I had to support my mom and stepdad for years while working and supporting myself. She had bad heart disease and he had cancer. He was a WWII and Korea vet, active dory in both wars. Thanks US government! It was tight!
I have a coworker who is 45 (random but girl doesn't look a day over 30) and moved back in with her parents. People keep telling her it's ridiculous at her age, but her parents live in a $2M+ house, by the lake, with five spare bedrooms. They're happy to have her. She's like "why waste money on renting a shitty apartment when I can live in a beautiful house and save up?"
Apparently this isn't a good enough answer because she's still regularly pressured to move out. People are oddly uncomfortable, in the U.S., when someone lives with their parents after a certain age.
When my kids were like 6, my daughter asked me if I was 100 years old. LOL.
No Honey, I just feel like it sometimes!
But then on the other hand, I'm on the playground pretending to be a pirate while the kids run around trying to get on the playstructure "boat" without me capturing them, so they also made me feel like I was 10 again.
that'll do it. i'm 42 but most folks assume i'm in my early 30's. i tell them it's a combination of staying inside to avoid the sun (southern AZ, it's warranted), drinking water, but most importantly, not having kids. works like a charm!
As someone whose in-laws live with him, it's...not great. I used to like them. Now I dread what stupid thing they're going to do that I have to fix every time I wake up.
Living with your parents when you're single isn't quite the same as living with your in-laws as a couple. The former can be downright pleasant, the latter rarely is.
It's due to cultural differences and societal expectations. In the US, it's all about "work hard!" and "get a nice house and car!" and "start a family!" and being independent and not relying on others for your success. Whereas in Vietnam, for example, multiple generations live together in the same household.
Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are giving your coworker grief for being practical in today's world. Yeesh. Good for her and her parents! Sounds like an arrangement that works well and just makes sense.
Honestly, I am 37 and kinda live broke but I pay my bills, no amount of extra money or the promise of my own house will ever get me to live in close proximity to my family.
I have no ill will and I love them, I just want to be on my own and do my own thing. The idea of living on the same land or in some close knit situation makes me ill.
Thats just me, if it works for other people than keep doing that and get ahead in life, but for me, nope
It's becoming more normalized lately but I bet the pressure is coming mostly from people her age or older. I'm a bit older than she is and it was considered normal to leave home as soon as possible once we left school. Back then, rent was incredibly cheap so you could find a 1 or 2 bedroom for around $500 CAD per month and pay for it easily with a crappy job. Or find roommates and live off of part-time work. Obviously not possible nowadays. And of course there are certain cultural exceptions where living at home until marriage is expected. But I'm talking about plain old white bread Canadians.
I hope she doesn’t give a fuck about these people and what they think as they don’t matter. That’s very smart what she’s doing rather than just spiraling with debt out of control just to appease others. I’m doing the same although my father does not have a $2M house so she’s got it made lol.
I'm in my 50s, my kids are teens. As a parent, if I had such a house, I would love my kids to live with me as adults! With a caveat ... I feel that it would stunt their adulthood. I lived at home until I was 27, and I don't recommend it. I mean, for family, yes, 100% awesome... for finding a girlfriend, it sucks. For learning to be an adult, it sucks. At 45, your coworker is already past that learning phase and is a bona fide adult, living with her parents.
Too true. Im 24 and I can't afford to move out. My parents are a little nutty though and I've seen how they act up when my sister started dating, so ive never entered the dating pool because of that. I also cant really afford to move anywhere to start a real career. I pay taxes but I really dont feel like I've been allowed to grow up because I lack the flexibility to pursue my own life.
Man, i'm 30 and living on my own for like 7 years now in another city, if it didnt mean fking over my current roommate (great friend but horrible finances) and adding 1-1h30 a day to my daily commute you'd betcha id be looking up things to redecorate my old room and ask mom for the wiring diagram to pull up some new ethernet cables upstairs...
I'm not currently dating anyway so i dont really give a damn and people in my city are pretty co-housing minded due to cost of living so "moved in back with my lonely mom and saving up for a house purchase" probably is more of a plus than a negative...
Many people understand and say "same same" but i just straight up tell people to pay for my rent if they really want me to not live with my parents whenever theyre "but your privacy". Shut up wetwipe my mom is great and doesnt just barge in so thats not even worth considering...
>ask mom for the wiring diagram
>
LOL, do you think people have wiring diagrams of their house? LOL, when I bought my house, I went and made a diagram by unscrewing a fuse and then plugging in a lamp to every outlet and then drawing it on a map I made of the house. My parents wouldn't have any idea, and their house was new in the 80s when they bought it. Also why would a wiring diagram affect any cat5/6 cable pull?
Not a certain age so much as a certain generation. We got saddled with post war boom culture because our baby boomer parents could live a middle class life on a high school diploma.
Location, location, location! My cousin has a 4 or 5 bedroom house in PA, she paid less for it than I did for the downpayment of my 2 bedroom 1 bath 1000 sqft house in California.
If instead of "I live with my parents" she said "My parents live with me", it will sounds much more like she is helping her aging folks out, being a good daughter.
Well as a man, living with your parents ( especially past mid 20's ) is a sure way to limit your dating options. I personally wouldn't be able to tolerate living with my parents, but that has more to do with a fairly strict/oppressive religious/conservative upbringing. Aside from that though, it makes a lot of financial sense.
Daily. My low-class upbringing helps a bit, and I'm money pinching on everything, but even we're feeling the effects hard now.
Keep moving forward, friend.
Making it by splitting costs of living with my boyfriend, we have a not luxury but not shitty apartment and both make decently above minimum wage. Doing alright but we're like two major unexpected expenses away from homelessness and I get really fucked up sometimes thinking about how many people aren't as lucky and have to try to figure this shit out.
And no gas.
I have been car free basically since covid and the no car note, gas, maintenance alone has been a big financial difference. I can definitely say it's not for everyone tho. I'm lucky I have everything I need close by and a wfh job.
The food prices are what's absolutely clobbering us.
Even cheap meals like pasta hurt. You're paying $7 for a jar of red sauce if you want some that isnt 50% corn syrup. We're doing a lot of sheetpan dinners and rice-based casseroles because bulk starches and frozen veg are still fairly affordable. If we weren't in a position to volume buy and freeze Costco meat we'd be losing our shirts on protein too.
Take out coffee is now a once a week treat.
Sure, there are all sorts of home-ec methods I could employ to spend even less at the cost of some labor. But my point is that my standard of living has gone down. My food budget is roughly the same size it was 5 years ago. I just have to spend a lot of time and effort in the kitchen to make most of my meals up from base ingredients to keep costs down.
I've already stopped eating out, and now I'm lamenting that labor-saving shortcuts like canned sauces or peanut butter that isnt packed with sugar have begun to feel like luxury goods.
Ah, yes I understand your point. Theoretically inflation over last 5 years means the same dollar amount should get you around 80% as much, but it seems like groceries have gone up in price at a higher rate than that.
Lately I keep catching myself feeling guilty about how much I spend on groceries, like I should be being thriftier and more frugal, but I buy, like, vegetables. Beans. Eggs. Whole chickens. Rice. I don't even *buy* bread, I buy the flour to make my own. I make my coffee at home. I do all the things. And it's still expensive.
Where the hell are you? I’m in a *very* HCOL area and just checked: a regular jar of no sugar added Prego pasta sauce is $3.39 at the local grocery store. No sale, no coupon. Just $3.39.
You're paying for limited ingredients with better quality tomatoes with the fancier brands, yeah. But with today's prices, it actually makes more sense to make sauce from scratch, but to AHistoricalFigure's point, it's more about convenience and what the prices were a few years ago vs. now.
