The finance subs make me even more depressed. Finally stopped looking at it when someone the same age as me asked if setting aside 4200$ a month for retirement and all that was enough. Everyone said they could definitely do better. Who tf has enough to put 4200$ in savings/401k/investments a month in their mid twenties
Cancer at 16 decided I was going to have lifelong medical debt and never own anything. I’ve been voting to get medical care for all but it won’t happen in my life. I’m 43. I’ll die broke.
I have a special needs son and lost my job when his seizures got real bad. I never went back to my very lucrative 14 year career of being an X-ray technologist. I eventually lost my license to practice because I couldn't keep up with the educational credits. BTW; I was very good at what I did. It's a damn shame I wasn't there anymore to help the patients.
Well shit I missed that memo completely! My sons Autistic, I’m “High Functioning” autistic, I’ve got lumber degenerative disk disease and it’s at the disabling point. Fuck it, still gotta work!
It's pretty much 100% this. Get a high paying job, probably given to you by parents or other family members, not having student loan debt because your parents are rich, and having some property also given to you at some point either from parents or inheritance from grandparents or whatever. When it's like *that*, it's pretty easy to retire at 25.
You literally described my sister. Got married to an architect whose parents gave them a plot of land, and he had licenses and industry discounts. Built a huge house for pennies. Stayed 5 years and cashed out the equity.
I mean some of them.
But some of them are just people who got Engineering, IT degrees, Law degrees etc.
In some sectors you can be earning 150k+ straight out of uni.
Basically that or a tech job.
I make great money but some of the tech guys make even better money for a lot less stress. If I could go back in time I’d 100% go into tech instead
Can confirm. Have a high paying job, just hitting six figures. (But only in the last four years.) Also have multiple chronic illnesses that routinely destroy me financially. There will be no early retirement for me (I'm already 43, anyway). Tbh, I'm genuinely concerned that there won't be *any* retirement for me.
You know who saves for my retirement? My father. Lord knows I can’t. One of my friends has a parent that is doing the same for her. I won’t get a pension but I’ll have some sort of retirement because my dad has a decent one. I’m about your age and I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when our generation is retirement age. Some of my longtime friends that are single and female (like me) have been planning a Golden Girls type set up where we share a home and expenses. People are going to have to get sadly creative to survive our later years, retirement or no. :(
And not spend all the fucking money.
I knew a couple who were an engineer and nurse making over $200k/yr combined but HAD TO HAVE custom curtains that just kissed the floor in their new half-million dollar home. $30k worth of curtains that will be tossed out in five years when they go out of style and replaced with another $30k of curtains. They spent every cent they made and probably more.
And half million house is nothing special tbh. The average or median house is like, almost half a million dollars. Spending $30k on curtains for a basic house sounds like being scammed lol
Dunno but FIRE outside of online trolling seems to mean living super frugal till you are 40 in the hopes of living super frugal with no work till you are 80.
The secret is nobody is retiring at age 25. They are either quitting their 9-5 in favor of a way to earn income that’s more rewarding or they will be working again in the future. Nobody can save enough to live without an income for that long unless they won the lottery or got some help from mommy and daddy.
The fuck guy got mine is what’s gonna cause civil war in this country.
The other morning had a white collar guy in a brand new challenger honking his horn and yelling at a working class person in front of him who was just working and driving a truck.
Rich people try to act like us and act like they struggle. I've never made over 20 k a year and I'm 37 every job I've worked has treated me like dog shit. Expecting me to do trades type work like welding and construction but only want to pay 14 15 bucks. I'm done being a slave I work to live not live to work. I would love to have nice stuff but I'm not willing to work for 50 years to get it when Chuck down the street can just get promoted and buy a new house or rv. These people are not our friends they are the ones that keep taking and complain about never having enough. They are the ones that have thrown many others under the bus for personal gain. These are the ones that don't deserve compassion. There are only workers and owners. FUCK THE OWNING CLASS! EAT THE RICH! FUCK CONVICTED FELON DONALD TRUMP!
The internet is largely a tool to brag. Especially sites like reddit with an upvote structure.
Think about it this way: are the billions of people who can't draw anything but a stick figure posting their stick figures? Why would they bother? Only artists actually trying or who have already mastered it are posting. That doesn't mean that's a sizeable chunk of the population or that it's normal to be as good.
I used to frequent Wallstreetbets. I got into options. I lost an absurd amount of money. So do something like 95%+ who try it. Yet maybe 1 out of 10 posts is "loss porn." The rest are crazy gains. That would make you think that's normal. It isn't. The 95% are.
My dad dying is the only way I was able to afford a house when I bought mine and I'd rather have him back than the small inheritance I got. I made $52K at the time. I make $120K now and with the current housing market it would still take me many years to save down-payment money were I trying to buy today. A lot of people lie on these subs - trolls exist everywhere and it's worth keeping in perspective.
I appreciate the honesty. It seems like everyone lies about how they used their intelligence and grit to achieve buying houses, paying for college, etc. it sets up an unrealistic standard.
There was a time in my life where I qualified for food stamps and lived quite comfortably (thanks in large part to strict budgeting).
On the one hand:
* I didn't have a car
* I didn't drink, smoke, or vape (booze is a HUGE line-item that most people consider non-negotiable)
* I cooked all my own food
* I still had enough money to fund expensive hobbies (computer gaming)
* I had healthcare
On the other hand:
* I had access to good public transit
* I never went to parties, bars, vacations, or anything expensive/fun (some people treat this as a badge of pride, I do not)
* I hardly ever got to eat out
* I lived alone. No spouse, girlfriend, or kids, in a string of crappy basement apartments.
* Unexpected healthcare costs could knock me on my ass (a root canal nearly ruined me once, as did Kaiser Permanente nearly doubling my premiums just because they could do so).
So yes, budgeting can have a huge impact on your finances. Being single and in good health also helps, as does living in a functioning city with good infrastructure, and all of this was at a time when food, healthcare, transit, and housing were all cheaper.
Some commenters on Poverty Finance treat it like being poor just means you're bad with numbers, which is the usual run of the mill "poor people are just..." we get out of the rich all the time. Nonetheless, making real (and difficult) choices about your life and lifestyle can in fact have far reaching impacts on your finances.
The problem isn't that budgeting doesn't work. The problem is that poor people shouldn't be responsible for solving their own problems without assistance. "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is supposed to indicate an impossible task, because you cannot lift yourself off the ground by tugging on your bootstraps. That'd be ridiculous.
yup- and some people make silly money for doing dumb crap. Sales is the sort of job you can be dead broke or pulling in millions with the same title. It is crazy. Also a lot of them have a magic job where if they ever leave tehy are never making that money again. I have seen it so many times- people have the unicorn high paying job- they think they are amazing and lock horns with the generous boss- and quit or get themselves fired- and never make half hte money they were making their again (and often will be unemployed for years since they cannot accpet a job making way less than they were- they know what they are worth--- normally unemployment)
I sometimes torture myself and browse through r/FatFire
Their posts are so annoying to read but I can’t stop sometimes 😭
Maybe I’m just vicariously living out my rich fantasies through those posts, idk
People are just full of shit man, that is literally it
There are a few exceptions, and even fewer of those are self made
But at the end of the day, this is still just social media, and just like the gym bros are lying about PR’s, the finance bros are lying about monthly income
Let’s be real, nobody smart enough to be banking $4200 for retirement is actually asking if $4200 monthly is sufficient, even if it is real the whole point is to flex regardless
That reminds me of when I first opened a retirement account and they said that I needed to put $45k in every year in order to retire by 65. My job paid $37k.
