The "American Dream" costs far more than most people will earn over their lifetime
The "American Dream" costs far more than most people will earn over their lifetime
The cost of raising kids, buying a home and achieving other traditional milestones today far exceeds a typical worker's earnings, one analysis finds.
Health insurance is HOW MUCH!
And there are Brits here saying how great private care is and how much they want it... fucking turkeys to christmas.
People who push for private healthcare are either the type that could afford it or are the sheep following them.
And the thing is, private healthcare is great for those who can afford it. Both specialists and PCPs are readily available for appointments in the US, and the quality of care is good!... You'll just end up bankrupt if your employer doesn't provide good insurance.
It's fucked up, and it's not equitable. But I understand why it's appealing to the wealthy.
quality of care is good
That's debatable for sure
I don't know about great
Haven't heard of that phrase but it's an apt analogy for my fellow Brits. Same with Brexit. Wasn't till afterwards did they realize that what they voted for and were upset. Heaven forbid you listen to those warning you about it.
Stop dreaming, start killing the billionaires.
First person to get a billionaire killionaire gets bragging rights for eternity.
That would be about 10 seconds of bragging and eternity dirt napping
They got guillotines on Amazon?
Only “action hero” size, and I’m certainly not going to cut off Andre or Wally’s head… how would we have dinner?
The last Bezos will ship us the guillotine we chop him with, or something...
... median lifetime earnings for the typical U.S. worker stand at $1.7 million...
And Musk makes over 3.5x that amount in a single day.
Three and a half lifetimes of work per day, and nobody wants to do anything about the billionaire problem?
But you don't understand. Billionaires earn their money. They're superior to us. They make that much because they're just much better people than the rest of us. If you stood next to Musk you would notice the heat radiating from his head as his massive Iron-Man like intellect dwarfs your puny brain. You should be in awe of his superiority and beg to have his children (even if you're a guy). Clearly they should be rewarded for all their helping society and their taxes should be LOWERED, not increased.
The REAL billionaire problem is that we don't have enough of them!
If you spent $35K on a wedding, you're doing it wrong.
If you read the actual original Investopedia article, most of these claimed costs make silly assumptions about the definition of "The American Dream" and a lot of the data is cherry picked.
They claim the "American dream" requires an $800k house at an over 7% interest rate and they assume you only put 10% down.
They claim the "American dream" involves buying a different used car every 6 years.
They claim the "American dream" involves spending $70k on pets over the course of your lifetime.
Its an interesting exercise, but the assumptions are weird and the headline is sensational.
If we assume a generous pet lifespan of 15 years that's not unreasonable that's like $400/mo which depending on what your pet needs food wise and how much you spoil them is easily met
If you have pets bigger than a hamster, 70k in your lifetime seems reasonable, even low. That around 1k per year.
And a different used car every 6 years is borderline frugal. My dream would be a new car every 3 years.
I don't see the data to be so bad. Even the house financing is realistic (heavily dependent on location, of course).
As an average, those assumptions are downright modest. The cliche of a house with a white picket fence, a wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a mortgage line up pretty well with that.
Granted, this isn't everyone's dream, and it doesn't apply everywhere. But I would bet that the majority of people in this country would describe that as the cost to live that cliche.
The $800k house figure includes interest payments. So the value of the home will be much, much less than $800k.
Retirement: $715,958
And this is why I likely won't be able to retire. At a recent retirement meeting my company gave, they said that people should be putting 15% of their income into retirement. However, I can't afford to do this. Not even close.
I live a pretty frugal life. I don't vacation. I rarely go out to eat or order food in. I plan my meals and only buy what we need. I drive a 14 year old car that's paid off. Still, my expenses, while less than my income, wouldn't let me reduce my pretax income by 15%.
I'm 48 and I doubt if I'll have 20% of the figure above when it comes time to retire.
And still 700K for retirement is still low since I'm sure they're using the US median salary and the old adage of saving 10 times your salary for retirement. So far every place I've worked and attended the financial seminar, my own retirement manager, and my sister who works in the industry have told me you really should be saving 15 - 20 time your salary if you want to live comfortably.
So to me what this article is saying is that you'll need that just so you can live pay check to pay check through retirement and still be stressed the fuck out and at risk for being homeless in your golden years.