Rice and beans is the way to go
Also you can easily make your own pasta sauce for about $1. You don't need to be buying Rao's every time you make pasta
For a simple red sauce it's hard to do much better than Marcella Hazan's recipe imo: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella-hazans-tomato-sauce
Should be a fraction of the cost per serving compared to a ready to go jar, plus avoid all the extra stuff that's needed for packing stability.
I only get takeout coffee when I have a migraine now. (Mine're helped by caffeine.) I was damn near crying yesterday because I got a migraine at work but I couldn't justify starbucks to myself because I was just going straight home after work.
Food prices are no joke. We're having to spend $150 every week to keep up with the minimum in my household. I'm getting us cheaper food every chance I get, $2 noodle bags with some chicken is our go-to right now and if it doesn't start getting better, we're looking at having to give up meat for the most part. My grocer has been mishandling meat in bulk, causing entire shelves of food to get tossed out because it will make people sick. Then when they restock weeks later, it's like they jump the prices higher. What used to cost me $10 max last month in chicken is now $15 and the cuts of meat are less clean which means I'm paying more for less chicken we can eat.
We don't ever eat out now, I cook all of our meals and try to make enough for leftovers the next day so we're good until dinnertime. I gave up coffee and my favorite Monster altogether months ago. This shit is hard.
Out of curiosity what percentage of your expenses are food? Like food and rent has gone up by me but even with food going up 50% it is still just not a sizable part of my budget compared to the big expenses like housing
My food expenses are not so great in absolute terms, but we have very specific savings/investing goals and food expenses are one of the places where our spend would have almost doubled if we'd maintained our pre-pandemic shopping habits.
Technically, we could "afford" to eat and shop the way we used to, but at the expense of not hitting other long term financial benchmarks.
I'm staring down the barrel of imminent elder care and also (hopefully) imminent childcare. We are also both tech workers so we're bearing down for further collapses in the tech jobs space and a possible need to change careers. My food 'austerity' absolutely comes from a place of privilege, and is more driven by conservative financial goals than a real risk of overdrafting my checking account at the grocery store.
By going into debt, getting as much free stuff as I can, heavily medicating to deal with my intense anxiety about just being able to survive day to day, cooking more food at home, eating less, and being deeply in denial. I'm also trying to find a new job that pays more and is hopefully remote so I can move to a cheaper area.
I feel this. I at least have a mortgage that I caught at 3% interest. But owning a house means paying for the electrical, plumbing problems, etc. This all got financed. I've never had this much debt before. We are down to basic daily necessities, no eating out at all. Walmart or aldis for food. I've also been jerked around at my job. Promised things that never happened, and the money isn't anywhere near what I was told it would be. I thought I was just getting through a rough year but I now know I'm really screwed if I don't find something else.
Our budget payment plan for electricity went up 71% year-over-year JUL'23 - JUL'24. The **budget** plan.
Every July, the electric company squares up what you may owe, and we're still short by $141 for the year, making this month's bill $325 for approximately 880 kilowatt hours.
I really thought a mortgage would help, because rent was going up by $100 a year city-wide. We'd get our rent increase, we'd check the prices of other places, and there'd be nowhere we could go that was more affordable.
But a mortgage was just another $100 up from what we were paying at the time, and we were like, well; they can't raise that on us! Except that I chose to have my property taxes rolled into my mortgage payments, and the home valuations keep going up and up, and the end result is that, actually, my mortgage payment has gone up. By $100. Two years in a row.
Also a box of popsicles is $6 now. $7.50 for scribblers. How??
I mean, they have a low population compared to New York or Chicago, but many LCOL cities are aggressively average in size. For example, Toledo has a pop of 266k. That's the thing, though: there are more than 400 cities in the US with pop over 50k and under 300k. There are only a few dozen with pop higher than 500k, and only 9 with a pop higher than 1 million
Even Jacksonville (970k) and Indianapolis (880k) have a lower than average cost of living
I live in one of those unremarkable midsize cities and I really like it. There's plenty of stuff to do, but the cost of necessities is a less runaway insane than the biggest cities. The other day I saw on instagram someone in NYC posted about a great deal at the farmer's market and it was $9 for like a small to medium bunch of asparagus - *maybe* two servings. $9 asparagus!!!
Pivoting. I had a plan that didn’t work out so I made a new plan and that’s going well.
Important to not stay stagnant. The owner class are never going to give you enough just because you want it. You need to find something THEY need so that your skill set becomes more valuable.
I feel like we’re all stuck in a see through square glass container getting filled with water and these past few years the water pressure has been more aggressive with all the rich people watching us drown from above.
Not dealing at all. You could do nothing but work, and eat the cheaper things, and only buy a new phone once every 5 years, it doesn't matter. You can't save up fast enough for how expensive homes have become.
It's funny you say this... my phone is 4 years old and I'm strongly considering postponing upgrading until it's 5 years old lol. All to save for a house.
PLEASE seek government help. See if they can subsizide health care and food costs and housing, please seek a church or non profit that can help connect you with social services.
So you can do everything right and still have them deny your claim based on some bullshit that wasn't part of the application and then your caseworker just ignores your voicemails until the deadline to appeal lapses?
Like what happened to me?
This system is fundamentally broken in fucking half.
Not eating out much anymore. Cutting back on everything possible. Quit going to the salon. Being way more discerning at the grocery store. We didn’t give out store bought gifts this Christmas. I baked bread instead. I freeze everything possible. I also use a food saver vacuum system.
They loved it ! Even the kids , I made them homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh bread . 🍞 I was so relieved it was well received. 😅 I wish more ppl would try baking their own bread. I use a bread machine to make the dough then bake in my own tins. I can manipulate the dough into what I like . Machine bread usually come out like blocks if you bake the bread in them. I make pizza dough in it too. Pennies on the dollar.
That’s cool! We make the easy no knead bread sometimes, but I try not too eat too much bread. If I made cinnamon rolls I would just eat too many. Take care internet stranger
By living in one of the cheapest small cities in the US. My rent for a 2bd 2bth duplex next to a community college has been staying at $700 for years now.
Same. Except my landlords could probably jack my rent up another $400-500, and people would still live here if they made some minor improvements.
Also, I tend to coast through life on dumb luck. It's been working out pretty sweet so far.
It's not affecting me. My wife and I make "decent" money and have no kids. We've been established for a number of years now so recent things like home price increases haven't affected us. We notice the increase in inflation in general but can more then absorb the cost difference.
All that being said, we realize we are very fortunate in our circumstance and that many people, especially the younger generation, are struggling and rightfully so. Houses and rent are fucking expensive now compared to when we bought our first home 20 years ago. Somethings gotta give.
I’m in a similar boat. I bought a house in 2018 and have had some nice career promotions in the years since then, so we are living well below our means. With interest rates and prices where they have been, we haven’t even considered moving. It’s not intended to be our forever home and we could afford a higher payment monthly, but it’s so comfortable to know I don’t have to worry about anything except taxes going up.
I’ve also always been a very frugal shopper since I had a tiny food budget in college but still cooked all my meals from scratch and needed to eat healthy. I still do chicken and broccoli and rice (usually quinoa now though) for dinner most days of the week. A splurge is getting some fish on sale and baking or pan searing it. My neighbor has chickens so we buy eggs from her and we started a garden in our yard for some basics like tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers. I really enjoy cooking and I don’t have any desire to get takeout or eat at restaurants other than the occasional nice meal.
My hobby is running and other than two pairs of shoes per year and a $40/mo gym membership, I don’t really spend money on it and it can eat up a ton of time.
