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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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There's a term for this, HENRY. High Earner, Not Rich Yet. The lie is the "Yet". Millennials and Gen Xers have been struggling to reach the middle class that is kept perpetually out of reach. They have given up on the idea of financial solvency and are going into debt to indulge in luxuries like having children, going on vacations, and living somewhere that isn't a complete shithole. Saving for retirement is as realistic as training to live on Mars, so why bother? Keep digging a financial hole and then lie down and die in it.
Gen X here and I can’t afford to contribute to my retirement. Even had to withdraw some during unemployment. I’m either working until I die or hoping assisted suicide becomes legal in 20 years.
Yep. Same. I do pretty good for myself and I'm more fortunate than most, but I had to borrow money from my dad recently for a series of expenses I couldn't absorb in real time. I got the "you don't know how to budget" sermon. It felt as fun as you'd expect
I said fuck it and gave him a list of earnings and expenses (I'm pretty frugal) and he was like, "oh..."
Gen Millennial here. I can assist you on your suicide that day for a hot meal so I can at least eat on that day. Maybe someone from Gen Z can assist my suicide if I leave him my blanket then.
A hot meal? If you're eating the person who just suicided then you could probably stretch those left overs out for at least a week or two.
You might be on to something here....
Is that when you die but take a billionaire with you?
On the bright side, 9mm is cheaper than a retirement home. Somebody's getting a blowjob on my 60th birthday, and it ain't gonna be me!
Damn, that's dark. Like my favourite kind of humour.
X here too, 53yo, cannot contribute to retirement. At 67 I will have to sell my house because I'll not be able to afford taxes, insurances, power, repair, etc
I might be "rich" when my parents die, depending on how much elder care they need.
I'm actually kind of looking forward to the day I look my kids in the eye and say "I'm going out to look for firewood" and just walk out into the snow and die.
But there won't be any snow anymore so I'll just wander off into a slightly chilly night.
You're a glass half full kind of person, aren't you?
What if we just financed all our kids advantages on our own credit for them and then promptly died?
What would happen to the debt?
Say I max out my credit card for their down payment on a house and then go "get firewood".
They definitely try to track large cash gifts when putting down a down payment on a house.
What most people don’t realize is that once you have excess income, you have options. What you do with the excess is what matters. If you don’t save and invest it, you’ll be living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of your life.
A lot of folks think being rich means just spending money on whatever you want. That’s not really the case. If you spend the excess on fancy cars or luxury items that make others think you’re rich, the irony is you’ll be working for a long time and never actually become financially independent.
Edit: well, if I’ve learned anything from this comment, it’s that everyone on Lemmy identifies as a HENRY with bad spending habits no matter how much money they make. Or, at least a temporarily embarrassed one.
Except that's not at all what OP said or was implying. Nice way of pushing the blame on the people affected rather than the broken system we live in.
Most people are struggling with the basics, not disputing that. But, then I wouldn’t consider those people HENRYs.
When I look around, I also see a lot of people with high income making boneheaded moves like buying expensive vehicles, renting luxury apartments, etc. For some people the problem isn’t the system, it’s their own lack of self-control or planning. If you’re making $200,000 and still feel broke. Maybe that $1,500/month car payment was a mistake. Maybe you shouldn’t have used the raise to move into a luxury apartment building.
When I was starting my career all my coworkers lived in $2200/month luxury buildings. I knew we all made roughly the same amount of money, so was shocked that they would pay this much for rent. Meanwhile, I sought out roommates and paid $650. With the money I saved, I paid off my student loan debt aggressively. Now all these people are struggling to get to the next step in life. Yeah, I could’ve seen that coming 10 years ago for you.
I see the same thing with cars. Everyone wants to own some luxury SUV. And, they make fun of me for driving a Prius. I won’t be surprised in another 10 years when they’re still struggling.
This isn’t an attack on people who don’t have the money. This is an attack on people who do and can’t plan well, but then act surprised when they’re broke still.
