Great aticle on how middle class is struggling and not saving enough

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

So the person you procreated with isn't financially supporting your teen? I'm a good writer and may have wanted journalism, but I wanted to be financially secure so I went into law. Where did you decide you had the luxury of going into a disappearing, very middle class profession?

You answered your own question. I'm not a lawyer because I don't want to be a pompous snob like you. Plus, there has never been a father in the picture. And journalism wasn't in a death spiral when I went into it in the late 80s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We have no retirement savings, because we emptied a small 401(k) to pay for our younger daughter’s wedding.

WTF?

Good thing Chandler saved enough to pay for Monica's Wedding Scenario #8!

[Anonymous]

Oh, this made my blood boil:

"But, without getting too metaphysical about it, these are the choices that define who we are. We don’t make them with our financial well-being in mind, though maybe we should. We make them with our lives in mind. The alternative is to be another person."

Uh, fuck you, sir. I'm made literally every important decision in my life with my financial well-being in mind. Whether to marry when I did, how much to ask my parents to spend on the wedding (they chipped in $5K and DH and I paid $2K), what house to buy and where (and whether to compromise on location, size, schools, etc), how many kids to have, which career to follow (passionate about art but do that as a hobby and went into tech).

Making decisions "with our lives in mind" sounds a lot like hedonism if you're not considering your financial future. I'd love to buy a $1.5m house in North Arlington and be a creative and never sit at a desk or work on a schedule and have 4 kids, but realistically, I can't afford any of that. So I do as much as I can while still being careful and planning for rainy days.

The author sounds like an awful, awful person who condemns those who live carefully and thoughtfully as "not being their true selves" or something similar. What an evil, soulless, greedy asshole he is. I'm glad he's floundering and I hope he enjoys being the grasshopper when the winter comes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Not true. We make under the Commerce Dept's benchmark and have very healthy amounts in all those categories. The thing we didn't do is overbuy our house which is what got the author and most people in DC in trouble.

[Anonymous]

And then, on top of it all, came the biggest shock, though one not unanticipated: college. Because I made too much money for the girls to get more than meager scholarships, but too little money to afford to pay for their educations in full, and because—another choice—we believed they had earned the right to attend good universities, universities of their choice, we found ourselves in a financial vortex.

*shocker* College is expensive! Upper-middle class families don't qualify for need-based financial aid! What a shocker! Came out of nowhere!

[Anonymous]

^^^Also: we believed they had earned the right to attend good universities, universities of their choice, we found ourselves in a financial vortex.

Oh please. Give me a freaking break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, this made my blood boil:

"But, without getting too metaphysical about it, these are the choices that define who we are. We don’t make them with our financial well-being in mind, though maybe we should. We make them with our lives in mind. The alternative is to be another person."

Uh, fuck you, sir. I'm made literally every important decision in my life with my financial well-being in mind. Whether to marry when I did, how much to ask my parents to spend on the wedding (they chipped in $5K and DH and I paid $2K), what house to buy and where (and whether to compromise on location, size, schools, etc), how many kids to have, which career to follow (passionate about art but do that as a hobby and went into tech).

Making decisions "with our lives in mind" sounds a lot like hedonism if you're not considering your financial future. I'd love to buy a $1.5m house in North Arlington and be a creative and never sit at a desk or work on a schedule and have 4 kids, but realistically, I can't afford any of that. So I do as much as I can while still being careful and planning for rainy days.

The author sounds like an awful, awful person who condemns those who live carefully and thoughtfully as "not being their true selves" or something similar. What an evil, soulless, greedy asshole he is. I'm glad he's floundering and I hope he enjoys being the grasshopper when the winter comes.

"We make them [the choices] with our lives in mind. The alternative is to be another person."

If he is so shallow so as to believe that his financial choices define him as a person, well then, there is nothing more to say. That misguided belief is what got him into all this hot water.

[Anonymous]

on the upside, at least now he has a viral story in the atlantic.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why his wife never went back to work. Even if in a different field or part time. I know he said he kept her in the dark about their finances but I have a hard time believing she was totally unaware. Especially since he also mentioned how they didn't go on vacations like ever or really buy anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are paycheck to paycheck and have to juggle bills around all the time. It's awful. I could do some juggling to come up with 2000, but it's not sitting in a savings account. And I would have to wait till payday to get it. Our HHI is $180 too. We bought, then DH effectively had a pay cut. It's a long story.