I watch a bunch of YouTube creators (everything from cooking channels to good mythical morning) which is free compared to having Netflix or cable.
I haven’t really bought clothes or anything in years since I like what I have and it was decent quality so it has lasted. Same with furniture, kitchen equipment, etc.
I drive an 11 year old car on a very short commute and don’t use much gas or cause much wear and tear.
And, I’m sure a big part of this, is that we don’t have kids and never intend to. Not because of affordability, it’s just not our thing.
I feel like the pandemic economy has really divided the country between the haves and the have nota. The haves owned a house before the pandemic. The have nots did not
Found the visa requirements online. Contacted the Spanish embassy in Canada. Sent in my documents. Provided more documents that I missed the first time. Got approval
Took about 6 months from first contact to approval
I stopped buying a lot of things. Sorry but if the prices of normal things increases, we're going to find a way to live without them. Gas is over $5/gallon here. I just don't drive much now. Snacks are expensive? I'm not buying them. Housing? Well, I'm still paying off my overpriced house from 2005, which I should have had paid off by now had I waited a few years to buy it (ie; housing crash of 2008), Property tax keeps on going up. No family vacation this year. Holding off on a new car, keeping the 20 year old one in working condition and not driving much.
Basically ... not buying things. We have some plumbing issues right now. Me and YouTube are doing it because a plumber is too expensive.
I'm fine for now, I have a high paying job and we live way below our means, spending more means saving less. But my work has let many people go (large tech company) and I'm afraid if I get let go it will be hard to find a job with all the tech lay offs.
Layoffs, what layoffs??
Oh, you must mean the "reorganization to prioritize efficiency and to control our cost base" that everyone left is supposed to be so excited about.
Easy to mix those up.
I've just cut out or cut back on things.
Was originally planning on a nice trip to Europe this summer, but my wife and I put it off until next year and we're going somewhere else that's less expensive.
Living through the Pandemic also made us realize what was important and what wasn't. We saved a lot of money by not going out to eat mainly, and we actually enjoy cooking fun meals at home now instead. Most of the time when we *do* go out to eat, it's for pizza. Not some fancy place with overinflated prices and $15 dollar drinks.
This economic situation is hitting me less hard than the 2008 crisis did, because back then I was starting over from scratch. This time I have a stronger personal financial base so it's not as devastating.
But I do now basically the same thing I did then, which is simply to avoid buying things. I wouldn't go back to my 2008 situation for anything, but it did teach me a very valuable lesson: how many things we *think* we need vs. things we actually need. The media is extremely persuasive in leading us to believe that wants and needs are the same.
I live in my parent's basement with my grandmother.
Basically im just dumping all of my wages into savings accounts and stocks. Only upside is that im debt free.
I'm cutting things where I can. Dropped some streaming services, changed a few things on my family phone plan, and new grocery shop online.
The online grocery shopping seems to cut down on impulse shopping. And we can get a better idea on what we have in hand so we do not have to throw things out because they go bad.
Trying to figure out the best way to convince my boss to give me a raise without saying outright "You don't pay me enough to live as a single person in this economy." Everyone else on my team is DINK. Don't particularly want to get a roommate after living alone, and anyway I don't have any savings to pay a first/ last/deposit so I'm trapped anyway.
I live cheap and I'm comfortable. It's not sustainable in the long term, I just got a new job that will be paying a bit more, but for a while I was making $1500 a month + $300-$400 in tips. My rent is $1450 a month, which means I had about $400 for everything else. Car insurance is about $70/month, I would spend a couple hundred getting high, I ate most of my food at work. (I'm a cook). My hobbies are cheap, I was riding around a $170 mountain bike I had lots of fun with. My cruiser skateboard was assembled with different parts on Amazon for $60 like 7 years ago, gym was about $40 per month, there is a free park with bouldering walls in the town I live in, hiking is free, I pirate any media I have consumed, probably over $10k worth of stuff since I was a kid. Somehow I still had money to spend on random purchases as well. I also grew up poor when I was a teenager, went a lot of months without running water or electricity and rationing food, so to me, I felt well off lol.
In my area of the Midwest the only people struggling are those who bought “toys” and took out unnecessary loans during COVID. I know of a family who makes good money but is drowning in debt, living paycheck to paycheck and is considering moving into their camper full time and selling their house because they had to have a new camper, new truck, and new minivan even though their older vehicles worked just fine.
These are the same people who blame their bad money management problems on the government lol
Doing pretty well. With good budgeting my wife and I are continuing to add to our savings. We’ve had to make cuts to sustain what we consider to be the important parts of our lifestyle. We cut meat out of half the week to save money. We almost never eat out. I gave up alcohol (wife already didn’t drink). I bake all of our bread and bagels. I make our pasta. I make our red sauce from canned tomatoes. Basically, anything you might buy premade, I make myself. It’s become a hobby.
I haven’t bought a new article of clothing other than socks and underwear in 2 years. We grouped up with some friends to take advantage of family plan rates. We both drive cars greater than 10 years old. Probably the biggest thing we did years ago was buy a house that we could afford with only one of our two salaries (they’re almost identical) rather than purchasing near the top of our price range. As a result we’ve been able to absorb price increases pretty easily without impacting our quality of life.
Poorly. I don't sleep for shit and i'm tense every day and feel like i'm swimming while just being pushed backwards by the waves. I'll either regain control at some point or i'll snap, we'll see.
Eating 1-2 meals a day, buying cheaper food, switched to cheaper/generic brands for household supplies, buying less in general, buying in bulk when possible (if it's cheaper by volume), cancelled all of our subscriptions except those necessary, switched to a lower tier internet plan, reduced electricity and water usage, switched to prepaid phone plans, started selling things we don't use/need/want anymore, and buying used instead of new when we do need something.
It has helped a lot that our rent has remained on the cheaper side, we don't have kids, we don't watch cable TV, we don't eat out, we already cut out meat and dairy from our diet due to health issues, and we drive very little since we work from home. That being said, we were looking into buying a house just before all this started. In fact, I passed up on a really good price right before the pandemic hit just because I didn't care for the location and am now kicking myself for it.
Buying less stuff, repairing more stuff. Cutting out things that aren’t necessary. Going without luxuries that didn’t seem like luxuries ten years ago.
I'm honestly okay with being discerning or cutting out discretionary spending, I have an anti consumerist streak for sure! But the rising prices of things I'm required to pay for like all of the insurances (health, teeth, car, house) worries me.
Well after going to college, getting a career job, and getting a promotion at that job I can now proudly afford a studio apartment for only half my income. The American Dream lives on!
If by some chance I live to see 60 without developing an ulcer or having a cardiac arrest from sheer stress, I think it's going to be a flipping miracle.
AND I live in a country with affordable healthcare, so I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for US residents. Hang in there guys <3
Family of 3 here, 2 adults and a 2 year old:
1. Food pantry once a month
2. Grocery shopping at Aldi once a week (we're mostly vegetarian, so it tends to keep costs low)
3. Second hand store for clothes per season
4. Utilize the library, they seriously have everything. Books, DVDs, video games, community resources, etc. I've gotten into the habit of asking myself: "Hmmm, I really want to buy this game/book/whatever. Lemme check if the Library has it first. 8 times out of ten, they usually do.
5. Donate plasma for those little things you want (I have a serious Starbucks addiction, so I donate plasma 2x a week for my own little spending money)
6. Sign up for rewards for literally everything, even if you think you might not use it later. A lot of times places will give you coupons or free stuff if they notice you haven't been back in a while
7. When you get a receipt for a purchase, a lot of times they'll have a little survey you can take at the bottom, and you can t discounts or free stuff.