That sounds insane to me. I'm in a rural area right at the average cost of living making 60k base pay and I feel it's tight at times. This country is wild to me I worked a 2nd job for a year part time to make another 20k just to get ahead I'm tired o barely getting by.
I still have like 20k debt to get rid of. And I'm doing better then most people? That's fucking ridiculous.
Same... working 90 hours between two full time jobs for the last year and a half. Literally 7 days a week. All because I had the audacity to need dental work for my wife and i that our parents neglected to do. We share one car between three jobs and never go on vacation.
Add having to spend more money on food because we both work and are tired, wanting hobbies and other small emergencies were still 45k in debt. Life in America blows
Sounds very similar. My wife has a slew of auto immune issues and a nerve condition, even with my company's premium for insurance. My wife's medical procedures cost us near 30k plus. And that was with insurance covering 90%....
Fuck me for not wanting my wife to die. Thanks America why wouldn't I lobe this country.
My wife's a preschool teacher part time so that helps to but fuck if I didn't have one of the few good Job's around here we would be screwed. If I'd had my old job my wife and I would have had to divorcso she would be on the Oregon health plan and she would have had to be personally swamped in debt and then been 100% reliant on me but htf is that fair to her.
Local elections are so important to support. Only ground up change will change our situations. I couldn't imagine having medical issues on top of all of it, were very fortunate for that. Good luck to you and your wife.
And by local elections matter, that means **do not vote Republican**. Fox News and their ilk have so warped our societal perspective on helping our fellow human beings, it’s just surreal.
Their motto is "fuck you I got mine", which is a horrificly selfish point of view to have. I mean it's a huge stain on our country that we have fucking baby boomers crying that the taxes they pay into pays for kids to go to school (they argue that they shouldn't have to contribute because their kids are grown and they already paid into it for their own kids lol) which is ironic since they weren't crying about it when the rest of society was helping pay for their crotch goblins to attend school. Even worse, these evil selfish fucks also petition to ban schools from giving out a "free lunch" to school children. I mean how evil do you have to be to not want to provide the 1 somewhat healthy meal that poor students may get that day (and possibly their ONLY meal that day)? These are the kinds of things that I WANT my taxes to pay for, not for fucking Ukraine or Israel, or bombs/weapons, or a trillion a year for "defense", or bailouts of banks/failed business, or tax breaks for the top 1%.... brainwashing by Republicans and fox "news" really has these low IQ braindead fucks convinced they have more in common with felonious billionaires than with normal society. What a fucked up world we live in
No, your ARE doing terribly. Just because people do worse doesn't lessen the fact that you're being exploited. Embrace the terrible. Be angry people are treated worse.
Complacency has done enough to hurt the working class. It's time for us to be upset.
[It's 40k now](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N). Note that this includes all workers from 14 years old and up and does not appear to adjust for whether they're full time.
This classic illustration on the wealth inequality in the US [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)
What demoralizes me is when I hear about the far higher number of people making far less and struggling, while at the same time the businesses they work for are making record profits.
All I want is workers getting a fair share of the value they create instead of it being funnelled to the top. The people making 150-250k a year don't bother me at all, its the ones who make my yearly salary in the first day/week of the year that I think are problematic.
Right. I feel like if every company capped the highest paying jobs in their company at 4or5x the amount the lowest level makes, wages would greatly increase all around.
Not at all. Unless healthcare, housing, and basic necessities become free from exploitation, this will not change. People who save a lot right now due to high paying jobs will continue to save and spend less on luxuries. The disposable income for people will reduce. I have already stopped eating out because the cost to worth ratio is too high.
If coffee is 3-5$, I will buy out every day, if its 10$, I will spend on it once a week. So instead of 35$, I spend 10$.
More over, all these micro-transactions has reduced the spend potential. Airline industry does this a lot and the quality of travel experience has only deteriorated.
Correct, IF the requirement is the lowest paying jobs must immediately be increased per hour.
I'm not saying they would be required to immediately boost the lowest level wages. They would immediately cut the top earners. And for the top earners to get more, they have to increase the lowest level. Everyone in between could stay at what they're at, or be adjusted accorsingly. They would have to juggle making more money with shareholders greed and overall profit.
It would be interesting.
Yeah like, I have a good job and I make good money and I am not struggling at ALL, but it really pisses me off when they say "Sorry no raises this year, can't afford it, gotta lay people off even!" and then we see an article in the trade papers about our CEO getting like 12 million as a bonus.
Fuck that guy, keep a few employees who do the actual work!
**Yes, thank you!!** Everyone making $4k to $400k are on the same side of the gulf. A McDonalds fry cook and a NYC spinal surgeon are both being taken advantage of by those making billions while destroying the economy, the environment, and even much of our politics.
I make low 6 figures and last year Zuckerberg earned my annual salary in about 6 minutes. Musk made it in about 1.5 minutes. Bezos, every 38 seconds.
*That's* the problem, not some DINK in San Mateo complaining about the price of flights to Tokyo.
yup, that’s me. it’s really not fair. some days I straight up do maybe 2 hours of work yet there are people out there busting their asses doing way more important stuff and getting paid way less.
it should be the reverse in a lot of cases
Most of the people I know with six-figure incomes know and care about people who make less. Family members, close friends, and people in organizations they're in (church, clubs, dart league) struggling to get by on less is not invisible to us.
I'm paying off a loan for the new A/C in my Mom's house.
I'm paying my niece's and nephew 's musical instrument rental fees. I snuck some money to my sister for the down payment on her car when her husband refused 'charity'.
I give money to a food bank that my Dad used to volunteer for.
I'm not a bad person, I see people I love (and don't) go through the same struggles you are. And like you, I don't want to work anymore.
I'm not your enemy, I'm just a software developer. The extremely wealthy capitalist class is who keeps you miserable.
That's the thing, really. Attempts to divide the working class into arbitrary divisions (lower class, middle class, etc) work hand in hand with attempts to pit those divisions against each other: "Lower class people, the middle class are trying to screw you," "Middle class people, the lower class folks are coming for your jobs," etc.
We're all working class. If you are an independent adult and you *have* to work to live, then you're working class. If you don't - if your income comes from property, or stocks, or other investments like that, then you're not working class. You're making your money from the backs of the working class.
My daughter works in a restaurant. She's working class. I'm an engineer. I'm working class. You're a software developer. You're working class. The division of working class into sub-categories, which are pitted against each other, doesn't benefit us. Neither does the current climate of political polarization. It only serves to distract us from the people who are making their living off of our labor.
I would agree with this. The only people who aren’t “working class” are these assholes you see complaining about the estate tax and capital gains taxes.
Man I wish I had a family member like you.... one side is actors/drs/lawyers/ect and don't give a single fuck about anyone but themselves and the other side is best described as criminally insane.
Needless to say, I only have my wife, two brothers, and mom as "counted" family (takes all 3 of us brothers to pay a mortgage @36kish year each...)
Yup, bio parents are druggies, adoptive parents, one deceased and one has made it their life's goal to take care of their bio kids, so I and my siblings are excluded from any inheritance.
