People barely graduating HS don’t need Earth science geology electives and creative writing.

They need a budgetary life skills course and a requirement to graduate with a certificate in a trade skill if they don’t have a college acceptance.

On thing though outside of poor choices is that wages have stagnated for decades now relative to both inflation and productivity.

Chapter 7: Why you never should have come here.

Yes, but my point is $100k doesn't get you far in an area with high cost of living. Could we move? Sure. Our salaries would drop considerably.

Your statement of nobody making over 100k a year has to have finances that tight is pretty oversimplified.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

In an affluent crowd of triathAlon enthusiasts this may be weird and a surprise but this truly is how the other 3/4 live. Razor thin margin between 'makin' it and financial ruin.

My wife is a teacher - I don't know who would even teach a financial responsibility class in school. Virtually all of her coworkers are financially illiterate (i.e.: part of that 80% who live paycheck to paycheck). Sometimes we'll talk about finances with friends, who are inevitably other teachers, and none of them have the slightest clue how good they have it and how they could do better. Totally dependent on the pension which is getting shittier with each tier and is really not all that great of a deal for young teachers entering the system (my wife). But none of them have the skills and tools to evaluate that. My point is - with 80% of the country fiscally irresponsible, where do you find the talent to teach kids the right approach?

Another data point with regards to this shutdown and high salaries. Several of these teachers are married to CBP agents so I hang out with them a lot as well. Young teacher - 40K-60K and a CBP agent in his mid-30s...easily another 80-100K with OT. So these families are pulling in 120 - 160K/year. We went to a birthday party for one of their kids literally yesterday. 3 CBP agents who missed their check last week. The quiet panic was palpable. None of them outright broke down but all 3 families were totally bewildered by what was happening and talking about defaulting on at least something this month.

I've helped one of them with some vanilla financial planning about 2 years ago but they've implemented exactly none of my suggestions...so now they're about to go bankrupt...with a 140K household income...

If they have a pulse we take 'em. I think something like 50% of our students are the first person in their family to attend college.

Do they pay nurses considerably more in BC than Ontario?

Obviously you would have to develop a new customer base but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Would it be painless, no clearly not. But as I said you made a choice to live there.

It really is as simple as that.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

My theory is the gap started with my parents generation.

The plastic eliminated the line item checkbook balancing of my grandparents and you didn’t have a live internet statement to look at.

I got lucky and spent lots of time with my grandpa who religiously balanced his checkbook and took me on his errands to pay bills in person.

I also had a negative view of living wrong with money hearing parents argue through the walls at night. I just knew I didn’t want that and would rather have next to nothing.

My apartment during my first engineering job had a bed, a side table with cheapo alarm clock, a borrowed recliner, my college desk and computer, and a set of 4 place Ikea plates and utensils.

I had the closet full of tools to repair my car I had accumulated.

That’s it. Oh, and a 7 year old tube tv set. Bunny ears, no cable.

I had a sad existence for about 4 years out and of college paying off the car loan early and then getting a house.

One shit thing is the nearly zero ability to stay at jobs longer for Americans. Moving sucks equity and tons of money when you’d prefer stay at a place.

Holy shit, do none of them have a line of credit that they can draw on for a few weeks?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Um no.. it depends upon where you live. $100k in Louisville or Oklahoma City looks a lot different than NYC, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

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2017 Cervelo P2
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Correct. And you don't have to live in those places.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Cars SUCK the finance of people. Leases with significant monthly, with deposit then hand over the car, and pay for dings and over mileage.

Furniture, go to auction and find well made stuff that people are throwing out for the new styles. Don't like the color, refinish it.

Who NEEDS a 2000-3000 sq ft plus house?

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You should actually look at the study that you are talking about. If someone went bankrupt and had any healthcare related debt on it they counted that as healthcare related. So if I had 150k in credit card debt and 500 in medical debt they counted that as health care related.

No, apparently. But they're all at their borrowing capacity carrying other revolving debt (credit cards) so even if they had enough time to tap into equity the whole application process would probably take too long. 2 SUVs (or truck and SUV), homes that are unnecessarily large, toys coming out their kids' ears, motorcycles, snowmobiles, jetskis, boats, trailers, tractors, guns, motorhomes. You name it. Everything except a manageable debt to income ratio / debt to equity ratio.

Actual quote from one of them pre-shutdown when my wife suggested I review their finances (they were worried what Christmas was going to do to them financially): "we live comfortably"

My dad taught tech ed and had a section in his class where he taught his students how to fill out a job application and balance a checkbook. His thinking was that most of his students weren't going on to college and needed those basic skills. I think it should be taught to all students in high school because they don't really teach that in college either. I think I had to take a home economics class in middle school, but they taught us how to make a pillow.

I got a call a while ago from my alma mater trying to raise money for something. They started the call by asking me some questions about what I'm doing now, how my degree has helped me, etc. Then the student who called said she's graduating soon and asked if I had any advice. It caught me off guard and the only thing I could think of was to tell her to start putting money in her 401K as soon as she gets a job. She said, 'cool...what's a 401k?'

