Reply to Down and Out on $250K/year....

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Down and Out on $250K/year...."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's the thing.  The amount of money is not really relevant when people talk about this.  Really, its not.   Its the lifestyle that people are looking at.  [b]Look at this scenario, which I understand will not describe every single person on this board, but it will describe most who grew up in an average American family 30 to 40 years ago.  Most of our parents worked hard at middle class jobs.  Again, the exact amount doesn't matter.  They probably had the same kind of job you and I have or even a job was less 'affluent'.  Our parents graduated from college, paid their school loans, bought homes and cars, saved for college (often for more children) and for retirement.  They got the new microwave at some point in the late 70s or 80s and also that new answering machine thingy and maybe even the cordless phone.  When you were a teen you may have begged for that new call waiting feature.  Your family may have had an Atari on your console TV.  They took us on modest but honest to goodness vacations.  They had hobbies and interests that they persued.  They retired at 60 or 65 and are living comfortably now.  [/b]Now look at the same Average family today and here in the DC area will need to make waay more than our parents did, adjusted for inflation, to have that 'average American lifestyle".  Saving adequate amounts of money for retirement and college has become the domain of the well heeled whereas before it was just part of an average American budget.  Mostly our parents did not live paycheck to paycheck.  They bought cars.  They got the newest gadgets either sooner or later.  They subscribed to cable eventually.  But they didn't not need to fall into the top 5% of national income to do so.

The thing is, our standard of living in this country has crashed but nobody seems to want to say it.  You must now be a top income producer to live in the same manner that the average income producer lived 40 years ago.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sucks hard.  
[/quote]

Seriously, you described our family, right down to Atari! Still remember our first oversized for the counter space "meal in one" microwave! :-)[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics