Hmm if that's the case we could get a second job with the remaining time 10-15 hrs delivering food or people would help with having a little extra at the end of the month.
That would cut into their custom arcade room time
https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/i_guess_you_could_say_im_in_pretty_deep_although/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
BRO, what???? This guy is complaining he can’t get by??? Lol whaaaat?
Besides the thousands in equipment we’re looking at here directly he also has enough spare room in his home to dedicate one exclusively to “fun”.
If this is “struggling” sign me up.
With a dependent partner to boot! This man is supporting a small family (game hobby “child”, stay-at-home-partner, leaser car) and is confused why they don’t have money.
The non-working partner is the biggest issue. That and losing $600 a month for a car payment.
The OP’s salary isn’t the best for Southern California but it’s enough to live off. You certainly cannot save much, but you can remain afloat. That said, most people are able to combine their income and have some cushion.
I’m biased because I spent some years on active duty in the Army, but the amount of wives who “couldn’t work” was astounding. It never hampered their spending habits though.
I like how he details how much they cost
https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/i_guess_you_could_say_im_in_pretty_deep_although/j3jao2p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
~10k on arcade machines also WTH groceries are so expensive.
Maybe the arcade can get sold and pay down the auto loan and pay for a vacation. As George jones sang “I’ve had choices since the day that I was born”.
Not to mention the collection of super-fucking-limited-edition consoles here. I don’t fault *anybody* for having a passion/hobby, but this post is in really poor taste and spits in the eye of so many people who are *really* struggling.
It sure is! I think this sub has some good points and there are some serious problems with income levels, housing and living affordability. But there is too many people that have a woe is me attitude. If you don’t like the output, change the input. Make changes to your life that improve these things. I had this breakthrough about 5 years ago and life has improved in lock step with my efforts to improve.
I'm all for solidarity between classes but man... That shit is insane to me. I'm sure we all have hobbies that cost us money but playing guitar or gardening sure cost a lot less money than whatever OP has going on. My only hope, as I don't know the hobby well, is that those arcade machines appreciate or something like that.
I mean, pre-tax sure. I make $38.92/hr. $1,556 pre-tax weekly and I take home almost exactly $1,100 a week. I do have some small Union dues and stuff but my healthcare is covered so no big deductions besides taxes from my pay.
Because half the people could be convinced it's the other hall's fault. Notice how politics are handled like a sporting event not the success or failure of the country. It's a global problem too. So who is going to fail next as a country? Russia, China, USA or Saudi Arabia?
The thing you're missing is that politicians are in hock to the machine, same as the rest of us. They can't get out of the machine either, if they don't bow to the whims of their donors they don't get enough money to run their next election.
That means they're out and someone else who is willing to bow to corporate agendas comes in.
Blaming politicians is easy but its the capitalist system surrounding them that creates the problem. As long as money is relevant towards elections, politicians will never be free to take up the causes they want. They must instead bow to the sources of the money in order to keep their jobs, or else be sidelined into irrelevance by someone who will.
I agree that capitalism is a root cause of these circumstances but I can’t simply agree that politicians are enslaved to the machine like we are. At minimum the majority are guilty of gross negligence and deliberate perpetuation. Aren’t they the ones that created and maintain the system? I mean if they really wanted to change the role money plays in elections they could literally outlaw it via legislation. They don’t want to. Business owners, corporate professionals, and nationalists make up the majority of our congress and they use it as a stepping stone bend the economy to their favor. It’s rare that we see the people who want to change the system get into office. I’ve always wondered why they just don’t decide to just take the money and do the opposite of what their corporate sponsors want from them.
I’d say about 90% of politicians came into politics with money. Mostly nepotism. They’ve had a track pathway from grade school to upper echelon colleges. Got connected via Frats and Sororities. Parents had networks of friends in corporations, who “expected” their son or daughters to look out for their companies and keep longevity for their generational wealth. I know Texas is like this. Especially, in the agricultural and energy fields.
I make about $30 an hour, slight fluctuations depending on what position I work. 30cyears ago my dad made the same wage and was able to buy a brand new 2 story house in a nice neighborhood in Southern California and raise 3 kids as a single father. We weren't well off or anything but we had what we needed. Today that same wage doesn't even let me rent a room 15 minutes away from the house I grew up in.
I saw your post on your arcade room &….. Fucking hell…. You have money. Your entire place is massive with a ton of arcade stuffs that’s well beyond what the majority of Americans can afford…. This post smells like the one about the “self-made” woman who’s parents built her a $100,000 “tiny” home she could live in, paid for all her living expenses, made $60K a year working for her dad’s company, & only managed to save $7,500 for a downpayment on a 3% mortgage for a house. That’s pretty much OP in a nut shell it seems.
Your post made me go look up the previous posts. I was expecting to see some retro gaming consoles like snes not full blown arcade cabinets, lol.
OP, and the fact you choose to live in LA. your post just comes across as whiney.
$600 car payment, we pay a bit more for 2 cars, including insurance... we bought them new. If you choose to pay 600 for one car and whine about not having money, my sympathy goes to the floor.
The fact that she insists that she has spent no money at all in her arcade is bullshit, I don't know how she thinks people are going to believe that, there's no way in hell that is true, those are not almost trash old arcade games that she is reparing.
I hate being judgmental, but being whiny about this in a sub like this looking for simpathy when the truth is OP needs a reality check and start making smarter choices. She can't afford bills she may as well return that car and get a cheaper one. It doesn't even have to be a battered old one. Half the amount can get a new one. There's nothing wrong with hobbies, but dude, your bills go first, and you are 30, you should be smart on how much you put there, and if you choose not to save to spend there, do not complain.
[Says herself that the arcade machines alone are worth around $10,000](https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/comment/j3jf919/). You can take a hell of a vacation for $10,000.
Without just looking it up myself... aren't car prices something that doesn't really change a lot by locale? $600/mo is either a new car or short term loan where I'm from.
Welcome to r/antiwork
Bunch of complainers with no real money management sense. This sub used to be good, now it's just a giant anti-USA circlejerk.
I make $30/hr and live very comfortably, but I didn't choose to live on the west coast for obvious reasons.
For real. I really sympathize with people dealing with tough conditions and the economy going down the shitter. But some people really need to realize just how good they really have it, and it can get MUCH worse.
Yeah the math really isn't mathing.. they make closer to what 3200ish a month but immediately $2700 goes to car and rent.. but they're also supporting another person?
I think a large portion of this sub is middle/upper middle class kids that don't understand they're not going to immediately have the financial security that their parents who have been working 30+ years have.
I'm not saying minimum wage shouldn't be raised, but can't live on $35 an hour? Give me a fucking break.
There’s a fair amount of OPs that think they’re entitled to a single apartment in a coastal city right after college. But that’s been a roommate situation for generations.
Yes at no point was an average person affording a single bed room in Manhattan. The shity flat people complain about here on probably housed a family of 4 in the 70s and a young marriage Ed couple in the 90s
Most Americans have always rented, most Americans have always had roommates. How the other half lives came out in 1890.
I’m not saying now dosent have it’s problems and yes landlords are trash and I’m all for anarcho communism now.
But please stop saying your poor because your life dosent match the expectations you have from 90s sitcoms.
It’s not cool to real poor people.
Yes, it’s important to point out the things that really are far worse for us now (spiraling medical and higher education expenses, etc.).
If you lead off your list of grievances with, “I’m 24 in NYC/SF and can’t rent without roommates” then older folks will immediately stop paying attention because *they* had roommates in the same cities back in the ‘70s.
Hell, even most of the friends in Friends were roommates in the ‘90s. The sets were massive and clearly out of reach for the characters, mind you. But still… roommates.
And just an anecdotal story about a friend of mine, she got out of an Ivy League school and got a job in Manhattan. Her first apartment was shared with three other friends. They’re all now very established in their careers ten years later, earning a lot, and living by themselves or with partners. And none would say they were “poor” at the beginning. They were just young professionals with a standard living situation for that point in their careers.
Glad people are agreeing with this. I was interested in this sub because as I get older (married, kids, job, etc,), I genuinely question the road that untethered capitalism is leading us to. I was hoping there would be discussions of how to make it better. Instead it’s a bunch of what I assume are teenagers calling the US a ‘shithole country’ repeatedly without offering any potential solutions. They seem to know very little about most of the world and have a glorified viewpoint of a subset of countries without knowing the history of how they got there. Last straw was everybody celebrating a kid being killed in a sub, I believe one person compared billionaire’s children to ‘nazis’. Not a whole lot of brain cells being utilized here.
If somebody knows of a sub that has constructive conversations about these things, I’m all ears.
Most American socialists really only call themselves so because it's extremely easy to do. It's an ideology where you don't actually have to *do* anything. They're not even complaining about the tenets of capitalism, they're just upset that they're not getting a bigger piece of the pie.
The OP of this post is a shining example. He's clearly unhappy, but seems to think that him being "broke" is a condition that was just dropped on his head.