They really need to start teaching this stuff.

You also make less in those places.

I make less here than I did in Bermuda 15 years ago. Take home pay between my wife and I is lower than what I was making on my own there.

My standard of living is similar.

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But as another poster said incomes are and jobs are available in these locations. I work for a large global company, if I were to laterally transfer from Metro Los Angeles to say Louisville my base pay would go down by about $20-30k per year. Being in sales, the oppty to sell more accounts would also go down so less performance income as well.
So lower cost of living, in a place I don't want to live, with lower income = treading water and shoveling snow.

But if I gave the tri habit I would have a lot more $$$ ;>)

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2017 Cervelo P2
2017 Cervelo S2
itraininla.com
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Interesting. I have no debts. Equity in my home. Stock portfolio. Retirement accounts. But I don't have a 'line of credit'. Do you consider them necessary or an integral part of a good financial plan?

Good point car/house culture. They can be hard to overcome, even for the rational and educated. I drive a 5 y.o. Focus. I catch myself ogling a Tesla and have to tell myself to STFU. Or driving through downtown La Jolla and seeing rich people in high-end Beemers eyeball me like I'm there to clean the toilets.

But the plus side is our reserve cash is measured in years, even without using retirement money.

You clearly don't need one. We have one, it's nice to have. Once in a while we use it then pay it off.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

You all have no idea what living paycheck-to-paycheck means for most people. These aren't the people who went to your high school, or with whom you work who don't have a clue how to manage their 100k+ household incomes. They exist, of course (my teacher wife knows them), but that's not the majority of this group.

These are the people who work three part-time jobs, 60-80 hours per week, at near-minimum wage jobs. Or those who work full-time jobs at $12.50/hour, and try to support a family. 401(k)? Yeah, instead of eating, maybe.

Being poor is very expensive. You can't afford a monthly metro pass to get to your shitty job(s), so you have to pay more for daily or weekly passes. You can't afford to buy a couple of months' supply of household basics, so you end up paying more for smaller amounts of TP, napkins, rice, etc. You don't have access to a line of credit, because you don't own a home or anything else of value on which to borrow. Your "line of credit" is the payday loan shark down the street (and whose regulation is being stripped by this administration).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I agree, it is not. But if you asked me I very well might say yes.

I don't keep a crap ton of cash I can get to this afternoon (it keeps me from being dumb, which I may or may not have a tendency to do) so my walking around money depends on the next check.

So what I was trying to say, when you ask people if they live paycheck to paycheck, some people who might not really be doing it would say yes because it feels that way

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Yeah, I know...and agree that most aren't the people making decent money but managing it poorly. Those are the students my dad taught. That's basically what I was getting at with my earlier comment that for many the problem is income more than their spending habits. The math simply doesn't work out for some to save up an emergency fund.

I worked at a lumber yard then a factory for a while after high school before going back to college. I worked with a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck not making much money. I don't think most overspent that much actually. I remember one guy who worked two full time jobs for a while. He wanted to save up some money. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so tired. He had a tooth get infected and that cost him a fair amount of money. Then his car broke down and he had to get that fixed. He eventually had to quit one job because he was so tired. I think he spent the money on his tooth and car and didn't really get ahead.

It's hard to get ahead when there isn't much coming in and opportunities for better jobs for people like that are few and far between.

"As jpo said, the median household income is $59K. Subtract all necessary expenses and the math doesn't work out for many of those people to save 3-6 months of expenses for an emergency, especially if they have kids. Plus, they're supposed to save for retirement. "

What do people who make $49K do? Can't the people who make $59K live like the ones who make $49K but also stash away $10K a year?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
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Certainly - they're not in the same class (and I'm familiar with those as well. We buy them presents around major holidays because my wife - their teacher - knows they won't get any).

Subjectively, though, the 100K+ crowd that's one mishap away from a complicated financial mess is also going through a lot of stress to maintain the precarious balance. If some of our friends DO get into a reportable default situation on any of their numerous debt obligations it will set them back YEARS of work. Much better than homelessness but still pretty crazy considering their gross income. Their credit will be shit, they'll forever overpay for all of their future debt-financed purchases (because why change now?). Their kids will also be taught the wrong spending habits and fall on their face as soon as they get out of debt-financed college. Be stressed all their life, work jobs they don't like, die early. Rinse and repeat.

Well, some of us do. I was raised in a family with 9 kids, a mom who didn't work outside the home (could you imagine the child care costs?), and a dad who worked construction, which meant many winters on unemployment.

My wife and I spent many years going to school and working 30 - 40 hours a week and choosing food service jobs because you could eat there too. I have delivered and eaten more pizza than any human should ever see. And that is part of why I would probably still say I live paycheck to paycheck because it is hard to forget that is how I lived for so long.

But your point is not lost at all. A few years ago, ok, it was probably 10, I was talking with people I worked with. At the time Franklin County, OH had a median household income right around $45k. They simply refused to believe it. Everyone they knew made so much more than that they assumed the numbers were faked because no one could live on that. And Everyone they grew up with made way more than that.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.