financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionaires
I mean, it's not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they're willing to share their rigged casino gambling "speculative investment" derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.
You need state support to get that rich.
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it!"
-George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn't preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of "capitalism" relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our "dear job creators"
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn't exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don't need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don't need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it's kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone's benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner's club at everyone else's further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and "our" government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It's like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it's awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn't a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct "customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third" model to the "investors first, second, and only" rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen's of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It's a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarc
I hate to shoot this down, as I live the feeling. If one USA President enough to steal it for 40+ years, then we never really had it.
Reagan changed the political dynamics in America. The Democrats were a pro-labor party prior to the 1980s. Afterwards they were pretty much lock step with Republicans, and by extension the oligarchs, into today, because the "Reagan revolution" opened their eyes to the fact that bribes by unions, lets be honest, could never come close to the bribes offered by the owners that hated the unions. And in proudly corrupt America, thats what you become a politician to do, get bought.
Since the 1980s, we've had no opposition party on economic policy. All we get to vote on is divisive social issues, largely exasurbated by our crony capitalist economic system, by design.
Do you want to be a wage slave subsisting in service to the owners until your death with or without gay marriage?
That is the extent of American freedom since the Reagan Revolution. With the side benefit of keeping the peasants at eachother's throats instead of looking up.
Our Democrat Senate and Democrat President literally passed a law to bust a prominent union strike last year. There is no vote an American peasant is offered that would be in their corner, only slightly varying degrees of against them.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of "efficient distribution," got his "opposition" to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
So what do we do about it? What's the answer?
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn't reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven't been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they'll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren't willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don't see the will, we're too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society's many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
Month long vacations? That'll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that's exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that's $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there's millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
150-200k/year
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That's not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they've been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I'll watch them be voted out of power instead.
That's why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That's 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn't survive 3 generations, so it's way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they'll be around to spend it themselves forever.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It's being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.
Not true, it seems that way but it is a thing that non-billionaires have. It’s just that those who have such freedom choose to live and often work out of view of everyone else, so you never see them. It plays heavily into confirmation bias. That isn’t to say that the wealth distribution is off, everyone should be in their class including billionaires. They do exist.
financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionairesbanks and investment brokers
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
Now consider the majority of people who do not have 6 figure incomes.
I knew we were fucked when the same happened to me and I still can't afford a home.
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I've gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I'm giving that up to someone. It's an ugly mess, but at least it's my ugly mess.
I tell those companies I'll accept their offer if I have 3x the home's value in my pocket at the end of the process.
They don't call back.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
Honestly, you need to make 6 figures to just not be “poor” these days. Very annoying, considering how quickly things changed over the last decade.
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
Where the fuck do you live with a $3350 mortgage? I pay 1/3 of that for rent and I think that's too high.
Puget Sound area, a bit north of Seattle.
For a home purchased in the last 3 years, I got a pretty good deal. The floor on rent for a shitty one bed apartment in my city is $1200/month.
It’s also worth noting that the $3350 is my PITI. My strict mortgage is $2875, the rest is property tax to escrow and mortgage insurance.
Ah got it
I pay less than 1/3 of that for my mortgage on a bigger house with a large yard. But we did close on it at a much better time last decade, and it's about twice as valuable now. I would never consider something so ridiculously expensive that the mortgage could be 3k/mo.
Fortunately for my wallet, I don't like big city life and the rural real estate is much cheaper.
He lives in a $600,000 house. Probably more.
Edit: he says it's a $560k house lol
Jeez. I can't fathom what kind of home you must be in to be paying $3350 in a mortgage. Genuine question, have you ever been like, actually poor? I do find it hard to believe anyone willing or even able to pay a mortgage like that could possibly live a life anyone would call barely comfortable.
1000 sq ft starter home rambler in the seattle region. It’s nothing special and it was downright cheap at $560k. Was still dual income and mostly comfortable when we bought the house. We broke up and I had the income to keep the house, so I am. The equity isn’t there yet so I’m making a play to keep it for 10-15 years before I sell and we split the sale based on an agreement we signed when we broke up (very amicable breakup).
Yea, I grew up dirt poor with many dinners being noodles with butter, I never once had to pay for lunch at school because assistance programs, I never did extra curriculars because we couldn’t afford the materials, every Christmas was nothing or donations, I lived in houses where I could literally see outside through gaps in the walls, and the only reason I experienced a vacation before I was 30 was because my step-dad was negligently killed by a rich guy and we got a settlement that my mom blew on a 6 week vacation to Orlando when I was 14 and then put some money down on a house when she could have bought it outright instead. But I clawed my way out by going to college and getting pretty lucky along the way. 10 years ago I got my first job out of college making $13.75/hour, and have doubled my income twice since then, largely by the luck of knowing some good people, and my current job by the luck of being found on LinkedIn due to having a weird confluence of experience.
A big part of how I got into the house is that my ex-wife has rich family and they gifted us a pretty big chunk of change that got us to our downpayment. Still had to take $520k out on the mortgage, and another $20k to make some needed repairs once we were in (debt I’m taking on too).
I couldn tighten the belt in a few areas, namely my free spending which I limit to $400/month. But that already goes fast if I want to actually do anything and keep myself from falling into a pit by never leaving the house. I also use that money for helping my partner out. Otherwise I’ve cancelled all my streaming services save for Disney plus which is still a good deal, I’ve dumped my insurance to the lowest I can go, I pay $15/month for my cellphone, I’ve stopped buying name brand for nearly everything, and I’ve had to stop any real charitable giving. There is some saving that goes on in there like putting $50/month aside for my car expenses, so as long as nothing major comes up I’m covered, and $100/month toward ‘medical’ which really just pays for my therapy.
None of this is to garner pity, I know I’m in a better position than most people, not to mention much better off than I ever dreamed I could achieve as a kid growing up, and I’m extremely grateful for that. i don’t have any bills I have to choose between, and I never have to wonder if I have food to eat tonight. And I have enough saved (from my bonus) that I’ve got a few months to figure things out if I lost my job today or if a big repair comes up (like my water main breaking back in January), but not enough to replace my fence that fell down last winter. I just always thought that making it to six figures would mean a lot more than it does. I make ends meet and anything extra I make from here is gravy.