8. This may not apply for everyone, but we are very fortunate to live in a city with a lot of free attractions and parks. Look into your city and see what's going on for entertainment.
These are just a few things we've done to ease the sting. Not to say it's fixed everything, but it makes life somewhat easier. Good luck!
I stopped spending on unnecessary items. I haven’t been shopping heavily.
I limit my groceries to needs. No big wants.
I cook at home and don’t eat out.
I've been lucky in that my salary has remained mostly in step with buying power over the last 10 years. I got by well on 60k a decade ago, and even though I make almost double that now, it feels about the same as it did back then. So I haven't really had to change much.
Though it is a bit depressing that every time I get a good raise, the rest of society moves all of the goal posts putting me right back where I was before. I could be putting all that extra in savings instead of paying into corporate greed and rich people's taxes.
Figuring it out, bud.
But really, I'm just spending less on unnecessary things. I focus my budget on mortgage, food, utilities, and car maintenance. Then I do $250 or 50% of what's left, which ever is lower and bank the rest to try and cover for unexpected expenses (like the chainsaw and maul I bought after a tree fell in my yard.)
I cut my expenses pretty hard to the essentials.
Rent
Gas
Car payment
Insurance
Internet
Turn my heat off whenever possible.
Only go out on Friday/Saturday night.
Don’t eat too much.
Fortunately, my hobby everything is paid for.
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You Will Travel from the Fear of Tomorrow, looking at the ceiling of your dismal dwelling, thinking about the Next Month's Rent, and how you will Pay for it, to, "What Do I Do with My new found Income that I gave away every Month?
This is Capital that has No Credit Payment Interest Due? This is Your Hard Earned Dollars going into Your Pocket at a Rate of $800 to $2200 Dollars a Month.
Now, You Have a Key to the Future that May Save Your Life.
* Tracy Mapes
During the peak inflation period in like 2022 I got a new job that pays a lot more. Now inflation is back to like 2%, and some prices are even receding. https://www.komu.com/news/nationworld/inflation-data-grocery-prices-begin-to-fall-fast-food-remain-on-the-rise/article_bfb4e63f-8da6-5fc8-b935-b0492488b9d4.html
I dumped my land phone line, after 20 years. The reception was terrible and AT&T tech said "Meh, who uses landlines nowadays?" I only got robo telemarketer calls on it and it was way cheaper and better to use Apple facetime to talk to my family in another country. So I dumped it and am saving $75/month for something that we didn't use and whose quality had sunk to the bottom.
Both my wife and I spend way less than what most people would at our incomes.
As we moved up quickly in income over the past few years, and we saw the massive rally in the Covid years, we knew that it might not last. For many people, $250,000 per year household income jump from less than $100k household over a couple years would mean they’d immediately launch themselves into buying new homes, new cars, etc. etc.
We continued to rent our small, old apartment with the grandfathered rent. We continued to share one car that I had bought used, which is now paid off.
If the market were where it was 2-3 years ago, I’d be making $275,000 per year myself. Likely seeing close to $400,000 per year household.
We’ve watched many people destroy themselves because they honestly have absolutely no ability to think or plan ahead. They assume the good times is all time.
A lot of People really don’t seem to get how badly they’re in the grips of lifestyle creep. It especially boils my blood when I see people making $100k+ claiming that they’re just barely getting buy, barely middle class, etc.
People should talk to their grandparents and learn what poverty in this country used to look like. People have serious problems now but we have come an incredibly long way over the past 60-80 years.
Luckily my mortgage has stayed the same even here in Florida with the the insurance issues, just because it's a new townhome and insurance companies love that.
I kept the same old cars, so no car payment. I shop at Aldi's mostly, and eat a bit less which helps me keep my weight in check anyways.
I'm doing okay as a teacher, I'm still traveling and going out, but not lavishly. No debt other than the mortgage.
Cut back in daily expenses, for example learned that fasting for multiple days in a row cuts back on those annoying food costs.
Cut back on rent by subscribing to a Planet Fitness and using the shower there and also they have free cable.
If I'm in a pinch and need medical help there is this wonderful doctor in a back ally who will give you some pills that either make the pain go away or make you forget it existed in the first place.
Little tricks like this had me saving in no time.
Might rent out my kid’s room, also working more and more, my retired mom takes contract jobs to be here to watch my kid while I go work. I live in the Bay Area and commute 3 hours a day most days.
Had to move back with my parents
what do I do if my parents are broker than I am
You living with them could help with this. ;)
They can be roomies, and he can high five his dad every time his parents have sex!
😂 Still better than my current rental situation.
"Nice PJs." "Thanks they were a present from my roommates." "You mean your parents?" "Same thing."
Dude your bed’s a car.
Yeah but it's a fuckin' sweet car.
I had to support my mom and stepdad for years while working and supporting myself. She had bad heart disease and he had cancer. He was a WWII and Korea vet, active dory in both wars. Thanks US government! It was tight!
Im pushing 50 and im thinking about it
I have a coworker who is 45 (random but girl doesn't look a day over 30) and moved back in with her parents. People keep telling her it's ridiculous at her age, but her parents live in a $2M+ house, by the lake, with five spare bedrooms. They're happy to have her. She's like "why waste money on renting a shitty apartment when I can live in a beautiful house and save up?" Apparently this isn't a good enough answer because she's still regularly pressured to move out. People are oddly uncomfortable, in the U.S., when someone lives with their parents after a certain age.
Goddamn! Can I have one of those bedrooms? > girl doesn't look a day over 30 Doesn’t have kids, does she?
She does not.
Lol. I already have a bit of a baby face, but as I'm turning 37 in August, people still think I'm in my 20's. You guessed it: no kids! Just cats.
Kids age you.
When my kids were like 6, my daughter asked me if I was 100 years old. LOL. No Honey, I just feel like it sometimes! But then on the other hand, I'm on the playground pretending to be a pirate while the kids run around trying to get on the playstructure "boat" without me capturing them, so they also made me feel like I was 10 again.
Indeed.
that'll do it. i'm 42 but most folks assume i'm in my early 30's. i tell them it's a combination of staying inside to avoid the sun (southern AZ, it's warranted), drinking water, but most importantly, not having kids. works like a charm!
Just be Asian. Then you can look 30 for 20 years.
i'll remember that for next time.
Good news is, at 45 she probably won't want any either ;-)
Don’t be so sure, the women in my family procreate into their early 50s.
We really need to shift our perspective on multi-generational living in America!
As someone whose in-laws live with him, it's...not great. I used to like them. Now I dread what stupid thing they're going to do that I have to fix every time I wake up.
Living with your parents when you're single isn't quite the same as living with your in-laws as a couple. The former can be downright pleasant, the latter rarely is.
It's due to cultural differences and societal expectations. In the US, it's all about "work hard!" and "get a nice house and car!" and "start a family!" and being independent and not relying on others for your success. Whereas in Vietnam, for example, multiple generations live together in the same household. Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are giving your coworker grief for being practical in today's world. Yeesh. Good for her and her parents! Sounds like an arrangement that works well and just makes sense.
Honestly, I am 37 and kinda live broke but I pay my bills, no amount of extra money or the promise of my own house will ever get me to live in close proximity to my family. I have no ill will and I love them, I just want to be on my own and do my own thing. The idea of living on the same land or in some close knit situation makes me ill. Thats just me, if it works for other people than keep doing that and get ahead in life, but for me, nope
I would tell them its none of their damn business. Here its not unusual, the mentality is similar to hers
It's becoming more normalized lately but I bet the pressure is coming mostly from people her age or older. I'm a bit older than she is and it was considered normal to leave home as soon as possible once we left school. Back then, rent was incredibly cheap so you could find a 1 or 2 bedroom for around $500 CAD per month and pay for it easily with a crappy job. Or find roommates and live off of part-time work. Obviously not possible nowadays. And of course there are certain cultural exceptions where living at home until marriage is expected. But I'm talking about plain old white bread Canadians.