I assume you're in the US? Because many other developed countries rely a lot less on private retirement savings and a lot more on public retirement programs in order to get everyone covered.
Of course, that means higher earners would have to pay more into programs similar to social security through taxes to cover lower earners, which many Americans are not willing to do.
I'm willing.
Are you me? Wow.
Now, I don't know where you live, but Canada at least has old age security (and a pension plan) that should offset a good chunk of your expenses when you retire.
That's in addition to whatever you do manage to put away.
However, it really helps if you own a home and are mortgage free by the time you hit retirement age.
I do own my house and hopefully will be mortgage free by the time I retire (or hit retirement age). I'm in New York State. Social Security would theoretically help, but who knows if it'll be around in 30 years. If it's not, I'll be working until I'm 90. If it is, I might be able to retire at 75. Assuming I don't have any large, unexpected expenses (which is a huge assumption).
US also has Social Security to help fund a basic retirement but it’s pretty minimal. It is enough to keep you from living on cat food
I also can’t finish paying off my mortgage before I should retire and given rampant ageism, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to find a job that long. And Social Security won’t cover my mortgage plus utilities
And even worse, Social Security needs adjustments to be able to continue meeting its commitments. The longer our political leaders avoid that, the more impact it will have when they are forced to do their jobs
What's your employer match for you 401k? that 15% saving should be the savings after your employer match. So if you have that, you might be able actually sacrificing less than 15% of take home pay to save fore retirement.
I'd have to look it up. My company actually just changed the entire system to help out younger employees - but with the effect of hurting employees who have worked here longer. So it actually ends up being harder for me to save up. They acknowledged this, but argued it off as not affecting that many people. (Not many people - just the folks who stuck around the longest!)
The explanation we were given, though, was that 15% came before the matching. So I should take every $100 I earn and stick $15 into my retirement fund. Then, of course, I'd need to put some into healthcare, some into taxes, and some into basic costs of living. Then, when I'm done, I might be lucky enough to have a shiny penny left over. Unless I have any unforeseen expenses in which case I'd go deep into debt.
I work in a municipality in Texas, and despite our state government being crazy the benefits at most cities are fantastic.
We have the Texas Municipal Retirement System in most places. At the last several cities I've worked at there's a mandatory 7% employee contribution, but then the city double-matches the contribution, so I'm paying 7% in while putting 21% away.
The catch is you have to work in TMRS city for a minimum of 5 years before you vest. If you don't put in your 5 years you only get the 7%.
And the really big cities don't participate. So I ain't gonna go work for Austin or Houston.
Yeah, I think these rules (US) were made by people doing the math, without considering reality. It’s real easy to set aside a good amount to retire, as long as you set aside the recommended percentage throughout your career.
Of course the reality is that most of us will never do that. Many of us will get divorced and lose half what we put aside. Many of us will have financial emergencies such as medical emergencies, or being out of a job. Many of us will just be scraping by and can’t afford to set aside that much of our pay. Many of us just won’t have the perspective to be willing to set aside money for retirement many decades away. Many of us will live through times when our investments lose significant value over years. More importantly , most of us will hit those conditions sometime in our career and the basic premise is just not realistic. At least as importantly, with so much dependency on compounding returns over decades, there’s no way to recover when all those rosy assumptions don’t pan out.
I’m a good example, where I make a good income and realized the importance early on. At the beginning of my career I was able to daydream about my expected millions to retire. A few decades later and I’ve hit all of the above so am not even close. Even now as I panic about how soon I need to retire and how little I have set aside, and am making renewed effort, there’s no way to make up for all those missing years of compounding returns, and there’s only so much I can do while paying kids college expenses.
Do you mind me asking, what do you do? Do you own or rent your residence?
I'm 41, and really striving to hit those numbers too and I feel like I'm doing pretty well with my position in life..... it's just life seems to be getting away from me as I look into the future and see my kids getting much more expensive.
I'm a web developer. I own my house, but am still paying the mortgage. (So I guess I don't technically fully own it yet.) I'm in a decent position financially at the moment - my income exceeds my expenses. Still, I've had some big financial hits recently ($3,600 for hearing aids for me, $1,000+ for tests to rule out cancer for my wife, $750 for a new dryer when our old one died, the potential new car that I might need to buy,...).
