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these articles are always like "after 401k and Roth IRA contributions and college savings plans for their kids, there's nothing left at the end of the month"Yeah I was gonna say, I think when these people say "paycheck to paycheck" what they mean is "I don't have much liquid capital saved up so if I lost my job I'd have to liquidate some investments to make my mortgage", which would still suck mind you, but you ain't nowhere near homelessness motherfucker.
Hate to out myself but: I resemble this remark currently and consider myself "cash poor". Mind you liquidating shit like your IRA genuinely sucks and should be avoided if possible because you're essentially setting money on fire doing it....but you're definitionally NOT "paycheck to paycheck" if you actually have a relatively decent amount of money in an IRA. "Paycheck to paycheck" straight-up means that if you lose your paycheck that month you can't buy groceries, make a rent payment, or potentially both. It doesn't mean I might have to withdraw X thousand dollars from my account and pay the taxes on it plus a 10% penalty.
Confession, this is sort of where I am right now too. If I lost my job I'd live, but I'd have to dip into some funds I'd rather not.
stop with these BS MSM articles that they turn out regularly about upper middle class amercians struggling. They are struggling because they can't imagine lowering their high consumption levels.
Literally this, my manager is a petite bourgeoisie hack who constantly bemoans about his tennis club fees going up ten dollars.
Meanwhile he's enthusiastically slashed my wages down to the bone, so hard im living hand and mouth and having to beg to mutual aid and food banks.
I am probably one (maybe two) bad paychecks away from being houseless.
My dad made the upper end of five figures most of his life, so not even half what these people do, and he just retired sitting quite pretty. Granted he's an accountant so very good with money, but the dude hasn't been living like a hermit either, he's got a condo 10 minutes from the beach and goes to happy hour almost every night. Honestly the main thing is he didn't spend his money on dumb shit, no sports cars or boats or Rolex's.
So I find is so bizarre these people are "struggling", cuz like my dad is pretty treated up on much less of a budget. You really don't have to live a meager lifestyle, you could totally live it up on $250k and be financially stable, you just have to have some reasonable budgeting skills.
If I made 250k a year I could eat at a michelin starred restaurant every day and still have momey left over. I'm genuinely appauled at their consumption.
Look buddy. I need a McMansion and a Ford F-950 or else my wife will keep making appointments with the tennis coach. I will not stand for the humiliation and mockery at the country club.
I don't make anywhere near that, where the hell do these people live?
The $250,000-plus income bracket roughly represents the top 5% of earners in the country, according to US Census Bureau data.
Living paycheck-to-paycheck doesn’t necessarily mean hardship, and LendingClub makes the distinction between those can pay their bills easily and those who can’t. Only a fraction of high earners -- roughly one in ten -- reported issues covering all their household expenses in April, according to the survey.
That just tells me they're just living just on the edge of their means of subsistence, I'm more than willing to bet they'd be doing a whole lot better if they simply did things like cut out avocado toast out of their splurging budget.
i know somebody like this. technically only >$200k, but in a LCOL area. if they had any brain whatsoever, their home they bought 15+ years would be paid off, but they are an idiot. they probably started accessing a HELOC as soon as they got a letter in the mail inviting them to do so. these are the people that the financial services sector was born to screw.
they have 1 kid who is in their mid 20s and requires some assistance, but if its more than a few K a month, i would be shocked. they carry credit card debt, bafflingly. they buy new cars. they buy top of the line, state of the art, lifetime warranty equipment and gear for the hobbies they never do. a garage full of absolutely primo shit that has been used once. they buy expensive clothes. they purchase all Apple products and can barely check their email without someone telling them what to click/tap on. it's all status purchases to affect the appearance of an metropolitan sophisticate.
they are not my friend. they are a former boss of mine. if they got laid off with a month's notice, they would be in bankruptcy court inside of 90 days having to be told by a judge that they need to sell things, downsize their spending, and that they need to make early withdrawals from their retirement account and accept the tax penalties before they can file for bankruptcy.
their only hope is to make it to retirement age, because their retirement account has got to be massive at this point. and this has made them the most cowardly company man i have ever known, because they are just trying to get to the end, and accept all decrees from above like a total snake.
also, the contradiction of them just "treading water" at >$200K while being upset that the lowest paid & most essential full time employees negotiated a concession for a salary floor of $30K [because housing here is fucked].... is infuriating.
