40-year-old homeowner says economy doesn’t add up: ‘I’m making the most money I’ve ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck’

Hey, somebody's gotta pay for the highest corporate profits in 70 years.
- Important to note:
  Companies aren't just raising prices enough to cover costs, they're padding their margins on top.
  Just saying that their profit is higher means nothing because of inflation. Inflation will mean that their profits are more often than not the highest they have ever been every year. But the highest margins? That shows they are price gouging.
  
  If you want to know how bad we're being fucked, search for the PPI, the producer price index. CPI, the one we always hear about, is the measure of inflation to us, the consumer. The PPI is the measure of inflation to producers, what they pay for goods and services to produce the goods and services we buy.
  The PPI has been back to "normal" for a while now. Pretty much as soon as the post COVID logistics issues were mostly ironed out. The difference between PPI and CPI changes is almost all profit.
  We don't get daily articles on the PPI though, I wonder why.
  Tell people about PPI whenever you can, online or off, the more people know, the better. It's easy enough to say inflation is just down to greed but being able to back it up by comparing two simple charts will help people really understand.
  PPI
  CPI
- Exactly that. On average the economy is doing fine but it's skewed very heavily towards the top and nothing much for the 90%. The median income is actually decreasing.

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.
  
  assisted suicide
  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!
  
  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
  
  Assisted suicide vs... illegal suicide? What's the difference?
- 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.
  
  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".
  
  You should watch the movie The Road if you haven't already.
  
  I'd rather look forward to the improvements in technology that make elder care less expensive.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  If you don’t save and invest it, you’ll be living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of your life.
  I don't think you really know what "living paycheck to paycheck" actually means if you think it, in any way, involves investing.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  OP is like: Even if you have highly-valuable skills, you can't get ahead, because the game is stacked in favor of renting out your assets instead of delivering valuable labor.
  Reply is like: Yeah, but have you considered renting out your assets though?
  
  what the heck's a rimjob?

Honestly, same boat. Our power bill has gone up over 20% this past year like it's insane. Our grocery costs have easily doubled in that time, too. Like I'm doing the math and seeing the numbers like I'm making more than I was 3 years ago, but I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck then, and I'm rationing food today.
I also can't count the number of times prices have gone up on common groceries in the last year. Every time I go in I'm spending more than I did the previous time. And the grocery stores around here have started phasing out their cost saving brands. More and more lately what used to be the expensive brand is the only one left, and I'm paying twice as much for half as much compared to what I was getting before. They're not even trying to hide what they're doing.
- I'm in this same boat. I get letters from the power company all the time about how I'm using more power than anyone around me. The heat in my place has been kept around 62 all winter, occasionally allowed to get colder. It's a pretty modern build for a house too. I actually used my PC to heat just my bedroom over winter which should be far more power efficient the heating every room. The letters I get try selling me how I need to or could be more efficient like genius ideas like "turn down the thermostat"... its already nearly almost off, just enough to make sure pipes don't freeze.
  Only thing that really changed was they installed a new smart meter last fall, of which I had no say.
  
  In Canada those so-called smart meters turned out to be sending incorrect data (or no data at all) AND causing fires.
  Best of luck in getting the powers that be to check them tho. :/
  
  Maybe you're getting incorrectly billed, have you checked the meter readings? Smart meters don't have a great reputation.
  
  My bill also shows I use way more electricity than similar houses. My best guess is they have a heat pump or gas heat/water heater. Whereas I have forced air electric.
  I recently installed an emporia energy monitor. It's basically a kill-a-watt meter that you connect to the circuit breakers for full house monitoring. And while I see some areas that I could improve to cut my bill, no where near enough to get to what the power company is saying similar houses are using. Saving up for a heat pump now as I think that's the best thing I can do to get my bill down. And as a plus I'd have central AC instead of having to use window units in the heat.
  
  it's* already nearly almost off
- I went grocery shopping Saturday. Grapes were $6/pound. It's getting so we can't afford produce anymore.
  