So while I'm able to keep my head above water, financially, I'm not able to put enough away to secure my retirement. Also, one big adverse event (medical crisis, job loss with unsuccessful job search, etc) and my current financial state could go from "decent in the short term" to "drowning in debt."
It costs lives too. Exploitation is hard baked into any $ucc€$$fu££
vultureventure or ideologyTo put it in perspective... I inherited my mom's house, retirement, life savings, car, etc. And I am still very limited in buying a new home where I actually want to live, bc of how outrageous prices are. Just imagine... almost 70 years of her life, and I can't do what my dad and his first wife easily did at age 20 working as a restaurant manager. Insane.
WE KNOW
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
George Carlin
You beat me to the punch.
No pun intended 😂
Is using an expression literally considered a pun?
Considering the Earth is dying and society will probably collapse in the next 20 years, there's no "retirement plan". You either die in your work boots at 90, get shot in the water wars, or starve to death once agricultural zones turn to sand.
Buy the game you want. Tell that hot person you're into them. See as much as the world right now as you can.
Sure, there's a COL crisis right now in North American, but in 20 years we'll look back at right now as "the good times".
You've forgotten the fourth category: the rich who barricade themselves into a paradise of hoarded resources while everyone else dies.
It's funny that the ruling class is banking on this outcome, without the understanding that to have a functioning society where people don't just randomly die of disease or infection, you have to have a few thousand people that all live relatively close to each other. Bunker living is just delaying the inevitable death by starvation.
Man my kid is going to have such a leg up over all the people who think like this. I hope your hilarious pessimism spreads honestly.
Let me guess, you're one of those "climate change is natural and the Earth has changed climate before a bunch of times periodically!" types of people?
Turns out, pumping trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere for 150 years is bad for interconnected ecosystems. Notice how it doesn't really snow anymore in North America, or if it does, it's a "once in a lifetime" snowpocalypse? Notice how the hurricanes in the south don't really ever stop now? Notice how Europe floods like a motherfucker now? Notice how many people are dying of heat stroke every year? How every single year is the hottest year in history? Remember when the North Pole existed?
Also, how do you figure your kid is going to have an easy time? Statistically speaking, you make around $35k a year. Given the housing market and wage stagnation, your kid is most likely going to be in the working class who scrapes a living together with 5 roommates.
Some costs might be lower or higher, depending on a family's goals. For instance, some might pay for more than one-year of college for their children, while others might buy fewer cars.
Wedding and engagement ring: $35,800
One year of college for two kids: $42,080
Pets: $67,935
Average cost to buy a home, including lifetime mortgage payments: $796,998
Are you really buying a house if you never finish paying for it?
And you effectively never truly own the house, if you stop paying property taxes on it the city/county takes it.
That's roughly a 30 year mortgage on a 400K home (5% interest).
Yes, because you have equity. You have partial ownership from the first payment until the last. If shit hits the fan, you can choose to sell it for whatever your portion of ownership is worth.
You also don't (generally) have to ask permission on what you do with your property.
I need to take a finance or accounting class. I don't know anything about either.
Nope, the Big Brain Compassionate People have since informed me that the American Dream™ is ONLY that you have the OPPORTUNITY to maybe afford that life.
So the American Dream™ is that CEOs exist, you can be one. The end. Get fucked Mr.Factory worker, your time passed and even though we still need you we don't care about your quality of life, just be a CEO.
It's amazing, because in that world the American Dream™ is literally impossible to deny. Rich people will always exist and Big Brains will always point to them and say "you can be that" so shut up.
I feel like I read a same article like this every 3 months
It's because you're still sleeping.
This explains alot, a life without love has made my checking account stable.
Save up a million in 401k, investments and equity just to spend it all in a couple of years for senior care.
Most of the.math here makes total sense but what the fuck is this shit
Wedding and engagement ring: $35,800
If anyone here spends $35k on a fuckin ring when you can't afford hospital stays and shit, let me know so I can come slap some sense into you.
Like why is this even on the list? It doesn't even materially change the final outcome.
"They call it the American dream, because you have to be fucking asleep to believe it." / George Carlin
Okay, this may be just a side note, but I hope they mean "wedding (as a whole) and engagement ring" because 35 THOUSAND for three rings is excessive.
