how the fuck do people have so much money?
>go to someone's house
>fucking shelves full of blu rays, must be upwards of one hundred
>friend goes shopping
>buys a $400 dress/jacket without thinking twice about it
>other friend
>any triple A game comes out and he buys it immediately
>has fucking four hundred games
do people seriously have this kind of money or are they just wasting it?
>>26872115
I get almost 1k AUD a week from mt shit tier job. I can just about buy anything I want. I imagine people with good jobs have fucking heaps of shekels
Most likely: they have shit credit
Fairly likely: they never save any money. If they live alone they'd be fucked if they lost their jobs.
Somewhat likely: they make a lot more money than you.
>>26872115
They waste it. Why do you think so many people are in debt?
>>26872168
but is 1k a week a lot? I make 1k a week and save at least $400 per paycheck
>>26872115
truly massive amounts of debt
>>26872216
Is for me. But my parents bought me a house so my bills are like $200 a week max. If you come from a nigger tier family probs not
Wagies live for instant gratification. This is why they will never be anything more than wagies
$50,000 a year is a ton of money, and many people make more than that
>>26872115
If you have an educated dual-income household with no kids, there's a huge surplus.
Both mySOand I make 40k and with expenses being about $2k/mo including food, that's a good $2.5k extra to waste frivolously each month. Which is easy to do.
They're probably wasting it too, if everything else in their life doesn't seem equally up to par. Like a nice house in a nice neighborhood for the blu-ray guy, etc.
>>26872115
If you live with your parents and they don't make you pay rent, you can buy lots of expensive shit even on a minimum wage job.
Then they move out, keep trying to do the same thing, and have horrible credit.
>>26872338
I make less than 1000$ a year
>>26872235
>American Greed
based af senpai desu
>>26872115
two words senpai
credit
cards
anyone can buy expensive shit even on minimum wage
>>26872168
most normies work at least as hard at keeping themselves poor as they do at their jobs. One of my friends knows someone who's an air-traffic controller and makes something like $200k. She lives paycheck-to-paycheck because every dime is out the door as soon as it came. Big house in a high-tax city, expensive car, fancy restaurants, boom. Big income, no savings. Doesn't even have kids, if she did she'd be running an enormous deficit.
they just don't have the willpower to say "nah, I could buy a beamer for 100k, but I think I'll keep my '01 civic instead"
>>26872409
honda is based tho
>>26872115
400 games is only 20k
>>26872348
I don't get what he could possible be doing to afford it
I mean I have a degree in computer science, I think he has a degree in some liberal arts bullshit, don't even know what he does for a living, that's why I am so confused as to where he could be getting all this money
>>26872408
>>26872235
>>26872188
>>26872194
do people seriously get into debt from buying stupid shit they don't need?
>>26872409
Women can't be trusted with money
>>26872461
in america they do my man
>>26872461
You could just ask him what his job is.
>>26872461
>>do people seriously get into debt from buying stupid shit they don't need?
quite literally all the fucking time. Get a big mortgage for a house that's bigger than you need. Refinance it a few times, borrow from home equity, blow it on remodeling every couple years. Lease a fancy car. Lease is up in three years, pay a penalty because you drove too many miles, and now you've paid a lot of money but you don't own the car. So you lease a new one and it starts all over again, you're paying $400 a month to drive for your entire working life, just to have the latest model. Buy new furniture cause you were tired of the old stuff. Probably on credit. Fill your house with tacky shit from the home shopping network for five easy payments of however much. Blow a bunch of dosh on a new hobby every year only to find out you don't like it and give it up. That's how the fancy racing bike gets in the garage one year, that lovely set of golf clubs the next, the full-frame DSLR you have even though you don't know your aperture from a hole in the ground. Nowadays you just take your pics on your phone anyway. It's either the latest iPhone or a flagship android, and updated every year for a few hundred bucks. Everyone in the family has one. The phone plan to use 'em is something like $200. And then there's another $150 for premium cable TV, with some money on top for internet, and maybe a landline that you never use but don't bother to cancel because hey, it's only $20. You have a dozen credit cards in your wallet, they all have a big balance on them, and you juggle stuff between em and pay the minimum on the ones you aren't using. You got kids, of course, because that's the American dream, and you send em to team sports and summer camps and flute lessons and tutoring and a bunch of other expensive shit. You and your wife are really busy so a lot of nights you just plain don't have time to cook, so you go out.
