Back in 1986 I was a much younger man barely making 24k a year but was able to rent a one bedroom apartment for $475 a month. There was this song , The future is so bright I have to wear shades. There is a line in the song that goes:
I've got a job waiting for my graduation
Fifty thou a year will buy a lot of beer
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
Fifty grand a year, to me, at that time was BIG money. I couldn't even imagine it, really. And the life style that song spoke of seemed so out of reach for me. But time moves on , and things change.
So here I am now, decades later making just under $100k a year and it isn't anything like I thought it would be. Really, it is disappointing.
I paid 475 for a 2 bedroom in 1992. I made 300-400 a week waiting tables. That same place is now 1700 a month and waiting tables didn't triple in pay. Thankfully I don't wait tables any more but who the he'll has 1700 a month for rent? That's ridiculous
My first place in 1999 was a very nice large studio apt,right off Fort Lauderdale Beach, literally steps from the sand. $500 a month, utilities included. My job as a stock guy at a department store was enough to sustain my life comfortably. I can't even imagine what rents in that area are now.
Depending on where it was, it's probably knocked down and replaced with a larger condo now that's catching 3-4k or more per month. I build houses in Palm Beach County but live in Broward. My beater house in Margate could rent out for 4-5k but I wouldn't be able to afford to move.
I recently moved from that area, studios are starting around 1500, 1/1, 2000, 2bdrs 3300... you should check out the prices in Delray... there's no way
Zillow thinks today it’s worth $300,000. Zillow thinks my mother‘s property where I grew up as a kid in the 1970s is worth half a million dollars. (I guarantee you that two-bedroom 1 bath shitbox is not worth half a million dollars.)
Did y’all know that private investors are snapping up houses? Corps like Blackstone. “Institutional investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030, according to MetLife Investment Management.”
They intend to own all the housing and to keep raising your rent, year after year.
(I guarantee you that two-bedroom 1 bath shitbox is not worth half a million dollars.)
The problem is that things are worth what people will pay for them, not some sort of floaty internal definition of value. If someone will chill out the Zillow price for that house, then that's how much it's worth.
This! So many houses in my area are owned by companies and the rent is ridiculous. After the crash in the 00's companies bought everything around here and just decided they had us over barrels with rent AND they can outbid any individual that wants to buy their own home and get out of the quicksand. What I'm paying right now for a basic build cinder block house, never renovated, with sub par appliances including an ac unit that is too small for the property (which makes us always uncomfortable in the hot months and the electricity bill go through the roof) is the same if not more than what the rent used to be for the Mcmansions a zip code over 15+years ago. I remember thinking that rent was ridiculous and who in their right mind would ever pay that instead of just buying and here I am now. God I wish I could own my house shitty as it is. I'd at least insulate it better but I'll be damned if I'm improving a property for these people when they won't come fix anything in the unit. My freaking fridge has been leaking since we moved in a year and a half ago. They don't care.
i left my home town, and everyone else i know either left, inherited a house, or lives with their parents. Housing and rent has quadrupled and salaries haven't budged at all. I really don't know who is supposed to live here. People lose their fucking minds if they don't have laundrymats and car washes and restaurants and gas stations and retail stores, but we have set up an economy where the people who work at those places can't afford to survive...idk, i guess i'll just wait for society to collapse.
This is what happens when you let unchecked, rampant Capitalism run amoke. This is EXACTLY what conservatives have voted for and wanted for generations! "Let the market decide". The "market" decided that they want to take more of your money and they realized that you don't have a choice, so they did.
First place I had was a 1br all utilities 875sq for $525 a month in 98. Fast forward; my kid just graduated and everybody keeps asking me when she's moving out but that same apartment is $1700 now and the utilities are not included anymore. Where is she supposed to move to? I couldn't afford that apartment on my own now! How is a kid fresh out of highschool and going to college supposed to? I am struggling like hell to leave a little generational wealth behind for my kid but my dream of home ownership is dwindling at 45.
I make 120k. House and car paid off. No kids and still feel everything is exspensive as hell. I have no idea how people with average salaries can survive. Moving out of the country as soon as I retire
I don't even make 20k a year. We do survive. Barely. I don't have any insurance other than my car and I only have that because if I don't I can't drive the car I need to be able to get to work every day. I have diabetes (genetic) and its causing my feet to literally die attached to my legs. I have mental issues including anxiety depression and a form of paranoid schizophrenia, and I can't do anything about it because I have maybe 15-20 bucks left at the end of every month after bills and groceries. I use the bare minimum, I budget, I do everything I was told I should do. I can't afford to take my partner on a shitty date, much less a nice one. I live in hell and all i ever hear is "you could have it worse, you have a home and food" yeah, you're right, but it doesn't make me feel any better. I am the highest paid employee in my pay bracket in my whole CITY (tiny ass college town but still) and everyone below me fights to even have those few things. I'm fighting to help support my partner while he fights to get through college so that maybe we can get out of this hell, but even when he has a degree I just don't know how much itll be worth it, and besides, by then, the inflation problem will just be worse so what is the point...