  Grapes were $6/pound. It’s getting so we can’t afford produce anymore.
  Are we talking regular red/black/green non-organic grapes or some of the more exotic varieties? I track grape prices myself and $2.99/lbs mark for out-of-season-domestic grapes. This is the current price a regular grocery stores right now here with the exception of warehouse clubs which have them at $2.29/lbs. The normal in-season non-warehouse price can be as low as 89c/lbs, but is usually $1.25/lbs.
  Is there something special about your geography that makes it more expensive?
  
  I'm in the southern emisphere and just started eating grapes. Assuming you are in the US, consider looking for produce that is in season. Besides helping with your budget, it contributes to addressa number of other issues around shops and producers trying to focus on growing stuff that doesn't want to grow at a particular time of the year.
  
  Grapes are in season the exact opposite time of year as we are now.
  Imported/greenhouse produce is expensive. Always has been.

I had dinner with my mom last night. She told me she made $2.20/hr as a waitress in 1972. Not including tips.
That's the equivalent of over $16/hr now.
The boomers have no idea how lucky they were. And they fucking wasted it.
- They weren't lucky. They voted for people that removed all the guardrails that enabled their success.
  
  I agree. I still think they were lucky insofar as they were born in the right place at the right time to benefit massively over future generations.
  
  They had too. They couldn't get rich if they had to pay workers what they were paid when they were starting out.
  
  Not mutually exclusive.
- Waiters today make $2.13 an hour in my state.
- Few people in that period had the information you have now. People were presented with this economic miracle in the 50s and there was little to no components other than conformity.
  
  As more time has passed and I continually re-assess my Boomer parents, I am struck more and more that they truly were a propagandized generation who was never given the tools to properly think through what they were seeing. It was always just "here, more, buy this, this technology is new and amazing". Everything was new year after year until the late 80s/early 90s, when technology evened out. Even then people had cell phones and such. Once met with the Internet, especially through Facebook, we could see all of their problems flourish.
  Not to say that any generation is better than any other or not, but I do believe that each generation after Boomers is actually much better than the previous one at critical thinking--probably because society had no choice but to and the fact that more people have at least a bachelors degree now.
- Median waiter salary in USA seems to be $15/hr currently. Did you think it was significantly less? There are large differences in the median between states. Where did she work?
  
  Reminder that 15/hr was the goal about ten years ago and inflation spiked hard between 2020-2023. 15/hr is no longer a "generous" wage.
  
  $15/hr with tips included, maybe. That's why I specified that the $16/hr equivalent from 1972 did not include tips.
  
  Not even close. Server wage is like $3 in some states. Stop lyin
  
  Servers in most of America make $2.13 an hour plus tips. Id say depending on COL, anywhere from $12/hr at shitholes to $30+/hr at nice spots or high COL
  $15/hr seems like a decent number, considering most servers will not claim cash tips. considering lack of cash these days compared to credit usage, id say $20-25/hr is a decent average.
  But again, the other commenter said that $2.20 was WITHOUT tips, so certainly the 1972 waittress made more still
  
  I'm seeing multiple numbers
  $10 here https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/waiter-hourly-wages
  $14 here, but also some are paid just $2/h and are expected to make the rest they need from tips: https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-does-a-waiter-in-the-us-earn-per-hour-what-is-the-average-salary-n/
  
  Livable wage is now more like $30.
- As much as you complain about the boomers, the current generation(s) are the ones you need to pay attention when it comes to who’s caused the house shortage because of unchecked capitalism. There’s more than enough houses that should house everyone for cheap.
  You cannot blame boomers for the smouldering wreck that Airbnb left behind. That was the work of a millennial. Take some responsibility for yourselves and your own actions that have attributed to the current state of society that you live in.
  
  My guy, air bnb didn't cause the shortage or even significantly make it worse. It's the mega corps that literally own hundreds of thousands of homes across the US and just rent them out. I'm not even upset at boomers who own 3 or 4 rental properties and I work with a lot of them. It's always mega corps fucking it up for the rest of us.
  
  Housing was wildly expensive and rising incredibly fast before Airbnb was invented (company started in 2008, which you might recognize as an important year for the real estate market). After 2008, tons of investors came in to buy up the depressed value properties to either flip or rent out or just hold onto until the value returned. People buying houses with cash isn't something Airbnb caused. Corporations buying up houses to rent isn't something Airbnb caused. Foreign investors buying up houses to get their money out of their country isn't something Airbnb caused.
  
