I contemplated wheather to post this… because I don’t want it to come across as self pitying (which is not the intent). The intent is to stir a discussion if how the middle class is rapdidly becoming unobtainable… and Facebook isn’t a viable place for venting.
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Another career transition seeming likely. Because of… student loans kicking back in.
My review yesterday went well from their perspective. They’re very happy with everything about the work I am doing. From mine, they capped any raise at 5%… So that’s 8% over two years in which inflation has been double that. Meanwhile, they let go of my boss in Janaury and handed me a ton of her workload in the name of “learning”.
And during the discussion of the raise, the head of the sales team had the audacity to say “we are just becoming profitable as a company. [Insert billionaire founder] isn’t even taking income from any of this".
I love the people I work for and the environment they foster, but when student loans kick back in 10% of my income will be going in that direction because Biden’s plan did nothing for Grad Loans. Also, peole talk about the past couple years inflation wise, but what they don’t mention is that it’s actually at 25% since 2016.
I lived contently off 40k for years in Los Angeles with the occasional bump towards 60k if I took on a really good project. At which point I could dump money in savings.
I’ve added a cat and dog since then and live on my own instead of with roommates (which I opened the possibility to by moving cross country). My standard of living hasn’t changed– indie concerts have become more frequent, buying records way less so. I still don’t really eat out unless I’m on a date, haven’t taken a real vacation since the winter of 2016 (though that will change this fall) and have quit buying organic since inflation kicked in.
Yet for people with students loans, 60k a year– which was enough for Boomers to buy a starter home and save for retirement now means being closer to paycheck to paycheck than not.
And as all of this goes through my head, I wonder how my friends with kids or who didn’t go to college are making ends meet.
First, I have to comment on your management saying that the billionaire who owns the company doesn’t take a salary…of course they don’t. This is a well known loophole that company executives exploit, they ask for compensation in stock instead of in salary because capital gains taxes are far less than income taxes. Also, they are able to borrow against stocks and if those stocks take a downturn, they are also able to count it as a loss and tax shelter capital gains from other investments. I hate this crap about how the CEO doesn’t take a paycheck, of course not, how would they leverage the tax code to their advantage if they did?
I have a lot of dystopian thoughts about why things are becoming unaffordable, but most of it adds up to our society allowing wealth accumulation with no proper redistribution mechanism—redistribution mechanisms include things like nationalized health care, properly functioning public transit, and publicly owned utilities to name a few. Much of this sort of stuff isn’t allowed at all or is barely functional because wealthy people write the laws.
As for the price of living, most people with more than one kid (I have three) don’t live in pricey areas—I live where I live because housing is affordable and it’s close to family. They usually need two incomes to make it work and when my kids were younger, we heavily relied on both of our parents for childcare and extra income if we ran into an emergency or problem. My kids have been on one real vacation in the last 5 years and we have never been able to afford a trip to a place like Disney. When I asked other parents about their Disney trip, most people cited credit card hacks and credit card debt or their parents paying for these trips. I also regularly put off medical procedures so my kids have enough medical dollars in my HSA for their care. If I can’t work, then I have to go get medical help, but my Celiac’s is still undiagnosed because I don’t want to have to pay a GI to feed me gluten and run tests on me, especially when the treatment is to not eat gluten—and I have been on a gluten free diet for two years. I rely on my parents and my IL’s to buy the kids’ clothes because a large portion of my income goes to feeding three teen/tweenagers. We go out to eat once a week—usually it’s fast food but I do much better buying in bulk from warehouse stores and cooking at home. My house needs major repairs but I am unable to fix anything especially since my ex has decided not to pay his child support or see the kids anymore. I drive an 11 year old vehicle and if that breaks, things are going to get really tight. I do take full advantage of things like the library and I don’t have cable, just streaming. What has really killed me over the last 12 months is how expensive food has become. I have started cutting down on meat in our meals and have started keeping things like popcorn for snacks instead of chips. I used to do extreme couponing when the kids were much younger but it is a whole other job and my kids only like certain brands which makes a lot of it moot, as well as the fact that most coupons are for non edible consumables like body wash and razors.
I could go on but you get the idea. We have to watch where everything is going, we rely on family, and we move to lower COL areas if we can. Most people in HCOL’s don’t have more than one or two kids—the birth rate in the US has sharply dropped and analysts wring the hands about a diminishing labor force for the future, but if people can’t afford kids, they usually don’t have them, or limit to one kid. The main reason for divorce in the US is stress over money, so our COL crisis is profoundly impacting our society.
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