I'd do his job for half that. Just let me horde half of it each year like squirrel. I'd like to have a leisurely retirement and not work past 70 like my father.
for sure. his job is to attend meetings and tell attendees he is overcommitted, find underpaid people to offload his responsibilities onto, and tell everyone there is no money for raises, new hires or promotions.
Dudes making $250,000 like "my tenants are barely covering my mortgages! Waaaah!"
Assuming it's not total BS like many of these articles ultimately are, the 1/3 (1/10) being talked about are probably people in San Fran or Boston with a high paying job but absurd housing costs, and some edge cases with self-employed people or people laundering drug proceeds and shit.
Yeah high CoL area + large mortgage payment + large student loan payment. Obviously these types are a lot more secure than someone living off minimum wage, but it’s possible for them to be saving next to nothing after their costs.
And this is why they give that avocado toast advice. Thats the advice they know helps them when expenses stack up. They simply have no concept of what paycheck to paycheck means for most people
Honestly they must be splurging on some insane shit cuz I don't make nearly that much yet I manage to put avocado on my toast pretty regularly.
I think most of these people are just house poor because they bought too fancy of a piece of real estate.
I know some people like this. They got brain poisoned by social media and think they need to be constantly seen doing expensive things to be happy. Expensive apartments in expensive cities, way too many designer clothes, tons of long flights to vacation spots, and I don't know what designer drugs at a rave cost but there's a lot of those too.
I feel bad for them because it's obvious that advertising and social media have completely fucked them over. But I also feel like... hey just don't do that.
These motherfuckers can't make 20,800 a month work? Money is wasted on the rich
You leftist bozos have no idea how hard it is to make payments on my lifted F350, my wife's Suburban, all the while still paying off our mortgage for our 6 bedroom 8 bath. Not to mention Disney increased prices which will make our Florida vacation even more expensive. Trump please save us...
Car people are unironically cucked by their vehicles. My mom in a constant cycle of paying off debts on a shitty SUV she swaps every couple years.
I know a few people who said they wanted a truck. Like little old ladies who probably need a step ladder and a booster seat. If they said it was for safety in an arms race against giant cars, I’d get it. But they just want it “because.”
I literally cannot even fathom spending $250,000 in a single year that didn't involve like, buying a house or an apartment or something
250k in the USA is a little less than 170k after taxes. The various health insurances for a lot folks at that level is gonna take another 10k. With the cost of food and rent, you can't afford to buy a house with that kind of money in a single year!
You could definitely put a down payment on a house with that kind of money
Idk, if I made $250k a year I'd be fuckin set. That is several times more than my salary has ever been. Granted I don't live in New York or San Francisco, but still...
Yeah, even assuming "lifestyle creep" of like 50% of my current expenses, I'd be saving over $100k/yr. Rent in SF looks to be about double what I pay currently, so knock off another $18k... still saving $80k/yr.
Rich people are so stupid with money it's no wonder why most of them get rich through their parents. They can't fathom living normally, even though they may posture about it. They're such brain poisoned little piggies with such a high standard for comfort.
Plus I suspect a lot of their lives are centered around ensuring they never interact with a homeless/poor person, which has to suck up a ton of their income. They need a fancy house in a white suburb, they need a huge vehicle, they need to stick their kids in a fancy private school so they won't mingle with the poors. They can't have wealthy without also building a social cocoon, even if they could have a much higher standard of life without such an incessant focus on the country club stuff.
I make less than a fifth of what these people make and I still take vacations overseas and have a comfy apartment. I can save money too every month. I barely own anything. The most expensive thing I own is a $900 bicycle. The most precious things I own are my cats. I eat rice and beans for half my meals and my TV is a CRT from 2002 connected to a Dreamcast and PS2. Like what the hell, why do you need a yacht
The most expensive thing I own is a $900 bicycle.
How old are you?
I make less than a fifth of what these people make and I still take vacations overseas and have a comfy apartment.
Now try taking care of a household with all their education and healthcare needs.
I'm an adult, near middle age. I bike everywhere. It's nice.
I don't have kids and never would, so I can't talk realistically about what that would be like. But I sincerely doubt I'd have any issues maintaining my current standard of living if I had like 6 times my income, but also two kids. In fact, if I was given $250k per year I'd volunteer to raise someone else's kids.