It all depends on where you live, but the prices are insane everywhere now. I bought my house 5 years ago and the estimates indicate that is now worth double what I paid for it. DOUBLE. And it's not because I live in some super hot area, the prices have gone up like that almost everywhere in the entire area in and around the city. I could not have afforded this house If I were buying today, and that is with a significantly higher income than when I bought it.
My mortgage is around that for Austin, TX (barely in the city for a tiny home) and that is when the rates were good. So, they probably just live somewhere that's a bit popular.
25-90 minutes north of Seattle depending on traffic. So yea, it’s an expensive area to live in.
OH, that COL is wayyyy higher than my area. Hopefully you got a good deal on it then!
Yep. But this area is home, so as long as I can make it work, I will.
Trailers are 300k here in Colorado, at least where I'm at with jobs. If you want an actual house it's 450-600k
My childhood home with 3 bedrooms and a finished basement was like 130k and that was purchases in the 2000s
Same here. Feels like I'm making the same, but my mortgage is huge now. Sucks.
Its nice to see someone else mention the doubling. There are news things about gas being expensive but its cheap relative to everything else. People better be ready for eight bucks a gallone once it rights itself. Inflation would suggest 30% odd increase but for what you have to buy its 100% over 2020 prices.
Don't worry urban planners are making driving more difficult instead of mass transit easier. That way when gas prices double the entire lowest tier of the workforce won't be able to afford to work. "No one wants to work anymore"
My partner and I make over $300k, and we're struggling to buy a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of Orlando, FL.
As someone who lives in Florida I've got to ask, how? When thinking about finances and investments I often feel like I'm in my own bubble and I don't understand other peoples' situations, motivations, etc. So I'm genuinely curious. 4-bedroom houses near Orlando can be found in the mid 300s. With your income you should be able to pay in cash after saving for just one or two years (depending on how much savings you're starting out with). Even if you wanted something more expensive, are mortgages that difficult to get approved even for someone with such a high income?
holy crap. 300k for 4 bedrooms. no wonder people risk the storms.
You probably don’t want to buy a house there, anyway, what with all the insurance companies pulling out of the state.
Your rates are going to be sky high, assuming you can even get insured, which isn’t remotely a guarantee anymore.
Sell your house and move slightly further out of Orlando.
Or don't have a family size of 7+ and try to live in a city while expecting every kid to have their own room.
I’m 45 and I’ve more or less accepted that short of an unexpected and massive windfall, I will never be able to retire, much less experience “financial freedom.”
I'm 43 and literally had this exact conversation today. I work full time for a major financial institution. This shouldn't be how things work.
Agree yet you work for the enemy.
Because things will certainly change if you keep working without disruption.
Lol got em. Yet I live on mostly potatoes and was crippled by a billionaire corporation and haven't worked or made any income since. Homeless too.
Really? Do they? That's very interesting. Tell me, is the over half more like 99%?
I think you knew exactly what idea they were saying. Agency, the ability to control your own life, varies. Clearly and obviously a regular person in the West has more agency than say a regular person in North Korea. It is not an one-off switch. The ever growing wealth inequality is making the population shift more and more to the slave side of things. That doesn't mean that you are a slave it means your papa was less of a slave compared to you.
This is why being a lolitarian makes you stupid. It bifurcates slavery and freedom. It defines force to be a specific term, that no one else uses, and declares victory in the game it is playing with itself
It's really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.
70% of Americans retire.
I think the stat you're referencing is for people aged 65-69. That means 30% of those people are still working. That number should be much lower, like 0.
What is actually the definition of “financial freedom”? Having (earned / gained) enough money, so that a person has no need to go to work anymore? If that’s the case, I would expect that number to be much, much lower than 50%.
EDIT: sorry, I just read it in the article. If “financial freedom” just means to work and live more or less without having to worry about financial obligations and what will happen tomorrow, then less than 50% is a rather shocking figure.
Agree. And anyone could quickly go one from side to the other. In need of a expensive surgery? Might lose your financial freedom. Bought an expensive house and lost your job? Goodbye as well.
That’s what a health insurance would be good for. But for many Americans that would equal communism.
Health insurance sucks. I’m all for universal health coverage with the opportunity to pay more for faster service for those who are well off.
Just think - there are tens of thousands of insurance employees who’s job is to calculate risk and develop pricing algorithms such that the company makes money no matter what. There’s no product or value created for humanity. It’s just ensuring that some people who own significant portions of the business keep getting paid.
They screw doctors and patients. Doctors get reimbursed whatever arbitrary predefined rates that were agreed upon during contract negotiations. That’s if insurance gives the green light for the patient to even get the procedure. Why does a middleman decide who gets medical care and how much the doctors should be paid? How is a patient supposed to choose a surgery team that’s all in network?
I get what you’re saying, but fuck insurance. These companies are a parasite on healthcare, housing, and mobility.
Well, yes and no. It should probably be a state-run system or at least a heavily regulated system where the companies are limited in their profit making. No idea how an ideal system could look like. Here in Germany there is a two-fold system, which a generic public health insurance (with several companies offering those insurance services), where every employee pays a certain percentage of his salaries as insurance fee (actually the total fee is split 50/50 between employer and employee). Service is rather basic, but sufficient.
And then there is the possibility to get a private health insurance contract, if your income is above a certain level, which interestingly is (for the most time) lower than that in the general public insurance, but service is much better (e.g. you usually get doctor appointments much faster if you are a “private patient”). The only downside is that you don’t know how much you will have to pay when you get old, and once you are out of the public insurance you can not go back (only if you income falls below the private insurance entry level, which is rather unlikely).
It’s not ideal but it works for the most part and with some exceptions (like new teeth, where you have to pay a substantial part by yourself) you don’t have to be afraid of any health problems, operations or whatever, because that’s all covered. Those insurance companies are treated like public service companies and prices for medication and medical (doctor) services are subject to agreement between the government and the medical associations representing doctors, hospitals etc., but I guess those companies still make profits and the doctors have good earnings.
