financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionaires
I mean, it’s not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they’re willing to share their
rigged casino gambling“speculative investment” derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.You need state support to get that rich.
"It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!" -George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn’t preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of “capitalism” relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our “dear job creators”
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn’t exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don’t need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don’t need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn’t a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct “customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third” model to the “investors first, second, and only” rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen’s of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It’s a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarc
I hate to shoot this down, as I live the feeling. If one USA President enough to steal it for 40+ years, then we never really had it.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
So what do we do about it? What’s the answer?
Month long vacations? That’ll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That’s why we can never truly go anywhere.
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It’s no secret that a very large percent of people live well beyond their means when a modest lifestyle with retirement funds is obtainable for the vast majority of the population. One doesn’t need a new car every few years, the newest gadget, eating out constantly, and an apartment in a high cost of living area. It’s certainly not morally wrong to buy what you want, but just know that not investing in your own future is making life harder for you in the medium and long term.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that’s $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there’s millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
150-200k/year
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
That’s not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they’ve been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I’ll watch them be voted out of power instead.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That’s why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That’s 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn’t survive 3 generations, so it’s way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they’ll be around to spend it themselves forever.
financial freedom is a myth peddled by
billionairesbanks and investment brokersThis guy gets it.
I finally got a job that broke six figures.
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
Now consider the majority of people who do not have 6 figure incomes.
I knew we were fucked when the same happened to me and I still can’t afford a home.
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I’ve gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I’m giving that up to someone. It’s an ugly mess, but at least it’s my ugly mess.
I tell those companies I’ll accept their offer if I have 3x the home’s value in my pocket at the end of the process.
They don’t call back.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
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I’m just breaking even on the house. I bought at peak like a genius.
There’s also no way I could possibly buy again if I let this place go, not to mention it’s a starter home already, there’s nothing in my area that would ne cheaper short of going back to renting. I’d rather feel the squeeze and keep the investment.
Re lifestyle, that’s the number one thing I’ve been working on and have clawed back probably a grand a month there since breaking up with my wife and going down to single income. I drove a 10 year old car that I own outright (managed to get my wife to take the newer car that still had payments which she luckily can afford), shop Winco for nearly everything except a few staples that Costco saves me money on and coupon anywhere else, and have one streaming service.
I still let myself go out to with friends occasionally and engage in my long standing hobby, though to a much lesser degree, but I’m getting better and better at saying no to superfluous stuff. After a decade of being pretty comfortable it’s an adjustment to make that I’m giving myself some grace on, though I recognize that my ability to even do that is privilege. My #1 financial goal right now is to start spending under my budget rather than up to it, and I’ve got some units that are proving hard to break, namely having food in the house that I can make and eat even on those days where my executive dysfunction is making everything impossible.
Where the fuck do you live with a $3350 mortgage? I pay 1/3 of that for rent and I think that’s too high.
Puget Sound area, a bit north of Seattle.
For a home purchased in the last 3 years, I got a pretty good deal. The floor on rent for a shitty one bed apartment in my city is $1200/month.
It’s also worth noting that the $3350 is my PITI. My strict mortgage is $2875, the rest is property tax to escrow and mortgage insurance.
Ah got it
I pay less than 1/3 of that for my mortgage on a bigger house with a large yard. But we did close on it at a much better time last decade, and it’s about twice as valuable now. I would never consider something so ridiculously expensive that the mortgage could be 3k/mo.
Fortunately for my wallet, I don’t like big city life and the rural real estate is much cheaper.
He lives in a $600,000 house. Probably more.
Edit: he says it’s a $560k house lol
Jeez. I can’t fathom what kind of home you must be in to be paying $3350 in a mortgage. Genuine question, have you ever been like, actually poor? I do find it hard to believe anyone willing or even able to pay a mortgage like that could possibly live a life anyone would call barely comfortable.
1000 sq ft starter home rambler in the seattle region. It’s nothing special and it was downright cheap at $560k. Was still dual income and mostly comfortable when we bought the house. We broke up and I had the income to keep the house, so I am. The equity isn’t there yet so I’m making a play to keep it for 10-15 years before I sell and we split the sale based on an agreement we signed when we broke up (very amicable breakup).
Yea, I grew up dirt poor with many dinners being noodles with butter, I never once had to pay for lunch at school because assistance programs, I never did extra curriculars because we couldn’t afford the materials, every Christmas was nothing or donations, I lived in houses where I could literally see outside through gaps in the walls, and the only reason I experienced a vacation before I was 30 was because my step-dad was negligently killed by a rich guy and we got a settlement that my mom blew on a 6 week vacation to Orlando when I was 14 and then put some money down on a house when she could have bought it outright instead. But I clawed my way out by going to college and getting pretty lucky along the way. 10 years ago I got my first job out of college making $13.75/hour, and have doubled my income twice since then, largely by the luck of knowing some good people, and my current job by the luck of being found on LinkedIn due to having a weird confluence of experience.