If the kids had disabilities or long term healthcare issues then yeah, that could be debilitating. I wouldn't put my hypothetical kids into a private school unless I was worried for their safety.
You gotta understand that to me $250k per year sounds like infinite money per year. So I'm never gonna be able to logically proceds that. I'm way down in the pits of selling manual labor and I'm never going to have anything higher than what I make now. $250k sounds like a fantasy, made up amount of money that I can't even fathom. If I woke up tomorrow with just $15,000 in my bank account I'd probably collapse and start crying.
Cause they spend all their money on bazinga nonsense.
In the US, this issue is deeply rooted in cultural norms that equate living on credit with normalcy. Success and social standing are gauged by material possessions, leading people to compare themselves to their peers who also live beyond their means. As a result, there's immense pressure to maintain appearances and avoid being perceived as inferior, perpetuating an endless cycle of debt-fueled consumption and the illusion of success.
I buy 100 Funko pops a month and have a 2,000 sq ft U haul storage space to store them. Help me my children are starving
when you see Democrats posting about a "booming economy", this is basically what they are referring to lol.
People here need to do better class analysis. People making $250,000 are still working class and share an unfair tax burden. They aren't owners with their wealth growing passively. Some could be living in a high cost of living area, or some maybe irresponsible with their money, they are still workers and are still being robbed of their labour.
Exactly, all the people who sell their labour for a living have a common class interest.
No, they don’t. On the surface level, sure, we all want more money and less work hours. But that overlooks the details of the specific professions/industries and their relative position to capital, or just simply their income.
For example, abolishing tipping culture by instating minimum wage is good. But there’s still a lot of service workers who make a lot more money from tips compared to a fixed wage, so they rather fuck everyone else to maintain their position. Ask a silicon valley tech worker who they think should deserves 6 figure salaries. Ask them if they want to build affordable housing next door to their home. Ask a STEM major if social workers deserve the same salary as them, or what they consider ‘useless majors.’ Ask a pig if they’re willing to stand in solidarity with striking food workers. This doesn’t mean that all of them are like this, but the majority of them are.
Sometimes these professions and industries collide in unity, like in Argentina with cops and workers protesting against Millei. But there are stark differences overall.
most silicon valley 6 figure salaried workers do not own a home.. nor will they ever unless they leave silicon valley or they win the IPO lottery
The fact that we have a labour aristocracy doesn't mean that their fundamental interests are different. The actual problem is that people in that bracket often don't see themselves as part of the working class. However, a lot of the people in tech are now discovering that they are not in fact capitalists as stuff like mass layoffs start to hit them personally. So, the issue is with lack of political education, and divisions within labour that prevent a unified front against capital from forming.
That's not necessarily true. Global north labour aristocrats get paid higher, and in this example significantly higher, than global south proletariats because of the global system of exploitation.
Through various mechanisms of global value transfer, labour aristocrats functionality exploit the proletariat proper.
Labour aristocrats are not necessarily being robbed of their labour so much as they are part of the process of robbing others of theirs; and upset that they aren't robbing quite as much as they would like because someone else, the bourgeois proper, is more effective at the robbing.
Living paycheck-to-paycheck doesn’t necessarily mean hardship, and LendingClub makes the distinction between those can pay their bills easily and those who can’t. Only a fraction of high earners -- roughly one in ten -- reported issues covering all their household expenses in April, according to the survey.
Assuming this is remotely truthful, they may be ‘robbed’ of their labor but they’re living pretty comfortably. I don’t know how the survey was worded or whether or not these people consider themselves living “paycheck to paycheck,” but it’s pretty clear their ‘struggle’ is wildly different than that of the average wagie.
Anyone would be screwed if they lost their jobs, but if you can easily pay your bills and live a lifestyle you find comfortable and enjoyable, chances are you’ll survive temporary unemployment at a much better rate than someone who has to decide whether he should eat or skip the meal and let his dog eat.
They aren't owners with their wealth growing passively.
The article doesn’t go into detail about the specifics if their income, but you don’t need to be an owner to benefit from passive investments. You just gave to have the money to invest in the first place
You're not doing better class analysis, you're doing class reductionism