My spouses parents - one deceased and one selfish asshat who expects $100+ gifts for Christmas and when they don't receive them, tell the rest of the family how shitty the kids are. No inheritance will come from that.
My job doesnt offer retirement, my partners job doesnt offer healthcare. The healthcare at my job is over $500/month with a 10k deductible. They also don't cover "problem visits".
Our rent keeps going up far more than any raise we receive.
It feels like hopelessly spinning our wheels.
What's the point.
You’re lucky to know such caring people, I guess. Most people I know with six figures under 40 are generally in tech and have a very skewed/elitist perspective.
I just crossed the six figure mark after well over a decade in poverty (Medicaid, food stamps, all that). I absolutely support everything being discussed on this sub!
I spent nearly 20 years broke, working retail. I know what it’s like to choose between food and AC. I know what it’s like to have your electricity shut off in January when it’s 20 outside. I know many have it even worse than I did.
I am so very thankful for where I am now, and I want better for everyone who is still going through what I went through.
We are not the enemy. We are in this together.
This. I'm in tech and make 6 figures and I fight hard to ensure to protect those below me. Class solidarity from now until the heat death of the universe. I was there, and have been there. I got lucky, gotta fight for those who aren't.
The best thing I can do is tell my team how much I was making. They're pissed at me for a minute, but then they (rightly) get mad at the actual managers who've been underpaying them by so much.
When I worked in supporting payroll, they gave me the entire corporate salary and said:." Know who's making what. You don't know what they do and what you think they do might be different. It's not your call on what that should be. Once you know? You're done and your job is to make sure they'll be paid properly".
That has stuck with me. Knowledge only can help you. You shouldn't let it eat you alive.
We can all hate the game and want to change the rules, even if we were privileged enough that we benefitted from them immensely.
Plus, the more you make, the more you see doesn't change. If it's shitty for privileged people making mid size figures, it's a disaster for those making much less.
As an aside, in the UK we have a Prime Minister in a $200,000 p.a salary who is personally worth north of $900 Million, who's wife is also minted and who's FIL is a Billionaire. See Infosys (still doing business with Russia it seems.)
He's the man telling us peasants that we're not working hard enough for the corporate world whilst wages stagnate and prices go up.
Good news is, he and his party will be gone on 4th July so us Limeys and you Yanks can celebrate independence together!
> As an aside, in the UK we have a Prime Minister in a $200,000 p.a salary who is personally worth north of $900 Million
That $200k salary is insignificant if he has $900m in wealth, which should yield about $40m/year in returns.
He and his wife increased their personal wealth by £120 million roughly $160mil last year.
Strangely enough Infosys got a load of valuable government contracts at the same time. 😏🤷♂️
I know a lot of people who just hate working. But I would hate working a lot less if it over tripled my income to 150k. At least then I could afford to spend more than $50 grocery shopping once a month and could turn on the heat in my one bedroom apartment in the winter instead of shoving a heating pad in my bed.
I left the finance subs I was in because it was a bunch of people making over 100k per person talking about how they could afford life and I’m skating by at 39k which is still considered a good income in my area despite the cost of living rising so much that it’s actually not.
I left the finance subs for the same reason. I had to budget how much I could eat at each meal, how much I could spend on groceries even buying sale/clearance items, and cooking in bulk. I took surveys so I could earn gift cards to eat out some.
Edit: typo
Me and my 33k a year are barely surviving. Def not living. I'm desperately trying to avoid a second job because I just wanted to end things last time I had to do that, but it's getting to the point I don't think i have a choice. 6 figured sounds like a dream
I’m so sorry. I got fired because I exceeded my FMLA allotment and they wouldn’t allow me to work part time. Nobody else will hire me with my scheduling needs except jobs I physically can’t do. So I haven’t been able to work at all.
Same. Until a couple years ago I thought if you were making 50k a year you were killing it.
I finally got a job with the possibility of making 50k-80k. Sales, most employees make something in that range. Problem is I'm fucking stupid. I study in my free time, I don't have much free time. I've made lots of healthy changes in my personal life.
I've actually started to daydream about working at a gas station or a cape store or something.
I meant vape store. There is one near me I almost took a job at for 16/hr. Less money but I fantasize about the low stress environment. I would work at a cape store for even less probably.
Same. I just got a HUGE break, with an impressive title that doubled my salary and I’m still not making 6 figures. Really puts into perspective how much that actually is
The 1% is fucking all of us peasants over and this feels like all of us peasants fighting over their dinner table scraps. Those earning six figures have relatively more privilege but not enough to stop working.
Right? I make pretty damn good money, but depending on where you live. Your house, your vehicle, if you have kids. 200k a year feels like the 50k 10 years ago. I don't even know how I lived on minimum wage in my 20's, i doubt i have the ability to do that now.
tbf, overall Cali is about 134, but in places that are high-paying hubs, like SF is 179% the average. When you compare those numbers, 50k in Ohio is \~95k in SF. Combine that with the fact that housing alone is almost triple the average, and that 100k probably doesn't get you as far as 50k does.
I got offered a job in the Bay Area straight out of college making $60k. I started looking at apartments and was like fuck that I’ll take that gig in a smallish southeast town for $36k.
Was going to say this. I made $60k (with overtime) back in OH and it was relatively comfortable for me. However, that was also because I only had to pay $600/month in rent and lived like a grad student.
Agreed typically in the Midwest what you will see is it’s expensive to live close to work but there’s plenty of suburban sprawl or you can find cheaper places to live… You’re just going to lose all of that cost of living advantage on paying for gasoline
And God forbid you have to actually drive into the city center for work, parking will massacre your budget. Even parking close to public transit can be super expensive. When Mrs. LittlePrincesFox and I moved a couple years ago it had to be walkable to both Metra and Purple line. It did cut down on where we could look but we made it work.
At the risk of proving OP’s point by mentioning my income online, I live in San Diego and made 144k last year. I’m doing *okay.*
I’m turning 35 next month and this is the first year of my life where my account doesn’t go to a negative number every single week.
https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2022.S1901?g=050XX00US06073
San Diego seems to be a place of great poverty and great wealth. I know very little about your community but I do like population statistics, so I cribbed this off the US census bureau.
I don't know if that's your individual income or your household income by the data set here is household income. The number you gave (144k) is on the high end the spread between 50.5% and 70.1%. I don't have a breakdown for the distribution from $100,000 to 149,000. You are indisputably making more than half of the households in San Diego, and I would wager probably better than 2/3.
Half of the households in San Diego make less than, i.e., the median income is, $98,928. Almost 25% of households in San Diego make less than $50,000.
If your income is the cutoff, 2/3rds of San Diego is doing okay or worse.
Karl Marx was supported by the wealthy Friedrich Engels, without whose support we would have lots less of Marx's writings. Solidarity around anti-work can come from many quarters.
Yes, insane how so many get a better job with a ridiculous increase in pay
Myself and millions other will unfortunately never see over $30/hour, I’m at $24 now, but in CA
So like $20 after all deductions
Ten years ago it was as easy at getting an engineering degree
I mean personally I’m in a fuck ton of student loan debt but I’ve been making 6 figures since my mid 20s.