A big part of how I got into the house is that my ex-wife has rich family and they gifted us a pretty big chunk of change that got us to our downpayment. Still had to take $520k out on the mortgage, and another $20k to make some needed repairs once we were in (debt I’m taking on too).
I couldn tighten the belt in a few areas, namely my free spending which I limit to $400/month. But that already goes fast if I want to actually do anything and keep myself from falling into a pit by never leaving the house. I also use that money for helping my partner out. Otherwise I’ve cancelled all my streaming services save for Disney plus which is still a good deal, I’ve dumped my insurance to the lowest I can go, I pay $15/month for my cellphone, I’ve stopped buying name brand for nearly everything, and I’ve had to stop any real charitable giving. There is some saving that goes on in there like putting $50/month aside for my car expenses, so as long as nothing major comes up I’m covered, and $100/month toward ‘medical’ which really just pays for my therapy.
None of this is to garner pity, I know I’m in a better position than most people, not to mention much better off than I ever dreamed I could achieve as a kid growing up, and I’m extremely grateful for that. i don’t have any bills I have to choose between, and I never have to wonder if I have food to eat tonight. And I have enough saved (from my bonus) that I’ve got a few months to figure things out if I lost my job today or if a big repair comes up (like my water main breaking back in January), but not enough to replace my fence that fell down last winter. I just always thought that making it to six figures would mean a lot more than it does. I make ends meet and anything extra I make from here is gravy.
My mortgage is around that for Austin, TX (barely in the city for a tiny home) and that is when the rates were good. So, they probably just live somewhere that’s a bit popular.
25-90 minutes north of Seattle depending on traffic. So yea, it’s an expensive area to live in.
OH, that COL is wayyyy higher than my area. Hopefully you got a good deal on it then!
Yep. But this area is home, so as long as I can make it work, I will.
Trailers are 300k here in Colorado, at least where I’m at with jobs. If you want an actual house it’s 450-600k
My childhood home with 3 bedrooms and a finished basement was like 130k and that was purchases in the 2000s
@SeducingCamel @A_Toasty_Strudel
In the early 2000’s a mobile home in oil sands territory (Alberta) was $450k.
Canada’s been working a long time on our housing bubble … which is about to crash.
It all depends on where you live, but the prices are insane everywhere now. I bought my house 5 years ago and the estimates indicate that is now worth double what I paid for it. DOUBLE. And it’s not because I live in some super hot area, the prices have gone up like that almost everywhere in the entire area in and around the city. I could not have afforded this house If I were buying today, and that is with a significantly higher income than when I bought it.
This comment highlights your ignorance not their privilege.
Not really but you do you I guess.
Honestly, you need to make 6 figures to just not be “poor” these days. Very annoying, considering how quickly things changed over the last decade.
Same here. Feels like I’m making the same, but my mortgage is huge now. Sucks.
My partner and I make over $300k, and we’re struggling to buy a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of Orlando, FL.
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You probably don’t want to buy a house there, anyway, what with all the insurance companies pulling out of the state.
Your rates are going to be sky high, assuming you can even get insured, which isn’t remotely a guarantee anymore.
Sell your house and move slightly further out of Orlando.
Or don’t have a family size of 7+ and try to live in a city while expecting every kid to have their own room.
I’m 45 and I’ve more or less accepted that short of an unexpected and massive windfall, I will never be able to retire, much less experience “financial freedom.”
What is actually the definition of “financial freedom”? Having (earned / gained) enough money, so that a person has no need to go to work anymore? If that’s the case, I would expect that number to be much, much lower than 50%.
EDIT: sorry, I just read it in the article. If “financial freedom” just means to work and live more or less without having to worry about financial obligations and what will happen tomorrow, then less than 50% is a rather shocking figure.
Agree. And anyone could quickly go one from side to the other. In need of a expensive surgery? Might lose your financial freedom. Bought an expensive house and lost your job? Goodbye as well.
That’s what a health insurance would be good for. But for many Americans that would equal communism.
Health insurance sucks. I’m all for universal health coverage with the opportunity to pay more for faster service for those who are well off.
Just think - there are tens of thousands of insurance employees who’s job is to calculate risk and develop pricing algorithms such that the company makes money no matter what. There’s no product or value created for humanity. It’s just ensuring that some people who own significant portions of the business keep getting paid.
They screw doctors and patients. Doctors get reimbursed whatever arbitrary predefined rates that were agreed upon during contract negotiations. That’s if insurance gives the green light for the patient to even get the procedure. Why does a middleman decide who gets medical care and how much the doctors should be paid? How is a patient supposed to choose a surgery team that’s all in network?