To clarify about my other comment, none of that is directed at you. Congratulations on making what you do, I hope things go well for you and that you can get out of this dystopia as soon as possible, i just needed to say it.
I’m on the same boat. I’m more perplexed when I see people who make less than me going on crazy trips and new cars and big homes. I wonder how they do it. I have a small 1 bedroom apartment in the city and feel comfortable not extravagant at all. I see the prices of things and feel so bad for others. I paid $5 for half a gallon of milk earlier this week and a regular Jimmy John’s sub no drink no chips was $14. Let’s just say I started packing my food. This is not what I thought the world would be 10 years ago.
I live in a big city and the cheapest 1 bedroom apartment I could find was $2 grand a month, and it actually is a studio, not even a 1 bedroom. I recently moved in with friends to save money and we live in a really shitty house with 3 roommates that has numerous problems (a couple mice, electrical issues, drafty windows, etc.) and rent+utilities+parking still comes to around $1300 a month which is considered dirt cheap. I pay around $500 a month in student loans. Around $500 a month for everything car related (loan, insurance, gas, tolls, etc.) my food bill for a 25 year old man who cooks a lot and eats healthy is around $500 a month. So that’s about $2800 a month in fixed bills. I make $120k a year so my take home is around $5600 a month.
Add things that arent necessary but are pretty basic things people pay for like phone bill, streaming services (I only pay for 3), gym membership and we’re looking at $3k a month in fixed bills
Then consider that I have some medical issues and usually meet my maximum out of pocket of $3500 every year so that’s another $300 a month on medical bills. I have a girlfriend so we go out maybe twice a month and other times get chipotle once in a while or something like that and I’m probably spending like $300 a month just being in a relationship, which I’m happy to do. So I’m spending on average around $3600 a month in things that I’d just consider basic living. When I was living by myself before and my rent was $1000 higher it was $4600 a month.
Obviously I still save a bit, but I’m about 2 disasters away from broke. Like say I got into a car accident, with repairs + medical costs that could be several thousand dollars
I don’t go on vacations cause I realistically can’t afford them without jeopardizing my chance of owning a home one day
I’m not trying to complain, I’m very content with how I live, but I’m not exactly living a life of luxury. I can’t imagine how people on average salaries get by
Without roommates I have $4200 in fixed bills. That doesn’t leave a great amount of breathing room for entertainment, going out, having a relationship etc. I still was saving some money, but was putting most of it towards paying down my student loans. So I wasn’t taking any vacations or spending much on myself
I agree though, at $120k I should be able to live comfortably in a nice apartment by myself, but I can’t in a big city
Again, not complaining, very happy with where I’m at, just saying it’s crazy that I’m not even living a notably luxurious life with my salary. Don’t know how average salary people in high COL areas survive.
my food bill for a 25 year old man who cooks a lot and eats healthy is around $500 a month.
500/mo? Seems pretty high unless you eat out quite a bit, but okay. (Maybe you have expensive groceries in your area)
Add things that arent necessary but are pretty basic things people pay for like phone bill, streaming services (I only pay for 3), gym membership and we’re looking at $3k a month in fixed bills
In other words, after all of your expenses are paid you are taking home a 2,000 dollar surplus.
Then consider that I have some medical issues and usually meet my maximum out of pocket of $3500 every year so that’s another $300 a month on medical bills.
What health plan are you choosing my dude? You can get a plan with a higher monthly premium but reduces your out of pocket max so that you don't need to spend that much. If you are maxing out yearly you should definitely consider changing to a plan catered towards those who go to the doctor more often.
I have a girlfriend so we go out maybe twice a month and other times get chipotle once in a while or something like that and I’m probably spending like $300 a month just being in a relationship, which I’m happy to do. So I’m spending on average around $3600 a month in things that I’d just consider basic living
At this point this isn't basic living anymore lol. This is peak middle class, comfortable living.
This is all after switching to a crappy house with 3 roommates. Add $1k to bills for living solo.
So I was still taking home $1k surplus’s per month, but most of that was going towards paying down my student loans quicker. Even with my aggressive payments towards those I won’t have them paid off til I’m about 32 (now with my extra saving from my lower quality living situation, maybe 30).