I get your point, but even with a certain level of protection you’re probably still better off than with no protection at all. However, the system should also not be based on profits and shareholder value, that’s true.
In other news, water is wet
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
That's how society is, brother, literally 1% controls the world in their favor and keeps the wealth, impoverishing the 99%.
It's been 10,000 plus years. Let's change it, brother.
i agree, but not by passive aggressively shitting on people's life choices in a social media comment section.
If they choose to stand in an apple line for 12 hours then I have no apologies to offer. But I get it.
49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
I'm going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can't even agree on what "Financial Freedom" means. Defining the metric you're polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. "Over half" is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the "American families are financially fucked" though, I'm not sure there's any hard data to extract from this.
--
"Peter don't ya call me cause I just can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."
Don't also forget that we're talking about what people say about their own financial position - which may be different from what their financial position actually is. Self-reporting is never accurate, because people report what they feel or are aware of, which is different from objective facts, to a greater or lesser degree.
Between letting individuals define the terms of the question they're going to answer, and then self-reporting, this "study" goes beyond useless and into detrimental.
I agree, the definition is a real problem. While still interesting the survey is pretty screwed.
I thought financial freedom was being independently wealthy. Idle rich. Apparently I was wrong, it means working class but with some "bonus" money. Maybe still struggling but struggling less than most working stiffs.
How free can you be if you still have to work full time?
There is a point in income where you have the choice, the choice to move, the choice to switch jobs, the choice to leave your partner, etc.
That is freedom. A lot of Americans are just stuck exactly where they are.
That's a good point. I make well into the 6-digits and the one reason I don't believe that anyone under 7-digits will ever be "financially free" is because of the for-profit healthcare system. One bad accident or cancer and I'm fucked for a long time if not the rest of my life as is anyone that can't just shrug off 5 to 6-digit bills.
Now if I were somewhere that offered universal health care and I was making what I was, I'd consider myself to be financially free. So I guess I fall into the 46.2% category.
Same. I'm financially stable. Meaning I can hit a few bumps and I'll be fine. But I don't think it's possible to be ' financially free' when at any time I could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt.
I can roughly estimate potential pit falls with my home. And home insurance is reasonably reliable for catastrophic scenarios. Even if they aren't, bankruptcy is still feasible. The same cannot be said about healthcare. Insurance plans are extremely opaque and while they claim to have terms such as 'out of pocket maximum' that should**** in theory limit your losses, there are endless stories about how little that holds up when put to the test.
Proper healthcare coverage would be the single biggest impact on American stability. Nothing else is even close.
You can add disability to this. If I can't work I pretty sure im buggered even if for some reason we get universal healthcare (I guess being disabled, if you can navigate to the point of getting it, you would have medicaid but what comes in every month would not be adequate to stay where I live or such)
"This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name."
I would also venture to say that applies to 90% of us.
"Over half" is a fucking laughable fake figure.
I mean, 90% is over half...
Yeah, but it's marketing jargon to make it seem like less of a deal. When someone says "over half" do you immediately assume they're talking in the 90% range, or closer to 60%?
Probably the half that make $31k or less.
Looking for a job is insanely depressing when you get to see just how many jobs-white collar, blue collar, fast food, whatever- all pay absolutely disgusting wages one person can't live of off...
I'm now in a 2 income household with fewer kids as they grow up, and to us it feels more like we are close always, just no hope of ever actually getting there, if that makes sense. Always almost enough.
Which is better than my previous experience but since it's happening later in life, still wouldn't expect to ever stop having to earn money by working. I have never expected to retire though, it would take - as someone else noted - a windfall, luck, not effort. Effort has taken us as far as it can.
Clearly the answer is work harder and get a 3rd job. Eventually you'll be a millionaire!
Sheeit I'm one step above homelessness living off plasma donations.
I'd go for this except I got a false HIV-positive back in '89 and no matter what I do I can't get it off my blood donation record. :(
I do ok, but all my debt and bills are telling me I need to get on this gravy train
I’d have thought more. With a big gaping chasm in between.
Wtf? Of course not. The workforce would be devastated if half of Americans had achieved financial freedom.
Not if the goal was equilibrium/homeostasis rather than unsustainable growth/metastasis on a finite world of finite resources as it is today.
That will never be permitted though. Humanity will destroy itself not out of hatred as once believed, but in the name of cold, insatiable, sociopathic greed.
Yah we won't stop using resources and fucking the air until we all die off. There's no other way cause humans, specifically the humans in power with the ability to make change. Won't. Cause cold hard cash.
Yup. Workers in America desperately need more rights. But so long as there are unpleasant jobs thst have to be done, total financial freedom isn't really possible. Even under a socialist/communist model.
🎶 Day's never finished, masta got me workin, someday massa set me free! 🎶
Labour will set you free, indeed
That's a good slogan, we should put it up over the front gate
Nobody wants to work anymore so a little encouragement is much needed.
There is $222 in the wallet in the link preview. Just found that interesting.
Old news. How about providing some ideas of solutions to this problem. Like, I dunno, tax the rich... 🤔
I'm actually the polor opposite of that, as are many.
Financial Freedom? I don't understand. You might as well be calling me an asshole in Greek.
I certainly don't live debt free, though the debt I have has a ROI that makes it worth having.
What amount would be enough to consider yourself financially free? $30K in savings? $100K, $500K, $1 Million?
Personally, to be "financially free" I would need enough investment income to cover all my expenses without making any sales/withdraws. Ideally this would include owning my home outright. So probably in the neighborhood of one million. I doubt I will ever get there.
Unless you pay cash upfront for a house, it serves no benefit to pay it off early due to inflation. As inflation goes up your debt says flat but your home value increases as well as equity. With a interest rate lower than the inflation rate your making money on the loan, not losing it. A mortgage is an investment, let it roll for as long as you can. Also it's convenient that taxes are collected within the mortgage rate, once that is gone it becomes a pain.
A mortgage is an investment, let it roll for as long as you can.
The fact that you're not wrong about this is part of the reason housing keeps getting more expensive. So many individuals have their nest eggs tied up in their houses that building more would hurt a lot of ordinary folks.