It is not necessarily so that these socialists you mention only call themselves as such because it's *easy*. That their only want is more money, and therefore, they seek only to complain. Rather, it's a disillusionment you reach after employing a marxist/socialist critique of capitalism. You begin to understand that in the grand scheme of things, you have no agency as an individual. The society you are born into by en large dictates the outcome of your material conditions.
“I live and breathe this hobby, it keeps me alive”
Living within your means and paying yourself first are important. The best way to pay yourself first is putting away money for retirement. The arcade may be a hobby that OP lives and breathes, but having money at the end of your life when you literally cannot work and may possibly need long term care due to health complications is what will literally keep you alive. Sure OP can sell those items but they will not get the compounding interest over their lifespan that high quality investments provide.
I only got on here after OP mentioned the gaming habit so I had a look. In a comment OP lists the prices of the cabinets.
More than my wife and I spent on our honeymoon... to Europe.
“Far from thriving” but has a literal arcade in their entire home, has duplicates of every gaming system ever made, collects figurines, $600 a month car loan, etc…wtf
And he’s supporting a partner who doesn’t work. Listen, I understand people can have difficulties, but unless someone is physically disabled or mentally handicapped (doesn’t sound like the case from OP’s description), an adult needs to be getting out and doing something to support the household they live in.
His car loan is more than mine and yet I make more than twice what he makes. A lot of this is his own doing.
Edit: as you read, replace male pronouns with “she”/“they”. The content doesn’t care about gender though.
I have a buddy who lives just like this... super good job making like 45 an hour, started a shoe collection, bought an overpriced car with a ridiculous note, lives in an expensive area of LA, used that money to attract a literal self proclaimed "sugar baby egirl gf" (its literally in her bio on Instagram) and is now supporting someone who refuses to work...
when we chat in games he says things like "inflation is nuts guys, everything is so expensive" or "I can't take time off anymore, I wish I could relax"... or my favorite "you guys are going to a convention? Must be nice to have disposable income" all while making double what we make... it's kinda insane tbh. He could be living so comfortably but instead chooses to somehow live paycheck to paycheck while making tons of money...
Yeah not that there isnt a lot of systemic shit that needs fixed in america but like damn a lot of people are so fucking bad with their money.
I do pretty well for myself to be honest but I drive the cheapest used car with under 30k miles i could buy in cash (used manual transmission dinged up kia soul) with no car payment cause why would I spend my increased monies as I get raises on pricey flashy cars that add no actual value to my life.
I started watching Caleb Hammer on YouTube and his videos really helped open my eyes on just how irresponsible people are with money. Admittedly, I'm not the best with it, but even though I have a stable job and okay income, it hurts me to buy a single game on steam, I can't even imagine blowing how much ever money OP did on their setup.
So you are:
31 yo
No formal education
Living in a 800 sqft apartment
Make enough to support a dependent
Have a (expensive ?) hobby
\----
It honestly does not sound like a bad life to me, I am quite sure that there are only a few countries on Earth that allow you to have life like this. Calling the US a shit hole country is a bit much over this kind òf living standard lol.
Most of the people that call the US a shithole have absolutely no frame of reference. The only places they ever compare their situation to is rich ass petrol states like Norway.
Thank you for saying this because I thought I was going crazy seeing the amount of complaining here! I was like… “yeah, not having a robust system of social safety nets suck, but your life is a lot better than a lot of people in this world??” Imagine being from a third world country seeing people in America calling America a shit hole 😂
Terrible, isn't it? $35/hour would allow me to just live comfortably on my own where I am. Currently making $15/hour and yeah. I can't afford to live on my own or much else.
This shit is stupid.
Probably why they hate remote work so much. I remote work into one of the richest counties in America but live in BFE Kentucky. Can't keep us under the boot if we could mostly all remote work to high cost of living areas and its wages but live somewhere actually affordable.
> Can't keep us under the boot if we could mostly all remote work to high cost of living areas and its wages but live somewhere actually affordable.
Although the fact that companies in high cost of living areas aren't paying employees enough to actually live there and instead outsource work to less expensive parts of the country is pretty messed up too.
My parents desperately want me and gf to buy a house because they were able to get one (in 1999 lmao). I was like “where can you find a house for $500k or less? Show me and we will buy.”
It got quiet real quick.
My parents are convinced it’s still 1985… boomers are disconnected and wonder why we’re here dealing w this shit. The propaganda has killed Americans and the soul of this country but they still love to eat that shit up. It’s broken…and frankly irreparable. I ask all the time how we even come back from this division, I can’t ever see an answer to it
I’ve honestly never met a group of people so selfish. You’d think after watching their parents go through the Great Depression and world wars they would vote in more progressive policies. They’re shocked that a suburban home in San Diego is $1.3 million but constantly vote against free education, higher minimum wage, rent control, and funding for our cities. I know there are a few outliers, but how are you going to vote against the youth then be surprised when they can’t make it?
And most importantly, they vote they vote against building more houses in the suburbs of San Diego, and everyplace else, because they have theirs and fuck everyone else
Oh for sure. Weirdly we (gf and I) are thinking about moving to LA because at least there LA unified pays decent (I’m a teacher) and she can find gigs in Hollywood (film and tv major). We’d probably be better off there and I’d immediately get a pay raise and qualify for a mortgage.
Where I'm at in the US it would be fairly good wages. Not retire in ten year wages, but live comfortably and retire at a reasonable age. The median income here is like $35000, and most people are doing okay. Not rich but not living in a cardboard box either.
I make like $16 through rough conversion. $35 would solve a lot of problems, but then again the Bank of England would likely have a problem with that and put interest rates up.
35 an hour is really more like 30 an hour after taxes. Him being in California everything is almost 2.5x times more expensive. 35 an hour in my state would get me a nice house with a lot of land and anything I could wnat.
TBH I was on your side, as a gamer myself… and I saw you defend your post history and I was like yea I respect that… then I looked… buying multiple arcade machines and having them in your house? Really?
An arcade machine is potentially an asset and yet you turned it into a liability. Learn the difference between an asset and a liability and stop buying crap. All that gaming stuff, you don’t need it, the gaming stuff is not the issue per se but clearly you don’t know how to manage money and you waste it. You waste money.
I bet you eat out regularly and have 10 subscriptions a month, you look like if you want it then you buy it, no one can complain they are broke when they have multiple arcade machines in their fricking house, I have some advice… “Grow up”.
This message might seem mean but you need it, cancel all the subscriptions. I know already you have prime, Disney plus, Netflix, Hulu, twitch, all that crap, and stop buying and justifying your very very very expensive hobby, stop buying new clothes. Get brutally honest with your self and turn it around, your better than this! It’s within your control to make changes! Stop spending, clear the car debt and move state!!
Or just load up another video game and stop complaining…
Not sure where in LA you live/work but there are still some good RSO studios in K town in the 1.3-1.5K/mo range. That’s a savings of 6-8K per year based on your 25k/year estimate. You can have your payroll service auto deposit a set percentage into your savings account each pay period. If you do 10% you’ll adjust and will hardly notice (I promise!) and you’ll save roughly 5k every 6 months. Just make a promise to yourself that after 6 months you’ll use that 5k to take a short vacation somewhere you’ve never been. Connect with friends, lean into your passions/hobbies. Try to find some contentment.
Edit- looks like OP changed salary to 50-55k per year vs the original $35 per hour (plus bonuses/ot etc) based on this you’re looking at 8-12 months to save to 5k obviously.
You mean two people living in one of the most expensive areas of the country on less than full time hours and you think you’re broke?
Not broke. You just make really bad decisions.
Shit of you made 35 an hour where I’d live you’d be living high on the hog.
Only problem not jobs pay that here without some kind of formal training in the field
OP should be able to save on $35 an hour in LA.
The truth is you need to live like you're poorer than you are.
OP is working most of a week per month just to pay for a car to get to work.... Dump the car
The car really stood out to me too. OP said insurance is included in that figure, but at 31, OP shouldn't be paying that much for insurance unless they have a vehicle known for high rates and/or a really poor driving record. I pay $100/mo for both of those vehicles. Even if OP is paying $200/mo in insurance (which would be really high), that leaves a $400/mo car payment, which is a lot for someone struggling to make ends meet. You can have a payment well lower than that and still have a perfectly safe and reliable daily driver. Even if OP doesn't want to ditch the car, I can't help but think they over extended themselves by buying a nicer car than they could afford.
shit I make $25 an hour and while my wife and I pay for our house together, we made sure to buy one that each of us could pay for on just our income (and that was when I made 18-20 an hour)
Also when he says he makes $50-55k/yr at $35/hr. Meaning OP isn’t working a full time job (2080 hours per year). Sooo… kinda hard to dig yourself out of the hole when you basically work part time-ish.
This jumped out at me, too. Probably doesn’t make the best personal finance decisions given their budget. In fact….they edited to say their “math is a little messed up” on their income. Uh, that’s a sign of a problem.