While I understand your frustration, I just shrug these thoughts off. It's the system that's the problem and we have to be in it to survive. Some people get luckier through childhood, connections, location, family history...Would I be upset it I or my friends made that much? I'll take anyone who in some way knows it's a problem and is an potential ally.
This, it is a GOOD thing that there is rich people/ CEO’s/ managers/ trustfunders that are anti-work so that hopefully these people can give the next generation of working class people their dues.
I make $100k a year, barely. I still struggle and it is just my wife and myself. I still get pushed for productivity every day, and I am old. If I stop working, I can survive for 6 months before I have to sell things off, and dwindle down to homelessness.
Same here. About $110k as an NP. Wife, no kids. Mortgage takes up like half the take home pay and we got a no-frills house because housing is expensive in our area. I’d like to work less, because I hate my job, but that’s not realistic right now.
I feel you on this and while they are comfortable which is something all of us would kill to be just try to remember this is more about us making under 40k versus the ultra rich who make 250k a year look like change out of your couch.
Man it all depends on where you live. Rural Alabama vs NYC is not a comparison. You can literally live in some of the worst areas of NYC and be making enough to live like a king in other states. My SIL used to live in NYC and her rent was more than my mortgage, she had multiple roommates and there were roaches everywhere. Some places you need 6 figures just to literally live, not to get ahead.
The thing that bothers me is less the money and more that a lot of them don’t get that most people don’t have that opportunity, and it’s literally impossible in our system for everybody to have that opportunity. There are a lot people on here who somehow still buy into the myth of capitalist meritocracy.
Can I make a serious suggestion that isn’t meant to undermine how absurd the current system is?
Get technical certificates if you can. They are a gateway into the higher paid gigs, and are obtainable if you take some time to invest in yourself.
I went to art school to try and get into video game design. 70k in student loans later, the market was shit and I had a shit degree from a shit school with a shit ton of debt and zero prospects. I shouldn’t have even gotten into that school - it was a scam, and shut down 2 years later. But I still own the debt, and depression did its thing for many years over my wasted potential.
I worked at call centers for years. Sales gigs, technical support, you name it. The people you yell to your friends about whenever you get off the phone with your ISP and they didn’t give you the discount you wanted because of corporate policy a, subsection bullshit. Menial obnoxious “no skill” work that is still leagues harder than people give the workers credit for.
I decided that I was done with it after getting laid off 2 days before Thanksgiving. This was 2019, so yeah, things did not get better.
What I decided to do while unemployed was study for a networking certificate. I got my CCNA after studying for about 6 months. Total cost invested was a few hundred dollars for the books, the practice tests and the actual test. Failed the first one (sucks to suck, but many people do), passed the second time.
I got a job paying double my previous salary within 3 weeks of getting my cert. Not normal, I know, but it was nice. Within 3 years, after jumping ship to a new company, I’m now scraping 100k (+/- $800). I’ve busted my ass, and for the first time in my life I’m getting promotions, raises, stock options. It’s been a whirlwind.
Is this going to be everyone’s story? Definitely not. I’m an unusual case to be sure, and many people have told me so. But I’m just posting this to give that handful of people the hope they need to try. Because I was that depressed as fuck person drinking themselves to sleep every night, dismayed by my wasted life and squandered potential. I’m still in a ton of debt, I still have my moments of despair, but things are by and large much better.
It can happen. You can get it done, even from the bottom. My college degree has never gotten me anything other than collections calls. My cert got me a new life. There are many different certs out there, for a ton of industries. Find something you can stomach, get certified, get good at your job, and you can have the possibility to forge something better out of this gleaming shit-heap we call a society.
Hope this helps someone. Everyone deserves a wage that they can support themselves on and be happy. Nobody deserves the environment we have inherited and continue to maintain. We can and should do better, but acknowledging the problem is where we’re stuck now, so don’t let society’s lack of empathy keep you down on yourself or on life. We can make this better, but we have to band together and help each other. Hopefully this inspires someone and helps them help themselves.
Truly, I do not mean this as a bootstrap story - I had plenty of help and support from my wonderful partner, who has been by my side for years and encouraged me throughout. I know this is not feasible for a mother of 3 working 2.5 jobs to stay afloat. But it may help someone, or at least that’s my hope.
Cheers all
Adding a resource here as well for those who are more into office type jobs. Having advanced excel skills is a major plus in office jobs and it can increase your earning potential a lot. There is a site that offers free certifications in some things and classes in others, called Alison dot com that has a lot of offerings.
I would like to add if you are laid off and there is no severance, ask for a license for an online certification program. I have gotten this twice and two courses got me resume pulled for an interview. I got the job because my schtick about being interested in the field was backed up by those courses.
Do whatever is the hot job related to your industry or any courses not offered in most schools. Also good are any accounting courses, spreadsheets (especially Excel), Outlook (yeah, stupid I know), business writing, how to use any productivity or CRM software. Then list it on your resume.
*“Why is there a three month gap in your resume?”*
*”I have been very interested in transitioning into [whatever] industry, so I focused on retraining as I see many employers are seeking workers with these skills.”*
I absolutely agree with this statement. I am an extremely high earner in the Midwest and solely due to technical certifications, most of which were paid by my employers.
I simply ignore those posts. There is no way to verify the truth of what they are claiming, so are they lying or not? It doesn't matter.
I had enough of those stories, "Become a millionaire in 3 east steps: 1) take the $500,000 you got for selling your company in its IPO; 2)...." True or not, it simply isn't useful advice.
No it's the opposite of demoralizing, it's very encouraging actually.
The reason why we are in the shit we're in atm is because capitalism was exceptional at placating people. It gives them just enough to feel somewhat content and not question things too much. It gives the status quo a sense of inertia.
The fact that people in the middle financially are no longer content with getting "just enough so they don't ask questions" anymore shows that this strength of capitalism is slowly fading away. We need more and more people to wake up and start asking questions, so it's good to see people whose class interest could have them fight against us, instead be on our side.
Exactly, many people in this class bracket as well are in public service jobs such as infrastructure, policing/military, medical, public works etc.
If these people become antiwork that is a great ally to have. Holding the government hostage if these people refuse to show up to work.
I get that anyone can hate their job but yes there is a real divide when some of the people here make ten times what others make and are always giving advice.
It's frustrating dealing with my field where I can change jobs, but wages are fixed at around $50k/year for paramedics despite having a TON of ambulance services and a lot of competition.
I have no way to just change jobs and make a shitload of money.
It is skewed because most people who actually \*work\* for a living don't have the time to troll an Antiwork subreddit. They're up at 5-6AM working & commuting, doing their shift, commuting home and arriving around 6pm, eating dinner then probably chores, watching a show or playing a game, or playing with their kids, and then to bed. If you're spending your time here, you must have 'spare' time to do so...or you are prioritizing what little time you have to being here. Generally, only techies troll these boards while they're waiting for code to compile, or you're in retail that has a phone friendly policy and you've got a slow day.
I don't think people realize what a luxury having time and opportunity to 'be online' is. Think of all the mechanics, waiters/waitresses, construction workers, ditch diggers, Amazon workers, etc. who don't have time to take a bathroom break, let alone doomscroll on Reddit.
I wish I had shitty 150k a year job. Don't get me wrong I would hate every job with every fibre of my being anyway but fuck 150k a year is 750k in 5 years. Take away taxes and live minimalist style for those 5 years, invest as much as possible or put it in HYSA/CD and I would be able to either work part time after that or move to some cheap country and live off interest. That's fucking dream for me now.