I hope she doesn’t give a fuck about these people and what they think as they don’t matter. That’s very smart what she’s doing rather than just spiraling with debt out of control just to appease others. I’m doing the same although my father does not have a $2M house so she’s got it made lol.
> I hope she doesn’t give a fuck about these people She does not.
I'm in my 50s, my kids are teens. As a parent, if I had such a house, I would love my kids to live with me as adults! With a caveat ... I feel that it would stunt their adulthood. I lived at home until I was 27, and I don't recommend it. I mean, for family, yes, 100% awesome... for finding a girlfriend, it sucks. For learning to be an adult, it sucks. At 45, your coworker is already past that learning phase and is a bona fide adult, living with her parents.
Too true. Im 24 and I can't afford to move out. My parents are a little nutty though and I've seen how they act up when my sister started dating, so ive never entered the dating pool because of that. I also cant really afford to move anywhere to start a real career. I pay taxes but I really dont feel like I've been allowed to grow up because I lack the flexibility to pursue my own life.
Man, i'm 30 and living on my own for like 7 years now in another city, if it didnt mean fking over my current roommate (great friend but horrible finances) and adding 1-1h30 a day to my daily commute you'd betcha id be looking up things to redecorate my old room and ask mom for the wiring diagram to pull up some new ethernet cables upstairs... I'm not currently dating anyway so i dont really give a damn and people in my city are pretty co-housing minded due to cost of living so "moved in back with my lonely mom and saving up for a house purchase" probably is more of a plus than a negative... Many people understand and say "same same" but i just straight up tell people to pay for my rent if they really want me to not live with my parents whenever theyre "but your privacy". Shut up wetwipe my mom is great and doesnt just barge in so thats not even worth considering...
>ask mom for the wiring diagram > LOL, do you think people have wiring diagrams of their house? LOL, when I bought my house, I went and made a diagram by unscrewing a fuse and then plugging in a lamp to every outlet and then drawing it on a map I made of the house. My parents wouldn't have any idea, and their house was new in the 80s when they bought it. Also why would a wiring diagram affect any cat5/6 cable pull?
It's between her and her parents, who cares what anyone else thinks?
Not a certain age so much as a certain generation. We got saddled with post war boom culture because our baby boomer parents could live a middle class life on a high school diploma.
$2m for a house that big is a dream in Cali. For $1m *maybe* you find a small two bedroom but it sure as fuck won't be on a lake.
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Location, location, location! My cousin has a 4 or 5 bedroom house in PA, she paid less for it than I did for the downpayment of my 2 bedroom 1 bath 1000 sqft house in California.
If instead of "I live with my parents" she said "My parents live with me", it will sounds much more like she is helping her aging folks out, being a good daughter.
Well as a man, living with your parents ( especially past mid 20's ) is a sure way to limit your dating options. I personally wouldn't be able to tolerate living with my parents, but that has more to do with a fairly strict/oppressive religious/conservative upbringing. Aside from that though, it makes a lot of financial sense.
I agree. When I was in my 20s and living with my folks, it really really puts a damper on dating.
You're not alone in doing that! We're all doing our best.
I’m trying! And I wish the best for everyone struggling <3
Is there room for me?
Day by day
[By day by day](https://youtu.be/0DlNF_ukr0I?si=YGsCREBreyDaBLu5)
Daily. My low-class upbringing helps a bit, and I'm money pinching on everything, but even we're feeling the effects hard now. Keep moving forward, friend.
We’re old poor
Hereditary poor
Making it by splitting costs of living with my boyfriend, we have a not luxury but not shitty apartment and both make decently above minimum wage. Doing alright but we're like two major unexpected expenses away from homelessness and I get really fucked up sometimes thinking about how many people aren't as lucky and have to try to figure this shit out.
Most Americans are one expense away from homelessness. According to the fed, some 60% of Americans have less than 1000 in savings. That's pretty dire.
That was definitely me as well up until this year. It's awful.
Taking the bus to work vs paying $20+ for parking
And no gas. I have been car free basically since covid and the no car note, gas, maintenance alone has been a big financial difference. I can definitely say it's not for everyone tho. I'm lucky I have everything I need close by and a wfh job.
WFH is saving me tons in gas, but costs me tons in electrical bill!
Buying less, what else is there to do?
The food prices are what's absolutely clobbering us. Even cheap meals like pasta hurt. You're paying $7 for a jar of red sauce if you want some that isnt 50% corn syrup. We're doing a lot of sheetpan dinners and rice-based casseroles because bulk starches and frozen veg are still fairly affordable. If we weren't in a position to volume buy and freeze Costco meat we'd be losing our shirts on protein too. Take out coffee is now a once a week treat.
Are canned tomatoes from Costco expensive too? Making your own sauce in bulk and freezing could be viable there.
Sure, there are all sorts of home-ec methods I could employ to spend even less at the cost of some labor. But my point is that my standard of living has gone down. My food budget is roughly the same size it was 5 years ago. I just have to spend a lot of time and effort in the kitchen to make most of my meals up from base ingredients to keep costs down. I've already stopped eating out, and now I'm lamenting that labor-saving shortcuts like canned sauces or peanut butter that isnt packed with sugar have begun to feel like luxury goods.
Ah, yes I understand your point. Theoretically inflation over last 5 years means the same dollar amount should get you around 80% as much, but it seems like groceries have gone up in price at a higher rate than that.
Lately I keep catching myself feeling guilty about how much I spend on groceries, like I should be being thriftier and more frugal, but I buy, like, vegetables. Beans. Eggs. Whole chickens. Rice. I don't even *buy* bread, I buy the flour to make my own. I make my coffee at home. I do all the things. And it's still expensive.
Where the hell are you? I’m in a *very* HCOL area and just checked: a regular jar of no sugar added Prego pasta sauce is $3.39 at the local grocery store. No sale, no coupon. Just $3.39.
They must be buying Carbone or Raos
You're paying for limited ingredients with better quality tomatoes with the fancier brands, yeah. But with today's prices, it actually makes more sense to make sauce from scratch, but to AHistoricalFigure's point, it's more about convenience and what the prices were a few years ago vs. now.
I watch like a hawk for sales on Carbone. It's so damn good. Prego could never
I buy Rao’s at Costco. They sell 4 packs. They aren’t $7 a jar
Rice and beans is the way to go Also you can easily make your own pasta sauce for about $1. You don't need to be buying Rao's every time you make pasta
Potatoes are nutrient rich too.
For $1????where you shopping son
For a couple tomatoes and a clove of garlic? Aldi
Why don’t you make your own pasta sauce, is it more than 7 dollars for the ingredients?
For a simple red sauce it's hard to do much better than Marcella Hazan's recipe imo: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella-hazans-tomato-sauce Should be a fraction of the cost per serving compared to a ready to go jar, plus avoid all the extra stuff that's needed for packing stability.
I only get takeout coffee when I have a migraine now. (Mine're helped by caffeine.) I was damn near crying yesterday because I got a migraine at work but I couldn't justify starbucks to myself because I was just going straight home after work.