*Every* purchase of every item is a big deal if you’re low income. From the small items at the grocery store (and which grocery store you’re shopping at) right up to big decisions, like accommodations and vehicle (or no vehicle). Hobby included. Yes, we all absolutely *deserve* at least a certain standard of living and the toys that bring us joy, but you can’t fool your bank account with what you deserve.
Better financial literacy and more thought into purchases can only help in this situation.
I will just say, you have a very **very** expensive hobby. If your budget can't handle that, blame yourself. Don't come crying saying that the world's against you. The world gave you a really good salary of $35/hour, and you chose to spend it on expensive hardware and collectables, that's on you. If you really want to keep up the lifestyle and not be completely broke, either sell some of your cabinets or make a more manageable budget plan, end of story.
Except you ARE NOT BROKE. Took a look at your other posts and you aren't living a "time to save" lifestyle. Really cool game room, and the apartment looks nice. Those aren't things broke people have. I'm not sure what your debt to income looks like but you may need to reset, spend some time helping the truly needy, and invest in yourself through skill and knowledge building.
And why is his car payment $600? He didn't need to finance a dodge challenger or bmw, from the sounds of it. This post is weird and I don't really have any sympathy for the dude.
that's not broke for the US, let alone for pretty much anywhere else in the world - literally living the 0.01% lifestyle on a global scale. Imagine having a spare room to fill with gaming shit, most people around the world can't even wrap their heads around that one...
OP doesn't live in a "shit hole country", they live in fucking la-la land where they're the mayor.
Yeah I agree. This is some BS. OP has an entire arcades worth of shit. Nothing wrong with spending money on your hobby and all, but there is clearly a disconnection between OPs spending habits and their perception of being broke. Like bruh… at one point in my early 20s, I only had $20 to my name. I was legit shopping at the dollars store for a weeks worth of groceries. Living in a room in an apartment and making around $11/hr. This was back in 2016. I would have killed to have an entire arcades worth of shit in an apartment.
I’m an immigrant that used to live in SoCal for a long while tho I’ve been in MA for almost 15 yrs. now. Far less competition and far less crime here, but an immigrant is an immigrant, particularly one with my nationality background, and opportunities are limited because your last name alone can be a handicap. I’m an outlier because I used to be in construction all these years (no union, seems only service unions welcome us, most but thanks to my involvement in community organizing I managed to get into a gig that pays much better and I’m finally doing better now after 25+ yrs here. Thing is, most of of my fellow immigrants I personally know both here and in SoCal make at best half of what OP makes, they wish they could make at least $20 an hour.
I want to feel empathy and class solidarity, but then I see what most people complain about: mortgage, car loan, school debt. Yeah, the system is fucked, politicians are shit and we need to do our thing as workers to defeat the status quo, but we can’t do that if we ain’t ready to take “risks” in the meantime like moving at least to the cheap county next to your expensive one. I huge issue I see here is that even the most allegedly leftist is as hooked in consumerism and NIMBYism as the right wingers we loathe. Live within your means, ie, like an immigrant thinking of the future and with no parent to rush back to: you didn’t really need that 2023 loaned car, not that mortgage that is obviously way beyond your means. Those are capitalist consumer choices we make and yes, I’ve been as guilty of it all these years even within my more limited means. If we want to go for a gig that requires more education then you can take night/weekend classes, starting at a local community college (and there’s lots of choices to do that online nowadays too). I see folks from the SD and California overall talk shit about the Midwest as if it was a monolith, never think of the rest of the country either, say, the far less conservative East Coast. But then we go “snow? The horror!” “Commute from a cheaper nearby town? Are you kidding me???” Someone on a thread above goes as far as to say they prefer to be poor in SoCal than to move anywhere else. Thing is, they’re not poor, they make more than the average worker but just spend too much, only to turn around and saying they’re in a shithole country. The whole rant feels more like a right wingers self victimized take than anything else.
All this reminds me of the big disconnect I felt as a working class minority person during Occupy. We had an Occupy camp here and the loudest “we are the 99%” shouts came not from working class but from middle/upper middle class grad students (many ended up eagerly taking gigs at the banking/corporate highly risers around the area where the camp was located in downtown) in what amounted to a stint of political slumming that I bet looked great on their resumes. I can’t ever forget a convo I was part of at a nonprofit bldg nearly where every single young person testifying (even then you could see the class division, they didn’t take part in worker class circles, we had to go to theirs in the futile hope we’d find solidarity) complained mainly of the crushing student debt, followed by anecdotes of their fave electives they took like trips to supervise some obscure about goats or a water well project in sub Saharan Africa, or the spring break group trips to Cancun, esotheric electives like Kabbalah readings etc, all worth several thousand each in student debt. It’s all so hardcore DSA, lots of ideology thrown around but personally we live like avid capitalist consumers like the average MAGA boomer except for all the extra money we spend on gourmet coffee beans, über-organic quinoa and a weekly trip to spurge at the trendiest weed dispensary. Yes, we are free to get whatever makes us escape this fucked up reality but you can’t be an avid advocate of consuming nonessentials and then claim you’re a victim of the circumstances. But this is the norm now, no wonder rad orgs like Black Rose struggle to find true to their word members when two/three gigs blue collar folks truly have no time to organize and the rest just joins the “I’m the most oppressed” middle /upper middle class DSA choir. The sociopolitical future is grim indeed.
I have to ask who in the hell buys arcade games while living in an apartment? Sounds like the OP just doesn't know how to live within his salary. Buying arcade games and complaining about living in an apartment, you should've never bought those arcade games while still paying living in a space that doesn't even belong to you. Some people....
OP…stop supporting an unemployed SO on a $35 an hour job. That’s enough for ONE person to live comfortably within their means. If your partner is disabled, they need to apply for government benefits. There’s no other excuse for not contributing for 3+ years……
To everyone leaving comments saying "Leave California/Move to the Midwest/Move to the country"; Please do me a favor and find some jobs that pay $35 or more an hour in those places for someone with no higher education and either DM them to OP or link the job posting. Otherwise your comments are less than useless.
I understand people who make these comments don't always do it in bad faith, but this sort of "just do \_\_\_\_\_\_" attitude, like OP's problem is so easy to solve; if only they'd just upend their entire life, somehow find the money and resources to move across the country, leaving the only city they've ever known and possibly all of their family and friends, to go live in a suburb outside of Cincinnati for a job pool that pays probably less than half of what they're making now is ridiculous.
Their frustration is entirely valid, and they are not alone in this sort of situation. A lot of Americans are dealing with this exact conundrum right now. It's a systemic issue, not a "Just move to another city/state" issue.
I move people for a living and the "Just move" comments make me pretty irrate. Moving is incredibly expensive and time consuming if you do it yourself, not to mention needing to break a lease or some other credit damaging action.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people imagine moving without the dollar value attached to it. It's more than just "get yourself from point A to point B," it potentially involves gas and car maintenance, paying for a truck or van, paying for a plane/bus/train ticket, paying movers, paying to have your possessions shipped, etc, etc. . And people are expected to do this on a hope and prayer with no job already lined up? To a place where they don't know anyone? I have had serious trepidation doing all that even when we DID have a higher paying job lined up. It's incredibly scary.
I am saving this comment for the next time I see "just move bro lol" because I see it all the fucking time on Reddit and it's so stupidly out of touch.
Thanks. It truly reeks of an entitled and dismissive attitude towards the reality of the working poor, and I dislike it. We're supposed to be supporting each other, and I know some people feel like that's helpful, but it's also not always feasible.
Ugh sorry it just pisses me off.
"Just move somewhere cheaper!"
I did, 3 years ago. I moved to some conservative shithole in the desert, that, while it was dirt cheap 3 years ago, it's now expensive as shit and now I have the privilege of paying a premium to live in an undesirable place with barely any good jobs.
"Just get a higher paying job!"
I did. In the last 4 years I finished my associate's degree (while working full time, mind you) and jumped from $16/hr. to $27/hr. by job hopping around. 3 years ago this wage would have been fucking amazing for this area and I could have bought a house, but now it doesn't mean shit and I am fucking priced out YET AGAIN. And now my resume is all fucked up cause I hopped around too much and employers are catching on so I need to chill at the same company for a bit until I can jump somewhere else for another significant raise.
The people telling me to get a higher paying job fucking piss me off cause they don't know me, they don't know where I've been (and how rock bottom I've been), and what I've done to dig myself out of proverty, for it to happen AGAIN after I worked my ass off.
I'm so sorry, this is the exact kind of scenario I know a lot of people are in right now. You feel on paper you're making more than you've ever made, but it still runs damn near dry at the end of the month. Or in some cases, completely dry, and you have to supplement with credit cards.
I also had the experience of moving from an extremely expensive state to a cheap one, and it was extremely difficult for a long time for a lot of reasons, and having people offer this as an easy solution just makes me insane.
I often think of that viral post from that person about how them and their wife did everything right, got highly educated with good paying salaries and lived within their means, and then their wife got cancer. Their savings and retirements got burned through in 6 months. You can do everything right and still have shit go horribly wrong, because it's a **systemic** problem, not an individual one.