  LOL you really believe that "a millenial" created AirBNB and not some conglomerate of venture capitalists funneling billions at a team made up of people of all ages?
  
  Wtf even does "the current generations" mean? Whenever people say "the newer generation" or "the young generation" or something they just sound so fucking incompetent.

Nikki Cimino, a 40-year-old recruiter living in Denver, said she finally saved up enough to buy a condo last year, but missed out on the ultra-low interest rates that had made homeownership more affordable in the early days of the pandemic. Her 5.25% interest rate pushed her monthly payments to $1,650. After a divorce in 2020, she’s shouldering $4,000 in credit card debt.
It's the credit card debt...
Instead of paying that off since 2020, she saved a down payment and bought an expensive condo. She's wasting a shit ton of money on interest because credit cards are all like 20-30%
Credit cards are predatory, if you ever carry a balance to the next month, that needs to be your highest priority.
Do a transfer to get 0% each year if you have to when recovering from emergencies. But paying credit interest for years is insane.
- Holy crap! She was "saving up" to buy a condo instead of using that money to pay off the credit cards? That's absolutely insane. I really feel like society would benefit immensely if there were mandatory financial literacy courses every 4 years, or at least before any major purchases (house, car, etc).
  
  Or just common sense laws against predatory lending by capping interest rates.
  Most people don't have a safety net and live paycheck to paycheck.
  A huge expense comes up, and rather than get a bank loan at even 8-10%, it goes on a credit card
  Companies have a tiny "minimum payment" because they don't want you to pay it off. They want that balance to grow while people ignore it. They don't want it back now, they want thousands more later.
  
  Also she was apparently planning on low interest rates, but when the rates went up she shrugged and didn't adjust her plans. It's kind of hard feeling sympathy for her. If she'd been hit with an unexpected but unavoidable expense that would be a different matter.
  
  Have you seen the movie Maxed Out? That was pretty eye opening for me.
- Bingo. I never, ever let credit card debt carry over. I'd genuinely rather miss a house payment.
- For Denise and Paul Nierzwicki, credit cards are the only way to make ends meet. The couple, ages 69 and 72, respectively, have about $20,000 in debt spread across multiple cards, all with interest rates above 20%.
  The trouble started during the pandemic, when Denise lost her job and a business deal for a bar that they owned in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, went bad.
  They applied for Social Security, which helped, and Denise now works 50 hours a week at a restaurant. Still, they’re barely scraping together the minimum payments for their credit card debt.
  Jesus. I don’t see how this gets un-fucked without a massive wave of defaults. And that’ll just lead to a different kind of fucked.
  
  Someone page Caleb Hammer!

I like the implication that economists aren't people
- Spot on if you ask me.

Her mortgage is $1650/mo, which is incredibly reasonable in Denver. I think this specific person's problems have more to do with her recent divorce. She was used to splitting costs, and probably spent quite a bit on the divorce itself
- She's paying $1650 for a house? You'd pay more for a house in a neighborhood where every night is the purge here.
  
  That's supply and demand, for you.
- It's always been pretty interesting to me how crazy the price of living changes. $1650 a month for a house seems insane to me.
  
  $1650/mo for a mortgage in Denver, CO at 5.25% interest is a fantastic price. You're going to find it can be a lot less in a lot of places in the US, but not in highly desirable major metropolitan areas
  
  lol i'm looking at paying ~4500/mo for a 3br 2ba ~1300sqft.
- ...that's more than I'd make with minimum wage in my state, which I don't think is that far behind colorado. Yikes.
  ETA: ok nvm I did math and if you make a little over $10/hr 40 hrs a week, your entire paycheck would go just toward that.
  