Most of the US upper-middle class lives like this. No savings.
>>26872461
Because all liberal arts degrees are worthless and could never ever lead to a successful career... Not like most people managers have them or anything
>>26872725
Wait how and why
do they consider what happens if they lose their jobs or livelihood?
I thought it was a rule of thumb that you always keep ~20k in savings
>>26872795
because they're all fucking stupid
>>26872725
Meanwhile my life will end this year due to poverty and I could live like a king on $500/month in my shit country.
>>26872795
No; some people just never learned this. Or maybe they did but they just ignored it. It's fucking shocking.
>>26872795
It's a result of a gradual lifestyle inflation. People don't immediately start like that but when they get out of college and they're not financially literate they never bother saving. They spend all the money they take in and as they make more they spend more
Consumer debt is a bubble that is expanding rapidly, aided by a culture that requires the best and newest. The people most susceptible to this are also generally the lowest income, meaning they need to finance to live the lifestyle they think they should be living. I worked at a Mercedes dealership in college and in my (anecdotal) experience 75%-90% of the cars that left the lot were leased or financed, often with stupid amounts of interest. The concept of saving money is no longer common sense, rather, artificially low interest rates and cheap credit work together to further a culture that thrives on materialistic gloating. I graduated with a degree in civil engineering and bought a house outright 2 years later. When I tell people, they look at me like I have two heads. Don't fall into the trap of trying to match what other people have, instead focus on what you want. I set aside 50% of my income in a conservative investment portfolio, but just having a savings plan puts you ahead of the majority of young people.
>>26872795
>>do they consider what happens if they lose their jobs or livelihood?
Either no, they don't, not for a minute, or they do and worry about it sometimes but have gotten so used to the lifestyle of buying what they want when they want it that they can't so much as fathom giving up their daily $6 latte.
I had a friend whose parents bankrupted themselves because of this. (the financial house of cards caved in completely when they divorced, and had not only expensive lawyers but negative net assets to divide)
It made me a lot more sympathetic to the rich, believe it or not. Because I learned that for the whole upper half of the income scale, all you have to do to be a millionaire is to live below your means, and the money just piles up if you don't find excuses to spend it. The lower half still has it rough, because the poor man pays twice, but the upper half literally just just to put their money in an index fund instead of blowing it to get to the 1%, and almost none of them do.
it's pretty easy to appear rich than actually be rich. credit cards, not saving money and instead spending it on bullshit.
most of them probably don't care how much money they spend because they know their parents will bail them out if they're in deep shit. or they just straight up use their parents money.
>>26872930
Exactly this, I've met a few millionaires in my time, and the majority drive a pedestrian car and live a relatively middle class lifestyle. The one exception is private schools, almost every person with the income to send their kids to private school does.
>>26873029
people shit on the rich for sending their kids to private schools, but I really don't blame them. public schools are a fucking joke and don't prepare you for anything.
>>26873085
The U.S. is weird in that school funds come from the property taxes of the area, meaning well funded areas generally have well funded schools and shitty areas....... The federal gov has been providing more money for shitty schools recently, but its still a drop in the bucket
>>26873085
Also, funding being linked to test scores causes a circular pattern.
>School does shit
>no money
>School does shit cause no money
>no money
This recursion causes a huge gap in the quality of education, meaning good schools stay good and shit schools get shittier
>>26873120
Private schools have to be good or parents won't send kids there. Public schools don't have to be good, and they know it. They do the minimum they have to to stay out of trouble with the state or the feds for bad test scores. The union teachers that work at them are there because they want a secure government job that they can't get fired from with a big pension. Because the parents who care the most send their kids elsewhere, most of the kids there are kids whose parents don't really care. And then there's a few inner-city schools that are just zoos without visitors anyway. The US actually spends a lot of money on public schools - three times as much in constant dollars as was spent in 1970. Educational outcomes have barely budged though, because of the above. Most public education is good money being thrown after bad.