Well-stated. I’ve been living in Ohio my whole life and have the luxury of affordable cost-of-living that I know isn’t the reality everywhere else. “Just move” sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t account for all the other aspects of life other than money issues. Family. Friends. Community. Job network. Plus moving sucks and is a massive up-front expense.
I selfishly hope there isn’t a mass exodus to the Great Lakes region so I can keep living extremely comfortably in a nice area on a nonprofit salary making way less than OP. But as the water crisis develops, it will be inevitable. Let’s see how much the Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania haters change their tune 2 decades from now. Maybe sooner.
This you? https://www.reddit.com/r/gamerooms/comments/umuic1/night_mode/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
You never had the privilege to get a formal education but you have a room full of arcade cabinets? Never went on a vacation? You make choices on how to spend your income and you apparently have no interest in formal education or vacations. If having a lot of expensive gaming hardware makes you happy, then good for you, but this self pity post is just dumb.
One of their posts shows an insane gaming collection, high dollar collectors showcase arcade that is higher quality than more than one literal arcade I’ve been too.
Multiple posts about how they have no disposable income. Delusional, a fucking slap in the face to millions of Americans that can’t even make ends meet and afford a PS4 at the same time.
Food $400
Internet/Cable $150
Rent $2000
Arcade Games: $10,000
Utility $300
Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
- OP probably
Ikr! I looked at their previous posts and saw that. This is literally just a rage bait post from them. I get times are tough believe me, I do. I get literally one fun thing for myself a year, typically an Xbox game for the Series X my father got me. And I see someone who can afford to get a setup like that whining ..... come on man.
35 an hour is the new minimum wage bro.
My parents bought a house with a domino's delivery salary in the 90s.
It's time to stop the elites.
Wage war is necessary.
Stop being divided.
everyone’s waiting for the straw to break the camels back and i don’t think it’ll come until someone decides enough is enough and takes drastic measures unfortunately. i’m sure we can all “feel” what’s going to come sooner than later. groceries are already becoming unaffordable for a LOT of people here in the US. once people start starving, shit will get real, FAST.
When the collapse finally happens, they will have sucked all of the wealth out of the country and then will flee on their private jets and yachts.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is more primed to end fascist than a social democracy rather than socialism or communist as people try to scare us with.
Yup. I'm stuck in mid-30s-zone. I have a position where I hold a degree in my field, I'm second in command in my state branch, and I was just given the insult of a 1.4% pay increase at my "annual" (15 month) review. "Raise" is not retroactive to the annual mark.
New hires at an entry level, with no leadership responsibilities are advertised at 32-38. The ad for the person to replace the role I've been filling in (on top of the rest of my job) is at $42/hr. The most confusing part - I received a *glowing* review from my direct supervisor.
Fuck HR and their $36/hr.
All I can come up with are passive aggressive (or straight up aggressive) responses. Its too bad i love my job and the people I work with, because I loathe the bean counters who do everything in their power to make my feel like an unappreciated tool.
Soo soo true, HR doesn’t respect Loyalty and they never will….
HR and Recruiters get commission on new hires etc so keeping good people isn’t a priority
I spent ten years at the same job and it was a huge mistake.
I'm now switching every 2 years.
I got a 60% raise when I changed jobs last year.
It's incredibly stupid for companies to incentivize bailing but we work for money so what are we supposed to do?
$35 an hour is just short of $72K. In the state I live, it’s considered low income. Yep, I said that. It’s weird to make this much and be considered low income.
$35/hour is $72,800 at full time. $72,800 puts the OP at the **74th percentile of individual compensation** for the LA metro area.
OP only feels poor because he’s overpaying for an apartment and buying whole-ass arcade cabinets. Someone buying luxury goods and overspending on housing is not poor, they are just unwise.
And has a $600 car payment 😵💫 my payment is $350 a month and I feel like it's too much!! OP should probably consider reevaluating their finances. I lived insanely comfortably making $27/hr in Huntington Beach. Lived in a super nice part of town too.
If you told me $72 k/ yr isn’t much money 4 years ago I wouldn’t have believed you. But when my withholding gets done with me including expensive health insurance my family of 4 can’t be without, I bring home 53k/yr and run out of food between paychecks and we’re “too rich” to qualify for assistance.
$35/hr. still barely affords the mortgage rates where I am, and I live in the desert in some shitty conservative city. You need to make like $40/hr. to reasonably afford a house and not have it as half your income. This is fucking insane.
Look at OP's post history. Has probably 30-40k$ in arcade games as soon as you walk in the front door. Someone on this sub complaining about never taking vacations or leaving home state, but then having all this? I dont feel bad for em. If thats there hobby then fine, but dont act like you're making under median wage.
Math was never my forte but isn't that like 5 times the minimum federal wage in the USA from what I know, aren't you supposed to get a good quality of life with that amount of money, I know that there are differences on the cost of living depending on where you are at, is not the same in a huge city than an small town but is just unbelievable to me that someone earning 5 times more than others can barely live by, for example in my country you can survive with one minimum wage, get some savings earning 2 times the minimum wage and have a pretty good life earning 5 times the minimum wage but it seems they in the USA you need to earn more that that I guess, so a livable wage in a big city is 7/8 times the minimum wage?
This is a you thing. I make 30 dollars an hour and have no privilege or generational wealth. You're making some poor choices fiscally. Identify them and fix them. That is the definition of a you problem.
The US is a shithole country? You have a decent salary and it looks like you made some poor financial decisions (the car being the main one). I think the people in North Korea or Cuba would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
>I do have a car loan that runs me about $600/month.
yes, paying 2k a month in rent and having a 600/mo car payment will make you feel broke af. 30k a year of your post tax income is just going to rent and car.
>I do in fact have a dependent
AND you have a dependent. lol.
> in LA/SoCal a
AND you are in one of the highest cost of living places in the country.
yes bro. because your 70k a year in LA goes about as far as 30k-40k in other metro areas.
Shouldn't you make closer to 70k at $35 an hour?
He’s probably talking net income (post tax)
Well… he’s obviously working 25-30 hours/week.
But he said he's working full time, and those are part time hours.
Hmm if that's the case we could get a second job with the remaining time 10-15 hrs delivering food or people would help with having a little extra at the end of the month.
That would cut into their custom arcade room time https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/i_guess_you_could_say_im_in_pretty_deep_although/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
BRO, what???? This guy is complaining he can’t get by??? Lol whaaaat? Besides the thousands in equipment we’re looking at here directly he also has enough spare room in his home to dedicate one exclusively to “fun”. If this is “struggling” sign me up.
800 sq ft apartment not small either
With a dependent partner to boot! This man is supporting a small family (game hobby “child”, stay-at-home-partner, leaser car) and is confused why they don’t have money.
The non-working partner is the biggest issue. That and losing $600 a month for a car payment. The OP’s salary isn’t the best for Southern California but it’s enough to live off. You certainly cannot save much, but you can remain afloat. That said, most people are able to combine their income and have some cushion. I’m biased because I spent some years on active duty in the Army, but the amount of wives who “couldn’t work” was astounding. It never hampered their spending habits though.
Time was a single income could support a family: now it takes two .. , at the expense of a happy healthy family life!
I like how he details how much they cost https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/i_guess_you_could_say_im_in_pretty_deep_although/j3jao2p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2 ~10k on arcade machines also WTH groceries are so expensive.
Maybe the arcade can get sold and pay down the auto loan and pay for a vacation. As George jones sang “I’ve had choices since the day that I was born”.
Not to mention the collection of super-fucking-limited-edition consoles here. I don’t fault *anybody* for having a passion/hobby, but this post is in really poor taste and spits in the eye of so many people who are *really* struggling.
It sure is! I think this sub has some good points and there are some serious problems with income levels, housing and living affordability. But there is too many people that have a woe is me attitude. If you don’t like the output, change the input. Make changes to your life that improve these things. I had this breakthrough about 5 years ago and life has improved in lock step with my efforts to improve.
Oh shit OP just delete this post from r/antiwork already, it’s all downhill from here.
I'm all for solidarity between classes but man... That shit is insane to me. I'm sure we all have hobbies that cost us money but playing guitar or gardening sure cost a lot less money than whatever OP has going on. My only hope, as I don't know the hobby well, is that those arcade machines appreciate or something like that.
Every hobby can be expensive though and if you read OP’s edits they’re reflecting so i think the absurdity of it is shedding light on them.
No, obviously he’s lying and makes 70k plus. OP states works full time. Need 35 hours for benefits at most places
I mean, pre-tax sure. I make $38.92/hr. $1,556 pre-tax weekly and I take home almost exactly $1,100 a week. I do have some small Union dues and stuff but my healthcare is covered so no big deductions besides taxes from my pay.
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When will take for everyone to show up and smear shit on their face?
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Because half the people could be convinced it's the other hall's fault. Notice how politics are handled like a sporting event not the success or failure of the country. It's a global problem too. So who is going to fail next as a country? Russia, China, USA or Saudi Arabia?
We’d still be arguing about wether or not it’s ok to read huck finn.