  You're still off unfortunately.
  Full time at $10/hr is $1600/month before income tax. For simplicity, we'll say federal+state tax is 15% so now we're at $1360. Social security is 6.2% so take away another $100.
  Then, of course, this is the United States where most people have to rely on their employees for "affordable" health insurance - and often still have money taken out of their check for it.
  So now we're at $1000-1260 monthly take home pay for a full time job at $10/hr
  
  Someone making minimum wage is unfortunately not likely to be getting a mortgage.
- $1650/mo hopefully includes taxes and homeowners insurance
  
  Yes, mortgages include an escrow payment for these
- I pay more than $2k for a 1-bed apartment in Seattle. Would love that rate for sure.
- As someone with mortage of 520€/month there's nothing reasonable in what she's paying. I don't care if it comes with 6 bedrooms, a maid, cook, gardener and a chauffeur - I'm not paying that. I'm more than fine in my tiny granny cottage on the outskirts of a middle sized city.
  
  You couldn't rent a shack that had a floor made of perpetual dirty needles for $520/month near me.

The floor is rising! But, the floor is lava.
- But the lava is tax deductable
  
  But you need an attorney to claim the deduction

To anyone struggling in the USA and wondering how to possibly get out, just live like Congress and become rich. Then, money problems are way easier to handle. If you have as much money as a Congressman, you will be equally as unconcerned with them as to the state of our union and you will be able to say things are great with a straight face.
- Not even.
  All you really need is wealthy parents. That way you never have to have any debt and get exploited by the credit system and can live your life glib and clueless and wondering why other people are so lazy and poor and didn't work hard like you.
- Exactly, just do a lot of insider trading and live the good life.
  
  Hard part is being rich first. New money goes to jail before old money
- Congress members don't make enough to be rich without taking bribes. They make $174k/year in 2024, which is equivalent to $75k/year in 1990. The only wages that haven't dropped due to inflation are CEO and other C-suites.
  
  Congress members don’t make enough to be rich without taking bribes.
  That's why so many of them take bribes :)
  
  And some are rich because of government money through contracts or handouts.
  
  That's why you can't just look at their salary, the real money is in lobbyists and stock market betting prior to rolling out industry wide changes.
  
  But then again they have no health care costs whatsoever.
- I dunno. Congressional salary really is still in the rage of "Middle Class", though definitely at the higher end of that. These people were wealthy or connected, for the most part, before getting into office. People who are barely getting by don't quit their jobs for political campaigns.
  
  I should have been more specific. Let's talk salary + perks. (official and unofficial)

Like Dubya said, you should get 2 or 3 more jobs so you can put more food on your family.
- "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it. That is fantastic that you're doing that. Get any sleep?" - President George Bush to a divorced mother of three. Omaha, Nebraska Feb. 4th 2005
  
  Proof you can't die of cringe
  
  Our enemies are innovative and resourceful - and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we.
  It was funnier when it wasn't so blatant. A politician saying this today might mean it.
  
  How else is she going to put food on her family?
- Aahahaha Bush's malapropisms, a gift that never stops giving
  
  Most of them were said by Dan Quayle.

I'm in this article and don't like it.

Gary Stevenson explains why this is, and why it's not gonna get better anytime soon.
- This video is great. He put into words what I've been suspecting for a couple months now. He predicts asset/housing prices will continue increasing while living standards stay terrible and he thinks they'll get worse. I think he's absolutely correct. A better quality of life is being gatekept by the wealthy.
- Great channel!

Consider the possibility that, first and given the political importance they have in the present day, the official numbers that the Economists are using are less than honest.
Also, I know that some countries don't include Housing Inflation - which is huge* - in their Official Inflation. Is that also the case in the US?
Last but not least, there is the whole difference between what is usually reported to us by Politicians, Economists and the Press, which is either country totals (which grow up merelly by the population growing) or the mean average (i.e. adding all values and dividing by the total number of points) which suffers from the "if a man has 10 chickens and 9 others have none, each has in average 1 chicken even though most have none" problem, and the mode (the value around which most cases are found) which is far more representative of most people's experiences: if for example the wealth increases from higher productivity are going entirelly to a few people who just get ever more filthy rich whilst the many have either stagnated or, worse, are getting a bit poorer due to inflation eating up the true value of their pay, the grand total will be growing, as will the average (if the population numbers are steady) but the mode will have stagnated or even be falling, matching the experience of most people - people get to hear about country GDP growing and even GPD-per-capita growing all the while the vast majority see not growth at all, maybe even a falling of their purchasing power (the latter for sure for any who don't already own their house).
- Been arguing for years that the Mode is far more representative of the common person's experience than Mean or Median. Most ppl don't remember that Mode even exists.
  