There are a LOT of us out here, just like you. HHI of $160K with 2 earners. $400 would be hard but possible but $2000 would be a real difficulty. We do not have emergency savings of any kind. A recent large but necessary repair had to be put on credit because we just didn't have the cash.

[Anonymous]

Eh. I'm really not surprised that a seemingly rational and sane person puts himself in a precarious financial state keeping up with the Joneses. This is very similar to my family's story. My dad was a high ranking government official and because of whom we grew up and mingled with the world elite. The government perks made it so we were able to keep up with the Joneses and the prestige his title afforded us more than made up for our lack of actual funds. We wined and dined like the rich and lived like rich even though we had no savings no college funds no home. Ultimately dad retired and his pension isn't enough to keep us afloat. My younger siblings work part time in retail and attend NOVA. I have developed very elite tastes and find it hard to live a "normal" MC life. My parents have no retirement savings and no home. Its awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eh. I'm really not surprised that a seemingly rational and sane person puts himself in a precarious financial state keeping up with the Joneses. This is very similar to my family's story. My dad was a high ranking government official and because of whom we grew up and mingled with the world elite. The government perks made it so we were able to keep up with the Joneses and the prestige his title afforded us more than made up for our lack of actual funds. We wined and dined like the rich and lived like rich even though we had no savings no college funds no home. Ultimately dad retired and his pension isn't enough to keep us afloat. My younger siblings work part time in retail and attend NOVA. I have developed very elite tastes and find it hard to live a "normal" MC life. My parents have no retirement savings and no home. Its awful.

+ 1 I struggle with the same. It's a form of child abuse in my opinion to grow up with pictures that just don't represent the real world in any way.
Good luck to you, don't let the anger eat you up. Jump over your pride. I dug myself out slowly but still feel like a fish out of water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. I'm really not surprised that a seemingly rational and sane person puts himself in a precarious financial state keeping up with the Joneses. This is very similar to my family's story. My dad was a high ranking government official and because of whom we grew up and mingled with the world elite. The government perks made it so we were able to keep up with the Joneses and the prestige his title afforded us more than made up for our lack of actual funds. We wined and dined like the rich and lived like rich even though we had no savings no college funds no home. Ultimately dad retired and his pension isn't enough to keep us afloat. My younger siblings work part time in retail and attend NOVA. I have developed very elite tastes and find it hard to live a "normal" MC life. My parents have no retirement savings and no home. Its awful.

+ 1 I struggle with the same. It's a form of child abuse in my opinion to grow up with pictures that just don't represent the real world in any way.
Good luck to you, don't let the anger eat you up. Jump over your pride. I dug myself out slowly but still feel like a fish out of water.

Its awful! My friends live these amazing upper class lives and that is "normal" to me and all I know. Now, while they enjoy the privileges of being born with money, my dad retired and I have hit the ground hard. Its really hard to learn to fend for yourself when you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. I'm really not surprised that a seemingly rational and sane person puts himself in a precarious financial state keeping up with the Joneses. This is very similar to my family's story. My dad was a high ranking government official and because of whom we grew up and mingled with the world elite. The government perks made it so we were able to keep up with the Joneses and the prestige his title afforded us more than made up for our lack of actual funds. We wined and dined like the rich and lived like rich even though we had no savings no college funds no home. Ultimately dad retired and his pension isn't enough to keep us afloat. My younger siblings work part time in retail and attend NOVA. I have developed very elite tastes and find it hard to live a "normal" MC life. My parents have no retirement savings and no home. Its awful.

+ 1 I struggle with the same. It's a form of child abuse in my opinion to grow up with pictures that just don't represent the real world in any way.
Good luck to you, don't let the anger eat you up. Jump over your pride. I dug myself out slowly but still feel like a fish out of water.

But what are you all doing as adults? OK, there are reasons to resent parents, but you, yourselves what are you doing to achieve the lifestyle that you want to have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, this is not me. Because working hard to me means you are doing something that gets you results, so that your situation improves.

His income by his own admission was dwindling steadily over a long time. That's not working hard.

Sounds like he's working hard. Just not working smart. And not smart about managing money.