>>26873166
There's a bunch of charters that do good work on a shoestring budget. The public schools it's more like
>school does shit on tests
>school bitches to politicians about how unfair it is to make kids take tests
>get tests scaled back or watered down
>school "improves" a little bit and gets people off its back, and returns to dozing
>>26873120
the schools I went to were all fucked up. half the kids were middle class and upper middle class kids and the other half were kids that had dirty poor families.
there are two high schools where I live, one built in a middle class residential area, the other built downtown. it's pretty clear they were originally built for two separate types of kids. one for middle class, one for poor. that idea went out the window at some point and they restructured the districts so each school gets a mix. it didn't work well. you can fill in the blanks, but basically the poor kids ruined classes, had no respect for teachers, and just caused continuous problems.
>>26872115
If you have a job but don't have kids then all your income beyond food and rent is disposable and it's not hard to afford luxuries like games, nice clothes, etc.
Normies only think it's hard to support yourself because they're animals can't resist the urge to breed.
>make 2k/month
>not on payroll
>have to stow away 20% of each paycheque so I don't get fucked at tax time
>live in expensive city because the only things that give my life any meaning are here
>endless cycle of renting shitty rooms from shitty landlords with shitty roommates
>cant afford to even buy clothes
JUST
>>26875472
What is there in the city that gives your life meaning? Most fun things in cities cost money.
It would probably be cheaper if you lived right next to the city as well instead of inside of it.
>>26875584
Might as well live in a hole in the ground desu.
I've always had that much money. Dad makes ~$130k/year after taxes, I got a scholarship for college that gave me extra, got a job right out of college. I've only ever been broke when I gambled ~$34000 in one month. I only make $45k/year, but I'm single and only pay $300/month for rent and utilities so I can still buy whatever I want that isn't a life.
I'm just as unhappy as
>>26875584
Basically just a band and a drumline ensemble I'm in. Both cost me next to nothing except the occasional overnight trips.
I'd prefer to live outside the city, but it's hardly less expensive and I'd have to buy a car to get around on top of it. Absolutely not doable.
>>26875675
>300 a month in rent and utilities
Do...do...what...where the fuck do. You live, and in what? Is that for a tent spot on a campsite?
>>26872461
>I think he has a degree in some liberal arts bullshit, don't even know what he does for a living,
The idea that libarts leads to the poorhouse is sort of a meme.
If you have a good portfolio and the right connections you can be earning $20-30 dollars or more an hour and only working 20 hours a week.
>>26875675
seriously man, i've never seen rent on a solo apartment less than 450 where I live
>>26872115
$400 dress? Literally get the fuck out of here.
$20,000 in games is a waste of money but the collection probably took 5 years to build. $350/month. Retard-level hobby but it's not shit.
I got $5,400 in income AFTER TAX this month (RIP $2,000 in taxes).
My fixed expenses (car, rent, student loans) came out to $1,100. Get on my god damn level. I can blow $800 every week and still save money. If you wonder who the fuck can afford a $300,000 house.. me. It's not shit. Stack up and fuck these poors who want you to live the $900/month NEETlife.
>>26872363
stack up my man.
>>26872338
$50k isn't shit. It's liveable but you still have to watch your expenses. Taxes take up $10,000 or more of that. I'd walk out my job if my pay got cut that low.
>>26875755
No, I just live with a girl who owns her own house and pulls in $85k a year and doesn't give a fuck.
She gave me chlam a year back and I haven't slept with her since. I tend to leave and go somewhere else on weekends because I'm sick of hearing the next chad in line fuck her senseless on friday and saturday night. It was three dudes in a one weekend a few months back, fuck.
But living here is cheap and she doesn't complain about my bullshit. So it goes.
>get $24k for doing fuck-all with my life
Thanks NEETbux <3
>>26875793
How are you NEET and make that much money?
>>26872115
i work as a systems engineer for a defense contractor. a little over $120k/yr is my net pay. my living expenses are a little over $2k/mo:
$1k/mo for house/car insurance
$338/mo mortgage
$45/mo for mobile phone
$75/mo broadband internet
$80/mo gasoline
$150/mo for food
$500ish (varies) for water/garbage/electricity
i do my own yard work and other random stuff.
so that leaves a good amount of dosh to invest, spend, or set on fire. i mostly invest for retirement stuff and buy fun things.
for someone living frugally on minimum wage, about $13k/yr i think is net for $15k/yr pay
they could live cheaply and still be able to buy the occasional nice thing each month. especially if they can save by having a roommate or cheaper commute or something.