Bridal jewelry worker here. I can absolutely confirm that, yes, you can indeed spend $10k on a ring setting and stone very easily. You can also spend $35k on a single ring if you got something from Hearts on Fire or Tacori.
Most of the cost comes from the stone and not the ring setting itself though. Like you can spend maybe at most like $5k on a platinum ring setting and another $10k+ on the stone.
Completely agreed, and none of this is directed at you. I’m responding to more of the overall sentiment in this post.
Jewelry and designer fashion is expensive very much on purpose. Yes, there’s an obvious quality element. That doesn’t mean that a Christian Siriano gown is going to last like a Carhartt jacket or that those Louboutin boots will outlast a pair of red wings. It’s wearable art, and it also makes a social statement.
We’re not even talking that level, though. The average cost for an American wedding is about $30k, so $35k all inclusive is absolutely in the ballpark. You can obviously get married for far less, but this article is talking about the reality of the “American dream” - which is really just a middle class lifestyle - versus various average expenses. The point isn’t that you can’t get married at the courthouse for $50, or even that you shouldn’t. The point is that people who subscribe to the concept of the American dream expect to be able to live an average lifestyle. Modest house. College for the kids. A “proper” wedding. Retirement. Leaving something behind. Those are increasingly moving out of reach.
You could hop over to Tiffany right now and find a nice necklace for $10k that would make a lovely Christmas present. That’s not what this article is talking about. It’s going beyond the basic “basket of goods” economists use to look at things like inflation and cost of living to include expenses that the average middle class family has traditionally expected. That’s exactly the approach many of us wish more people would take.
In the words of Green Day's new song "the American dream is killing me"
... Green Day has a new album dropping??
Not sure. The song came out a couple of months ago
Massively under calling the total costs, from my quick read on the Investopedia article. No surprise there given the quality of that source.
I don’t see Food, Utilities, Vacation, Fuel/Maintenance, Clothes, or quite a few other major household expenses listed out.
So… that cost (relative to life one interval) would be much more out of reach.
Very true. So. Hmmm, well - so Okay then! So what! I say let's forget the "american dream" then, and concentrate on the things we enjoy that make us happy to get out bed in the morning. Maybe there's more to life than just a big house and a nice car. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
I'm with you in spirit, but keep in mind the US is still making tons of income overall as a nation - GDP is, and has been, trending up for a long time. That money's going somewhere.
It's like if we all ran/worked in a business and saw we're making tons in profit but we were then being asked (regularly) to take a pay cut. It ain't right.
That said, yes we all need to learn to live with less because it ain't getting fixed for at least another generation or two, if ever
GDP is, and has been, trending up for a long time.
That’s because GDP has been inflated to high hell. Military spending and real estate both contribute to GDP as well - notice how high both of those things are in the US?
If I remember the numbers correctly, in the late 70s in the US 24% of corporate revenues went into salaries, whilst by 2012, that was down to 7%.
Or putting things differently a little less than 50 years ago, roughly 1/4 of the money people spent ended up as income for workers, whilst by 2012 that was down less than 1/14th.
It's hardly surprising that people who work for a living (i.e. the vast majority of people) feel a lot poorer now, given that every time they spend $1 and it circulates around in the Economy, 93 cents gets captured by people who live of making money from having money (i.e. from owning investments) and taxes, whilst only 7 cents find their way back to people who work for a living.
Given that taxes for the wealthiest have actually de facto come down since the 70s - thanks to lower top tax rates and the rise of things like tax havens and transnational tax evasion schemes - guess who is getting the extra 17 cents that half a century ago went to workers ...
Green Day came out with "The American Dream is Killing Me" . Perfect timing.
Learn to invest and grow money ffs, don't just squander your income. At the bare minimum understand compound interest. The earlier the better
Okay grandpa. With what money? I only own a house due to inheritance.
Owning a house means no rent, most people blow 30% of their income on rent. Use that
The idea that workers can't understand compound interest, as though it's some crazy new idea, is a lie told by Capitalists to split the labor Aristocracy against the rest of the Proletariat.
Everyone knows that investing is good. Lying to engineers and doctors that they are somehow smarter and better than people who can't afford to invest just because engineers and doctors often can afford to invest is just a way for the bourgeoisie to protect itself from a United Proletariat.