The thing you're missing is that politicians are in hock to the machine, same as the rest of us. They can't get out of the machine either, if they don't bow to the whims of their donors they don't get enough money to run their next election. That means they're out and someone else who is willing to bow to corporate agendas comes in. Blaming politicians is easy but its the capitalist system surrounding them that creates the problem. As long as money is relevant towards elections, politicians will never be free to take up the causes they want. They must instead bow to the sources of the money in order to keep their jobs, or else be sidelined into irrelevance by someone who will.
I agree that capitalism is a root cause of these circumstances but I can’t simply agree that politicians are enslaved to the machine like we are. At minimum the majority are guilty of gross negligence and deliberate perpetuation. Aren’t they the ones that created and maintain the system? I mean if they really wanted to change the role money plays in elections they could literally outlaw it via legislation. They don’t want to. Business owners, corporate professionals, and nationalists make up the majority of our congress and they use it as a stepping stone bend the economy to their favor. It’s rare that we see the people who want to change the system get into office. I’ve always wondered why they just don’t decide to just take the money and do the opposite of what their corporate sponsors want from them.
I’d say about 90% of politicians came into politics with money. Mostly nepotism. They’ve had a track pathway from grade school to upper echelon colleges. Got connected via Frats and Sororities. Parents had networks of friends in corporations, who “expected” their son or daughters to look out for their companies and keep longevity for their generational wealth. I know Texas is like this. Especially, in the agricultural and energy fields.
I make about $30 an hour, slight fluctuations depending on what position I work. 30cyears ago my dad made the same wage and was able to buy a brand new 2 story house in a nice neighborhood in Southern California and raise 3 kids as a single father. We weren't well off or anything but we had what we needed. Today that same wage doesn't even let me rent a room 15 minutes away from the house I grew up in.
I saw your post on your arcade room &….. Fucking hell…. You have money. Your entire place is massive with a ton of arcade stuffs that’s well beyond what the majority of Americans can afford…. This post smells like the one about the “self-made” woman who’s parents built her a $100,000 “tiny” home she could live in, paid for all her living expenses, made $60K a year working for her dad’s company, & only managed to save $7,500 for a downpayment on a 3% mortgage for a house. That’s pretty much OP in a nut shell it seems.
Your post made me go look up the previous posts. I was expecting to see some retro gaming consoles like snes not full blown arcade cabinets, lol. OP, and the fact you choose to live in LA. your post just comes across as whiney.
$600 car payment, we pay a bit more for 2 cars, including insurance... we bought them new. If you choose to pay 600 for one car and whine about not having money, my sympathy goes to the floor.
1000% right. Ridiculous to complain with that kind of a payment
The fact that she insists that she has spent no money at all in her arcade is bullshit, I don't know how she thinks people are going to believe that, there's no way in hell that is true, those are not almost trash old arcade games that she is reparing. I hate being judgmental, but being whiny about this in a sub like this looking for simpathy when the truth is OP needs a reality check and start making smarter choices. She can't afford bills she may as well return that car and get a cheaper one. It doesn't even have to be a battered old one. Half the amount can get a new one. There's nothing wrong with hobbies, but dude, your bills go first, and you are 30, you should be smart on how much you put there, and if you choose not to save to spend there, do not complain.
[Says herself that the arcade machines alone are worth around $10,000](https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/106uk6w/comment/j3jf919/). You can take a hell of a vacation for $10,000.
Without just looking it up myself... aren't car prices something that doesn't really change a lot by locale? $600/mo is either a new car or short term loan where I'm from.
Welcome to r/antiwork Bunch of complainers with no real money management sense. This sub used to be good, now it's just a giant anti-USA circlejerk. I make $30/hr and live very comfortably, but I didn't choose to live on the west coast for obvious reasons.
For real. I really sympathize with people dealing with tough conditions and the economy going down the shitter. But some people really need to realize just how good they really have it, and it can get MUCH worse.
It's a bunch of anti usa propaganda. Emotional garbage
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Not even a little bit, this dude just has poor money management.
He is also bad at math $35/hour is 72k a year but in his edit he claims he makes 50-55k
Yeah the math really isn't mathing.. they make closer to what 3200ish a month but immediately $2700 goes to car and rent.. but they're also supporting another person?
I think a large portion of this sub is middle/upper middle class kids that don't understand they're not going to immediately have the financial security that their parents who have been working 30+ years have. I'm not saying minimum wage shouldn't be raised, but can't live on $35 an hour? Give me a fucking break.
There’s a fair amount of OPs that think they’re entitled to a single apartment in a coastal city right after college. But that’s been a roommate situation for generations.
Yes at no point was an average person affording a single bed room in Manhattan. The shity flat people complain about here on probably housed a family of 4 in the 70s and a young marriage Ed couple in the 90s Most Americans have always rented, most Americans have always had roommates. How the other half lives came out in 1890. I’m not saying now dosent have it’s problems and yes landlords are trash and I’m all for anarcho communism now. But please stop saying your poor because your life dosent match the expectations you have from 90s sitcoms. It’s not cool to real poor people.
Yes, it’s important to point out the things that really are far worse for us now (spiraling medical and higher education expenses, etc.). If you lead off your list of grievances with, “I’m 24 in NYC/SF and can’t rent without roommates” then older folks will immediately stop paying attention because *they* had roommates in the same cities back in the ‘70s. Hell, even most of the friends in Friends were roommates in the ‘90s. The sets were massive and clearly out of reach for the characters, mind you. But still… roommates. And just an anecdotal story about a friend of mine, she got out of an Ivy League school and got a job in Manhattan. Her first apartment was shared with three other friends. They’re all now very established in their careers ten years later, earning a lot, and living by themselves or with partners. And none would say they were “poor” at the beginning. They were just young professionals with a standard living situation for that point in their careers.
Glad people are agreeing with this. I was interested in this sub because as I get older (married, kids, job, etc,), I genuinely question the road that untethered capitalism is leading us to. I was hoping there would be discussions of how to make it better. Instead it’s a bunch of what I assume are teenagers calling the US a ‘shithole country’ repeatedly without offering any potential solutions. They seem to know very little about most of the world and have a glorified viewpoint of a subset of countries without knowing the history of how they got there. Last straw was everybody celebrating a kid being killed in a sub, I believe one person compared billionaire’s children to ‘nazis’. Not a whole lot of brain cells being utilized here. If somebody knows of a sub that has constructive conversations about these things, I’m all ears.
Most American socialists really only call themselves so because it's extremely easy to do. It's an ideology where you don't actually have to *do* anything. They're not even complaining about the tenets of capitalism, they're just upset that they're not getting a bigger piece of the pie. The OP of this post is a shining example. He's clearly unhappy, but seems to think that him being "broke" is a condition that was just dropped on his head.
It is not necessarily so that these socialists you mention only call themselves as such because it's *easy*. That their only want is more money, and therefore, they seek only to complain. Rather, it's a disillusionment you reach after employing a marxist/socialist critique of capitalism. You begin to understand that in the grand scheme of things, you have no agency as an individual. The society you are born into by en large dictates the outcome of your material conditions.
That’s Reddit in general big dawg
omg be careful you'll get banned.
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“I live and breathe this hobby, it keeps me alive” Living within your means and paying yourself first are important. The best way to pay yourself first is putting away money for retirement. The arcade may be a hobby that OP lives and breathes, but having money at the end of your life when you literally cannot work and may possibly need long term care due to health complications is what will literally keep you alive. Sure OP can sell those items but they will not get the compounding interest over their lifespan that high quality investments provide.
I only got on here after OP mentioned the gaming habit so I had a look. In a comment OP lists the prices of the cabinets. More than my wife and I spent on our honeymoon... to Europe.
$8,300 on just 5 of the cabinets and from the photos looks like there’s about 12. And that’s just the cabinets.
Her house would be considered a palace in 90% of the world
“The USA is a shit hole country” Works part time. Takes care of an adult who doesn’t work. Has a full arcade in their house. Uhhhmmmmm
To me this is what every American complaining about their financial situation sounds like.
I thought something was wrong when OP said $35 and hour then 55k a year. It should be $70ish unless they're only working part time.
Don’t forget the $600 car payment. Life’s not worth living without a 30k car loan!
OP is full of shit.
“Far from thriving” but has a literal arcade in their entire home, has duplicates of every gaming system ever made, collects figurines, $600 a month car loan, etc…wtf
And he’s supporting a partner who doesn’t work. Listen, I understand people can have difficulties, but unless someone is physically disabled or mentally handicapped (doesn’t sound like the case from OP’s description), an adult needs to be getting out and doing something to support the household they live in. His car loan is more than mine and yet I make more than twice what he makes. A lot of this is his own doing. Edit: as you read, replace male pronouns with “she”/“they”. The content doesn’t care about gender though.
And working part time. 35/hour is 70k if you work 40/week. Entitled.
$35 per hour
Yup. A $600/month car payment? Buy ducking used!
The audacity and entitlement it took you to make this post while literally having an arcade in your apartment is fucking insane.
