"Over on Twitter, some people are roasting MarketWatch for an article originally published in January that says you should have double your salary saved by the time you’re 35.
I understand why people are poking fun at it. As MarketWatch notes in its rudely-titled follow-up, “the response highlighted just how anxious people feel about their financial responsibilities and the obstacles that outweigh saving for retirement.”
Putting such a large number on something is sure to scare people, particularly when you consider one in three Americans have less than $5,000 in retirement savings while one in five have none at all, according to Northwestern Mutual’s 2018 Planning & Progress Study. “It’s certainly possible but in my experience not typically done,” says Roger Whitney, a Texas-based Certified Financial Planner, about saving double your salary."
I must have taken more crazy pills than normal today. This is a country where the median car costs over $30k and iPhone C was discontinued because no one wanted an inexpensive phone.
If you make $70k, live on $50k (with taxes and insurance), and save $20k for 10 years starting at age 25, you have $200k (with 0 investing) by age 35, with is almost 3x the annual salary. Unfortunately, people go to out-of-state schools to get a degree in spanish art history and women’s studies, and then complain about paying 9% interest on the $160k loan, while making $30k/year as a sales rep at Macy’s. And that $30K car is usually financed, often at bad credit. Car companies make more money financing the cars than making the cars.
Corporate messaging works exactly as it intends to, then we blame the sheep. No one here should be annoyed about it, everyone is a shareholder.
It makes too much sense to teach personal finance in high school, that’s why we don’t. I assume at least, it’s been awhile since I left. Per boomer memes I’m under the impression kids snort Tide pods (not cheap btw) and renounce Jesus instead of reading the Constitution.
Maybe socialists that refer to people as sheep are just enablers.
If people took the responsibility to be adults instead of blaming everyone for the fact that they can quote every Ke$ha lyric and recite the last 10 bachelor contestants but don’t understand compounding interest they would have fewer problems. You spend some time in 3rd world countries watching people overcome real hardship and realize the problem isn’t “the system” it’s the fact that even the advocates for the "oppressed"in a materialistic society can’t help comparing them to livestock. People are just soft, that’s on them.
No I can still work that in. My Dad had an immigrant from Mexico that worked for him, made decent money helping manage a manufacturing floor, saved quietly for 10 years and then one day told us he bought a large avocado farm in Mexico and left. Looking at the price of avocados today, driven up by snowflake economics I always appreciate how well he must be doing today. Awesome guy, did all of that without any of the benefits these born on easy street Americans had.
Good friend of mine, born on an orphanage in Morocco. Saved carefully, came to the US, worked a lower mid class job and paid for his entire education in cash up front wound up as a major CFO. So stringent on costs anytime he’d drive out of state he’d buy a radar detector from Walmart and then return it when he got back. Every single time.
Point is I know a lot of people who are doing well, but people today just don’t care about savings then they make it someone else’s fault. I save more than half my income with two kids in a one income household. That means packed lunches every day, brewing coffee at home to keep in a thermos and just generally being disciplined, we simply don’t do what most of the people around us are doing which means things like literally 100% of my daughters’ clothes being hand me downs from other families. I have a flip phone, my wife has been dealing with shoddy Sprint service for a year because we took advantage of the 1 year free promotion and I drive a 200k mile 11 year old SUV. If I break $500K income in the next few years I doubt any of that will change. It’s simply not being entitled.
You can’t call it a fault of the education system because in any comparatively poorer country people take it on themselves to live within their means and not buy a $4 latte every morning on their way to work. A coworker pointed out to me that most of the millennial whining boils down to the fact that sure you can live on one income like your parents. That dream exists, but my parents like most people of that time started in a doublewide where I grew up, we had one car, one TV, one phone, one community college degree and rarely went to restaurants. Live that way and THEN you can complain if you can’t make ends meet.
This is the key to becoming financial independent. I don’t think it is just a millennial issue, but i’ll agree it is an issue for most millennials.
I have seen this play out in some clients lives. One client has an MBA and is making $400,000 a year and is struggling to save anything. Has net worth of about $350,000 I have another client who is younger making $40,000 working in a grocery store who has a higher net worth than the first.
i know this guy who makes 70k job right now as a 55 yo dude with a wife that makes 80k and 4 kids and is worth 8m. but he has like 5 houses in sf and a tax return close to 500k/year. he asked me for advice as to whether to work the govt job and pension or get paid more in the private sector. i told him. nigga, every marginal dollar you earn at this point is taxed over 50%+. stick wit the pension das like an annuity. you dont need the aggravation and $$. just earn your shit passively and tax free. i actaully wanted to tell him to not work. what is the point of hustling, just travel the world. maybe divorce your wife and find someone hotter. JUST KEEDING!
also lets stop hating on the ballers. if everyone saved, then returns wouldnt be as bumpin. the ballers shouldnt be criticized, they should be idolized and admired for their generosity!
I’m probably buying a little too much into the implied internet facetiousness of your posts, but wow, you guys might be a little cynical maybe? Millennials are doing everything better than anyone before them, the downside is they’re also doing everything worse than anyone before them.
Nearly 51 million households don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone , according to a study released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That’s 43% of households in the United States.
It’s also interesting that the link directly under this paragraph says: “Related: Unemployment is below 4% for the first time since 2000”. Doesn’t sound related to me.
my politician friend 30m owns a real estate consctuction co but made his bread and butter in used car sales. He told me that he sold the auto car at slight margin after paying commission. Majority of money was when they financed cars to desperate people who don’t have good credit at like double digit rates. Almost exactly like the shit you saw on John Oliver show. And I know his killer company where all they do is buy up these loans so that these auto dealerships get cash money upfront. Their profits are bankkkk!
The MEDIAN household income in the US is $59k. I call B.S. Besides, those statistics don’t tie out with actual statistics on homelessness, cell phone ownership, food, health insurance rates or transportation. Basically, common sense and statistics tell you this is fake news. Sorry for your loss. Also, landlines still exist.
The uninsured rate decreased between 2015 and 2016 by 0.3 percentage points as measured by the CPS ASEC. In 2016, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire calendar year was 8.8 percent, or 28.1 million, lower than the rate and number of uninsured in 2015 (9.1 percent or 29.0 million).
The vast majority of Americans – 95% – now own a cellphone of some kind. The share of Americans that own smartphones is now 77%, up from just 35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011.
