving housing prices up even further as they could afford to pay more.
No, people garnering wealth via capital gains from real estate are profiteering on ether. That erroneously drives up prices without value. We saw the impact of that during the last recession. It's not sustainable, hasn't been, and that's not going to change.
All we're going to see, instead, is people not wanting to work while telling others to live within their means even if that means a cardboard box because they are sucking the value out of wages.
There is always another excuse on deck. If you offer a rational suggestion, then there is another excuse and on and on. It comes down to not wanting to sacrifice any one thing. I have tried to help people with budgets but they won't give anything up, or try to make changes that would help them. Sometimes you must realize you made a mistake and need to go backwards to move forward. Some people just think they are too smart and refuse to listen to ideas or suggestions they did not think of.
One point does not negate the other.
I won't repeat myself, but I laid out how I made the equiv. of $30 an hour (today) working as a laborer on a framing crew in TN (lower wage area) in 1973-4.
You wouldn't give the exact same advice to me if you were talking to me then....as if you were talking to me now and I had the same job at $14 an hour, right?
This, NOT some other point, is the topic of the thread. People have been selfish forever...why do you think the Great Depression happened? Yep, shoeshine boys and doctors and everyone else wanting to get in on Wall Street scams. Greed. Fraud. Selfishness.
That part never changes. People are people.
My contention is that the biggest change in this particular segment of society, the so-called middle class person who could have a house, car, pension and more on a single income, is that WAGES HAVE BEEN DRIVEN DOWN AND DOWN....by the forces most of us are aware of.
It's really not my fault if I was born in the year 1999 and therefore making 50% of what I would have made if born in the year 1952.
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chucksnee
So, why will people not respond to "live within your means"?
I have several times, the main culprit is housing. And the fact that nobody wants to live in the ghetto, so they will spend as much as they have to on housing in order to not live in the ghetto
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