$35 000AUDhere in bank
21 years old still living with parents
i have a job and i just work. almost every opportunity i try to grab extra shifts. i'm pretty close to getting a sort of promotion too.
i also dont smoke, do drugs or drink alcohol.i would do drugs but i never actually have the time for it.
i just save up and never spend on anything big. always wait for sales forr games unless its a new release and im super keen on which is fairly rare.
>>26875793
>$400 dress? Literally get the fuck out of here.
That's a cheap dress.
>>26872409
that's more a personality thing particular to mostly approaching-middle-age women who live in a city.
not even joking - they are the biggest consumer market on the planet.
>>26872461
CS makes next to nothing if you aren't in development, have a killer app, or are an engineer.
>>26875947
don't kid yourself anon, men can waste money with the best of them. They just tend to waste it on more interesting things than another pair of fucking shoes.
>>26872795
some people don't plan or save or anything - they are economically brain dead and keep coasting along because they don't want either the responsibility or to be told (by good sense) "i shouldn't buy this now" or "let's prepare for emergencies like unemployment or natural disaster".
it's the instant gratification consumer culture thats grown the service industry 50x over the last 20 years and continuing to grow. these people can't function in the real world because it's a bubble that's waiting to get popped.
>>26872795
20k? Nah more like 6 months of expenses. The rest should go to retirement/investment accounts for that sweet sweet compound interest
>>26872927
Nice house
But seriously, why buy a house so young? You don't plan to stay flexible for career mobility(moving across the country)
>>26872115
A lot of people do not know how to live within their means and just throw money away.
>Friend works at retail store making $12 an hour. Take home pay is around $1200-1300
>Buys an $8K(!) wedding ring. Financing it by paying $600 a month
>Financing a car at 7%interest rate, paying $350 a month for a $20K car.
>Still eats fast food constantly, buys video games, dvds, and other stupid shit
>Complains that he can't go anywhere and has no money
This guy is 28 years old and he has absolutely no savings and is in debt up to his asshole. His only saving grace is that he lives at home
>>26875976
no seriously. look it up on consumer index reports for market growth. 20-29 single urban women outspend any other shopper segment by nearly 250%
>>26875934
god damn that scared the shit oit of me
>>26875793
what do you mean by stack up?
>>26872837
yeah really surprise robots here can easily earn $1k/week and it's still low for them. Meanwhile in this shitty country of mine, $1k/ month is already top.
>>26875768
Doing what? origymjam
>>26876020
Not my house, I drew up the CAD files and structural drawings for a client. I wish I could live there, Its under construction rn.
I paid 126k cad for mine in a decent area. I don't think I could leave, still a robot to the core. I have known my 2 best friends since kindergarten, literally don't know how to make new ones.
>>26876379
its nicer on the inside, I promise
And it has 2 garages for wrenching
None of my friends spend money on entertainment. My whole social circle is too broke for video games.
I don't drink, I don't have a car, I dont buy electronics I dont need, I live in the inner city, and I save a lot of money this way.
I don't get why people spend $60 on a game. I get bored of that shit so quick.
Instead I bought a bicycle on Craigslist and that has provided me countless hours of entertainment.
>>26876460
Best way to get rich is to spend like you're broke, don't think it'll help if you are actually broke though
>>26872795
The US is filled with the dumbest, poorest Europeans who rapidly became wealthy after World War II.
Most of them define themselves solely by material goods and have no concept of the future (or the past), living in the immediate present.
Obviously a culture like this is not sustainable and will collapse fairly soon after its peak.
>inb4 europoor
I'm American too.
>>26876537
it's been predicted before and it hasn't happened
not saying it won't, cause this election looks pretty bad, but I'm still skeptical, and I don't at all think its a sure thing.
>>26872795
Lots of reasons contribute to this.
Mostly, it's that the US was too successful for too long. The first people to load up on debt and live large was bailed out by massively improving conditions and never faced any consequences for it. In this environment, anyone playing safe is a sucker, so people in subsequent generations stopped playing safe. Now, the growth of America has slowed, but the appetites of the people haven't.