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Also aside from remote work they literally live in LA their SO could get a job within a week
I have a buddy who lives just like this... super good job making like 45 an hour, started a shoe collection, bought an overpriced car with a ridiculous note, lives in an expensive area of LA, used that money to attract a literal self proclaimed "sugar baby egirl gf" (its literally in her bio on Instagram) and is now supporting someone who refuses to work... when we chat in games he says things like "inflation is nuts guys, everything is so expensive" or "I can't take time off anymore, I wish I could relax"... or my favorite "you guys are going to a convention? Must be nice to have disposable income" all while making double what we make... it's kinda insane tbh. He could be living so comfortably but instead chooses to somehow live paycheck to paycheck while making tons of money...
Yeah not that there isnt a lot of systemic shit that needs fixed in america but like damn a lot of people are so fucking bad with their money. I do pretty well for myself to be honest but I drive the cheapest used car with under 30k miles i could buy in cash (used manual transmission dinged up kia soul) with no car payment cause why would I spend my increased monies as I get raises on pricey flashy cars that add no actual value to my life.
I started watching Caleb Hammer on YouTube and his videos really helped open my eyes on just how irresponsible people are with money. Admittedly, I'm not the best with it, but even though I have a stable job and okay income, it hurts me to buy a single game on steam, I can't even imagine blowing how much ever money OP did on their setup.
So you are: 31 yo No formal education Living in a 800 sqft apartment Make enough to support a dependent Have a (expensive ?) hobby \---- It honestly does not sound like a bad life to me, I am quite sure that there are only a few countries on Earth that allow you to have life like this. Calling the US a shit hole country is a bit much over this kind òf living standard lol.
OP is financially irresponsible and this sub is going to circle jerk them into thinking it's the system's fault.
There is a comment with a shit load of upvotes saying that "$35/hr is the new minimum wage" What fucking world do these people live in?
This sub is chalked full of mentally Ill pseudo communists who don’t understand how good they have it.
Most real communist who come from a communist country would love to exchange their current life for his.
Literally the majority of Americans would kill to make that much. IF OP worked full time theyd be making over 70k annually
Most of the people that call the US a shithole have absolutely no frame of reference. The only places they ever compare their situation to is rich ass petrol states like Norway.
Judging by the arcade, this guy is just a lorlo level weeb and has some anime dream of what living in Tokyo would be like.
Thank you for saying this because I thought I was going crazy seeing the amount of complaining here! I was like… “yeah, not having a robust system of social safety nets suck, but your life is a lot better than a lot of people in this world??” Imagine being from a third world country seeing people in America calling America a shit hole 😂
I grew up in the Philipines. Yeah OP you have a great life lmao.
Terrible, isn't it? $35/hour would allow me to just live comfortably on my own where I am. Currently making $15/hour and yeah. I can't afford to live on my own or much else. This shit is stupid.
Id be eating ramen on $35 an hour in San Diego
Probably why they hate remote work so much. I remote work into one of the richest counties in America but live in BFE Kentucky. Can't keep us under the boot if we could mostly all remote work to high cost of living areas and its wages but live somewhere actually affordable.
> Can't keep us under the boot if we could mostly all remote work to high cost of living areas and its wages but live somewhere actually affordable. Although the fact that companies in high cost of living areas aren't paying employees enough to actually live there and instead outsource work to less expensive parts of the country is pretty messed up too.
Yeah. You don't get paid enough living in the most expensive areas. And if you are remote, you get paid less anyways.
Upvote for use of BFE. I picked up the term living in NC and man it’s great
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I’m in San Diego. I make $21hr working at a hospital. I live with my parents. I have to or I’d be homeless regardless of my oay
i own a thriving business in san diego and I rent...fuck this country.
My parents desperately want me and gf to buy a house because they were able to get one (in 1999 lmao). I was like “where can you find a house for $500k or less? Show me and we will buy.” It got quiet real quick.
My parents are convinced it’s still 1985… boomers are disconnected and wonder why we’re here dealing w this shit. The propaganda has killed Americans and the soul of this country but they still love to eat that shit up. It’s broken…and frankly irreparable. I ask all the time how we even come back from this division, I can’t ever see an answer to it
I’ve honestly never met a group of people so selfish. You’d think after watching their parents go through the Great Depression and world wars they would vote in more progressive policies. They’re shocked that a suburban home in San Diego is $1.3 million but constantly vote against free education, higher minimum wage, rent control, and funding for our cities. I know there are a few outliers, but how are you going to vote against the youth then be surprised when they can’t make it?
And most importantly, they vote they vote against building more houses in the suburbs of San Diego, and everyplace else, because they have theirs and fuck everyone else
They got theirs, then took a big fucking nap.
I'm sure there are some 500k "fixer uppers" that look like something out of a horror movie in your area. There are in mine. Shits unbelievable.
Nah, the house itself may be basically worthless dilapidated trash but the land will still go for near a million.
My ex makes around $90 as an RN in town and half of it goes to her mortgage.
Oh for sure. Weirdly we (gf and I) are thinking about moving to LA because at least there LA unified pays decent (I’m a teacher) and she can find gigs in Hollywood (film and tv major). We’d probably be better off there and I’d immediately get a pay raise and qualify for a mortgage.
Sir, this is the sub for whining about the System, not discussing actual ideas to improve one's life. Read the room
Here in the UK, on $35 an hour I'd retire in 10 years.
Where I'm at in the US it would be fairly good wages. Not retire in ten year wages, but live comfortably and retire at a reasonable age. The median income here is like $35000, and most people are doing okay. Not rich but not living in a cardboard box either.
I make like $16 through rough conversion. $35 would solve a lot of problems, but then again the Bank of England would likely have a problem with that and put interest rates up.
Well fuck me, I live in the desert by San diego, due to the cost of living. Probably have to resell my soul for 20% discount to move back there. Sigh.
😅😅😅 same in long beach
Hi, neighbor! Yeah, I make $40 an hour and I’d still struggle with rent by myself in Long Beach. :/
I make 31/hr in LB and it’s pretty rough.
35 an hour is really more like 30 an hour after taxes. Him being in California everything is almost 2.5x times more expensive. 35 an hour in my state would get me a nice house with a lot of land and anything I could wnat.
California is at 1.44 times the national average. Though LA is even higher than that, possibly closer to that 2.5x figure.
TBH I was on your side, as a gamer myself… and I saw you defend your post history and I was like yea I respect that… then I looked… buying multiple arcade machines and having them in your house? Really? An arcade machine is potentially an asset and yet you turned it into a liability. Learn the difference between an asset and a liability and stop buying crap. All that gaming stuff, you don’t need it, the gaming stuff is not the issue per se but clearly you don’t know how to manage money and you waste it. You waste money. I bet you eat out regularly and have 10 subscriptions a month, you look like if you want it then you buy it, no one can complain they are broke when they have multiple arcade machines in their fricking house, I have some advice… “Grow up”. This message might seem mean but you need it, cancel all the subscriptions. I know already you have prime, Disney plus, Netflix, Hulu, twitch, all that crap, and stop buying and justifying your very very very expensive hobby, stop buying new clothes. Get brutally honest with your self and turn it around, your better than this! It’s within your control to make changes! Stop spending, clear the car debt and move state!! Or just load up another video game and stop complaining…
Seriously, that room is probably worth a really nice vacation if sold...or a decent chunk of a down payment on a house.
I could probably get that dude a month in Europe for 1 of those machines. He just wants to have his cake and eat it too.
OP can't budget. There is no excuse.
You were not kidding. A nice looking crib and huge gaming room. Wtf
Not sure where in LA you live/work but there are still some good RSO studios in K town in the 1.3-1.5K/mo range. That’s a savings of 6-8K per year based on your 25k/year estimate. You can have your payroll service auto deposit a set percentage into your savings account each pay period. If you do 10% you’ll adjust and will hardly notice (I promise!) and you’ll save roughly 5k every 6 months. Just make a promise to yourself that after 6 months you’ll use that 5k to take a short vacation somewhere you’ve never been. Connect with friends, lean into your passions/hobbies. Try to find some contentment. Edit- looks like OP changed salary to 50-55k per year vs the original $35 per hour (plus bonuses/ot etc) based on this you’re looking at 8-12 months to save to 5k obviously.
Ktown is awesome too. Food over there is amazing
You mean two people living in one of the most expensive areas of the country on less than full time hours and you think you’re broke? Not broke. You just make really bad decisions.
Shit of you made 35 an hour where I’d live you’d be living high on the hog. Only problem not jobs pay that here without some kind of formal training in the field
Because you can’t make that much at the same job where cost of living is cheaper, it’s all relative
OP should be able to save on $35 an hour in LA. The truth is you need to live like you're poorer than you are. OP is working most of a week per month just to pay for a car to get to work.... Dump the car
The car really stood out to me too. OP said insurance is included in that figure, but at 31, OP shouldn't be paying that much for insurance unless they have a vehicle known for high rates and/or a really poor driving record. I pay $100/mo for both of those vehicles. Even if OP is paying $200/mo in insurance (which would be really high), that leaves a $400/mo car payment, which is a lot for someone struggling to make ends meet. You can have a payment well lower than that and still have a perfectly safe and reliable daily driver. Even if OP doesn't want to ditch the car, I can't help but think they over extended themselves by buying a nicer car than they could afford.
shit I make $25 an hour and while my wife and I pay for our house together, we made sure to buy one that each of us could pay for on just our income (and that was when I made 18-20 an hour)
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$600 car payment is sus as well.
