70% of millennials live paycheck to paycheck

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rent costs $2500-3000 per mo. A modest Honda is gonna set you back $400-500 per mo. We aren’t even covering childcare, health expenses, and utilities that keep going up. Food prices keep going up and up and up. You will feel poor on a $120k salary these days.

Not everyone can afford to live in a trendy, desirable major city. Some people will have to move. They’ll survive.

If you have a portable career like teacher or nurse you can get a job anywhere, and if you have a corporate desk job you have WFH so you might only need to come in once a week. You commute from Baltimore County once a week. No big deal.

You're an idiot. Apartments in Columbia, MD are $2000-3000 per mo. Many apartment complexes in Baltimore county run $2000+ per mo. Neither of those are swanky cities.

How long exactly have you had your head up your ass? You sound like you're living in 2003 dollars.

You live with roommates if you’re childless.

And after you have children and are paying $2000/month for the apartment and $2000/month/child for childcare?

You still have a “roommate”: your spouse. So housing would be $1000/month. And maybe you move to PA or the south.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad but true. I know too many people who make really good money, but they blow their money on things like a giant house they don’t even need or expensive cars just to keep up with the Jones’s. It’s really sad. Nobody cares what you have or what you drive.

At least with the house they will get the money back.

+1. And remember, you are not privy to all their financial information. You may assume they don't have the money to blow but there might be another revenue stream, trust fund, inheritance or other windfall you know nothing about. M physician thinks our DH makes close to what he does but he is off a zero and I don't care to educate him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rent costs $2500-3000 per mo. A modest Honda is gonna set you back $400-500 per mo. We aren’t even covering childcare, health expenses, and utilities that keep going up. Food prices keep going up and up and up. You will feel poor on a $120k salary these days.

Not everyone can afford to live in a trendy, desirable major city. Some people will have to move. They’ll survive.

If you have a portable career like teacher or nurse you can get a job anywhere, and if you have a corporate desk job you have WFH so you might only need to come in once a week. You commute from Baltimore County once a week. No big deal.

You're an idiot. Apartments in Columbia, MD are $2000-3000 per mo. Many apartment complexes in Baltimore county run $2000+ per mo. Neither of those are swanky cities.

How long exactly have you had your head up your ass? You sound like you're living in 2003 dollars.

You live with roommates if you’re childless.

You realize millennials are over 40 now? Who is living with roommates past the age of 30?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rent costs $2500-3000 per mo. A modest Honda is gonna set you back $400-500 per mo. We aren’t even covering childcare, health expenses, and utilities that keep going up. Food prices keep going up and up and up. You will feel poor on a $120k salary these days.

Not everyone can afford to live in a trendy, desirable major city. Some people will have to move. They’ll survive.

If you have a portable career like teacher or nurse you can get a job anywhere, and if you have a corporate desk job you have WFH so you might only need to come in once a week. You commute from Baltimore County once a week. No big deal.

You're an idiot. Apartments in Columbia, MD are $2000-3000 per mo. Many apartment complexes in Baltimore county run $2000+ per mo. Neither of those are swanky cities.

How long exactly have you had your head up your ass? You sound like you're living in 2003 dollars.

You live with roommates if you’re childless.

You realize millennials are over 40 now? Who is living with roommates past the age of 30?

People who made poor financial & life choices. But, you do what you need to do to survive. If that means roommates, so be it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rent costs $2500-3000 per mo. A modest Honda is gonna set you back $400-500 per mo. We aren’t even covering childcare, health expenses, and utilities that keep going up. Food prices keep going up and up and up. You will feel poor on a $120k salary these days.

Not everyone can afford to live in a trendy, desirable major city. Some people will have to move. They’ll survive.

If you have a portable career like teacher or nurse you can get a job anywhere, and if you have a corporate desk job you have WFH so you might only need to come in once a week. You commute from Baltimore County once a week. No big deal.

You're an idiot. Apartments in Columbia, MD are $2000-3000 per mo. Many apartment complexes in Baltimore county run $2000+ per mo. Neither of those are swanky cities.

How long exactly have you had your head up your ass? You sound like you're living in 2003 dollars.

You live with roommates if you’re childless.

You realize millennials are over 40 now? Who is living with roommates past the age of 30?

Some millennials think they’re too good to live in a lower COL area. Not everyone gets to live in NYC.

[Anonymous]

I'm a single mother with a take home pay of about $4000 a month after taxes.
Our rent will be $2000 a month. Phone, internet and car insurance is another $200 total.
We live well on $1800 a month. While I'm not millennial, I got a very late start in going to school (at 30), building a career (never did), and investing because I was illegal the first ca 10-12 years after moving here. I got my papers right when financial crises hit in 2007-2009. Illegal meant that I couldn't go to school, I couldn't easily change jobs, I was often underpaid and overworked. 4 restaurants didn't even bother to pay the $2.77 an hour and/or pay up to meet the DC minimum wage. Not sure if it was the law back in a day.
Not being able to invest or buy a home really bothered me. I had been homeless before and all I wanted to do is to make sure it wouldn't happen again. Saving $400-$500 a month and not investing it, wasn't going to do it.
Once I got my papers, all extra money monthly went into real estate and market. I'm not touching any of it and it has grown a lot. I may be able to stop working soon and all this never making more than $4000 a month and in ca 15 years.
I made many mistakes, but learned a lot. not buying any real estate unless it's for living. Market grew so much faster than real estate because of the timing and location.
For young people, let's stop telling them that them market grows 8-10%, because it seems discouraging. Just put some in an index fund (inside Roth ) and a little in high growth. Make it a bill you got to pay.
Wait to upgrade car and home. Couple of years of that is a lot of help.Why parents don't teach their kids all that, I don't know. Maybe they don't listen. Maybe they are waiting for inheritance. Schools won't because world wants them to spend money. Parents are pushing for higher education which costs a lot. Even they don't see the value of investing the money in the market vs education (can do both). And even if they do, it's in that lousy 529 plan pushed by the companies.
Just a little bit of financial education goes a long way. So does life experience, but why not use the one parents have so kids don't waste their time on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rent costs $2500-3000 per mo. A modest Honda is gonna set you back $400-500 per mo. We aren’t even covering childcare, health expenses, and utilities that keep going up. Food prices keep going up and up and up. You will feel poor on a $120k salary these days.