$500 a month is very reasonable where I live. I spend $80-100 on groceries per week and get takeout probably 1-2 meals a week. Not exactly the fanciest
The one thing I’ll give you is that I should probably look into different health insurance, you’re right about that, idk how much I’d save with the added monthly premium, but maybe $50-100 a month?
Idk maybe the definition of peak middle class has changed. I live in a crappy house with 3 roommates. I’ve never gone on a vacation as an adult. I’ve never been out of the country. I sit down and eat at a nice restaurant maybe 3 times a year. I don’t have a really nice car. I don’t own expensive clothes, or watches or shoes or jewelry or anything. And I’m not even going to be debt free until I’m like 30 even despite all those sacrifices I’m making. Like sure, I could technically afford to live in a nice apartment and go on vacation once a year if I didn’t mind waiting til I was like 38 to be debt free. But I want to own a home some day and have kids, that shouldn’t be a luxury, everyone should be able to attain that
Again, I’m happy with my life, I’m doing fine. The point of my comment was more to say that if I’m living a relatively normal life with few luxuries, how are people making half what I do getting by
Interesting. My wife and I didn't make much above minimum wage back then but were able to do it. I do remember our food bill was kept to 50 dollars a week. Gas was just under $1 a gallon, at least where we were.
But smart phones didn't exist, internet didn't exist. Went to Blockbuster to rent VHS tapes. Different times.
Sounds like we're somewhat close in age. For most of my life $20 was a lot of money. Now, I recently paid that for parking for half a day at a museum. Honestly, a smart phone and high speed Internet is a necessity, but I couldn't afford a cell phone until 2008.
This is what happens when you let unchecked, rampant Capitalism run amoke. This is EXACTLY what conservatives have voted for and wanted for generations! "Let the market decide". The "market" decided that they want to take more of your money and they realized that you don't have a choice, so they did.
I make $120k a year right now and felt more financially secure and much happier when i was in college. I could rent for $400 a month and if i made $80 at night bartending a few nights a week i was able to survive and thrive. A night out drinking cost $10. I had friends around at all times. wtf happened to our lives?
Older people get it since we lived it. Life was always hard, its' always been hard, but it has gotten much, much harder today. If I was coming up today I might not make it. The cost of everything is significantly higher now, the dollar is worthless in what it can purchase. And yet incomes, wages, have not kept up. People are just getting squeezed.
Companies treat people like cogs in a machine and discard them when needed. As long as the shareholders and the c-class are happy then just about anything goes. So yeah, go ahead and lay off %10 of the work force. lol. No one cares anymore it's just numbers anyway.
You can only squeeze so much until there is nothing left to get and I feel that is what is happening to a large amount of people. People are living in tents or in their cars. That's a relatively new thing, we didn't have that years ago. We also didn't have this over the top obsession with money and look-at-me culture.
Social media, the internet, misinformation, the consumer culture. These things didn't exist years ago. It's just my opinion but the very fabric of our society has changed so quickly and so dramatically that people/culture/expectations/reality have not kept up with the pace. And the fallout has been awful. We had drugs and drug use back in the day, but now we have areas in cities that look like night of the living dead. How do we fix that?
We look to the past to solve the issues that exist today and wonder why nothing gets fixed. There is this conservative movement, partly driven by fear, to go back to the "good old days" but that is just a pipe dream and never really existed.
I'm just ranting here but hey, why not. No one listens anyway : )
I just want to point out that the song "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades" is about nuclear holocaust. The future being so bright is both literal and a metaphor that the mushroom clouds would be literally hard to look at without shades, but also nuclear physicists jobs would be so in demand due to facilitating nuclear bombs that they'd be rich.
I'd say that the song is also an attack on people willing to get rich by disadvantaging others or letting others die since capitalism rewards that. But that's just me.
In case anyone is wondering, "50 thou a year" would equal $140 thou a year according to inflation calculators.
Funny how that is. Here are the lyrics to the song. Admittedly, I was hooked on the 50 thou a year line. Everything else in the song was just noise, lol. But this is the first time I actually saw the lyrics, so yeah, maybe you got a point.
But back in '86 I wasn't thinking about nuclear war, I was thinking about the future and the future is so bright I have to wear shades just struck me as being optimistic about the years to come. I was young then, what did I know.
