Do you think it’s essential to keep a solid buffer between you and disaster or did you sacrifice that to the gods of “living life to the fullest right here and now”? Or mayhaps you’re struggling to keep a boat afloat as it is and going cheaper isn’t really an option for you as you are already at the timit of cheapness for your specific situation and saving seems like an unachievable goal, becauase everything goes to surviving?
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Necessities used to be about 50% of my income after tax. I’ve recently moved so I’m not exactly sure what it is now, probably about 66%.
I’m fat and gay.
We spend less money than we make, but that feels like an extremely privileged position. I’m lucky that I hate online shopping and that I get over wanting things super quickly, so I don’t feel deprived.
Same. I have what I need, much of what I want, and I don’t really have many expensive habits.
I live right at my means. My food and clothes aren’t expensive, but they’re not trash. I spend enough on food that it’s not just fortified sugar and plastic, and my clothes will take my abuse without looking bad, but i gave up on building a large reserve of funds. The world has tanked us all too many times for a savings to be worth anything. The price of everything has inflated much faster than any of the bullshit indexes report, stocks are rigged and can be wiped out at any point. I’ve had my IRA decimated three times by things completely out of my control. But my posessions are still mine. And they’re value adjusts for inflation. I developed an eye for antique glass, tools, furniture, and art. I learned to refurbish things. I learned to predict decor styles early enough to hunt for valuable closeouts and pricing errors.
Every time a “once in a lifetime” event happens, I sell things I fixed or stocked up on. A rusty handplane at an antique store might run me 12 bucks and look like a knickknack off the wall at an applebees. But since I know what I’m looking for, I can spend 2 hours bringing it back to life and it’s worth $150 to a woodworker. I needed some tile for a bathroom. The stuff I liked is 15$ per foot. Unless I buy a whole pallet, then it’s 2$ per foot, and I had 65 extra boxes to sell on FB for half the price of home depot, and I sold out in 2 days.
An irresponsible idea, but true none the less: If the value of money keeps going down, so does the value of debt. 15 years ago, 5000$ in debt might as well have been a million to me. Now, it’s a few month pay off. And if I didn’t just waste the money on useless trash, the items I gained from the 5k will garner several times that amount if I suddenly lose my job.
Playing that game several times gets you a hell of a credit score, too, so you can ramp up returns. I put myself 70k in credit card debt buying materials and tools to build my house. At 20-30% Apr, that 70k would never be paid off. But houses are valuable, so I had the house appraised (270k, fuck yeah), and took a fixed rate mortgage out to pay off the cards. Now the interest rate is 4%, and 70k is significantly less than the value of the house, so it can’t be taken away from me if I’m suddenly bankrupt.
And a funny thing in this bullshit capitalism game, paying off a shitload of debt AND taking a mortgage shoots a credit rating even higher.
I ranted for so long here I think I missed the initial point of the prompt.
tldr: no.
Ok, IRA is a strictly amercan thing (I guess) sooo… Not to be rude or anything, but you’re doing a couple of things wrong here. Im afraid Its not that the capitalism game is rigged, its just that you are bad at playing it. Stocks beat inflation by ~5-7%/year if you use them right (which is putting money YOU WONT NEED in another 10+ years in there EACH MONTH and not even lookimg at it for the bare minimum of ~10y).
Pre-read-full comment:
that its not just sugar and plastic
Damn are you an american? Cos it sure as hell does sound like an almost exclusively american thing to have junk food be cheaper than normal fruits/veggies/potatoes/meat/fish, lol 🤣
Unhealthy foods are more expensive than healthy food in lots of places in the western world.
I try to but I’m terrible at it.
I don’t, but it’s mostly because I don’t want much/consumption is not fulfilling for me. My wife is somewhere in the middle, even if she enjoys new things way more than me, but we’re financially privileged all in all so we’re alright.
Ну-ка, я все таки хочу знать: чё?