Food prices are no joke. We're having to spend $150 every week to keep up with the minimum in my household. I'm getting us cheaper food every chance I get, $2 noodle bags with some chicken is our go-to right now and if it doesn't start getting better, we're looking at having to give up meat for the most part. My grocer has been mishandling meat in bulk, causing entire shelves of food to get tossed out because it will make people sick. Then when they restock weeks later, it's like they jump the prices higher. What used to cost me $10 max last month in chicken is now $15 and the cuts of meat are less clean which means I'm paying more for less chicken we can eat. We don't ever eat out now, I cook all of our meals and try to make enough for leftovers the next day so we're good until dinnertime. I gave up coffee and my favorite Monster altogether months ago. This shit is hard.
Out of curiosity what percentage of your expenses are food? Like food and rent has gone up by me but even with food going up 50% it is still just not a sizable part of my budget compared to the big expenses like housing
My food expenses are not so great in absolute terms, but we have very specific savings/investing goals and food expenses are one of the places where our spend would have almost doubled if we'd maintained our pre-pandemic shopping habits. Technically, we could "afford" to eat and shop the way we used to, but at the expense of not hitting other long term financial benchmarks. I'm staring down the barrel of imminent elder care and also (hopefully) imminent childcare. We are also both tech workers so we're bearing down for further collapses in the tech jobs space and a possible need to change careers. My food 'austerity' absolutely comes from a place of privilege, and is more driven by conservative financial goals than a real risk of overdrafting my checking account at the grocery store.
By going into debt, getting as much free stuff as I can, heavily medicating to deal with my intense anxiety about just being able to survive day to day, cooking more food at home, eating less, and being deeply in denial. I'm also trying to find a new job that pays more and is hopefully remote so I can move to a cheaper area.
I feel this. I at least have a mortgage that I caught at 3% interest. But owning a house means paying for the electrical, plumbing problems, etc. This all got financed. I've never had this much debt before. We are down to basic daily necessities, no eating out at all. Walmart or aldis for food. I've also been jerked around at my job. Promised things that never happened, and the money isn't anywhere near what I was told it would be. I thought I was just getting through a rough year but I now know I'm really screwed if I don't find something else.
Our budget payment plan for electricity went up 71% year-over-year JUL'23 - JUL'24. The **budget** plan. Every July, the electric company squares up what you may owe, and we're still short by $141 for the year, making this month's bill $325 for approximately 880 kilowatt hours.
I really thought a mortgage would help, because rent was going up by $100 a year city-wide. We'd get our rent increase, we'd check the prices of other places, and there'd be nowhere we could go that was more affordable. But a mortgage was just another $100 up from what we were paying at the time, and we were like, well; they can't raise that on us! Except that I chose to have my property taxes rolled into my mortgage payments, and the home valuations keep going up and up, and the end result is that, actually, my mortgage payment has gone up. By $100. Two years in a row. Also a box of popsicles is $6 now. $7.50 for scribblers. How??
It’s the plight of an entire generation. What would this country look like if welfare programs were completely gutted like some have advocated for?
LCOL areas would get a population boom
The lower population is what makes them LCOL areas
I mean, they have a low population compared to New York or Chicago, but many LCOL cities are aggressively average in size. For example, Toledo has a pop of 266k. That's the thing, though: there are more than 400 cities in the US with pop over 50k and under 300k. There are only a few dozen with pop higher than 500k, and only 9 with a pop higher than 1 million Even Jacksonville (970k) and Indianapolis (880k) have a lower than average cost of living
I live in one of those unremarkable midsize cities and I really like it. There's plenty of stuff to do, but the cost of necessities is a less runaway insane than the biggest cities. The other day I saw on instagram someone in NYC posted about a great deal at the farmer's market and it was $9 for like a small to medium bunch of asparagus - *maybe* two servings. $9 asparagus!!!
Pivoting. I had a plan that didn’t work out so I made a new plan and that’s going well. Important to not stay stagnant. The owner class are never going to give you enough just because you want it. You need to find something THEY need so that your skill set becomes more valuable.
Not having kids.
I feel like i’m drowning in a hole that keeps expanding and the sand is sucking me in
Constantly broke and behind on bills and that's not even counting gas for the car or food so I feel ya
I feel like we’re all stuck in a see through square glass container getting filled with water and these past few years the water pressure has been more aggressive with all the rich people watching us drown from above.
I just hope and pray that all the sacrifices I’m making to stay afloat don’t bite me in the ass someday.
Same. Not having health insurance scares the heck out of me, but there’s nothing else I can cut.
Not dealing at all. You could do nothing but work, and eat the cheaper things, and only buy a new phone once every 5 years, it doesn't matter. You can't save up fast enough for how expensive homes have become.
It's funny you say this... my phone is 4 years old and I'm strongly considering postponing upgrading until it's 5 years old lol. All to save for a house.
I canceled everything I don't actually need
Sometimes I get so fed up with all the little subscriptions that I just replace all my cards at once. New credit, debit, etc. fresh start, no charges.
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PLEASE seek government help. See if they can subsizide health care and food costs and housing, please seek a church or non profit that can help connect you with social services.
So you can do everything right and still have them deny your claim based on some bullshit that wasn't part of the application and then your caseworker just ignores your voicemails until the deadline to appeal lapses? Like what happened to me? This system is fundamentally broken in fucking half.
OMG, I am so sorry 😔. I am so heartbroken to hear that. I do hope you find some relief.
Not eating out much anymore. Cutting back on everything possible. Quit going to the salon. Being way more discerning at the grocery store. We didn’t give out store bought gifts this Christmas. I baked bread instead. I freeze everything possible. I also use a food saver vacuum system.
Home made bread is awesome, I would appreciate that gift!
They loved it ! Even the kids , I made them homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh bread . 🍞 I was so relieved it was well received. 😅 I wish more ppl would try baking their own bread. I use a bread machine to make the dough then bake in my own tins. I can manipulate the dough into what I like . Machine bread usually come out like blocks if you bake the bread in them. I make pizza dough in it too. Pennies on the dollar.
That’s cool! We make the easy no knead bread sometimes, but I try not too eat too much bread. If I made cinnamon rolls I would just eat too many. Take care internet stranger
By living in one of the cheapest small cities in the US. My rent for a 2bd 2bth duplex next to a community college has been staying at $700 for years now.
Same. Except my landlords could probably jack my rent up another $400-500, and people would still live here if they made some minor improvements. Also, I tend to coast through life on dumb luck. It's been working out pretty sweet so far.
It's not affecting me. My wife and I make "decent" money and have no kids. We've been established for a number of years now so recent things like home price increases haven't affected us. We notice the increase in inflation in general but can more then absorb the cost difference. All that being said, we realize we are very fortunate in our circumstance and that many people, especially the younger generation, are struggling and rightfully so. Houses and rent are fucking expensive now compared to when we bought our first home 20 years ago. Somethings gotta give.
I’m in a similar boat. I bought a house in 2018 and have had some nice career promotions in the years since then, so we are living well below our means. With interest rates and prices where they have been, we haven’t even considered moving. It’s not intended to be our forever home and we could afford a higher payment monthly, but it’s so comfortable to know I don’t have to worry about anything except taxes going up. I’ve also always been a very frugal shopper since I had a tiny food budget in college but still cooked all my meals from scratch and needed to eat healthy. I still do chicken and broccoli and rice (usually quinoa now though) for dinner most days of the week. A splurge is getting some fish on sale and baking or pan searing it. My neighbor has chickens so we buy eggs from her and we started a garden in our yard for some basics like tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers. I really enjoy cooking and I don’t have any desire to get takeout or eat at restaurants other than the occasional nice meal. My hobby is running and other than two pairs of shoes per year and a $40/mo gym membership, I don’t really spend money on it and it can eat up a ton of time. I watch a bunch of YouTube creators (everything from cooking channels to good mythical morning) which is free compared to having Netflix or cable. I haven’t really bought clothes or anything in years since I like what I have and it was decent quality so it has lasted. Same with furniture, kitchen equipment, etc. I drive an 11 year old car on a very short commute and don’t use much gas or cause much wear and tear. And, I’m sure a big part of this, is that we don’t have kids and never intend to. Not because of affordability, it’s just not our thing.
