Great aticle on how middle class is struggling and not saving enough
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
This isn't quite me and I haven't made as many dumb financial decisions as the writer, but I am unlike most on DCUM, at least.
I am a single parent. I finally hit $90K this year. I could pay the $2000, but I would only have $4000 left in my emergency fund. I have enough saved for two years of state college for my teen. I have more than $4000 credit card debt, left over from a medical emergency. I have retirement savings, but nowhere near enough for someone who is 50. I disagree that working hard equates to your income going up on a steady trajectory. I'm a writer/editor. Journalism has imploded over the last couple decades. I stay because I love what I do and I don't think I have the temperament or right kind of smarts to be a lobbyist or IT professional to rake in the big bucks. I'm not exactly close to the edge, but closer than I'd like, and no one in real life knows that. |
Anonymous
| The author just seems to have made a number of very stupid decisions. |
Anonymous
It's normal if you have no values or sense of proportion. |
Anonymous
|
Why did he chose to live in Brooklyn and have to pay for private schools when he could have lived in Staten Island, Queens - or the suburbs of Nassau or Suffolk county. Same thing with paying for his kid's wedding. Its keeping up with the Joneses. DH's family and my parents were poor and through our own savings we paid for a beautiful "UMC" wedding. Whatever that meant. Weddings are optional.
The first daughter went to medical school. Stanford is an extraordinarily good school but here's a dirty little secret, medical school is a different beast. You don't have to go to ivy to be a successful doctor. They care what more about your MCATs and which medical school/residency you get into. I know very successful doctors in high paying specialties that went to state schools. If you go to Stanford to do a start up that's a total different story. They paid an inordinate amount of money for the second daughter to be a social worker. Poor choice. |
Anonymous
I would die of shame if I let my middle class parents drain their savings to pay for my wedding. Holy shit. |
Anonymous
|
I can't feel too sorry for him. He is paying for his lack of financial skills and his delusional nature. |
Anonymous
|
The article was too long for me. We are broke because we are paying down debt aggressively. Can borrow thousands at 3% for 15 months if necessary.
We are broke because we have 3 mortgages. Don't spend a whole lot or send kids to private school. Once the mortgages paid, should get easier. I didn't plan to have any kids and he didn't plan to have any kids and therefore we didn't save much when we were single. I think we will catch up, not stressing about it as we have a plan and have been following it closely. |
Anonymous
| This article isn't about how bad middle class wages are - by his own admission he was paid ok - this was about living beyond your means. That is no one's fault but his own. If you make as many bad life choices as this man did it would be absolutely amazing if you didn't end up in the street. |
Anonymous
This. Apparently appearances matter. But the in-laws are going to find out about his true financial situation when they have to ask the daughter for money. Hiding this is his downfall. It sounds like he wanted to be someone he is not. He is finally admitting his problems to himself and he feels better that other Americans are in the same place. However, most of those other Americans did not send their children to private schools, have wives that did not work, and pay for children to go to expensive private colleges. He is having problems for different reasons, but wants to lump himself in with those who did not live large like he did. |
Anonymous
Re: living in Brooklyn/sending to private. There was a period of time when he was doing really well in his career (I think he said one of his books was optioned for a film?) and I got the impression that that's when they decided to buy in Brookyn, wife would quit her job to SAH, and that eventually they would pay for private school. His big mistake was assuming that his income would keep rising at a steady pace. He even says at one point none of his mistakes (such as buying a second house before selling the first one or selling his first house at a loss) would have mattered in the end had that happened. And the thing is, it's not so unusual for people to think that: that they'll keep making more money as they get older. How could he have predicted the collapse of print media? |
Anonymous
| in which world does the film executive quit to be a sah parent while the writer becomes the breadwinner. |
Anonymous
Maybe this has something to do with the industry you're in, but I'm in a volatile industry where things are very up-or-out, and I have never assumed that I'll continue to make more money as I get older. I mean obviously you hope for that and work for it, but you don't assume it -- thus you save accordingly. In what world would a writer NOT think that way? It's different if you're in something like healthcare, where you know there will be continuous demand -- but writing? |
Anonymous
Except like much of the article, bringing up the cost of college was misleading - he says his parents paid for most of their kids' education. The article is not really an example of how the middle class is struggling - it's an example of how someone who's a spendthrift eventually runs out of money. Well, duh. |
Anonymous
If he assumed his salary would keep going up when he chose such an unstable field the fault is his own. I know they fire people in my field at the drop of a hat so my DH and I are socking away as much money as possible while times are good. |
Anonymous
|
In a 2010 report titled “Middle Class in America,” the U.S. Commerce Department defined that class less by its position on the economic scale than by its aspirations: homeownership, a car for each adult, health security, a college education for each child, retirement security, and a family vacation each year.A 2014 analysis by USA Today concluded that the American dream, defined by factors that generally corresponded to the Commerce Department’s middle-class benchmarks, would require an income of just more than $130,000 a year for an average family of four. Median family income in 2014 was roughly half that.
So to open the continuous argument here - $250K 'feels' middle class in DC because by this measure, it probably takes at least $200K in this area to attain some or most of the things on this list. |