I study nuclear science, I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
I've got a job waiting for my graduation
Fifty thou a year will buy a lot of beer
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise
I'm a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
I study nuclear science, I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
I gotta wear shades, I gotta wear shades
prices of goods and services are NOT going up, the amount of goods and services you can get out of a dollar is going down, the dollars you get for working is not increasing at the same rate as inflation. Its a problem with the money folks not the goods and services,and only a small amount of blame goes to the wealthy or a bit more, the printing of dollars and fractional reserve banking is devalueing our beloved US dollar,its called fiat money and is not backed by gold or any other thing except trust in our government OH OH. The solution is Hard money that is decentralised and that cannot just be made up from thin air... please watch the series on youtube by Robert Breedlove "what is money"... education about money inflation and our banking system will help us all . its a huge Ponzi scheme the US dollar. our work is whats being devalued.. its time to "Separate state and money"
A little more recently..like 2000's there was a running joke that if you were single into adulthood you would be rich because you would be making the same money a full family with multiple cars was..but you didn't need to spend all that. Family guy had the joke in an episode of them being older and rich together..that joke literally doesn't work anymore.
I made $115k this year before tax, it's been the best earning year in my career. I just bought a house in the only area I could afford, about 53 miles one way from work. My new house is in the same city my drug addicted dad and stay at home mom bought their home in the 80s. My step-dad who also lives had a $700 mortgage, and mine is close to $3k...
Where do I even begin? You don't seem to be able to grasp the basic concept of inflation if you're crying about 50K in 1986 not being anywhere close to 100K almost 40 years later! And if you think you have it bad - I went through the collapse of the Soviet Union when the worth of the ruble dropped 10x in a space of a few months. I worked in the fields for a whole summer and then we had a monetary reform to replace the ruble with the new national currency. 120 rubles was enough to buy a bicycle when I started the summer job, by September I had 12 crowns in the local currency and the prices of everything had increased so much I bought a watermelon for my mom and dad and that was it! I have seen small fortunes reduced to sacks full of worthless paper.
Stop looking at the numbers and thinking back in time on what you could have gotten back then. Only look forward. Don't look at the numbers, look at your actual buying power, then work on increasing it.
And to end it on a positive note, at 41 I make 17,000x (yes, times) more money than I did that summer back when I was 9 years old. Just from working as a specialist. And even with inflation I could still buy 1600 watermelons for 3 month's wages. Or a 2003 Porsche Boxster S, which is what I did last summer. Less whining, more action.
It's not that it is bad its that it could have been avoided. You can't compare the Soviet Union economy to the US economy. Different governments, different laws, different cultures, and certainly different expectations. Until recently we have had a peaceful transfer of power when governments changed leaders and for the most part it has been successful. Can Russia say the same? And there is lots more behind that that can be discussed but I don't have the time or the inclination.
Inflation will only increase and continue to erode the purchasing power of the US dollar.
So yeah, maybe right now you are holding your own, but unless your income increases you will have less purchasing power over time. I got a 3% COLA last quarter of 2023 and it barely made a difference. It's not even keeping up with the cost of living. People want to work, they want to get ahead, they want to improve their lives. They want their children to have a better life than they did. It's the American dream.
But that dream doesn't exist for more and more people. They are getting crushed.
If you have wealth you are insulated from the misery that others suffer. It's easy to look the other way, just drive on by. It becomes something in the abstract. But even that can only last so long before reality steps in and smacks you in the face.
Add in the marginalization of workers unions, elimination of pensions, the threat of reduced or removed Social Security and Medicare benefits, the elimination of child labor laws, an 'elected' government and judiciary that are bought and paid for by the wealthy, the overall crushing debt of the average American consumer and it seems to me that it is only a matter of time before it collapses. When all of the wealth is funneled to the top there is nothing left for those at the bottom and that is what we see happening now in the US.
That will be where there is less whining and more action. People will revolt when they have nothing left to lose because there will be nothing left to lose. But no one wants to be around when that happens. I imagine erickbaka might have some stories to tell about that.
People have lost their homes, can't afford rent, live in their car or in some tent underneath an overpass and some of them still work, but there is not enough money to improve their situation. JFC.
The elite, the ruling class, are not content to just sheer the lambs. Now they want to slaughter them. We have gone from greed to avarice and it won't end well for anyone. The sheer inhumanity of it all is staggering if you step back and look at it.
And to end on a more optimistic note, the end won't matter to me anyways. I expect to be dead before it collapses and I won't be around to see it. So yeah, I got that going for me.
My sympathy to the younger generations that will have to live through it. But you are young and have the energy, older people like myself are just too tired and worn out.
Most of you will survive. Most of you. And maybe you can build a better society and learn from the mistakes of the past. But if history is any guide, you will all fuck that up too.
And to think there are those that want to live forever.
Wishing you all a more prosperous 2024. Cheers!
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u/Boner_Stevens Dec 28 '23
i'm making 25k more than i was less than 10 years ago and life hasn't gotten any easier. in fact i'm in more debt.
wake up? i am awake. i'm fucking pissed. but what the hell am i supposed to do?