Not everyone can afford to live in a trendy, desirable major city. Some people will have to move. They’ll survive.

If you have a portable career like teacher or nurse you can get a job anywhere, and if you have a corporate desk job you have WFH so you might only need to come in once a week. You commute from Baltimore County once a week. No big deal.

You're an idiot. Apartments in Columbia, MD are $2000-3000 per mo. Many apartment complexes in Baltimore county run $2000+ per mo. Neither of those are swanky cities.

How long exactly have you had your head up your ass? You sound like you're living in 2003 dollars.

You live with roommates if you’re childless.

You realize millennials are over 40 now? Who is living with roommates past the age of 30?

The youngest millennials were born in 1996 so a fair number still in their late twenties and thirties.

[Anonymous]

I mean millennials are 27 to 42.

At 27 I was a poor grad student. At 38 I have a net worth over $1 million.

So I don't know this is that alarming, frankly. Given millennials survived the housing market crash which lead to an employment crash, COVID, etc all with record levels of college debt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both my kids lived for free with us after college and grad school for a few years to save as much money as they could. No student debt either. There was no way I was letting my kids leave the nest without a significant leg-up. They got merit scholarships in in-state so we did not have to pay for them. The money we had saved for their college was repurposed for grad school.

Living paycheck to paycheck is also happening due to lack of planning, overspending, poor choices and a shocking sense of entitlement.

Glad your kids got to live for free in a major metro area after college, in commuting distance to high-paying jobs. They also had grad school savings that they didn’t save for themselves.

Most people don’t have those advantages, due to no fault of their own.

Yes, its the fault of parents.

We lived frugally and far below our means for years to save money for college for our kids. All of this on one salary, as I am a SAHM. We were able to save for prepaid tuition for in-state public colleges. Our kids excelled in academics and got merit aid which made the college basically free for them. By that time we had moved from LMC to UMC and would not get any need based aid.

Our kids have more advantages than we have. They have a home base and parents who can feed and house them. We are immigrants who had nothing and we were poor.

Are these poor millennials recent immigrants like us? No family in the US? Nobody to fall back on? I guess not. So, they need to live frugally and save money. No eating out, group housing, taking public transportation...until they have some savings. My kids know that they do not have a choice but to live at home because they are also making 80K at their first job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad but true. I know too many people who make really good money, but they blow their money on things like a giant house they don’t even need or expensive cars just to keep up with the Jones’s. It’s really sad. Nobody cares what you have or what you drive.

Oh yes they do.

And that is why people are poor. Most people do not care. So they go into debt to impress the small minority that does care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going to flashy, expensive OOS & private colleges, getting useless master’s degrees and thinking you’re entitled to live in a major city without roommates will do that.

You do realize that though millennials are the highest college completers so far, less than half attend college let alone graduate school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both my kids lived for free with us after college and grad school for a few years to save as much money as they could. No student debt either. There was no way I was letting my kids leave the nest without a significant leg-up. They got merit scholarships in in-state so we did not have to pay for them. The money we had saved for their college was repurposed for grad school.

Living paycheck to paycheck is also happening due to lack of planning, overspending, poor choices and a shocking sense of entitlement.

Glad your kids got to live for free in a major metro area after college, in commuting distance to high-paying jobs. They also had grad school savings that they didn’t save for themselves.

Most people don’t have those advantages, due to no fault of their own.

Yes, its the fault of parents.

We lived frugally and far below our means for years to save money for college for our kids. All of this on one salary, as I am a SAHM. We were able to save for prepaid tuition for in-state public colleges. Our kids excelled in academics and got merit aid which made the college basically free for them. By that time we had moved from LMC to UMC and would not get any need based aid.

Our kids have more advantages than we have. They have a home base and parents who can feed and house them. We are immigrants who had nothing and we were poor.

Are these poor millennials recent immigrants like us? No family in the US? Nobody to fall back on? I guess not. So, they need to live frugally and save money. No eating out, group housing, taking public transportation...until they have some savings. My kids know that they do not have a choice but to live at home because they are also making 80K at their first job.

Uhh your kids are adults & can live wherever the h*ll want. And of course someone making $80k can afford to live somewhere besides their parents house.

[Anonymous]

We live “paycheck to paycheck” after 529, savings, med school student loans, HSA, taxes and more savings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We live “paycheck to paycheck” after 529, savings, med school student loans, HSA, taxes and more savings.

After savings doesn't count. Aaaaah!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re a millennial (27-41 years old) and aren’t making at least $80k you did something very, very wrong.

Well since the median income for a 35-year-old is $57,500, it looks like a lot of them screwed up in your eyes.

They did. 21 y/o dental hygienists who went to NoVa CC & truck drivers make far more than that.

Dental hygienists living where? Most Americans can’t afford to live in Northern Virginia, obviously.

Is this a joke? I'm an immigrant and live in Northern Virginia, in a paid off house.