Yes a mortgage is an investment (which can make a profit or loss just like other investments) but it is also an obligation. With a mortgage losing your job could potentially leave you homeless. That is not what I consider "financially free". If you have a lot of cash up front you could potentially put it into higher yielding investments and make a profit on the difference between yield and mortgage rate at the end of 30 years but that takes some amount of luck and skill with investing. Especially now that mortgage rate are 7%. If you don't have all the cash up front then taking out a 30yr 7% loan for 300k will mean you're paying over 700k for the house with interest included.
Saving up an emergency fund to pay the mortgage if you become jobless should be a top priority for any homeowner. Priority meaning you cut back everywhere you can to generate those savings, until you have enough saved to be comfortable. Once I saved up a 6-mo emergency fund I felt much closer to financial freedom. I can have 6+ months to look for a new job if I lose mine.
No benefit? I agree that inflation can make paying a house off early less financially advantageous, but it’s silly to say there’s no benefit.
with an interest rate lower than inflation
First to your point, with interest rates as they’ve been the last year or so, it isn’t safe to assume your interest will be lower than inflation. (Mine isn’t, and I bought my house last June.)
Also, removing a huge monthly bill grants freedom in the short-term. Making a mortgage payment every month may mean things like not leaving a bad job or not starting your own business due to fear of losing your house. With that expense out of the way, you can make riskier choices with potential for greater pay off.
And lastly, there’s the mental burden of debt. It’s easier to be happy when you don’t have any debt, so getting rid of it can be a huge boon personally.
So yeah, I might lose a net benefit of a few thousand dollars spread out over the next 15 years if I don’t pay my house off early. But I might miss out on even greater benefits because I’m saddled with ~33% of my take home going into my mortgage every month. I’ll take the minor hit to be debt-free ASAP.
Currently I wouldn't suggest buying a house because the interest rates are high. We refinanced at 2.2% so I don't plan on ever moving. Bought my home at $225K and it's value is $525K now, over a 50% increase since I bought. I'll never see that happen in my lifetime again so I'm sticking here for life.
Unless you pay cash upfront for a house, it serves no benefit to pay it off early due to inflation.
Maybe not due to inflation specifically, but there are a lot of benefits to being mortgage free.
Such as the simple peace of mind that comes from not having a massive debt hanging over your head.
A mortgage isn't debt, it's free money due to ROI. Rent is debt.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
What is YOUR definition of financial freedom?
I view it as living within your means. I make more money than I spend.
I'd define it working on whatever you want for a living.
I don't necessarily mean surfing and getting drunk every day, but just being able to make a living off something that you actually want to do.
I make enough to make ends meet and pay off my mortgage and then some, but I'm not financially secure enough to just quit from one day to the next or start a company myself to make the things that I think the world needs or that I find interesting.
I believe that there's a huge potential if people weren't bound to always have a job that pays the bills.
Most people are limited to carrying out the ideas of a few people who have the means to live their dreams.
Universal basic income could solve this and realise that potential. And it only requires taxing of the richest or automation of the government services. If we did a little of each, we could actually have this.
My definition is:
Ability to pay all expenses, including things like sudden repairs, medical payments, job loss for up to 6 months, etc with minimal impact to quality of life.
Ability to partake in moderate luxuries such as travel, dining out, new phone/TV/etc every so often. Does not mean you have enough to always buy whatever you want, but have enough to have some extra enjoyment.
Ability to take care of 1-2 children including education, day care, medical, activities, etc
Just based on the healthcare component alone, I don't think it's feasible for Americans to be financially free until they hit the millions. Otherwise, if you ignore that aspect I'd say its around the mid level executive type of income or about ~$300-600k year depending on location. If it's just moderate financial stability, then it's maybe only $90-200k, but I don't think I'd call that level 'free'
The article is really bad and confusing, but the very first statistics says only 10% are living with their defined financial freedom. It also doesn't appear to provide any sources for this data.
edit: They do have sources, I'm just blind.
Money makes money.
Feedback loop concentrates the money towards those with more money.
Dog I've been lying flat since I figured out the world wasn't how I imagined it. I'm so stuck in my lack of freedom I'm like not even in the top 10 decision makers in my own life.
If you just saved 5% of your pay in a 401k from the time you were 22 and invest in the stock market for 40 years and never get sick, quit your job to raise a family or care for loved ones, then you might become a millionaire. Not that a million would be enough to retire on after 40 years of inflation.
Also, this plan depends on the world economy continuing to grow at the same rate as it did in the past, never mind that this growth is toxic to the planet. But, hey you might see some financial freedom at that point.
Just stick with it.
Sobering post
But why would more than half of Americans be financially free? Are more than half of all Americans already over 65 where they need to be financially free? If not, then it would be very odd that more than half would be close to financial freedom. It's an odd statement that makes you feel bad, but if you think about it, it would make no sense if it were true.
financial freedom is a myth peddled by billionaires
I mean, it's not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they're willing to share their
rigged casino gambling"speculative investment" derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.You need state support to get that rich.
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it!" -George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn't preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of "capitalism" relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our "dear job creators"
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn't exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don't need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don't need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it's kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone's benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner's club at everyone else's further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and "our" government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It's like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it's awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn't a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct "customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third" model to the "investors first, second, and only" rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen's of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It's a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
I hate to shoot this down, as I live the feeling. If one USA President enough to steal it for 40+ years, then we never really had it.
Reagan changed the political dynamics in America. The Democrats were a pro-labor party prior to the 1980s. Afterwards they were pretty much lock step with Republicans, and by extension the oligarchs, into today, because the "Reagan revolution" opened their eyes to the fact that bribes by unions, lets be honest, could never come close to the bribes offered by the owners that hated the unions. And in proudly corrupt America, thats what you become a politician to do, get bought.
Since the 1980s, we've had no opposition party on economic policy. All we get to vote on is divisive social issues, largely exasurbated by our crony capitalist economic system, by design.
Do you want to be a wage slave subsisting in service to the owners until your death with or without gay marriage?
That is the extent of American freedom since the Reagan Revolution. With the side benefit of keeping the peasants at eachother's throats instead of looking up.