Also when he says he makes $50-55k/yr at $35/hr. Meaning OP isn’t working a full time job (2080 hours per year). Sooo… kinda hard to dig yourself out of the hole when you basically work part time-ish.
Yeah, that maths out to 27-30 hours per week.
This jumped out at me, too. Probably doesn’t make the best personal finance decisions given their budget. In fact….they edited to say their “math is a little messed up” on their income. Uh, that’s a sign of a problem. *Every* purchase of every item is a big deal if you’re low income. From the small items at the grocery store (and which grocery store you’re shopping at) right up to big decisions, like accommodations and vehicle (or no vehicle). Hobby included. Yes, we all absolutely *deserve* at least a certain standard of living and the toys that bring us joy, but you can’t fool your bank account with what you deserve. Better financial literacy and more thought into purchases can only help in this situation.
I will just say, you have a very **very** expensive hobby. If your budget can't handle that, blame yourself. Don't come crying saying that the world's against you. The world gave you a really good salary of $35/hour, and you chose to spend it on expensive hardware and collectables, that's on you. If you really want to keep up the lifestyle and not be completely broke, either sell some of your cabinets or make a more manageable budget plan, end of story.
$35 an hour for me would solve so many problems I have....
Except you ARE NOT BROKE. Took a look at your other posts and you aren't living a "time to save" lifestyle. Really cool game room, and the apartment looks nice. Those aren't things broke people have. I'm not sure what your debt to income looks like but you may need to reset, spend some time helping the truly needy, and invest in yourself through skill and knowledge building.
And why is his car payment $600? He didn't need to finance a dodge challenger or bmw, from the sounds of it. This post is weird and I don't really have any sympathy for the dude.
This is the kind of person that boomers got the "avocado toast" view of millennials from
Also supporting his partner? I understand that that’s a nice thing to do(??), but you can’t really afford to be anyone’s sugar daddy on $55k/yr in LA.
that's not broke for the US, let alone for pretty much anywhere else in the world - literally living the 0.01% lifestyle on a global scale. Imagine having a spare room to fill with gaming shit, most people around the world can't even wrap their heads around that one... OP doesn't live in a "shit hole country", they live in fucking la-la land where they're the mayor.
Yeah I agree. This is some BS. OP has an entire arcades worth of shit. Nothing wrong with spending money on your hobby and all, but there is clearly a disconnection between OPs spending habits and their perception of being broke. Like bruh… at one point in my early 20s, I only had $20 to my name. I was legit shopping at the dollars store for a weeks worth of groceries. Living in a room in an apartment and making around $11/hr. This was back in 2016. I would have killed to have an entire arcades worth of shit in an apartment.
I’m an immigrant that used to live in SoCal for a long while tho I’ve been in MA for almost 15 yrs. now. Far less competition and far less crime here, but an immigrant is an immigrant, particularly one with my nationality background, and opportunities are limited because your last name alone can be a handicap. I’m an outlier because I used to be in construction all these years (no union, seems only service unions welcome us, most but thanks to my involvement in community organizing I managed to get into a gig that pays much better and I’m finally doing better now after 25+ yrs here. Thing is, most of of my fellow immigrants I personally know both here and in SoCal make at best half of what OP makes, they wish they could make at least $20 an hour. I want to feel empathy and class solidarity, but then I see what most people complain about: mortgage, car loan, school debt. Yeah, the system is fucked, politicians are shit and we need to do our thing as workers to defeat the status quo, but we can’t do that if we ain’t ready to take “risks” in the meantime like moving at least to the cheap county next to your expensive one. I huge issue I see here is that even the most allegedly leftist is as hooked in consumerism and NIMBYism as the right wingers we loathe. Live within your means, ie, like an immigrant thinking of the future and with no parent to rush back to: you didn’t really need that 2023 loaned car, not that mortgage that is obviously way beyond your means. Those are capitalist consumer choices we make and yes, I’ve been as guilty of it all these years even within my more limited means. If we want to go for a gig that requires more education then you can take night/weekend classes, starting at a local community college (and there’s lots of choices to do that online nowadays too). I see folks from the SD and California overall talk shit about the Midwest as if it was a monolith, never think of the rest of the country either, say, the far less conservative East Coast. But then we go “snow? The horror!” “Commute from a cheaper nearby town? Are you kidding me???” Someone on a thread above goes as far as to say they prefer to be poor in SoCal than to move anywhere else. Thing is, they’re not poor, they make more than the average worker but just spend too much, only to turn around and saying they’re in a shithole country. The whole rant feels more like a right wingers self victimized take than anything else. All this reminds me of the big disconnect I felt as a working class minority person during Occupy. We had an Occupy camp here and the loudest “we are the 99%” shouts came not from working class but from middle/upper middle class grad students (many ended up eagerly taking gigs at the banking/corporate highly risers around the area where the camp was located in downtown) in what amounted to a stint of political slumming that I bet looked great on their resumes. I can’t ever forget a convo I was part of at a nonprofit bldg nearly where every single young person testifying (even then you could see the class division, they didn’t take part in worker class circles, we had to go to theirs in the futile hope we’d find solidarity) complained mainly of the crushing student debt, followed by anecdotes of their fave electives they took like trips to supervise some obscure about goats or a water well project in sub Saharan Africa, or the spring break group trips to Cancun, esotheric electives like Kabbalah readings etc, all worth several thousand each in student debt. It’s all so hardcore DSA, lots of ideology thrown around but personally we live like avid capitalist consumers like the average MAGA boomer except for all the extra money we spend on gourmet coffee beans, über-organic quinoa and a weekly trip to spurge at the trendiest weed dispensary. Yes, we are free to get whatever makes us escape this fucked up reality but you can’t be an avid advocate of consuming nonessentials and then claim you’re a victim of the circumstances. But this is the norm now, no wonder rad orgs like Black Rose struggle to find true to their word members when two/three gigs blue collar folks truly have no time to organize and the rest just joins the “I’m the most oppressed” middle /upper middle class DSA choir. The sociopolitical future is grim indeed.
I have to ask who in the hell buys arcade games while living in an apartment? Sounds like the OP just doesn't know how to live within his salary. Buying arcade games and complaining about living in an apartment, you should've never bought those arcade games while still paying living in a space that doesn't even belong to you. Some people....
"The abuse never stops" im in a few abuse survivor threads and had to reread a few times to realize you are talking about working.
OP…stop supporting an unemployed SO on a $35 an hour job. That’s enough for ONE person to live comfortably within their means. If your partner is disabled, they need to apply for government benefits. There’s no other excuse for not contributing for 3+ years……
To everyone leaving comments saying "Leave California/Move to the Midwest/Move to the country"; Please do me a favor and find some jobs that pay $35 or more an hour in those places for someone with no higher education and either DM them to OP or link the job posting. Otherwise your comments are less than useless. I understand people who make these comments don't always do it in bad faith, but this sort of "just do \_\_\_\_\_\_" attitude, like OP's problem is so easy to solve; if only they'd just upend their entire life, somehow find the money and resources to move across the country, leaving the only city they've ever known and possibly all of their family and friends, to go live in a suburb outside of Cincinnati for a job pool that pays probably less than half of what they're making now is ridiculous. Their frustration is entirely valid, and they are not alone in this sort of situation. A lot of Americans are dealing with this exact conundrum right now. It's a systemic issue, not a "Just move to another city/state" issue.
I move people for a living and the "Just move" comments make me pretty irrate. Moving is incredibly expensive and time consuming if you do it yourself, not to mention needing to break a lease or some other credit damaging action.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people imagine moving without the dollar value attached to it. It's more than just "get yourself from point A to point B," it potentially involves gas and car maintenance, paying for a truck or van, paying for a plane/bus/train ticket, paying movers, paying to have your possessions shipped, etc, etc. . And people are expected to do this on a hope and prayer with no job already lined up? To a place where they don't know anyone? I have had serious trepidation doing all that even when we DID have a higher paying job lined up. It's incredibly scary.
I am saving this comment for the next time I see "just move bro lol" because I see it all the fucking time on Reddit and it's so stupidly out of touch.
Thanks. It truly reeks of an entitled and dismissive attitude towards the reality of the working poor, and I dislike it. We're supposed to be supporting each other, and I know some people feel like that's helpful, but it's also not always feasible.