  All three should be reported, along with raw data. Maybe it's available somewhere, I haven't looked.
  
  I've never understood why median is a useful metric.
- Apparently inflation went down bigly in the 1980s when they decided to stop counting the cost of housing. NPR last week had a report about people advocating to put that back in so that we can have a better idea of what is going on.
  
  Well, the official Inflation is used in the calculation of the official GDP were it acts as a deflator (i.e. the more the inflation the less the GDP) to correct the Nominal GDP (which is in present day currency terms) to make the Real GDP (which is supposedly free of Inflation and hence comparable between years) aka the Official GDP.
  If the official Inflation understates the real Inflation, what happens is that the increase is the Nominal GDP that comes merelly from inflation rather than from any actual growth in wealth, is not fully offset when the Real/Official GDP is calculated, so the resulting "real" GDP number is bigger than reality and proud government politicians can come out, compare it to last years's GDP (which it should've been comparable with, if both were done properly) and claim that it was their steering of the Economy that made such a difference to last year's GDP, i.e such high GDP Growth.
  Hence the is massive political pressure to understate Inflation, i.e. to lie, so that ultimatelly larger GDP Growth figures can be posted and boasted about.

A higher quality of living is being gatekept by the wealthy.

Honest work: You make just enough to live on until its not enough and then you're homeless
Scams and grifting: You make possibly lots of money then maybe get sent to jail which is where the courts are gearing up to send homeless people anyway.

Money is for corporate people, not normal people! Silly goose

“We had more money when Trump was president,” she said, noting that three years ago her credit card debt was less than half of what it is now.
Oh boy, that's gonna upset some people.
- Only people dumb enough not to connect the strong economy under Trump to Obama, or the current issues to Trump.
  Too bad that's the majority of people.
  
  "He's gonna come back and run the country like a business again!"
  Yeah, his businesses that routinely fail and he bails out on.
  Also, its a country, not a company, assholes. People matter more than our bottom line.
- When Covid hit and lockdowns started, it was reasonable to think that the world as we know it might be ending. I was scared for sure and had started making contingency plans to flee to the mountains in a U-Haul full of canned foods and water.
  Things are manageable now despite people still dying from Covid. Big corporate has been milking us since, as if their profits today are the last dollars they will ever make, and so it goes that they squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
  It takes a special kind of ignorance to ignore the impacts of Covid which were made worse by the inaction of trump, the fucking idiot, and say something as blitheringly stupid as ‘well I had more money when trump was president ahardy har har’
  
  I'm just going to say it absolutely was not reasonable to believe the world was ending. It was bad, made far worse by people who thought it was reasonable to cough and sneeze and spit on others, on food, and mass purchase hundreds of dollars of toilet paper. However, "world ending" is a bit sensationalist and only the easily fooled and unreasonable people justified such viewpoints.
  Putting aside the tragic losses caused by Covid, both directly and indirectly, those three years might be argued as having been a chance to shift climate talks and the more negative cultural expectations experienced in developed nations, and especially the U.S. Hell, even the air itself was clearly up.
  I recognize this is a hot take and am not in any way attempting to downplay how damaging Covid was to many families. It's just such a damned shame a chance to change for the better ended up with where we are now. Further struggling, more homeless, greedflation, and an incessant need to argue amongst ourselves.
- That works the other way too. The second half of the Trump administration brought three separate events into my life that would each be financially devastating on their own. I went from debt free except mortgage and a proper emergency fund to now, even with a higher salary, I’m scraping by and have a bunch of debt to pay off.
  But I’m one of those people that knows that the President doesn’t directly control my financial situation. Trump sure as shit didn’t improve anything he touched, and I could see things in my life being a bit different if he was remotely competent with Covid, sure. I had more money at the end of the Obama administration than the end of the Trump administration. But even if that were swapped I don’t see that as a compelling reason to vote for a corrupt narcissistic rapey wannabe dictator.
- Thats... kind of how credit card debt be.