Our Democrat Senate and Democrat President literally passed a law to bust a prominent union strike last year. There is no vote an American peasant is offered that would be in their corner, only slightly varying degrees of against them.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of "efficient distribution," got his "opposition" to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
So what do we do about it? What's the answer?
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn't reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven't been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they'll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren't willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don't see the will, we're too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society's many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
Month long vacations? That'll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that's exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That's why we can never truly go anywhere.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that's $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there's millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That's not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they've been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I'll watch them be voted out of power instead.
That's why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That's 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn't survive 3 generations, so it's way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they'll be around to spend it themselves forever.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It's being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.
Not true, it seems that way but it is a thing that non-billionaires have. It’s just that those who have such freedom choose to live and often work out of view of everyone else, so you never see them. It plays heavily into confirmation bias. That isn’t to say that the wealth distribution is off, everyone should be in their class including billionaires. They do exist.
This guy gets it.
I finally got a job that broke six figures.
Housing boom made houses twice as expensive in five years. Monthly grocery bill doubled. Renting doubled. Cost of cars doubled. Every day expenses doubled.
Now consider the majority of people who do not have 6 figure incomes.
I knew we were fucked when the same happened to me and I still can't afford a home.
I have a house that was bought back when I made around 35K in 2006 and they where giving out loans to everyone, so nothing great by any means. Had someone come by and ask to buy it earlier this year now that I've gotten to a decent career class job and I had to tell them no. Like, have you looked at the price of things lately? My payment is less than most single bedroom appartments these days, no way I'm giving that up to someone. It's an ugly mess, but at least it's my ugly mess.
I tell those companies I'll accept their offer if I have 3x the home's value in my pocket at the end of the process.
They don't call back.
This is essentially where I’m at, too, except bought in 2013 so probably slightly less good price.
I can’t afford to do the fix up work on it properly, so it’s slowly crumbling, but I can’t really afford to move either because this place was on the low end when I bought it and hasn’t improved 😜. I literally can’t find housing for myself and 3 cats for the $550/mth I pay now. Even with my place being worth 3x what I paid for it, I’d end up in a worse or (at best) equivalent place for the same price. May as well just stick with the skeletons I know.
Honestly, you need to make 6 figures to just not be “poor” these days. Very annoying, considering how quickly things changed over the last decade.
Yep, pulling in 110k this year after bonus at my job and I’m having to DoorDash to get just a bit of breathing room.
$3350 mortgage eats more than half my take home. The rest goes to debt (took out a loan to fix a couple things on the house last year, and student loans coming back now), caring for my aging dog, food, bills, maxed 401k that I’m considering dropping for a while, and a little bit for free spending so I can go on a date or two or out with friends. Even with this mortgage payment this would have been easy on just my salary even 3 years ago (it was easy af with dual income at the time). But the way costs have increased are making me feel broke in a way I haven’t felt in a long-ass time. I always thought that if I could make it to six figures I’d be properly wealthy, but I’m not. I’m barely comfortable.
Where the fuck do you live with a $3350 mortgage? I pay 1/3 of that for rent and I think that's too high.
Puget Sound area, a bit north of Seattle.
For a home purchased in the last 3 years, I got a pretty good deal. The floor on rent for a shitty one bed apartment in my city is $1200/month.
It’s also worth noting that the $3350 is my PITI. My strict mortgage is $2875, the rest is property tax to escrow and mortgage insurance.
Ah got it
I pay less than 1/3 of that for my mortgage on a bigger house with a large yard. But we did close on it at a much better time last decade, and it's about twice as valuable now. I would never consider something so ridiculously expensive that the mortgage could be 3k/mo.
Fortunately for my wallet, I don't like big city life and the rural real estate is much cheaper.
He lives in a $600,000 house. Probably more.
Edit: he says it's a $560k house lol
Jeez. I can't fathom what kind of home you must be in to be paying $3350 in a mortgage. Genuine question, have you ever been like, actually poor? I do find it hard to believe anyone willing or even able to pay a mortgage like that could possibly live a life anyone would call barely comfortable.
1000 sq ft starter home rambler in the seattle region. It’s nothing special and it was downright cheap at $560k. Was still dual income and mostly comfortable when we bought the house. We broke up and I had the income to keep the house, so I am. The equity isn’t there yet so I’m making a play to keep it for 10-15 years before I sell and we split the sale based on an agreement we signed when we broke up (very amicable breakup).
Yea, I grew up dirt poor with many dinners being noodles with butter, I never once had to pay for lunch at school because assistance programs, I never did extra curriculars because we couldn’t afford the materials, every Christmas was nothing or donations, I lived in houses where I could literally see outside through gaps in the walls, and the only reason I experienced a vacation before I was 30 was because my step-dad was negligently killed by a rich guy and we got a settlement that my mom blew on a 6 week vacation to Orlando when I was 14 and then put some money down on a house when she could have bought it outright instead. But I clawed my way out by going to college and getting pretty lucky along the way. 10 years ago I got my first job out of college making $13.75/hour, and have doubled my income twice since then, largely by the luck of knowing some good people, and my current job by the luck of being found on LinkedIn due to having a weird confluence of experience.
A big part of how I got into the house is that my ex-wife has rich family and they gifted us a pretty big chunk of change that got us to our downpayment. Still had to take $520k out on the mortgage, and another $20k to make some needed repairs once we were in (debt I’m taking on too).
I couldn tighten the belt in a few areas, namely my free spending which I limit to $400/month. But that already goes fast if I want to actually do anything and keep myself from falling into a pit by never leaving the house. I also use that money for helping my partner out. Otherwise I’ve cancelled all my streaming services save for Disney plus which is still a good deal, I’ve dumped my insurance to the lowest I can go, I pay $15/month for my cellphone, I’ve stopped buying name brand for nearly everything, and I’ve had to stop any real charitable giving. There is some saving that goes on in there like putting $50/month aside for my car expenses, so as long as nothing major comes up I’m covered, and $100/month toward ‘medical’ which really just pays for my therapy.
