[Gorefest]

One doesn't exclude the other. I'm sure that there are plenty of examples of people on low/medium incomes who spend their money unwisely, putting themselves in difficulties that could easily be avoided with better money management. But that doesn't invalidate the real financial concerns of others on low wages. My in-laws are doing fine these days, but when my wife was very young she and her parents and brother lived in a council flat with her dad doing a warehouse job and her mom picking up odd jobs here and there as well. But it would still occasionally happen that they had to choose between keeping the heating and the lights on or feeding their kids. So they'd have 'in door camping' games where they'd light candles and get everyone in one room with blankets as some sort of cool family night, with the real intent to keep the lights off and themselves warm. And trust me on this when I say that they didn't have a fancy car or a big TV that they could have done without.

[Tsundoku]

Cause, on 26 July 2019 - 09:36 AM, said:

Okay so by pure chance I came across a video on youtube which was an interview with an author Juliet B. Schor who wrote the overspent American. Now I don't know how well respected she is, her Wikipedia page shows what loos like a good career but information was light. Now the book is about 20 years old, 1999 but I think some of her points align with what I think I see today

Still lets discuss some of her points.

1) Now as the title of the book might indicate she seems to think Americans are overspent, one of the primary problems they have is not that they don't earn enough but they spend to much. Over 50% of all americans feel they don't earn enough to meet their basic needs, however even with those who earn 100k dollars a year, 25% still feel they don't earn enough to meet their basic needs. She argues that americans are constantly chasing a higher standard of living. She speaks about 'keeping uo with the jonses' but she points out that used to mean keeping up with your neighbourhood, people in a similar social class and similar earnings. With social media, TV, etc she points out that people are trying to keep up with the affluent lifestyles of the rich and famous. The average size of a house is getting bigger even as people complain they cant afford them. People are buying brand clothing and shoes at a higher price for the same quality.

I realize that some debt is good debt and very necessary. A home mortgage falls in this category. very few if any people can ever just buy a home outright for cash. However today ou can buy your cellphone, laptop and even your clothes on credit. If you cant afford to put down the full price of an iPhone 10 today paying it off over 24 months hoping no financial emergencies happen is probably a very risky and stupid thing to do. However thousands if not millions of people are doing just that.

2) One of her points I really liked because its something I think about too and was even considering a discussion about it but I don't want to drop ten at once. TV seems to be a powerfull influencer of human behavior, morality and culture. Lets focuss on finance though. She specifically mentioned Friends, which I thought was great because I have had the excact realization she talks about. I love friends, and I came to the Friends party late. I think I was in honours or masters when I first watched it, so I was 21 0r 22 years old and have since rewatched it several times. The first time I watched it I just enjoyed the humour and didn't think too much of it. As I got older I started to notice certain things. The show starts with them all around 25 years old and ends with them around 35 ten years or later or so. Despite money and the lack of it sometimes being a source of the comedy no one in the show ever really suffers. They are constantly having coffee during the middle of the day without a care in the world. This is played for a joke in one episode where they all discuss how their bosses dont't seem to like them and Phoebe says maybe becyase your all here drinking coffee at 3 in the afternoon. Still before the show ends Ross becomes a tenured professor, before 35! That's basically a miracle. Chandler seems to make so much money that he doesn't seem to mind paying his roomates half of the rent plus various other things like acting classes, headshots and food. Rachel works as a waitress and is used to being supported by her rich father but despite the jokes doesn't seem to suffer a huge loss in lifestyle. She lives in a beautifully massive apartment in NY city, now we are constantly told its rent controlled but this apartment is massive. Ross's apartment is equally beutifull and big. Now this is not suprising, its a TV show, the set needs to be big to provide the actors room to perform their craft, it wont make good tv if Rachel has to tell the other friends she cant come with them on their beach weekend because money is tight. It distorts our perception of what kind of lifestyle we could be living on similar salaries at a similar age. At 22 I didn't really notice at 32 I look at friends and realize just how unrealistic me affording those apartments in NYC, having that much free time would be.

Friends is not unique. How I met your mother has a bunch of 20 somethings living in new York, one of the characters Marshal is a student who at one point says he makes negative 200 dollars a week or some such during one epsidoe and yet he still lives with his friend in a NY apartment, eating out and going to the downstairs bar every week. Despite his wife Lilly being a shopaholic with massive debt she cant pay and despite buying a mortgage he cant afford none of these problems are ever actually that serious, they just good for a few laughs. Crippling life long debt payments doesn't do anything to hurt their lives.

Now the author cites surveys that prove that people who watch more TV were more likely to feel like they were not earning enough and they needed to buy more things.

Basically it's in the interests of the big companies and their poltical lackeys to make people participate in a debt-and-excess-consumption culture. For 2 reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
1. It contributes to the "trickle up" effect, and
2. It distracts from all the other bullshit they pull to fuck us over. Bread and circuses, man.

[Kanese S's]

I don't want pity.

I want justice, a living wage, job security, housing, and health care.

I have been scraping by through temping for a decade. I recently got hired for my first full time, non-temp job. If I retain my current job, next year is the first year of my adult life that I will even make enough money to be in the lowest income bracket that actually has to pay federal income tax.

In a couple weeks I will be 33.




I know that things are worse in other places, but this shit still sucks.

This post has been edited by Kanese S's: 30 January 2020 - 09:10 PM

[Cause]

Okay Interesting time to resurrect the thread! I have been living in Brooklyn in my own (overpriced) apartment for exactly a month. My perspective on this matter has certainly grown. My understanding in the change of living costs has certainly changed. I am also currently unemployed so I am feeling the pinch espencially hard.