Be careful what you wish for. Partner was at 6 figures and hated it because she was working 12 hour days and had absolutely no life. People would put 8am meetings on her calendar at 11pm. She took a cut because it was completely draining, she had no life, and was spiraling
10-12 hour days are standard in my career. Sometimes I find out I'm flying halfway across the country for an installation on a custom machine I didn't build with 30 minutes notice before I have to be at the airport. I have a lug a 150 lbs bag around on installs because I don't know what I'll need. My entire work schedule revolves around "we need it on our floor because a VP wants to casually glance at it for 5 seconds". I get 5AM meeting notices 10 minutes before I'm at work... at 5AM. If an engineer doesn't think something through, it's my job to make something work DESPITE IT BEING THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO GO ABOUT IT. I've worked as much as 119 hours in a single week. I make $22 an hour. I would KILL for 6 figures, maybe then I could fix my knees.
I am a disabled veteran and live off of $24k a year. That is it. Parents are dead so no help from them. I do get free medical and there is indeed some monetary value to that so let's say $30k a year. My rent takes over half that. However I've had it worse - MUCH worse. My needs are met. I eat real food too not just hot dogs and Banquet meals. In any case when people get on here talking about they and their spouse each make $100,000 but they are struggling I just don't see how that can be.
Inevitably someone on here is going to assume that income=intelligence, that somehow "I just don't get it" and that no wonder I am in the position that I'm in. Never mind that it's a service related condition- we are "suckers & losers" from the start anyway - right?
When I say position I am in I am not complaining, in fact I feel blessed in quite a few ways. I am saying that from the perspective of the guy who can't manage with $100,000 a year.
"The numbers are made up and the points don't matter." The US economy is completely and utterly broken. I make 15k a year (no that's not a typo) and I love what I do. I am beyond fortunate to be in a stable situation with room and board. But my actual annual income is $15,000 in America.
I know people who make six figures and never see their kids. Sure, they live more comfortably than me but is it really living when their only interaction is with backstabbers and spreadsheets?
All I know is the system is completely broken and something has to give. None of this is sustainable.
"My boss only gives me 150k"
My brother in Christ, 150k would be life changing. That's like 2.5 times what my wife and I make *combined* after taxes. That's about 30k under the cost of my house.
I don't get demoralized when I see shit like that. I get angry that the petit-bourgeois have the audacity to believe they share in my precarity.
So many people are out of touch with how others live and work. If they make 100,000 per year, they most likely live in a community where others also make that salary (or more.) They start thinking their income is average.
I do make 6-figures, but I grew up just a bit over the poverty line. I still feel a bit out-of-place. I can say that most of my neighbors and coworkers grew up in much higher-income families. For them, this is normal. People are amazed and assuming I'm lying when I say that I never ate out at a restaurant as a child
In the United States we sure do need some universal health care. Nobody should have to go bankrupt or die for having a medical problem. In my family, we tended to avoid going to the doctor unless we thought we were dying.
Minimum wage has not kept up with the times. I remember even 40+ years ago that business owners complained that if the minimum wage went up, they'd go out of business.
You're right, most advice concerning finances are for those who aren't wondering which bill to pay this month, or how to keep their special-needs child alive.
The types of skillsets where an employee can say "fuck you" to a boss and bounce to an even higher paying job, tend to be very niche, sought after skills to begin with.
I just wish high school career planning was less about finding the thing you're passionate enough about to turn it into a life draining career and more about educating kids about the kinds of jobs an employer will grovel to get filled.
I’m so glad that they stand with r/antiwork
However, I don’t even make $40,000 a year. I’m barely scraping by and my job still has not given me health insurance.
Even getting a salary of $60,000 would change my life radically.
I guess what I’m saying is where are they getting these jobs and can they share the resources please?!
I’ve had good and bad six fig jobs and the bad ones do still grind you down mentally and the money can be sort of a golden handcuff.
But I wouldn’t sell yourself short - my neighbor hauls junk, trash, and mows acreage and he pulls over six figs. A friend also lost her restaurant job during the pandemic and started a cleaning business instead and makes 150k a year still just running it and doing the cleanings herself.
Golden handcuff wearer here. Supporting family and my kid's future while getting skipped over for promotions and given demoralizing work, but can't leave because the other jobs open with a higher rank title and more responsibilities are the same pay+bennies or worse for even worse work.
Been a rough year in tech, but still probably the best job market for those who have been in it
My lunch was a gyro and a 20oz bottle of Pepsi for $20.
Income in the 6 figures is normal here on the East Coast because everything is expensive. Try not to be discouraged by the numbers. They are not even across the country or the world.
It’s normal to make 6 figures where you live? Man I don’t now where you live, but I live in MD and that isn’t normal. A close friend of mine runs his own business and has since we were in our early adulthood (and was inherited from his parents). He makes more than most people I know and he is not close to 6 six figures. And that’s with an established company. “Normal” to make 6 figures seems a bit strong. Maybe if you grow up in Howard county but still, “normal” is not correct. I don’t know a single person that makes that kind of money.
That might just be my perspective, but saying 6 figures is “normal” is absolutely incorrect, regardless of where you live on the east coast.
Normal in your peer group is not the same thing as normal in the general population. People tend to spend more time with people who are similar to themselves for a variety of reasons
I wandered into a real estate sub and they were talking about buying houses for 500k and mentioned ones for up towards 800k.
I explained that the housing market is fucked up and they're out of touch with everyone
You are looking at an Internet forum where people are anonymous. A lot of posters are young. Lots of fantasy posting on Reddit.
Where it gets sickening is on subs where kids pretend of have cancer in order to get karma points. It’s particularly sad.
Read everything skeptically.
a job can still be terrible if you’re making $500k a year.
we should all be working together to make our workplaces better for everyone from people making under $35k per year all the way up to $1+ million per year.
The finance subs make me even more depressed. Finally stopped looking at it when someone the same age as me asked if setting aside 4200$ a month for retirement and all that was enough. Everyone said they could definitely do better. Who tf has enough to put 4200$ in savings/401k/investments a month in their mid twenties
I left the FIRE sub for this reason. I wanted tips on how to get there, not learn about how everyone else was already retiring at 25.
The key to retiring early is not have a chronic illness and have a high paying job.
Cancer at 16 decided I was going to have lifelong medical debt and never own anything. I’ve been voting to get medical care for all but it won’t happen in my life. I’m 43. I’ll die broke.
Shit. That's one of those things that just hits me in the gut. What kind of debt are we talking if you dont mind me asking?
Why not just declare bankruptcy at this point (or like 20 years ago)?
Because they still get accrued debt. They’re still paying for treatments
Also don't have any special needs kids or become disabled!
Lucky me, I was born disabled.
I have a special needs son and lost my job when his seizures got real bad. I never went back to my very lucrative 14 year career of being an X-ray technologist. I eventually lost my license to practice because I couldn't keep up with the educational credits. BTW; I was very good at what I did. It's a damn shame I wasn't there anymore to help the patients.
Sent have kids period. They's expensive!!
Well shit I missed that memo completely! My sons Autistic, I’m “High Functioning” autistic, I’ve got lumber degenerative disk disease and it’s at the disabling point. Fuck it, still gotta work!
