Down $3 for every $1 of stimulus. How about you? (tax, income, 100k)

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

From https://www.antifa.org where all the cool kids are members.

Thanks, charlygal. When did you get the cool sex change and username change?

[galaxyhi]

Gee.

In the middle of lockdown, I lost my non essential hotel job as travel stopped.

I found an essential job opening, aggressively went after it and got it not knowing what the pay even was...and was delighted it was a whole 40% more than I was making.

Sure gas has gone from$2/g to nearly$3/g..has nothing to do with Biden..it's lockdown caused low demand, we just had cheaper "winter blend" (at least here in the great white north tundra), and now there's way more cars on the road and the more expensive summer blend is coming online. Happens cyclically every winter/summer.

Utilities have stayed about the same. I was air conditioned last summer, and warm and toasty this last winter.

Food costs..well they went up before the pandemic and went up after. No change there.

No kids, definitely no babies, no need for adult diapers (at least not yet!)..so no change there.

NW increased due to reduction of debt...can't complain about that.

SSDI COLA went up, but so did my supplemental..no surprise, happens every year.

Dec '19, bought a 2019 Minivan...have saved a LOT in maintenance/repairs over my last piecof crap Kia Minivan. I'll be er buy a Kia or hyundai again..no wonder they go cheap used.

Did home maintenance last year, it would have been spent anyway.

Taxes we t up a whole $10/yr. But I bought an existing starter home in '15, so I'll not complain.

No kids means no child support.. anywhere.. anytime..to anyone. I'd say 4 kids is about 2 to many..but what can I say? I never had an URGENT need to procreate...and took steps to be sure that didn't waiver.
I have been considering adoption..there's too many kids "in the system" who would love to have a permanent home..and a parent or two to love them.
But that, again, isn't a URGENT need.

I shop smart, have been divesting crap I/we accumulated on CL, and while I bought a few well placed pieces of furniture, it was cheap. Just picked up a self propelled lawn mower for $125. New ones go fir $300 minimum, so saved a lot buyingoff CL. It's a well cared for Troy Bilt, and the only reason I bought it was I really need self-propelled. I'll get $75 for my old push mower, so I'm only out $50 for the self propelled, saving about $250 off a new one.

The money I'll spend on the increase in supplemental will be far cheaper seeing I have two major surgeries this summer lined up. Well worth it.

If you built a house in an expensive tax area, of course you're going to pay. My house is small, 750sqft, 2/1, well established neighborhood, fenced back yard, had new windows, 40yr architecture roof, new updated bath and kitchen (which we further upgraded after moving in), new driveway, new electrical and copper plumbing, all done in the 10 years before we bought it. Finished off a "screened back porch" into a 4 season bonus room with heat and air. Since it's still a "screened porch", taxes didn't go up..it was loosely enclosed when we bought...to that "screened porch" status. It's my favorite room in the house.

There's some stuff I'm going to do..finished the paint trim, etc, so I'll get something to do in the nicer spring weather.

Move/fence in the garden, trim the trees, etc.

So..more money not spent on debt means more to invest, and I'll be eligible for the work 401k soon. $1 for $1 match to 6%, not bad at all.

I figured out in another thread I'll have 6 "legs" (and Possibly one more) to my retirement"stool". Didn't realize it was so many..and I never ever had a pension offer.

So, I'm definitely happy(ier) this year.

Sorry, OP, if you've set yourself up for a major increase in expenses. But I see that as YOUR choices.. especially a 4th baby, and not accounting for the tax change in stays of the property. But those were YOUR choices.. so all I have to say is...time to pay the piper...and deal.

Best to you in sorting out your new life. Somehow, I think you'll be back in 10 years to cry over another divorce and more CS than you expected. But my crystal ball is a bit murky at the moment...

Still best to you...

[jiminnm]

Originally Posted by charlygal

The OP is making a veiled political statement that Biden (in under 90 days) has caused runaway inflation in the economy. Somehow Biden's stimulus payments are bad yet folks are to ignore that the previous administration made TWO stimulus payments.

Since the OP specifically cited the last calendar year, I doubt this is so.

[lchoro]

There's probably much less stimulus being spent than authorized. That's why the actual debt is increasing slowly since the last two stimuli in December. The same thing happened last year. The Treasury ended up with 1.8 trillion dollars in excess cash that was most of the unspent portion of the first stimulus.

[Vic Romano]

Originally Posted by rkcarguy

I did some simple math from my finances for the last calendar year, and to my complete lack of surprise I'm down $3 for every $1 of stimulus I received due to inflated costs of fuel, groceries, materials, and other basic consumer needs!
How about you?

I will say what every math teacher told me...show your work. Otherwise it's meaningless.

I saved quite a bit this year...

[lieqiang]

We're ahead as well.

Retired so didn't suffer from jobs, we live on investments and stock market has been great, expenses down since traveled and dined out less, but got stimulus money over and over.

[mathjak107]

for millions who had covid and were hospitalized there can be a fair amount of medical expenses even though most covid expenses were waived .

we will likely see at least half our individual stimulus checks go for uncovered related stuff as we both were hospitalized .

our total bills are over 250k so the out of pockets are pretty low but for anyone hospitalized the stimulus check will likely go for the expenses and on going expenses.

4 months later we still need doctor visits and tests .

[Bill the Butcher]

Originally Posted by rkcarguy

I did some simple math from my finances for the last calendar year, and to my complete lack of surprise I'm down $3 for every $1 of stimulus I received due to inflated costs of fuel, groceries, materials, and other basic consumer needs!
How about you?

Do you not invest in the stock market?

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by Bill the Butcher

Do you not invest in the stock market?

Most complainers you will find have no investments...they either have little to invest or as you see in economic forums. , they believe their own bull that things are perpetually bad and going to crash and crumble ...

It is only logical that those who complain are behind the curve more often than not.. as those that are ahead rather spend their Time learning to do even better , learning to play the cards they are dealt instead of complaining about the dealer

[redguard57]

Just saw a poll come out on financial well-being. 2400 participants with a pretty good representative sample of age, race, and income levels. https://apnorc.org/wp-content/upload...ne-FINAL-1.pdf

Compared to the period just pre-pandemic:

30% report doing better
15% report doing worse
55% report doing about the same

hat so many people are doing better is a testament to the government's response, to the economic effects of the pandemic, which was far better and more comprehensive than its response to the 2008 financial crisis. Especially things like the PPP and expanded unemployment. This time, they gave relief to actual people and that made all the difference.

Although the surveys findings are pretty interesting. So when you see those doom-scrolling articles that say "40% can't afford a $400 expense..." that is probably an exaggeration or lie. According to this, about 15-20% of their sample were what we would call doing poorly financially, while 38% reported that they could easily manage an emergency. 1 out of 5 is probably a more accurate representation of the people who live on a financial knife's edge or in poverty.

However, while the pandemic's effects haven't hurt that many people, but for the people it has hurt, it's been really, really bad. In the hardest hit fields it has destroyed people's careers because so many fields which looked verdant and promising as late as 2019, are now shut down for seemingly ever. If I was a young person who had prepared to get into any career field that previously catered to crowds, I'd probably be in a deep depression right now.

Of course there are other costs. Speaking for education, the mental health effects are pretty bad. I never realized just how much energy I got from the community of a classroom. Working from home for more than a year isolated in my house without ever getting to be in the presence of students, colleagues, co-workers... I didn't realize when the whole thing started how difficult it would be. I always thought education was recession proof and I never thought it would come to something like this.