Yeah welcome to the fuck guy.
- I’m going to start using this. Thanks!

Inflation is hitting people hard. And it's happening globally not just in the USA.
Last night I ordered some food and the delivery agent told me she is living in her car because people are not tipping well and she can't afford rent anymore. Paid for her stay in a motel for now.

Every year the value of our money goes down because the government keeps printing more of it like its a cocaine addiction (This is on top of prices going up for other reasons as well).
Unless you're getting huge raises every year you're never going to get ahead, and if you're getting nothing, you're actually losing money.
- It's way worse than that.
  I suggest you go read the paper entitled "Money ~~making~~ creation in the modern economy" from the Bank Of England, but I'll summarize it here:
  In the modern economy money is almost entirelly numbers in computers and most of it is created by banks when they extend loans (they literally create that money right then and there as two entries in two ledgers, one a credit on the account of the lendee an another a debit on a special account of the bank saying that they are missing that much money).
  The "good" old days when all the money was created by governments has been gone since the 90s and the advent of digital account keeping and digital money transfers. A banking license is de facto a license to print money, though within certain conditions, with central banks somewhat limiting that money creation by imposing reserve ratios on banks (i.e. money that they do have to put aside against those outstanding loans) which can be as little as 2% of the outstanding amount.
  Edit: the title of the paper was slightly wrong. Also, here is a link to it.
  
  90s and the advent of digital account keeping and digital money transfers
  Digital account keeping has been a thing since the 1950's. And doing it on a computer didn't change that all banks lent out more than they had. It's the premise of the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Bank runs were a thing for as long as banks have existed.
- This is false and understanding why it's false is important in order for us to be able to do the right choices which allow us to both keep inflation in check and avoid pointless deep recessions or depressions. You can find a decent overview here. Creating money (multiple ways, check video) is required for a growing economy to keep prices stable (inflation close to 0). This isn't new either. It was done even in ancient Greece with silver as it is easy to see the need for it once you have all the variables in front of you. The problem isn't with money creation per se, it's with the amount but most importantly its distribution. Where does it go. Does it go towards the creation of an additional bag of chip which we have little real constraint to do, or does it go towards a house in an area where there's bidding wars for houses and no new houses can be built.
- Unless you’re getting huge raises every year you’re never going to get ahead, and if you’re getting nothing, you’re actually losing money.
  Also if you're getting raises below the cost of living increase (which most people are), you're losing money. If you get laid off, which hundreds of thousands of tech workers are, you're definitely losing money. It's not a great time right now.
- Exactly. A 3% rise when inflation is 8% is effectively a paycut.

Have you tried skipping breakfast??? /s

It's as if workers can only improve their condition in a capitalist society when the pie grows exponentially, but continual exponential growth is an impossibility in a physical world.
- It doesn't need to grow exponentially, just faster than the population.
- Do you even know what exponential growth means? Because if you feel qualified to criticize capitalism you should know.

Isn't Denver an expensive city? Buying doesn't mean instant low monthly payments. You gotta sit on that crap for ten years.
- I dunno but my buddy just moved from his apartment in Brooklyn to Omaha and he was shocked the prices there were way too close to NYC prices for rent. He did go from a 1BD to 2BD but the cost difference per ft² was almost the same. Like $200 difference.
  I've heard similar stories all across Canada as well, I think landlords have unchecked greed these days because people will end up paying no matter what they have to sacrifice you have a roof over their head.
  
  Yeah, I always laugh at those median house prices because it's impossible to find a house for that.

Some months I struggle just to save $1000 and it's really starting to get to me
- You can save $1000 a month? Damn!
  
  Right???
- I'm lucky if I can save $50 a month. You are effectively rich. Congrats on being disconnected from reality.
- poor thing
- No shade for your success but you may need a bit of a reality check. Most people cannot save $100 a month.

A former treasurer of Australia solved it. You just need to get a good job.
- Treasurer of Australia sounds like a good job. Can I have that one?
  
  yes
- I mean technically he's correct. There absolutely are jobs out there netting 150k+ a year. Even without any college education if you are not afraid to climb the corporate ladder.
  