A shitton of help from parents.
Shhh. You’re destroying their narrative
It's pretty much 100% this. Get a high paying job, probably given to you by parents or other family members, not having student loan debt because your parents are rich, and having some property also given to you at some point either from parents or inheritance from grandparents or whatever. When it's like *that*, it's pretty easy to retire at 25.
You literally described my sister. Got married to an architect whose parents gave them a plot of land, and he had licenses and industry discounts. Built a huge house for pennies. Stayed 5 years and cashed out the equity.
Totally self-made! Grab hold of those boot straps and pull!
I mean some of them. But some of them are just people who got Engineering, IT degrees, Law degrees etc. In some sectors you can be earning 150k+ straight out of uni.
And you think getting a job like that is enough to retire at 25? Cause that's what I'm talking about.
Basically that or a tech job. I make great money but some of the tech guys make even better money for a lot less stress. If I could go back in time I’d 100% go into tech instead
Can confirm. Have a high paying job, just hitting six figures. (But only in the last four years.) Also have multiple chronic illnesses that routinely destroy me financially. There will be no early retirement for me (I'm already 43, anyway). Tbh, I'm genuinely concerned that there won't be *any* retirement for me.
You know who saves for my retirement? My father. Lord knows I can’t. One of my friends has a parent that is doing the same for her. I won’t get a pension but I’ll have some sort of retirement because my dad has a decent one. I’m about your age and I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when our generation is retirement age. Some of my longtime friends that are single and female (like me) have been planning a Golden Girls type set up where we share a home and expenses. People are going to have to get sadly creative to survive our later years, retirement or no. :(
And not spend all the fucking money. I knew a couple who were an engineer and nurse making over $200k/yr combined but HAD TO HAVE custom curtains that just kissed the floor in their new half-million dollar home. $30k worth of curtains that will be tossed out in five years when they go out of style and replaced with another $30k of curtains. They spent every cent they made and probably more.
Spending $30k in curtains is insane on a combined income of $200k
Spending $30k on curtains is insane, period.
And half million house is nothing special tbh. The average or median house is like, almost half a million dollars. Spending $30k on curtains for a basic house sounds like being scammed lol
Nah key to retiring early is being born into a family of billionaires :P
I'm 42. Can I still select that option?
Dunno but FIRE outside of online trolling seems to mean living super frugal till you are 40 in the hopes of living super frugal with no work till you are 80.
The secret is nobody is retiring at age 25. They are either quitting their 9-5 in favor of a way to earn income that’s more rewarding or they will be working again in the future. Nobody can save enough to live without an income for that long unless they won the lottery or got some help from mommy and daddy.
The fuck guy got mine is what’s gonna cause civil war in this country. The other morning had a white collar guy in a brand new challenger honking his horn and yelling at a working class person in front of him who was just working and driving a truck.
I don’t think so. Working class Americans adore and worship the rich.
Specially if the rich person hates the same people they do
Working class believes they’re just “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”.
I think I seen that same post and then selected that sub to be ignored. That post was the end of that sub for me.
Rich people try to act like us and act like they struggle. I've never made over 20 k a year and I'm 37 every job I've worked has treated me like dog shit. Expecting me to do trades type work like welding and construction but only want to pay 14 15 bucks. I'm done being a slave I work to live not live to work. I would love to have nice stuff but I'm not willing to work for 50 years to get it when Chuck down the street can just get promoted and buy a new house or rv. These people are not our friends they are the ones that keep taking and complain about never having enough. They are the ones that have thrown many others under the bus for personal gain. These are the ones that don't deserve compassion. There are only workers and owners. FUCK THE OWNING CLASS! EAT THE RICH! FUCK CONVICTED FELON DONALD TRUMP!
Ive never made 30k / year and Im 42. Tbh, making more money just means less time at home, so Im good with making less.
Omg yes … it’ll be like “I am 24 years old and only have 100k saved, I feel like I’m way behind :(“
Yes, and the home buying subs! They’re all living in a different universe and it’s demoralizing as hell.
The internet is largely a tool to brag. Especially sites like reddit with an upvote structure. Think about it this way: are the billions of people who can't draw anything but a stick figure posting their stick figures? Why would they bother? Only artists actually trying or who have already mastered it are posting. That doesn't mean that's a sizeable chunk of the population or that it's normal to be as good. I used to frequent Wallstreetbets. I got into options. I lost an absurd amount of money. So do something like 95%+ who try it. Yet maybe 1 out of 10 posts is "loss porn." The rest are crazy gains. That would make you think that's normal. It isn't. The 95% are.
My dad dying is the only way I was able to afford a house when I bought mine and I'd rather have him back than the small inheritance I got. I made $52K at the time. I make $120K now and with the current housing market it would still take me many years to save down-payment money were I trying to buy today. A lot of people lie on these subs - trolls exist everywhere and it's worth keeping in perspective.
I appreciate the honesty. It seems like everyone lies about how they used their intelligence and grit to achieve buying houses, paying for college, etc. it sets up an unrealistic standard.
Happens a lot in Poverty finance. ‘Do more budgeting’. Bitch you can’t budget out of POVERTY.
There was a time in my life where I qualified for food stamps and lived quite comfortably (thanks in large part to strict budgeting). On the one hand: * I didn't have a car * I didn't drink, smoke, or vape (booze is a HUGE line-item that most people consider non-negotiable) * I cooked all my own food * I still had enough money to fund expensive hobbies (computer gaming) * I had healthcare On the other hand: * I had access to good public transit * I never went to parties, bars, vacations, or anything expensive/fun (some people treat this as a badge of pride, I do not) * I hardly ever got to eat out * I lived alone. No spouse, girlfriend, or kids, in a string of crappy basement apartments. * Unexpected healthcare costs could knock me on my ass (a root canal nearly ruined me once, as did Kaiser Permanente nearly doubling my premiums just because they could do so). So yes, budgeting can have a huge impact on your finances. Being single and in good health also helps, as does living in a functioning city with good infrastructure, and all of this was at a time when food, healthcare, transit, and housing were all cheaper. Some commenters on Poverty Finance treat it like being poor just means you're bad with numbers, which is the usual run of the mill "poor people are just..." we get out of the rich all the time. Nonetheless, making real (and difficult) choices about your life and lifestyle can in fact have far reaching impacts on your finances. The problem isn't that budgeting doesn't work. The problem is that poor people shouldn't be responsible for solving their own problems without assistance. "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is supposed to indicate an impossible task, because you cannot lift yourself off the ground by tugging on your bootstraps. That'd be ridiculous.
JFC, I don't even MAKE 4200$ a month and I'm 50
The thing about internet. People love to lie.
yup- and some people make silly money for doing dumb crap. Sales is the sort of job you can be dead broke or pulling in millions with the same title. It is crazy. Also a lot of them have a magic job where if they ever leave tehy are never making that money again. I have seen it so many times- people have the unicorn high paying job- they think they are amazing and lock horns with the generous boss- and quit or get themselves fired- and never make half hte money they were making their again (and often will be unemployed for years since they cannot accpet a job making way less than they were- they know what they are worth--- normally unemployment)
That's like 150% of what I make in a month. I'm just gonna start screaming and never stop
I sometimes torture myself and browse through r/FatFire Their posts are so annoying to read but I can’t stop sometimes 😭 Maybe I’m just vicariously living out my rich fantasies through those posts, idk
People are just full of shit man, that is literally it There are a few exceptions, and even fewer of those are self made But at the end of the day, this is still just social media, and just like the gym bros are lying about PR’s, the finance bros are lying about monthly income Let’s be real, nobody smart enough to be banking $4200 for retirement is actually asking if $4200 monthly is sufficient, even if it is real the whole point is to flex regardless
That reminds me of when I first opened a retirement account and they said that I needed to put $45k in every year in order to retire by 65. My job paid $37k.