I get what you’re saying, but fuck insurance. These companies are a parasite on healthcare, housing, and mobility.
Well, yes and no. It should probably be a state-run system or at least a heavily regulated system where the companies are limited in their profit making. No idea how an ideal system could look like. Here in Germany there is a two-fold system, which a generic public health insurance (with several companies offering those insurance services), where every employee pays a certain percentage of his salaries as insurance fee (actually the total fee is split 50/50 between employer and employee). Service is rather basic, but sufficient.
And then there is the possibility to get a private health insurance contract, if your income is above a certain level, which interestingly is (for the most time) lower than that in the general public insurance, but service is much better (e.g. you usually get doctor appointments much faster if you are a “private patient”). The only downside is that you don’t know how much you will have to pay when you get old, and once you are out of the public insurance you can not go back (only if you income falls below the private insurance entry level, which is rather unlikely).
It’s not ideal but it works for the most part and with some exceptions (like new teeth, where you have to pay a substantial part by yourself) you don’t have to be afraid of any health problems, operations or whatever, because that’s all covered. Those insurance companies are treated like public service companies and prices for medication and medical (doctor) services are subject to agreement between the government and the medical associations representing doctors, hospitals etc., but I guess those companies still make profits and the doctors have good earnings.
I get your point, but even with a certain level of protection you’re probably still better off than with no protection at all. However, the system should also not be based on profits and shareholder value, that’s true.
Really? Do they? That’s very interesting. Tell me, is the over half more like 99%?
I think you knew exactly what idea they were saying. Agency, the ability to control your own life, varies. Clearly and obviously a regular person in the West has more agency than say a regular person in North Korea. It is not an one-off switch. The ever growing wealth inequality is making the population shift more and more to the slave side of things. That doesn’t mean that you are a slave it means your papa was less of a slave compared to you.
This is why being a lolitarian makes you stupid. It bifurcates slavery and freedom. It defines force to be a specific term, that no one else uses, and declares victory in the game it is playing with itself
It’s really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.
70% of Americans retire.
I think the stat you’re referencing is for people aged 65-69. That means 30% of those people are still working. That number should be much lower, like 0.
In other news, water is wet
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
Bill Hicks, I reckon?
That’s how society is, brother, literally 1% controls the world in their favor and keeps the wealth, impoverishing the 99%.
It’s been 10,000 plus years. Let’s change it, brother.
i agree, but not by passive aggressively shitting on people’s life choices in a social media comment section.
If they choose to stand in an apple line for 12 hours then I have no apologies to offer. But I get it.
I would also venture to say that applies to 90% of us. “Over half” is a fucking laughable fake figure.
I mean, 90% is over half…
Yeah, but it’s marketing jargon to make it seem like less of a deal. When someone says “over half” do you immediately assume they’re talking in the 90% range, or closer to 60%?
Probably the half that make $31k or less.
Looking for a job is insanely depressing when you get to see just how many jobs-white collar, blue collar, fast food, whatever- all pay absolutely disgusting wages one person can’t live of off…
Clearly the answer is work harder and get a 3rd job. Eventually you’ll be a millionaire!
I’m now in a 2 income household with fewer kids as they grow up, and to us it feels more like we are close always, just no hope of ever actually getting there, if that makes sense. Always almost enough.
Which is better than my previous experience but since it’s happening later in life, still wouldn’t expect to ever stop having to earn money by working. I have never expected to retire though, it would take - as someone else noted - a windfall, luck, not effort. Effort has taken us as far as it can.
Sheeit I’m one step above homelessness living off plasma donations.
I’d go for this except I got a false HIV-positive back in '89 and no matter what I do I can’t get it off my blood donation record. :(
I do ok, but all my debt and bills are telling me I need to get on this gravy train
🎶 Day’s never finished, masta got me workin, someday massa set me free! 🎶
Labour will set you free, indeed
That’s a good slogan, we should put it up over the front gate
Nobody wants to work anymore so a little encouragement is much needed.
Wtf? Of course not. The workforce would be devastated if half of Americans had achieved financial freedom.
Not if the goal was equilibrium/homeostasis rather than unsustainable growth/metastasis on a finite world of finite resources as it is today.
That will never be permitted though. Humanity will destroy itself not out of hatred as once believed, but in the name of cold, insatiable, sociopathic greed.
Yah we won’t stop using resources and fucking the air until we all die off. There’s no other way cause humans, specifically the humans in power with the ability to make change. Won’t. Cause cold hard cash.
Yup. Workers in America desperately need more rights. But so long as there are unpleasant jobs thst have to be done, total financial freedom isn’t really possible. Even under a socialist/communist model.
There is $222 in the wallet in the link preview. Just found that interesting.