None of this is to garner pity, I know I’m in a better position than most people, not to mention much better off than I ever dreamed I could achieve as a kid growing up, and I’m extremely grateful for that. i don’t have any bills I have to choose between, and I never have to wonder if I have food to eat tonight. And I have enough saved (from my bonus) that I’ve got a few months to figure things out if I lost my job today or if a big repair comes up (like my water main breaking back in January), but not enough to replace my fence that fell down last winter. I just always thought that making it to six figures would mean a lot more than it does. I make ends meet and anything extra I make from here is gravy.
It all depends on where you live, but the prices are insane everywhere now. I bought my house 5 years ago and the estimates indicate that is now worth double what I paid for it. DOUBLE. And it's not because I live in some super hot area, the prices have gone up like that almost everywhere in the entire area in and around the city. I could not have afforded this house If I were buying today, and that is with a significantly higher income than when I bought it.
My mortgage is around that for Austin, TX (barely in the city for a tiny home) and that is when the rates were good. So, they probably just live somewhere that's a bit popular.
25-90 minutes north of Seattle depending on traffic. So yea, it’s an expensive area to live in.
OH, that COL is wayyyy higher than my area. Hopefully you got a good deal on it then!
Yep. But this area is home, so as long as I can make it work, I will.
Trailers are 300k here in Colorado, at least where I'm at with jobs. If you want an actual house it's 450-600k
My childhood home with 3 bedrooms and a finished basement was like 130k and that was purchases in the 2000s
@SeducingCamel @A_Toasty_Strudel
In the early 2000's a mobile home in oil sands territory (Alberta) was $450k.
Canada's been working a long time on our housing bubble ... which is about to crash.
This comment highlights your ignorance not their privilege.
@huginn @A_Toasty_Strudel
Not really but you do you I guess.
I doubt your maxing your 401k. I assume you mean the amount needed to get maximum match from your employer?
Pre-tax 401k contribution limit is $22,500 in 2023. Plenty of people are able to contribute up to that limit.
Must be nice. I maxed ira in the past but this is beyond me barring winning the lottery. Of course then I would likely not have a 401k.
Same here. Feels like I'm making the same, but my mortgage is huge now. Sucks.
Its nice to see someone else mention the doubling. There are news things about gas being expensive but its cheap relative to everything else. People better be ready for eight bucks a gallone once it rights itself. Inflation would suggest 30% odd increase but for what you have to buy its 100% over 2020 prices.
Don't worry urban planners are making driving more difficult instead of mass transit easier. That way when gas prices double the entire lowest tier of the workforce won't be able to afford to work. "No one wants to work anymore"
My partner and I make over $300k, and we're struggling to buy a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of Orlando, FL.
As someone who lives in Florida I've got to ask, how? When thinking about finances and investments I often feel like I'm in my own bubble and I don't understand other peoples' situations, motivations, etc. So I'm genuinely curious. 4-bedroom houses near Orlando can be found in the mid 300s. With your income you should be able to pay in cash after saving for just one or two years (depending on how much savings you're starting out with). Even if you wanted something more expensive, are mortgages that difficult to get approved even for someone with such a high income?
holy crap. 300k for 4 bedrooms. no wonder people risk the storms.
You probably don’t want to buy a house there, anyway, what with all the insurance companies pulling out of the state.
Your rates are going to be sky high, assuming you can even get insured, which isn’t remotely a guarantee anymore.
Sell your house and move slightly further out of Orlando.
Or don't have a family size of 7+ and try to live in a city while expecting every kid to have their own room.
I’m 45 and I’ve more or less accepted that short of an unexpected and massive windfall, I will never be able to retire, much less experience “financial freedom.”
I'm 43 and literally had this exact conversation today. I work full time for a major financial institution. This shouldn't be how things work.
Agree yet you work for the enemy.
Because things will certainly change if you keep working without disruption.
If you prefer to 'bias for action' there is this: https://youtu.be/TMHCw3RqulY?feature=shared
Lol got em. Yet I live on mostly potatoes and was crippled by a billionaire corporation and haven't worked or made any income since. Homeless too.
Really? Do they? That's very interesting. Tell me, is the over half more like 99%?
I think you knew exactly what idea they were saying. Agency, the ability to control your own life, varies. Clearly and obviously a regular person in the West has more agency than say a regular person in North Korea. It is not an one-off switch. The ever growing wealth inequality is making the population shift more and more to the slave side of things. That doesn't mean that you are a slave it means your papa was less of a slave compared to you.
This is why being a lolitarian makes you stupid. It bifurcates slavery and freedom. It defines force to be a specific term, that no one else uses, and declares victory in the game it is playing with itself
It's really disingenuous to compare US-only data to unrelated generalizations of other countries that function under different cultural and economic systems. But I feel like you already know that.
70% of Americans retire.
I think the stat you're referencing is for people aged 65-69. That means 30% of those people are still working. That number should be much lower, like 0.
What is actually the definition of “financial freedom”? Having (earned / gained) enough money, so that a person has no need to go to work anymore? If that’s the case, I would expect that number to be much, much lower than 50%.
EDIT: sorry, I just read it in the article. If “financial freedom” just means to work and live more or less without having to worry about financial obligations and what will happen tomorrow, then less than 50% is a rather shocking figure.
Agree. And anyone could quickly go one from side to the other. In need of a expensive surgery? Might lose your financial freedom. Bought an expensive house and lost your job? Goodbye as well.
That’s what a health insurance would be good for. But for many Americans that would equal communism.
Health insurance sucks. I’m all for universal health coverage with the opportunity to pay more for faster service for those who are well off.
Just think - there are tens of thousands of insurance employees who’s job is to calculate risk and develop pricing algorithms such that the company makes money no matter what. There’s no product or value created for humanity. It’s just ensuring that some people who own significant portions of the business keep getting paid.
They screw doctors and patients. Doctors get reimbursed whatever arbitrary predefined rates that were agreed upon during contract negotiations. That’s if insurance gives the green light for the patient to even get the procedure. Why does a middleman decide who gets medical care and how much the doctors should be paid? How is a patient supposed to choose a surgery team that’s all in network?
I get what you’re saying, but fuck insurance. These companies are a parasite on healthcare, housing, and mobility.