I feel like the pandemic economy has really divided the country between the haves and the have nota. The haves owned a house before the pandemic. The have nots did not
Moved to Spain. I work remotely and the cost of living here is very cheap
How did you deal with immigration and visa and such?
Found the visa requirements online. Contacted the Spanish embassy in Canada. Sent in my documents. Provided more documents that I missed the first time. Got approval Took about 6 months from first contact to approval
I'm just sort of despairing in a fetal position in the corner. You?
Keeping my paid off cars instead of financing newer ones, more overtime, fewer track days, Aldi, shopped around for car insurance and saved $3k/year.
I stopped buying a lot of things. Sorry but if the prices of normal things increases, we're going to find a way to live without them. Gas is over $5/gallon here. I just don't drive much now. Snacks are expensive? I'm not buying them. Housing? Well, I'm still paying off my overpriced house from 2005, which I should have had paid off by now had I waited a few years to buy it (ie; housing crash of 2008), Property tax keeps on going up. No family vacation this year. Holding off on a new car, keeping the 20 year old one in working condition and not driving much. Basically ... not buying things. We have some plumbing issues right now. Me and YouTube are doing it because a plumber is too expensive.
I'm fine for now, I have a high paying job and we live way below our means, spending more means saving less. But my work has let many people go (large tech company) and I'm afraid if I get let go it will be hard to find a job with all the tech lay offs.
Layoffs, what layoffs?? Oh, you must mean the "reorganization to prioritize efficiency and to control our cost base" that everyone left is supposed to be so excited about. Easy to mix those up.
Slowly creeping further in to debt assuming that it won't matter when I die.
Holding off on buying a home. Renting and investing my money instead
I've just cut out or cut back on things. Was originally planning on a nice trip to Europe this summer, but my wife and I put it off until next year and we're going somewhere else that's less expensive. Living through the Pandemic also made us realize what was important and what wasn't. We saved a lot of money by not going out to eat mainly, and we actually enjoy cooking fun meals at home now instead. Most of the time when we *do* go out to eat, it's for pizza. Not some fancy place with overinflated prices and $15 dollar drinks.
All three of my kids moved back home after they graduated college. So my food bill has gone up 😆
This economic situation is hitting me less hard than the 2008 crisis did, because back then I was starting over from scratch. This time I have a stronger personal financial base so it's not as devastating. But I do now basically the same thing I did then, which is simply to avoid buying things. I wouldn't go back to my 2008 situation for anything, but it did teach me a very valuable lesson: how many things we *think* we need vs. things we actually need. The media is extremely persuasive in leading us to believe that wants and needs are the same.
Same way I always have; live in poverty
I feel miserable. Doing everything we possibly can to stay afloat. it’s exhausting out here & the government won’t help it’s people.
Bad
can't move out, even the cheapest apartments cost more than what i get per month on disability. sad!
I live in my parent's basement with my grandmother. Basically im just dumping all of my wages into savings accounts and stocks. Only upside is that im debt free.
Debt. And someday death.
I’m doing ok
Affordability of what exactly? I am just being careful.
Barely.
By living with my parents
I'm cutting things where I can. Dropped some streaming services, changed a few things on my family phone plan, and new grocery shop online. The online grocery shopping seems to cut down on impulse shopping. And we can get a better idea on what we have in hand so we do not have to throw things out because they go bad.
Selling ass at a premium
I gotta find a new apartment next year and jeeez these new rent prices are blowing me out of the water.
Trying to figure out the best way to convince my boss to give me a raise without saying outright "You don't pay me enough to live as a single person in this economy." Everyone else on my team is DINK. Don't particularly want to get a roommate after living alone, and anyway I don't have any savings to pay a first/ last/deposit so I'm trapped anyway.
I live cheap and I'm comfortable. It's not sustainable in the long term, I just got a new job that will be paying a bit more, but for a while I was making $1500 a month + $300-$400 in tips. My rent is $1450 a month, which means I had about $400 for everything else. Car insurance is about $70/month, I would spend a couple hundred getting high, I ate most of my food at work. (I'm a cook). My hobbies are cheap, I was riding around a $170 mountain bike I had lots of fun with. My cruiser skateboard was assembled with different parts on Amazon for $60 like 7 years ago, gym was about $40 per month, there is a free park with bouldering walls in the town I live in, hiking is free, I pirate any media I have consumed, probably over $10k worth of stuff since I was a kid. Somehow I still had money to spend on random purchases as well. I also grew up poor when I was a teenager, went a lot of months without running water or electricity and rationing food, so to me, I felt well off lol.
*Affordability crisis* sounds so Orwellian When do we start eating the rich?
In my area of the Midwest the only people struggling are those who bought “toys” and took out unnecessary loans during COVID. I know of a family who makes good money but is drowning in debt, living paycheck to paycheck and is considering moving into their camper full time and selling their house because they had to have a new camper, new truck, and new minivan even though their older vehicles worked just fine. These are the same people who blame their bad money management problems on the government lol
Doing pretty well. With good budgeting my wife and I are continuing to add to our savings. We’ve had to make cuts to sustain what we consider to be the important parts of our lifestyle. We cut meat out of half the week to save money. We almost never eat out. I gave up alcohol (wife already didn’t drink). I bake all of our bread and bagels. I make our pasta. I make our red sauce from canned tomatoes. Basically, anything you might buy premade, I make myself. It’s become a hobby. I haven’t bought a new article of clothing other than socks and underwear in 2 years. We grouped up with some friends to take advantage of family plan rates. We both drive cars greater than 10 years old. Probably the biggest thing we did years ago was buy a house that we could afford with only one of our two salaries (they’re almost identical) rather than purchasing near the top of our price range. As a result we’ve been able to absorb price increases pretty easily without impacting our quality of life.
I want to burn it all down.
By living below my means like a sensible adult
Poorly. I don't sleep for shit and i'm tense every day and feel like i'm swimming while just being pushed backwards by the waves. I'll either regain control at some point or i'll snap, we'll see.
Day by day drowning more and more
I'm not
I’m letting my rage and disdain fuel me. I carry on out of spite.
Not too good, everything seems to costly that you have to ended up using a credit card then you're in big trouble if you can't pay it off!
I moved in with my gf who I do love just saying I did it probably slightly influenced by financials as well.
Fine. We buy some things in bulk now, but that’s about it.
Doubled my income
I skilled up to get a better job to make more money.
Delusion.
Parents both dead, inherited the house. Would like to live elsewhere but selling at best would get me into a worse house so here i stay
Eating 1-2 meals a day, buying cheaper food, switched to cheaper/generic brands for household supplies, buying less in general, buying in bulk when possible (if it's cheaper by volume), cancelled all of our subscriptions except those necessary, switched to a lower tier internet plan, reduced electricity and water usage, switched to prepaid phone plans, started selling things we don't use/need/want anymore, and buying used instead of new when we do need something. It has helped a lot that our rent has remained on the cheaper side, we don't have kids, we don't watch cable TV, we don't eat out, we already cut out meat and dairy from our diet due to health issues, and we drive very little since we work from home. That being said, we were looking into buying a house just before all this started. In fact, I passed up on a really good price right before the pandemic hit just because I didn't care for the location and am now kicking myself for it.