America is a really, from my perspective, strange place. A dozen eggs are somehow only a dollar fifty but you want 3.50 for 24 oz of Milk? How much for bread? The price of milk is truly just mind boggling! It would be like 1.25 in SA. I think the government in SA also controls the price of bread to ensure the staple is affordable to the masses as well so a loaf of bread is never more than a dollar. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum things like laptops are so much cheaper here than in SA.

Your Data costs are surprisingly high (much higher than England and comparable to SA which I know has some of the highest in the world), the phones themselves are cheap though.

Everything is on sale though, or has a promotion, or a benefit. It actually makes me suspect that the discounts are built into the price. The level of marketing here is insane.

Turns out that New York at least does have significant subsidized health care for the poor. Citizen and Immigrant alike. Otherwise your healthcare is batshit insane! 430 dollars a month for a bronze level package with a 4200 deductible and a 8000 max out of pocket. If I got cancer or something serious id be out 12000 dollars for the year. In south Africa my Insurance was around 200 dollars a month, and when I got cancer I paid around 1000 out of my own pocket for surgery and maybe another 1000 dollars for CT scan and then the cancer benefits kicked in and they paid for the chemo, and all the follow up oncologist visits, bloodtests and x-rays for two years. Even With insurance it can be a 200 dollar co pay for an ambulance and 300 for an ER visit! Although playing devils advocate I have to say that a government ambulance in SA has a response time of over an hour so its basically death sentence. Not sure what a private one costs.

Im gonna think on this and come back and discuss it in more detail. Essentially for know it seems that a minimum wage job in NY would pay 2600 dollars, 600 which would go to tax. You can just squeek by on the remainig 2000 by living a frugal lifestyle that would leave you very little if any room to save anything for your future. A family would be out of the question. That said my rent is insanse and could probably be shrunk quite a bit if I had a longer lease. I try to avoid eating out, because its insanse from my point of view what it costs but I could probably shrink my food budget quite a bit by eating less junk food.

My perspective remains coloured however by the fact that in SA poor means living day to day in a shack. Whereas here I sea maids driving Ford pickups and wearing aplle watched. The poor in SA dont have apple phones, never mind watches. Poor in the US is not poor in SA.

Also a surprising observation I have made is that there are fewer homeless/beggars in NY compared to SA but the few you do have seem incredibly bad off. I presume the ones that fall through the net are the hardest to help and suffer the greatest.

[Kanese S's]

Cause, on 31 January 2020 - 09:02 PM, said:

Okay Interesting time to resurrect the thread! I have been living in Brooklyn in my own (overpriced) apartment for exactly a month. My perspective on this matter has certainly grown. My understanding in the change of living costs has certainly changed. I am also currently unemployed so I am feeling the pinch espencially hard.

America is a really, from my perspective, strange place. A dozen eggs are somehow only a dollar fifty but you want 3.50 for 24 oz of Milk? How much for bread? The price of milk is truly just mind boggling! It would be like 1.25 in SA. I think the government in SA also controls the price of bread to ensure the staple is affordable to the masses as well so a loaf of bread is never more than a dollar. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum things like laptops are so much cheaper here than in SA.

Your Data costs are surprisingly high (much higher than England and comparable to SA which I know has some of the highest in the world), the phones themselves are cheap though.

Everything is on sale though, or has a promotion, or a benefit. It actually makes me suspect that the discounts are built into the price. The level of marketing here is insane.

Turns out that New York at least does have significant subsidized health care for the poor. Citizen and Immigrant alike. Otherwise your healthcare is batshit insane! 430 dollars a month for a bronze level package with a 4200 deductible and a 8000 max out of pocket. If I got cancer or something serious id be out 12000 dollars for the year. In south Africa my Insurance was around 200 dollars a month, and when I got cancer I paid around 1000 out of my own pocket for surgery and maybe another 1000 dollars for CT scan and then the cancer benefits kicked in and they paid for the chemo, and all the follow up oncologist visits, bloodtests and x-rays for two years. Even With insurance it can be a 200 dollar co pay for an ambulance and 300 for an ER visit! Although playing devils advocate I have to say that a government ambulance in SA has a response time of over an hour so its basically death sentence. Not sure what a private one costs.

Im gonna think on this and come back and discuss it in more detail. Essentially for know it seems that a minimum wage job in NY would pay 2600 dollars, 600 which would go to tax. You can just squeek by on the remainig 2000 by living a frugal lifestyle that would leave you very little if any room to save anything for your future. A family would be out of the question. That said my rent is insanse and could probably be shrunk quite a bit if I had a longer lease. I try to avoid eating out, because its insanse from my point of view what it costs but I could probably shrink my food budget quite a bit by eating less junk food.

My perspective remains coloured however by the fact that in SA poor means living day to day in a shack. Whereas here I sea maids driving Ford pickups and wearing aplle watched. The poor in SA dont have apple phones, never mind watches. Poor in the US is not poor in SA.

Also a surprising observation I have made is that there are fewer homeless/beggars in NY compared to SA but the few you do have seem incredibly bad off. I presume the ones that fall through the net are the hardest to help and suffer the greatest.

There are fewer homeless in NY because of incredibly draconian policies of Giuliani when he was mayor. Also it's really hard to be homeless in that climate.
Here, I pass at least two or three shantytowns on my way to work every day.

Rent is the biggest chunk of my income. I spend like probably a third to half my money on rent. And I don't even live close to where I work, as I got evicted a year and a half ago. I'm always only a paycheck or two from being homeless myself.