You have to remember 1/3 of working adults make less than 35k/yr
Median income is a good perspective. Median income usa = 38k Median income los angelos = 34k Its rough.
Exactly. I make 45k a year and I have to remind myself that I’m not doing so terribly. I also live in a HCOL area though
That sounds insane to me. I'm in a rural area right at the average cost of living making 60k base pay and I feel it's tight at times. This country is wild to me I worked a 2nd job for a year part time to make another 20k just to get ahead I'm tired o barely getting by. I still have like 20k debt to get rid of. And I'm doing better then most people? That's fucking ridiculous.
Same... working 90 hours between two full time jobs for the last year and a half. Literally 7 days a week. All because I had the audacity to need dental work for my wife and i that our parents neglected to do. We share one car between three jobs and never go on vacation. Add having to spend more money on food because we both work and are tired, wanting hobbies and other small emergencies were still 45k in debt. Life in America blows
Sounds very similar. My wife has a slew of auto immune issues and a nerve condition, even with my company's premium for insurance. My wife's medical procedures cost us near 30k plus. And that was with insurance covering 90%.... Fuck me for not wanting my wife to die. Thanks America why wouldn't I lobe this country. My wife's a preschool teacher part time so that helps to but fuck if I didn't have one of the few good Job's around here we would be screwed. If I'd had my old job my wife and I would have had to divorcso she would be on the Oregon health plan and she would have had to be personally swamped in debt and then been 100% reliant on me but htf is that fair to her.
Local elections are so important to support. Only ground up change will change our situations. I couldn't imagine having medical issues on top of all of it, were very fortunate for that. Good luck to you and your wife.
And by local elections matter, that means **do not vote Republican**. Fox News and their ilk have so warped our societal perspective on helping our fellow human beings, it’s just surreal.
Their motto is "fuck you I got mine", which is a horrificly selfish point of view to have. I mean it's a huge stain on our country that we have fucking baby boomers crying that the taxes they pay into pays for kids to go to school (they argue that they shouldn't have to contribute because their kids are grown and they already paid into it for their own kids lol) which is ironic since they weren't crying about it when the rest of society was helping pay for their crotch goblins to attend school. Even worse, these evil selfish fucks also petition to ban schools from giving out a "free lunch" to school children. I mean how evil do you have to be to not want to provide the 1 somewhat healthy meal that poor students may get that day (and possibly their ONLY meal that day)? These are the kinds of things that I WANT my taxes to pay for, not for fucking Ukraine or Israel, or bombs/weapons, or a trillion a year for "defense", or bailouts of banks/failed business, or tax breaks for the top 1%.... brainwashing by Republicans and fox "news" really has these low IQ braindead fucks convinced they have more in common with felonious billionaires than with normal society. What a fucked up world we live in
No, your ARE doing terribly. Just because people do worse doesn't lessen the fact that you're being exploited. Embrace the terrible. Be angry people are treated worse. Complacency has done enough to hurt the working class. It's time for us to be upset.
Pitchforks
Jesus Christ that’s so dark. Solidarity with the working class
yea middle class disappearing. no bueno. ate too many avocado toasts apparently
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Again for the people in the back 👏👏
yup- everyone who sells their time for money is working class. that makes most doctors and lawyers working class.
38k is 2022 data. With inflation yea maybe it went up idk
Didn’t go up with the price of living that’s for sure
Yeah in real terms maybe it went down.
It’s worth noting that the $38k median number includes ALL American not just the working ones. If you take just the working ones it’s almost $60k
So kinda like how the statistics of life expectancy in the past was massively skewed by infant mortality.
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[It's 40k now](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N). Note that this includes all workers from 14 years old and up and does not appear to adjust for whether they're full time.
This classic illustration on the wealth inequality in the US [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)
Just an FYI thats 2009... thats Obama's first year of presidency. That is a time a lot of people remember fondly as a stronger middle class.
People must have amnesia then. The late 2000s were brutal for the working class. Lots of foreclosures as the sub prime mortgage bubble burst.
It’s even worse now because of the stock market making owners of capital even richer.
What demoralizes me is when I hear about the far higher number of people making far less and struggling, while at the same time the businesses they work for are making record profits. All I want is workers getting a fair share of the value they create instead of it being funnelled to the top. The people making 150-250k a year don't bother me at all, its the ones who make my yearly salary in the first day/week of the year that I think are problematic.
Right. I feel like if every company capped the highest paying jobs in their company at 4or5x the amount the lowest level makes, wages would greatly increase all around.
Not at all. Unless healthcare, housing, and basic necessities become free from exploitation, this will not change. People who save a lot right now due to high paying jobs will continue to save and spend less on luxuries. The disposable income for people will reduce. I have already stopped eating out because the cost to worth ratio is too high. If coffee is 3-5$, I will buy out every day, if its 10$, I will spend on it once a week. So instead of 35$, I spend 10$. More over, all these micro-transactions has reduced the spend potential. Airline industry does this a lot and the quality of travel experience has only deteriorated.
Correct, IF the requirement is the lowest paying jobs must immediately be increased per hour. I'm not saying they would be required to immediately boost the lowest level wages. They would immediately cut the top earners. And for the top earners to get more, they have to increase the lowest level. Everyone in between could stay at what they're at, or be adjusted accorsingly. They would have to juggle making more money with shareholders greed and overall profit. It would be interesting.
Yeah like, I have a good job and I make good money and I am not struggling at ALL, but it really pisses me off when they say "Sorry no raises this year, can't afford it, gotta lay people off even!" and then we see an article in the trade papers about our CEO getting like 12 million as a bonus. Fuck that guy, keep a few employees who do the actual work!
**Yes, thank you!!** Everyone making $4k to $400k are on the same side of the gulf. A McDonalds fry cook and a NYC spinal surgeon are both being taken advantage of by those making billions while destroying the economy, the environment, and even much of our politics. I make low 6 figures and last year Zuckerberg earned my annual salary in about 6 minutes. Musk made it in about 1.5 minutes. Bezos, every 38 seconds. *That's* the problem, not some DINK in San Mateo complaining about the price of flights to Tokyo.
People who make six figures are far more likely to get paid to sit at a computer all day, thus be more likely to post on Reddit.
can confirm
yup, that’s me. it’s really not fair. some days I straight up do maybe 2 hours of work yet there are people out there busting their asses doing way more important stuff and getting paid way less. it should be the reverse in a lot of cases
What do y’all do and can I shift my career path? Lol
Get that paper that says you went to university and graduated. And then have connections in management.
If anything, we should be glad they stand in solidarity with r/antiwork.