I don't make 200k, but together with my wife, we make a little under that. We both have cars, and both are paid off. I still have the first car I ever brought, which is a Nissan Sentra 2006 basic model. So, 17 years on the same car and hers is a 2015 Toyota. We do have 2 kids and brought a house in 2015. The last 4 years have been almost impossible to make ends meet, and all we try to do is survive with the very occasional do something for the kids. I have tons of housework I can't do but also can't pay for either. Because of this, we also can't move until it's taken care of, so we're kind of stuck here as well. We have no money to save or invest. Did we make some bad decisions? Sure, probably shouldn't have had kids for starters. They cost a fortune. But my point is we aren't doing anything crazy here, it's just that more and more things are taking our money and prices also went up. It sucks because all I want to do is live and get by, I don't really have any grandiose dreams of doing crazy things or buying tons of stuff. I just want to get by as my parents did, which seems impossible today.
How much did you pay for your house? Assuming you live in a HCOL area? Making almost 200k you shouldn't be struggling at all, unless you're living in some crazy high cost of living area.
I live in North NJ. From my understanding, it's about as bad as it gets. House was 330k 10 years ago. We also have crazy property taxes, so that alone is 13k a year. I also live in a very rural area which was the only option for the area if we wanted some space and also keep house prices semi cheap.
I gotta back your position here, especially because I think you're being downvoted unfairly. There is a lot of unfairness in this economy for sure but on this thread that started with HENRY and literally "They have given up on the idea of financial solvency and are going into debt to indulge in luxuries" your comments are totally in line and fair.
Want to add too, that even the first subject in the article 'Making the most I've ever made' isn't the best example of a tough economy. She went through a divorce and then bought a house in one of the most competitive housing markets in the US. The high interest rates certainly make that tougher but that'd be hard to afford even before without it.
I think there's a difference between High Earner and High Income that is causing a discrepancy here. Somebody making six figures is a High Earner, but isn't really a High Income anymore. In 2020, I made about $40k, which was more than about 55-60% of Americans made that year. That puts anybody making $100k or more in the top 25%, at least, of incomes in the country. And yet the prices of things mean that more and more of them are living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of their financial planning.
In a lot of ways, what's in the market dictates what people can buy more than what they can afford does. I had to buy an SUV the last time I bought a car because I need the 4 wheel drive for the winters here. I had a front wheel drive car once, and couldn't get it out of my neighborhood when there was more than a half inch of snow on the road. That same SUV today is at least 25% larger than the model I bought, because "that's what the market wants", according to Toyota.
When I was first looking for apartments in 2010, studio apartments in my town started at the $1,500 to $1,700 per month range. The lowest rent I could find was a single room in somebody's house with "occasional kitchen access" for $1,000 a month. And now there are cities where landlords are telling people making $100k that they need to find roommates to afford rent. A 2 bedroom house on a tiny plot of land that's falling apart just down the street from my parent's house got bought last week for $1.2 million. 10 years ago that house was probably worth $500k at best. The new owners intend to tear it down and replace it with an Air BnB, taking it off the housing market and further driving up housing prices in town. Builders are making luxury apartments and condos, and single family suburbs, instead of medium density multi-family housing because "that's what the market wants" and definitely not because that's what has the highest profit margins. I think there's been 1 new mixed-use development built in my hometown since I was living there as a kid, but the number of condo developments has increased from 1 to 17 in that same time frame. Every year more kids leave because it's simply unaffordable to live there. It was even when I was trying to live there, and it's only gotten worse.
There's people living above their means, and then there's people making a six figure salary who just had to replace a car in a market where car prices spiked 30% in the last 3 months of 2023 alone. Personally, I probably wouldn't even own a car if our country wasn't built for cars instead of people. They're priced as a luxury but considered a necessity by the powers that be. Even if you do a lot of the routine maintenance yourself, like me, it's still prohibitively expensive for the majority of people. Even those we could consider High Earners.
Both can be true. There are many people who barely (or don't) make enough to survive. There are also many people who spend money frivolously and then complain that they're broke because of the economy.