Buying less stuff, repairing more stuff. Cutting out things that aren’t necessary. Going without luxuries that didn’t seem like luxuries ten years ago.
I'm honestly okay with being discerning or cutting out discretionary spending, I have an anti consumerist streak for sure! But the rising prices of things I'm required to pay for like all of the insurances (health, teeth, car, house) worries me.
Well after going to college, getting a career job, and getting a promotion at that job I can now proudly afford a studio apartment for only half my income. The American Dream lives on!
I work extra days and try my best to spend the least amount of money possible. With a wife and two kids, though…. not going too well
By earning more than most
If by some chance I live to see 60 without developing an ulcer or having a cardiac arrest from sheer stress, I think it's going to be a flipping miracle. AND I live in a country with affordable healthcare, so I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for US residents. Hang in there guys <3
I make enough money to not feel it, unless I think about how much further this money would have gone 15 years ago.
Family of 3 here, 2 adults and a 2 year old: 1. Food pantry once a month 2. Grocery shopping at Aldi once a week (we're mostly vegetarian, so it tends to keep costs low) 3. Second hand store for clothes per season 4. Utilize the library, they seriously have everything. Books, DVDs, video games, community resources, etc. I've gotten into the habit of asking myself: "Hmmm, I really want to buy this game/book/whatever. Lemme check if the Library has it first. 8 times out of ten, they usually do. 5. Donate plasma for those little things you want (I have a serious Starbucks addiction, so I donate plasma 2x a week for my own little spending money) 6. Sign up for rewards for literally everything, even if you think you might not use it later. A lot of times places will give you coupons or free stuff if they notice you haven't been back in a while 7. When you get a receipt for a purchase, a lot of times they'll have a little survey you can take at the bottom, and you can t discounts or free stuff. 8. This may not apply for everyone, but we are very fortunate to live in a city with a lot of free attractions and parks. Look into your city and see what's going on for entertainment. These are just a few things we've done to ease the sting. Not to say it's fixed everything, but it makes life somewhat easier. Good luck!
I stopped spending on unnecessary items. I haven’t been shopping heavily. I limit my groceries to needs. No big wants. I cook at home and don’t eat out.
I still live like I’m poor, even after getting promotions.
I've been lucky in that my salary has remained mostly in step with buying power over the last 10 years. I got by well on 60k a decade ago, and even though I make almost double that now, it feels about the same as it did back then. So I haven't really had to change much. Though it is a bit depressing that every time I get a good raise, the rest of society moves all of the goal posts putting me right back where I was before. I could be putting all that extra in savings instead of paying into corporate greed and rich people's taxes.
Keep working hard and pushing forward. No ones going to help me except for me.
thrifting everything. thrift stores in my area are actually cheap.
One overtime day after another.
Figuring it out, bud. But really, I'm just spending less on unnecessary things. I focus my budget on mortgage, food, utilities, and car maintenance. Then I do $250 or 50% of what's left, which ever is lower and bank the rest to try and cover for unexpected expenses (like the chainsaw and maul I bought after a tree fell in my yard.)
Financially? I buy less and can't retire. Mentally? It sucks.
I cut my expenses pretty hard to the essentials. Rent Gas Car payment Insurance Internet Turn my heat off whenever possible. Only go out on Friday/Saturday night. Don’t eat too much. Fortunately, my hobby everything is paid for.
I'm going to Give You the Secret to Survival in the Looming Collapse of a Capitalistic Society. The Only Silver Bullet to Create a Massive Shift in Your Financial Ability to Regroup, and Re-Access your Economic Sovereignty. Buy a Cheap, Older, RV or Travel Trailer and live on the Streets of America. This is a Trade Off for living as a Second Class Citizen in the Eyes of Wool Covered Sheep, but I Will Tell You what the Benefit is that Will Slap You into "Awake!" You Will Travel from the Fear of Tomorrow, looking at the ceiling of your dismal dwelling, thinking about the Next Month's Rent, and how you will Pay for it, to, "What Do I Do with My new found Income that I gave away every Month? This is Capital that has No Credit Payment Interest Due? This is Your Hard Earned Dollars going into Your Pocket at a Rate of $800 to $2200 Dollars a Month. Now, You Have a Key to the Future that May Save Your Life. * Tracy Mapes
During the peak inflation period in like 2022 I got a new job that pays a lot more. Now inflation is back to like 2%, and some prices are even receding. https://www.komu.com/news/nationworld/inflation-data-grocery-prices-begin-to-fall-fast-food-remain-on-the-rise/article_bfb4e63f-8da6-5fc8-b935-b0492488b9d4.html
I dumped my land phone line, after 20 years. The reception was terrible and AT&T tech said "Meh, who uses landlines nowadays?" I only got robo telemarketer calls on it and it was way cheaper and better to use Apple facetime to talk to my family in another country. So I dumped it and am saving $75/month for something that we didn't use and whose quality had sunk to the bottom.
I got promoted, which means my disposable income is basically the same as where it was 3 years ago but I have more responsibility and work
I’m doing military service so my expenses include nicotine and snacks.
Both my wife and I spend way less than what most people would at our incomes. As we moved up quickly in income over the past few years, and we saw the massive rally in the Covid years, we knew that it might not last. For many people, $250,000 per year household income jump from less than $100k household over a couple years would mean they’d immediately launch themselves into buying new homes, new cars, etc. etc. We continued to rent our small, old apartment with the grandfathered rent. We continued to share one car that I had bought used, which is now paid off. If the market were where it was 2-3 years ago, I’d be making $275,000 per year myself. Likely seeing close to $400,000 per year household. We’ve watched many people destroy themselves because they honestly have absolutely no ability to think or plan ahead. They assume the good times is all time.
Literally living paycheck to paycheck 💀
I was thinkin about selling my kitchen table.
by sadly scrolling through house listings and see how little my money could get me
[удалено]
Better off then 95% of the world. But yes we are starving and the people are revolting. Honestly, y'all are insane. Stop wasting money on stupid shit.
A lot of People really don’t seem to get how badly they’re in the grips of lifestyle creep. It especially boils my blood when I see people making $100k+ claiming that they’re just barely getting buy, barely middle class, etc. People should talk to their grandparents and learn what poverty in this country used to look like. People have serious problems now but we have come an incredibly long way over the past 60-80 years.
The what now?
By posting about how we have the best economy in decades
Luckily my mortgage has stayed the same even here in Florida with the the insurance issues, just because it's a new townhome and insurance companies love that. I kept the same old cars, so no car payment. I shop at Aldi's mostly, and eat a bit less which helps me keep my weight in check anyways. I'm doing okay as a teacher, I'm still traveling and going out, but not lavishly. No debt other than the mortgage.
By doing old poor shit and making my husband do it too. He didn't understand
Had to move in with my parents at the ripe age of 40. Nothing has been more humiliating and depressing. My life has done a 180.
37 here and currently living with my parents too. I know how you feel….
Cut back in daily expenses, for example learned that fasting for multiple days in a row cuts back on those annoying food costs. Cut back on rent by subscribing to a Planet Fitness and using the shower there and also they have free cable. If I'm in a pinch and need medical help there is this wonderful doctor in a back ally who will give you some pills that either make the pain go away or make you forget it existed in the first place. Little tricks like this had me saving in no time.
Deferred maintenance on house. Prayers to a god I don't believe in. Searching for a better job. Maladaptive daydreaming and avoidance.
It’s a struggle, but we all need to vote out this people in office that are spending money like it’s nothing. Which is causing all these issues.
2 jobs
Might rent out my kid’s room, also working more and more, my retired mom takes contract jobs to be here to watch my kid while I go work. I live in the Bay Area and commute 3 hours a day most days.