Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 17:11     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
If they're relying on government handouts to survive, they don't have a modest income. They're poor.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 16:27     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


I grew up just like Vance, and Vance is VP and a Senator solely because he is such a rare case — very few escape the trailer park.

So let’s see, NYC with RENT CONTROL is a huge part of your parents success, and you probably received excellent public education in the 60s (I’m sure you are white) and it’s well documented that Boomers and Early GenX benefitted from the booming 80s and 90s economies and had crazy cheap housing.


Well I was in the Bronx in the 1970s it was a dangerous shithole. My building had crackheads in lobby

Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 15:52     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


I grew up just like Vance, and Vance is VP and a Senator solely because he is such a rare case — very few escape the trailer park.

So let’s see, NYC with RENT CONTROL is a huge part of your parents success, and you probably received excellent public education in the 60s (I’m sure you are white) and it’s well documented that Boomers and Early GenX benefitted from the booming 80s and 90s economies and had crazy cheap housing.


Yes, let’s see if 2 parents with a 6th grade education getting married today and having 4 kids would produce adult children millionaires.

Who cares?
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 15:51     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:Wow OP, you are REALLY out of touch with reality. This is not third world country-level poverty, this is AMERICA. A lot of people live this way and a lot of people make these choices. Just because you didn't, and because you don't know anyone like this, doesn't mean people (MOST PEOPLE) don't live like this. Grow up and learn more about the country you live in, you damn elitist.


My point was WSJ was showing this as a exemplary tale of how to have a large family on working class income, but I depends upon buying when houses were cheap, a union job, and govt hand outs to health insurance — all of which are vanishing.

Not to mention the weird 15 year age gap!
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 15:49     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


Vance's mother was poor, but his grandparents raised him, and they were not.

Also, "trailer park trash" is a horrible was to talk about human beings.


Vance's grandparents were just the next step up from poor. If they were middle class, it was just barely and entirely due to a low cost region.


Really, one step up from poor don’t usually own stock and a pension:
“ But Vance himself was never actually impoverished. His family never had to worry about money; his grandfather, grandmother and mother all had houses in a suburban neighborhood in Middletown, Ohio. He admits that his grandfather “owned stock in Armco and had a lucrative pension.””
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 15:46     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


I grew up just like Vance, and Vance is VP and a Senator solely because he is such a rare case — very few escape the trailer park.

So let’s see, NYC with RENT CONTROL is a huge part of your parents success, and you probably received excellent public education in the 60s (I’m sure you are white) and it’s well documented that Boomers and Early GenX benefitted from the booming 80s and 90s economies and had crazy cheap housing.


There was a recession in the early 1990s with significant unemployment and a housing crash in the late 80s. It's not like the boomers had it "easy" at all.


So housing prices crashed when boomers were mid 30s, ie went on sale at the peak time to buy.

The recession in 1990s was famously short and shallow. Followed by one of greatest job markets in history, maybe even better than post COVID

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/12/13/two-recessions-two-recoveries/



Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 15:20     Subject: Re:WSJ Affording a Family
I grew up in the 1970s in upstate NY in a middle-class neighborhood. We had plenty of larger families (Irish Catholics and Italians!) in small houses. 5 kids for a 2-bedroom house would not have been unusual, although very likely as the kids got older, they would bump out the house or renovate an attic space or garage to add another bedroom.

So it certainly is one way that working class or middle class families can afford a large family- kids share bedrooms and you don't save for college.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 13:54     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Wow OP, you are REALLY out of touch with reality. This is not third world country-level poverty, this is AMERICA. A lot of people live this way and a lot of people make these choices. Just because you didn't, and because you don't know anyone like this, doesn't mean people (MOST PEOPLE) don't live like this. Grow up and learn more about the country you live in, you damn elitist.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 13:50     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


I grew up just like Vance, and Vance is VP and a Senator solely because he is such a rare case — very few escape the trailer park.

So let’s see, NYC with RENT CONTROL is a huge part of your parents success, and you probably received excellent public education in the 60s (I’m sure you are white) and it’s well documented that Boomers and Early GenX benefitted from the booming 80s and 90s economies and had crazy cheap housing.


Well, if the kids had a 1500 plus SATs and were black, I have no doubt they could become millionaires.

Yes, let’s see if 2 parents with a 6th grade education getting married today and having 4 kids would produce adult children millionaires.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 13:35     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


Vance's mother was poor, but his grandparents raised him, and they were not.

Also, "trailer park trash" is a horrible was to talk about human beings.


Vance's grandparents were just the next step up from poor. If they were middle class, it was just barely and entirely due to a low cost region.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 13:32     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:[twitter]
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


I grew up just like Vance, and Vance is VP and a Senator solely because he is such a rare case — very few escape the trailer park.

So let’s see, NYC with RENT CONTROL is a huge part of your parents success, and you probably received excellent public education in the 60s (I’m sure you are white) and it’s well documented that Boomers and Early GenX benefitted from the booming 80s and 90s economies and had crazy cheap housing.


There was a recession in the early 1990s with significant unemployment and a housing crash in the late 80s. It's not like the boomers had it "easy" at all.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 11:35     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


Vance's mother was poor, but his grandparents raised him, and they were not.

Also, "trailer park trash" is a horrible was to talk about human beings.


https://theconversation.com/jd-vance-is-no-pauper-hes-a-classic-example-of-poornography-in-which-the-rich-try-to-speak-on-behalf-of-the-poor-236209

His mom was a nurse. A nurse makes more than a teacher.


Ironically Vance’s grandparents were solid stable middle class because of UNION jobs. The irony.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 10:48     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:I remember the years when daycare was equivalent to my mortgage. Even though the teachers were making near minimum wage. And it wasn't corporate. Church-affiliated.

I may someday be a grandma and be a full-time grandchild carer. I'm open to it.


Same. I remember thinking I was going to use a daycare near work in Arlington.... until we took a tour. The facility and staff were beyond mediocre but tuition was $2200 per kid! Most other places in the US would be providing Montessori plus extra at that price but in Arlington you got the EconoLodge of daycares.

Ended up paying $1200 per child at an even shabbier Alexandria daycare instead, but at least we could afford it.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 10:12     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:I remember the years when daycare was equivalent to my mortgage. Even though the teachers were making near minimum wage. And it wasn't corporate. Church-affiliated.

I may someday be a grandma and be a full-time grandchild carer. I'm open to it.

My neighbor retired at age 60 to provide childcare for his 3 grandchildren. Both his daughter and son-in-law are MCPS teachers.
Anonymous
Post 08/24/2025 09:38     Subject: WSJ Affording a Family
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My parents both with a 6th grade education who got married in 1957 in Bronx had four kids. My Mom was a SAHM, my Dad worked 60 hour work weeks. We had a rent controlled shithole 750sf rental that was two bedroom. Girls got second small bedroom. Brother and I slept on mattress on living room floor.

All four kids got masters degree and all four multi millionaires. Heck I live in a two million dollar home, have a beach house and a Stay at home wife

You don’t need money to have kids. If anything being poor is a great motivator.

DCUM is weird, look at JD Vance. You might hate him but dude grew up poor as shit. The next prez might be trailor park trash.


Vance's mother was poor, but his grandparents raised him, and they were not.

Also, "trailer park trash" is a horrible was to talk about human beings.


https://theconversation.com/jd-vance-is-no-pauper-hes-a-classic-example-of-poornography-in-which-the-rich-try-to-speak-on-behalf-of-the-poor-236209

His mom was a nurse. A nurse makes more than a teacher.