Well, yes and no. It should probably be a state-run system or at least a heavily regulated system where the companies are limited in their profit making. No idea how an ideal system could look like. Here in Germany there is a two-fold system, which a generic public health insurance (with several companies offering those insurance services), where every employee pays a certain percentage of his salaries as insurance fee (actually the total fee is split 50/50 between employer and employee). Service is rather basic, but sufficient.
And then there is the possibility to get a private health insurance contract, if your income is above a certain level, which interestingly is (for the most time) lower than that in the general public insurance, but service is much better (e.g. you usually get doctor appointments much faster if you are a “private patient”). The only downside is that you don’t know how much you will have to pay when you get old, and once you are out of the public insurance you can not go back (only if you income falls below the private insurance entry level, which is rather unlikely).
It’s not ideal but it works for the most part and with some exceptions (like new teeth, where you have to pay a substantial part by yourself) you don’t have to be afraid of any health problems, operations or whatever, because that’s all covered. Those insurance companies are treated like public service companies and prices for medication and medical (doctor) services are subject to agreement between the government and the medical associations representing doctors, hospitals etc., but I guess those companies still make profits and the doctors have good earnings.
I get your point, but even with a certain level of protection you’re probably still better off than with no protection at all. However, the system should also not be based on profits and shareholder value, that’s true.
In other news, water is wet
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.
If, like me, you didn't have the reference: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r85h2
I've known that from the Tool song Third Eye. Good to know the original sauce. Reference: https://on.soundcloud.com/MLXsj
Bill Hicks, I reckon?
That's how society is, brother, literally 1% controls the world in their favor and keeps the wealth, impoverishing the 99%.
It's been 10,000 plus years. Let's change it, brother.
i agree, but not by passive aggressively shitting on people's life choices in a social media comment section.
If they choose to stand in an apple line for 12 hours then I have no apologies to offer. But I get it.
I'm going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can't even agree on what "Financial Freedom" means. Defining the metric you're polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. "Over half" is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the "American families are financially fucked" though, I'm not sure there's any hard data to extract from this.
--
"Peter don't ya call me cause I just can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."
Don't also forget that we're talking about what people say about their own financial position - which may be different from what their financial position actually is. Self-reporting is never accurate, because people report what they feel or are aware of, which is different from objective facts, to a greater or lesser degree.
Between letting individuals define the terms of the question they're going to answer, and then self-reporting, this "study" goes beyond useless and into detrimental.
I agree, the definition is a real problem. While still interesting the survey is pretty screwed.
I thought financial freedom was being independently wealthy. Idle rich. Apparently I was wrong, it means working class but with some "bonus" money. Maybe still struggling but struggling less than most working stiffs.
How free can you be if you still have to work full time?
There is a point in income where you have the choice, the choice to move, the choice to switch jobs, the choice to leave your partner, etc.
That is freedom. A lot of Americans are just stuck exactly where they are.
That's a good point. I make well into the 6-digits and the one reason I don't believe that anyone under 7-digits will ever be "financially free" is because of the for-profit healthcare system. One bad accident or cancer and I'm fucked for a long time if not the rest of my life as is anyone that can't just shrug off 5 to 6-digit bills.
Now if I were somewhere that offered universal health care and I was making what I was, I'd consider myself to be financially free. So I guess I fall into the 46.2% category.
Same. I'm financially stable. Meaning I can hit a few bumps and I'll be fine. But I don't think it's possible to be ' financially free' when at any time I could suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt.
I can roughly estimate potential pit falls with my home. And home insurance is reasonably reliable for catastrophic scenarios. Even if they aren't, bankruptcy is still feasible. The same cannot be said about healthcare. Insurance plans are extremely opaque and while they claim to have terms such as 'out of pocket maximum' that should**** in theory limit your losses, there are endless stories about how little that holds up when put to the test.
Proper healthcare coverage would be the single biggest impact on American stability. Nothing else is even close.
You can add disability to this. If I can't work I pretty sure im buggered even if for some reason we get universal healthcare (I guess being disabled, if you can navigate to the point of getting it, you would have medicaid but what comes in every month would not be adequate to stay where I live or such)
"This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name."
I would also venture to say that applies to 90% of us. "Over half" is a fucking laughable fake figure.
I mean, 90% is over half...
Yeah, but it's marketing jargon to make it seem like less of a deal. When someone says "over half" do you immediately assume they're talking in the 90% range, or closer to 60%?
Probably the half that make $31k or less.
Looking for a job is insanely depressing when you get to see just how many jobs-white collar, blue collar, fast food, whatever- all pay absolutely disgusting wages one person can't live of off...
I'm now in a 2 income household with fewer kids as they grow up, and to us it feels more like we are close always, just no hope of ever actually getting there, if that makes sense. Always almost enough.
Which is better than my previous experience but since it's happening later in life, still wouldn't expect to ever stop having to earn money by working. I have never expected to retire though, it would take - as someone else noted - a windfall, luck, not effort. Effort has taken us as far as it can.
Clearly the answer is work harder and get a 3rd job. Eventually you'll be a millionaire!
Sheeit I'm one step above homelessness living off plasma donations.
@HereticHydra @fne8w2ah
I'd go for this except I got a false HIV-positive back in '89 and no matter what I do I can't get it off my blood donation record. :(
I do ok, but all my debt and bills are telling me I need to get on this gravy train
I’d have thought more. With a big gaping chasm in between.
Wtf? Of course not. The workforce would be devastated if half of Americans had achieved financial freedom.
Not if the goal was equilibrium/homeostasis rather than unsustainable growth/metastasis on a finite world of finite resources as it is today.
That will never be permitted though. Humanity will destroy itself not out of hatred as once believed, but in the name of cold, insatiable, sociopathic greed.
Yah we won't stop using resources and fucking the air until we all die off. There's no other way cause humans, specifically the humans in power with the ability to make change. Won't. Cause cold hard cash.
Yup. Workers in America desperately need more rights. But so long as there are unpleasant jobs thst have to be done, total financial freedom isn't really possible. Even under a socialist/communist model.
🎶 Day's never finished, masta got me workin, someday massa set me free! 🎶
Labour will set you free, indeed
That's a good slogan, we should put it up over the front gate
Nobody wants to work anymore so a little encouragement is much needed.
There is $222 in the wallet in the link preview. Just found that interesting.