Dude, i pay near $400 a month in just student loan payments. I had to buy a "new" car last year and this 8 year old Subaru cost me $360 a month. I could have bought another $4000 beater, but that's a hole you never get out of because you are constantly having to replace cars that aren't worth the scrap they are made of. Everyone has been on a knifes edge for the past 16 years and now everything costs double from them but wages have been the same. No amount of budgeting is gonna fix that.
I didn’t say that… my comment isn’t directed at people who are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s directed at people who think they should be rich because they have a high income, yet always seem to have found some unnecessary thing to spend their money on, which prevents them from building wealth.
If you’re always struggling to pay your bills, you need to increase your income. Not saying it’s your fault, just that practically that’s the best thing you can do for yourself in an imperfect system rigged against everyone but the very rich.
"just make more money" lmaooooo
You’re maliciously trying to misrepresent my comment.
On Lemmy financially irresponsible people don't exist, and when making any statement to the contrary, all they can hear is "blah blah blah avocado toast".
Didn't you just say you improved your budget situation by buying a more reliable car?
No, they said that their choice was either an extra expense of $360 a month for the car that they bought, or $4,000 for a cheap beater that's guaranteed to die on you at some point and be a hole that you perpetually shovel money into if you keep replacing it with more junkers.
That doesn't mean that they can afford the extra $360 a month. Just that it was the cheaper option.
I don't think you really know what "living paycheck to paycheck" actually means if you think it, in any way, involves investing.
You can have very high income and still live paycheck to paycheck if you spend every paycheck
Every time ive tried investing, i had to take it out after a few months to pay for something thats popped up in life after other things have raided my savings.
Investing is for people with a lot of excess cash.
Precisely, which is why I don’t think my comment is directed at you. If you’re always trying to get ahead of the latest unexpected big expense, you’re not a “HENRY.”
That's what living pay check to pay check is though...
This is really stupid.
You're basically telling people "just be rich" like it's that simple.
People living paycheck-to-paycheck are not able to invest money because they don't have excess income, they get to decide if they want to pay for rent or want to pay for food. Combine that with astonishing inflation rates and salary raises that don't match cost of living increases or simply layoffs, and we have one fucked up situation.
This is a systemic problem. Billionaires shouldn't exist. Billionaires are a societal problem.
edit: Oh, I see your comment isn't directed at people living paycheck-to-paycheck, that's a bit more reasonable then but I still think you're missing the mark. It's not as simple as "just increase your income" like you seem to be thinking it is.
because it is that simple.
be rich or forever be poor.
this is the system we have setup and the system that we worship.
The problem in this thread is that there are people - such as the one mentioned in the title of this article - that are living paycheck-to-paycheck by choice. They choose to spend their entire paycheck on stuff. They don't need to spend it all, they could save some, but instead they buy the biggest houses they can afford or build a deck they don't actually need.
There are people who would literally die if they tried to significantly reduce their spending. Those are the people who don't have a choice, and I sympathize with them and want solutions for this because it's a serious problem. The others I have somewhat less sympathy for.
I try to save whatever extra I have, because everyone says I need to have six months of expenses saved.
The problem is that before I can save up enough to cover that there's some huge expense that I need to cover that empties it out and puts me even more into debt.
If I could manage to save up a year of expenses, I could probably start my own consulting agency and start making a lot of money, but I just can't get there.
The problem is that for many folks the amount they are making isn't enough for them to live a very reasonable life AND they have nothing to invest in the first place. Suppose a household in a given area needs $100,000 to afford a VERY modest house in that area, health insurance, savings, healthy food etc. Now suppose the house has one disabled breadwinner and one fellow working for $40,000.
Because of this they live in shit town in a tiny apartment a building full of drug addicts in a not so great part of the state wherein the average life expectancy is about 10 years less than one of the good parts of the country.
The first 40k of "excess" would be spent on having a decent life, working a sane number of hours, moving into an actual home. For fully half the country the idea of having excess is laughable. It's a crass joke.
Ah the ol' deserving poor schtick. Classic.