  "the corporate ladder" is a fucking hoax lol, it is almost entirely only a concept for those born privileged

Yep. That's the truth. I didn't even feel like I was treading water until my late 40s and we were making decent money by any standard. A mortgage, a single car payment, all the insurances (family health, dental, home, car) you need to pay for, data connections (we don't have cable tv), taxes (FSaLT), and skimming money off the top for a 401k and there's very little left. Especially with the all the rising prices of groceries (our bill feels like it's almost doubled) and being subscription-fee'd to death.

So it isn't just me. My spouse and I bring in together $250000 (before taxes), we own a house and we are living paycheck to paycheck. One factor of many why I chose to move to another country. The only good thing is that once I sell the house I will be able to pay off all my debts because of how much the price of the house gone up.
- I'm sorry, but if you're making $250,000 and you're living paycheck to paycheck, your consumption if just too high, and you need to make cuts. In most countries, including the United States, you can live very comfortably on a $250,000 salary and reasonable spending.
  
  Most of my expense, other than taxes, are healthcare costs. I know of no way I can reduce how often my family needs healthcare, and I have thousands of dollars in healthcare debt still not paid. We rarely travel, rarely eat out, and rarely splurge. Maybe there is some way to squeeze our belts even tighter and make it work.
  It is easier to just move to a country with more affordable healthcare. 12 years ago when I met Americans living and working in Japan I didn't believe them when they said they were better off in Japan making less money than in the US because of how expensive healthcare is in the US. Now I regret not believing them. My family's healthcare costs grew faster than our incomes.
  
  The person mentions medical bills, but I largely agree. If most people can live somewhere in the $50 - $75k range, than this person can live at $250k by making adjustments. A lot of this sort of trouble comes because of scale. You can't fathom making so much money or what that means and you are likely to spend it without knowing precisely how much or what it means.
- 250k is a top 1% income level. There are some you problems in that math.
  
  250k is not top 1%
- Lololol, get bent with this woe is me crap
  
  What do you aspire to achieve with this toxicity?

Anecdotal

That person is a deluded Trump voter with zero financial skills and shit loads of bad debt. Of course everything is bad in their life.

Something tells me they pay for a lot of things they don't need.

Same. I'm making more than I've ever made in my life and I can barely afford paying both my mortgage and my mistress's rent, something has got to give.

"I just made the most expensive purchase of my life and I can't figure out why I am living paycheck to paycheck."
- Why would buying a house have you living cheque to cheque? Do you think you buy something on credit and then all your income gets taken until it's paid back? I'm genuinely confused about what you're trying to say, here.
  
  Also, it's not like she's paying for her mortgage in addition to whatever she was doing previously (presumably rent). The mortgage payment replaces your rent payment.
  
  It kind of does, though. She look out a mortgage and those have a monthly cost.
  What OP is probably saying is that if you have a certain income level and then you choose to take on a debt that you're going to have trouble paying back, that's mistake that you made and should have seen coming. This wasn't an unforseen medical bill, the person in the article could have chosen to buy a cheaper condo or rented until rates were more favorable.
  
  Probably because she bought more house than she could afford, and prioritized that over paying off get credit cards.
  
  If I borrow a half million from the bank, I have to pay it back in monthly installments, commonly known as a mortage. Those costs are now added to your regular expenses.
  Most rents are cheaper than mortages. So taking on a giant purchase + the cost of the mortage is a huge financial cost. Yes, she gets an asset (which she could sell at any point) but it's going to be more expensive.
  A quick look at Denver apartments for rent confirms this, a lot of 1 bedrooms available for between $400 and $500 cheaper a month.
- To be fair, they don't actually own their house if they're paying a mortgage.
  It wouldn't be any different if she was renting.
  I'm not sure why they call her a homeowner when the bank actually owns her house.
  
  In theory, over time you own more and more of a share of the house while the bank owns less and less. That's different from renting.
  Still, if you literally can't afford the mortgage payments then it's still a bad deal.
  
  They get to treat the property as if they own it from day one. Additions, changes...etc. lots of differences from renting.
  
  The bank does not own her house. She owns her house. The bank holds a lien on it. Holding a lien on something is not the same as owning it.