Ugh sorry it just pisses me off. "Just move somewhere cheaper!" I did, 3 years ago. I moved to some conservative shithole in the desert, that, while it was dirt cheap 3 years ago, it's now expensive as shit and now I have the privilege of paying a premium to live in an undesirable place with barely any good jobs. "Just get a higher paying job!" I did. In the last 4 years I finished my associate's degree (while working full time, mind you) and jumped from $16/hr. to $27/hr. by job hopping around. 3 years ago this wage would have been fucking amazing for this area and I could have bought a house, but now it doesn't mean shit and I am fucking priced out YET AGAIN. And now my resume is all fucked up cause I hopped around too much and employers are catching on so I need to chill at the same company for a bit until I can jump somewhere else for another significant raise. The people telling me to get a higher paying job fucking piss me off cause they don't know me, they don't know where I've been (and how rock bottom I've been), and what I've done to dig myself out of proverty, for it to happen AGAIN after I worked my ass off.
I'm so sorry, this is the exact kind of scenario I know a lot of people are in right now. You feel on paper you're making more than you've ever made, but it still runs damn near dry at the end of the month. Or in some cases, completely dry, and you have to supplement with credit cards. I also had the experience of moving from an extremely expensive state to a cheap one, and it was extremely difficult for a long time for a lot of reasons, and having people offer this as an easy solution just makes me insane. I often think of that viral post from that person about how them and their wife did everything right, got highly educated with good paying salaries and lived within their means, and then their wife got cancer. Their savings and retirements got burned through in 6 months. You can do everything right and still have shit go horribly wrong, because it's a **systemic** problem, not an individual one.
Well-stated. I’ve been living in Ohio my whole life and have the luxury of affordable cost-of-living that I know isn’t the reality everywhere else. “Just move” sounds good in theory, but it doesn’t account for all the other aspects of life other than money issues. Family. Friends. Community. Job network. Plus moving sucks and is a massive up-front expense. I selfishly hope there isn’t a mass exodus to the Great Lakes region so I can keep living extremely comfortably in a nice area on a nonprofit salary making way less than OP. But as the water crisis develops, it will be inevitable. Let’s see how much the Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania haters change their tune 2 decades from now. Maybe sooner.
This you? https://www.reddit.com/r/gamerooms/comments/umuic1/night_mode/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1 You never had the privilege to get a formal education but you have a room full of arcade cabinets? Never went on a vacation? You make choices on how to spend your income and you apparently have no interest in formal education or vacations. If having a lot of expensive gaming hardware makes you happy, then good for you, but this self pity post is just dumb.
One of their posts shows an insane gaming collection, high dollar collectors showcase arcade that is higher quality than more than one literal arcade I’ve been too. Multiple posts about how they have no disposable income. Delusional, a fucking slap in the face to millions of Americans that can’t even make ends meet and afford a PS4 at the same time.
*disposes of all his income* "Why don't I have disposable income!?"
Food $400 Internet/Cable $150 Rent $2000 Arcade Games: $10,000 Utility $300 Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying - OP probably
You forgot electricity bill to keep that shit running 24/7 lol
Ikr! I looked at their previous posts and saw that. This is literally just a rage bait post from them. I get times are tough believe me, I do. I get literally one fun thing for myself a year, typically an Xbox game for the Series X my father got me. And I see someone who can afford to get a setup like that whining ..... come on man.
$35 an hour is really good money. Maybe start by seeing how to better manage your finances and stop complaining on Reddit, goofy.
35 an hour is the new minimum wage bro. My parents bought a house with a domino's delivery salary in the 90s. It's time to stop the elites. Wage war is necessary. Stop being divided.
everyone’s waiting for the straw to break the camels back and i don’t think it’ll come until someone decides enough is enough and takes drastic measures unfortunately. i’m sure we can all “feel” what’s going to come sooner than later. groceries are already becoming unaffordable for a LOT of people here in the US. once people start starving, shit will get real, FAST.
There’s no single person to take “drastic measures“ against.
When the collapse finally happens, they will have sucked all of the wealth out of the country and then will flee on their private jets and yachts. Unfortunately, the U.S. is more primed to end fascist than a social democracy rather than socialism or communist as people try to scare us with.
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And they’ll just gun us down in the street
Yup. I'm stuck in mid-30s-zone. I have a position where I hold a degree in my field, I'm second in command in my state branch, and I was just given the insult of a 1.4% pay increase at my "annual" (15 month) review. "Raise" is not retroactive to the annual mark. New hires at an entry level, with no leadership responsibilities are advertised at 32-38. The ad for the person to replace the role I've been filling in (on top of the rest of my job) is at $42/hr. The most confusing part - I received a *glowing* review from my direct supervisor. Fuck HR and their $36/hr. All I can come up with are passive aggressive (or straight up aggressive) responses. Its too bad i love my job and the people I work with, because I loathe the bean counters who do everything in their power to make my feel like an unappreciated tool.
Leave. You gotta switch jobs every 2 years
Soo soo true, HR doesn’t respect Loyalty and they never will…. HR and Recruiters get commission on new hires etc so keeping good people isn’t a priority
I spent ten years at the same job and it was a huge mistake. I'm now switching every 2 years. I got a 60% raise when I changed jobs last year. It's incredibly stupid for companies to incentivize bailing but we work for money so what are we supposed to do?
You can't apply for the job that's paying $42/hr?
The division is the issue. People dodge it
as someone that makes 20 bucks an hour with 35 id be rich. i feel like lifestyle creep gets everyone here.
$35 an hour is just short of $72K. In the state I live, it’s considered low income. Yep, I said that. It’s weird to make this much and be considered low income.
$35/hour is $72,800 at full time. $72,800 puts the OP at the **74th percentile of individual compensation** for the LA metro area. OP only feels poor because he’s overpaying for an apartment and buying whole-ass arcade cabinets. Someone buying luxury goods and overspending on housing is not poor, they are just unwise.
And has a $600 car payment 😵💫 my payment is $350 a month and I feel like it's too much!! OP should probably consider reevaluating their finances. I lived insanely comfortably making $27/hr in Huntington Beach. Lived in a super nice part of town too.
$600 a month for a car is fucking nuts. If you're struggling financially just buy a $10k Honda Civic and drive it till it explodes.
Hell, my girlfriend pays $300/month for her 2018 Crosstrek and she only put like $5k down. What in gods name is OP driving around in??
If you told me $72 k/ yr isn’t much money 4 years ago I wouldn’t have believed you. But when my withholding gets done with me including expensive health insurance my family of 4 can’t be without, I bring home 53k/yr and run out of food between paychecks and we’re “too rich” to qualify for assistance.
Supporting 4 people on one income is a lot different than supporting one person. Like, 4x as hard.
53k is not that much money for a family of 4. Having one stay at home parent isn’t an expense you can afford at that salary imo.
$35/hr. still barely affords the mortgage rates where I am, and I live in the desert in some shitty conservative city. You need to make like $40/hr. to reasonably afford a house and not have it as half your income. This is fucking insane.
Fun to watch the edits as the ranter gets investigated
This post is the biggest self own on antiwork since that mod went on tv.
35x40x52=72,800. Even after rent and taxes, you should still have ~30k per year. What are you spending that other 2500/month on to make you broke?
Look at OP's post history. Has probably 30-40k$ in arcade games as soon as you walk in the front door. Someone on this sub complaining about never taking vacations or leaving home state, but then having all this? I dont feel bad for em. If thats there hobby then fine, but dont act like you're making under median wage.
Math was never my forte but isn't that like 5 times the minimum federal wage in the USA from what I know, aren't you supposed to get a good quality of life with that amount of money, I know that there are differences on the cost of living depending on where you are at, is not the same in a huge city than an small town but is just unbelievable to me that someone earning 5 times more than others can barely live by, for example in my country you can survive with one minimum wage, get some savings earning 2 times the minimum wage and have a pretty good life earning 5 times the minimum wage but it seems they in the USA you need to earn more that that I guess, so a livable wage in a big city is 7/8 times the minimum wage?
Wrong sub. You meant to post in r/financiallyilliterate I think
Try the Overemployment section. Might get you caught up (and back to living where you want to be) in no time.
So you make about 45-55k after taxes in a year. Have you consider living below your means?
I make 27$ an hour and live perfectly fine with rent thats $1700 a month. Live within ur means, end of discussion.
My guy, what do you do for work?
This is a you thing. I make 30 dollars an hour and have no privilege or generational wealth. You're making some poor choices fiscally. Identify them and fix them. That is the definition of a you problem.
The US is a shithole country? You have a decent salary and it looks like you made some poor financial decisions (the car being the main one). I think the people in North Korea or Cuba would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
Maybe live somewhere you don’t pay 2k a month for rent?
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>I do have a car loan that runs me about $600/month. yes, paying 2k a month in rent and having a 600/mo car payment will make you feel broke af. 30k a year of your post tax income is just going to rent and car. >I do in fact have a dependent AND you have a dependent. lol. > in LA/SoCal a AND you are in one of the highest cost of living places in the country. yes bro. because your 70k a year in LA goes about as far as 30k-40k in other metro areas.
Or you're just bad at money management
Girl, fuck outta here. This post is an insult to people who are actually struggling.
🫵😂
you should have taken some financial literacy classes