Old news. How about providing some ideas of solutions to this problem. Like, I dunno, tax the rich... 🤔
I'm actually the polor opposite of that, as are many.
Financial Freedom? I don't understand. You might as well be calling me an asshole in Greek.
I certainly don't live debt free, though the debt I have has a ROI that makes it worth having.
What amount would be enough to consider yourself financially free? $30K in savings? $100K, $500K, $1 Million?
Personally, to be "financially free" I would need enough investment income to cover all my expenses without making any sales/withdraws. Ideally this would include owning my home outright. So probably in the neighborhood of one million. I doubt I will ever get there.
Unless you pay cash upfront for a house, it serves no benefit to pay it off early due to inflation. As inflation goes up your debt says flat but your home value increases as well as equity. With a interest rate lower than the inflation rate your making money on the loan, not losing it. A mortgage is an investment, let it roll for as long as you can. Also it's convenient that taxes are collected within the mortgage rate, once that is gone it becomes a pain.
The fact that you're not wrong about this is part of the reason housing keeps getting more expensive. So many individuals have their nest eggs tied up in their houses that building more would hurt a lot of ordinary folks.
Yes a mortgage is an investment (which can make a profit or loss just like other investments) but it is also an obligation. With a mortgage losing your job could potentially leave you homeless. That is not what I consider "financially free". If you have a lot of cash up front you could potentially put it into higher yielding investments and make a profit on the difference between yield and mortgage rate at the end of 30 years but that takes some amount of luck and skill with investing. Especially now that mortgage rate are 7%. If you don't have all the cash up front then taking out a 30yr 7% loan for 300k will mean you're paying over 700k for the house with interest included.
Saving up an emergency fund to pay the mortgage if you become jobless should be a top priority for any homeowner. Priority meaning you cut back everywhere you can to generate those savings, until you have enough saved to be comfortable. Once I saved up a 6-mo emergency fund I felt much closer to financial freedom. I can have 6+ months to look for a new job if I lose mine.
No benefit? I agree that inflation can make paying a house off early less financially advantageous, but it’s silly to say there’s no benefit.
First to your point, with interest rates as they’ve been the last year or so, it isn’t safe to assume your interest will be lower than inflation. (Mine isn’t, and I bought my house last June.)
Also, removing a huge monthly bill grants freedom in the short-term. Making a mortgage payment every month may mean things like not leaving a bad job or not starting your own business due to fear of losing your house. With that expense out of the way, you can make riskier choices with potential for greater pay off.
And lastly, there’s the mental burden of debt. It’s easier to be happy when you don’t have any debt, so getting rid of it can be a huge boon personally.
So yeah, I might lose a net benefit of a few thousand dollars spread out over the next 15 years if I don’t pay my house off early. But I might miss out on even greater benefits because I’m saddled with ~33% of my take home going into my mortgage every month. I’ll take the minor hit to be debt-free ASAP.
Currently I wouldn't suggest buying a house because the interest rates are high. We refinanced at 2.2% so I don't plan on ever moving. Bought my home at $225K and it's value is $525K now, over a 50% increase since I bought. I'll never see that happen in my lifetime again so I'm sticking here for life.
Maybe not due to inflation specifically, but there are a lot of benefits to being mortgage free.
Such as the simple peace of mind that comes from not having a massive debt hanging over your head.
A mortgage isn't debt, it's free money due to ROI. Rent is debt.
300x my average monthly expenses invested. (Based on a 4% withdrawal.) Multiple ways to get there.
If I spend, not earn, 1K per month, then I need 300K invested.
I'll feel free when i finally have savings
Freedom is a subjective term, what do they mean?
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
What is YOUR definition of financial freedom?
I view it as living within your means. I make more money than I spend.
I'd define it working on whatever you want for a living.
I don't necessarily mean surfing and getting drunk every day, but just being able to make a living off something that you actually want to do.
I make enough to make ends meet and pay off my mortgage and then some, but I'm not financially secure enough to just quit from one day to the next or start a company myself to make the things that I think the world needs or that I find interesting.
I believe that there's a huge potential if people weren't bound to always have a job that pays the bills. Most people are limited to carrying out the ideas of a few people who have the means to live their dreams.
Universal basic income could solve this and realise that potential. And it only requires taxing of the richest or automation of the government services. If we did a little of each, we could actually have this.
My definition is:
Ability to pay all expenses, including things like sudden repairs, medical payments, job loss for up to 6 months, etc with minimal impact to quality of life.
Ability to partake in moderate luxuries such as travel, dining out, new phone/TV/etc every so often. Does not mean you have enough to always buy whatever you want, but have enough to have some extra enjoyment.
Ability to take care of 1-2 children including education, day care, medical, activities, etc
Just based on the healthcare component alone, I don't think it's feasible for Americans to be financially free until they hit the millions. Otherwise, if you ignore that aspect I'd say its around the mid level executive type of income or about ~$300-600k year depending on location. If it's just moderate financial stability, then it's maybe only $90-200k, but I don't think I'd call that level 'free'
The article is really bad and confusing, but the very first statistics says only 10% are living with their defined financial freedom.
It also doesn't appear to provide any sources for this data.edit: They do have sources, I'm just blind.
Money makes money.
Feedback loop concentrates the money towards those with more money.
Dog I've been lying flat since I figured out the world wasn't how I imagined it. I'm so stuck in my lack of freedom I'm like not even in the top 10 decision makers in my own life.
If you just saved 5% of your pay in a 401k from the time you were 22 and invest in the stock market for 40 years and never get sick, quit your job to raise a family or care for loved ones, then you might become a millionaire. Not that a million would be enough to retire on after 40 years of inflation.
Also, this plan depends on the world economy continuing to grow at the same rate as it did in the past, never mind that this growth is toxic to the planet. But, hey you might see some financial freedom at that point.
Just stick with it.
Sobering post
But why would more than half of Americans be financially free? Are more than half of all Americans already over 65 where they need to be financially free? If not, then it would be very odd that more than half would be close to financial freedom. It's an odd statement that makes you feel bad, but if you think about it, it would make no sense if it were true.
People who are surprised: Americans.
People who are not: the rest of the world.