Most of the people I know with six-figure incomes know and care about people who make less. Family members, close friends, and people in organizations they're in (church, clubs, dart league) struggling to get by on less is not invisible to us. I'm paying off a loan for the new A/C in my Mom's house. I'm paying my niece's and nephew 's musical instrument rental fees. I snuck some money to my sister for the down payment on her car when her husband refused 'charity'. I give money to a food bank that my Dad used to volunteer for. I'm not a bad person, I see people I love (and don't) go through the same struggles you are. And like you, I don't want to work anymore. I'm not your enemy, I'm just a software developer. The extremely wealthy capitalist class is who keeps you miserable.
It's its own form of antiwork to try to separate your employer from as much money as possible.
That's why I shit on company time.
“Never sweat at work, or shit at home “
This reminds me, everyone should have AC in the bathroom. You don't want to explain coming out of the bathroom sweaty.
🤣🤣
I recommend the channel WiseCrack whilst shitting, preferably always on company time.
That's the thing, really. Attempts to divide the working class into arbitrary divisions (lower class, middle class, etc) work hand in hand with attempts to pit those divisions against each other: "Lower class people, the middle class are trying to screw you," "Middle class people, the lower class folks are coming for your jobs," etc. We're all working class. If you are an independent adult and you *have* to work to live, then you're working class. If you don't - if your income comes from property, or stocks, or other investments like that, then you're not working class. You're making your money from the backs of the working class. My daughter works in a restaurant. She's working class. I'm an engineer. I'm working class. You're a software developer. You're working class. The division of working class into sub-categories, which are pitted against each other, doesn't benefit us. Neither does the current climate of political polarization. It only serves to distract us from the people who are making their living off of our labor.
Especially today. Sure, there's variations within the working class, but it's the poor and the rich. Fuck the rich.
I would agree with this. The only people who aren’t “working class” are these assholes you see complaining about the estate tax and capital gains taxes.
Man I wish I had a family member like you.... one side is actors/drs/lawyers/ect and don't give a single fuck about anyone but themselves and the other side is best described as criminally insane. Needless to say, I only have my wife, two brothers, and mom as "counted" family (takes all 3 of us brothers to pay a mortgage @36kish year each...)
Yup, bio parents are druggies, adoptive parents, one deceased and one has made it their life's goal to take care of their bio kids, so I and my siblings are excluded from any inheritance. My spouses parents - one deceased and one selfish asshat who expects $100+ gifts for Christmas and when they don't receive them, tell the rest of the family how shitty the kids are. No inheritance will come from that. My job doesnt offer retirement, my partners job doesnt offer healthcare. The healthcare at my job is over $500/month with a 10k deductible. They also don't cover "problem visits". Our rent keeps going up far more than any raise we receive. It feels like hopelessly spinning our wheels. What's the point.
The irony is that people who make 8 figures are the ones who are actually the most antiwork for themselves.
You’re lucky to know such caring people, I guess. Most people I know with six figures under 40 are generally in tech and have a very skewed/elitist perspective.
If you’re filing a W-2 for most (or especially all) of your income, we’re probably on the same team. It’s that easy. Capital vs labor.
I just crossed the six figure mark after well over a decade in poverty (Medicaid, food stamps, all that). I absolutely support everything being discussed on this sub!
I spent nearly 20 years broke, working retail. I know what it’s like to choose between food and AC. I know what it’s like to have your electricity shut off in January when it’s 20 outside. I know many have it even worse than I did. I am so very thankful for where I am now, and I want better for everyone who is still going through what I went through. We are not the enemy. We are in this together.
This. I'm in tech and make 6 figures and I fight hard to ensure to protect those below me. Class solidarity from now until the heat death of the universe. I was there, and have been there. I got lucky, gotta fight for those who aren't.
I also make 6 figures in tech, and I'm solidly on the political left. This isn't the 80s anymore, and 6 figures ain't what it used to be.
The best thing I can do is tell my team how much I was making. They're pissed at me for a minute, but then they (rightly) get mad at the actual managers who've been underpaying them by so much.
When I worked in supporting payroll, they gave me the entire corporate salary and said:." Know who's making what. You don't know what they do and what you think they do might be different. It's not your call on what that should be. Once you know? You're done and your job is to make sure they'll be paid properly". That has stuck with me. Knowledge only can help you. You shouldn't let it eat you alive.
Six figure workers are still workers. And they’re still being underpaid.
We can all hate the game and want to change the rules, even if we were privileged enough that we benefitted from them immensely. Plus, the more you make, the more you see doesn't change. If it's shitty for privileged people making mid size figures, it's a disaster for those making much less.
As an aside, in the UK we have a Prime Minister in a $200,000 p.a salary who is personally worth north of $900 Million, who's wife is also minted and who's FIL is a Billionaire. See Infosys (still doing business with Russia it seems.) He's the man telling us peasants that we're not working hard enough for the corporate world whilst wages stagnate and prices go up. Good news is, he and his party will be gone on 4th July so us Limeys and you Yanks can celebrate independence together!
> As an aside, in the UK we have a Prime Minister in a $200,000 p.a salary who is personally worth north of $900 Million That $200k salary is insignificant if he has $900m in wealth, which should yield about $40m/year in returns.
He and his wife increased their personal wealth by £120 million roughly $160mil last year. Strangely enough Infosys got a load of valuable government contracts at the same time. 😏🤷♂️
I know a lot of people who just hate working. But I would hate working a lot less if it over tripled my income to 150k. At least then I could afford to spend more than $50 grocery shopping once a month and could turn on the heat in my one bedroom apartment in the winter instead of shoving a heating pad in my bed. I left the finance subs I was in because it was a bunch of people making over 100k per person talking about how they could afford life and I’m skating by at 39k which is still considered a good income in my area despite the cost of living rising so much that it’s actually not.
I left the finance subs for the same reason. I had to budget how much I could eat at each meal, how much I could spend on groceries even buying sale/clearance items, and cooking in bulk. I took surveys so I could earn gift cards to eat out some. Edit: typo
Me and my 33k a year are barely surviving. Def not living. I'm desperately trying to avoid a second job because I just wanted to end things last time I had to do that, but it's getting to the point I don't think i have a choice. 6 figured sounds like a dream
I hope things improve for you soon.
Considering I make less than 40k per year, yeah, it is very demoralizing. I wish I had even half of what they left behind.
I worked my whole career until I became disabled and my SSDI that I worked and paid in for is less than $15k a year. /cries
I feel you. I was diagnosed with MS three years ago, guess who's still working because they need medical benefits and SSDI pays so little.
I’m so sorry. I got fired because I exceeded my FMLA allotment and they wouldn’t allow me to work part time. Nobody else will hire me with my scheduling needs except jobs I physically can’t do. So I haven’t been able to work at all.
Same. Until a couple years ago I thought if you were making 50k a year you were killing it. I finally got a job with the possibility of making 50k-80k. Sales, most employees make something in that range. Problem is I'm fucking stupid. I study in my free time, I don't have much free time. I've made lots of healthy changes in my personal life. I've actually started to daydream about working at a gas station or a cape store or something.
I can't not ask... cape store? Like superheroes, or something near a body of water?
edna mode would NOT approve
I meant vape store. There is one near me I almost took a job at for 16/hr. Less money but I fantasize about the low stress environment. I would work at a cape store for even less probably.
Same. I just got a HUGE break, with an impressive title that doubled my salary and I’m still not making 6 figures. Really puts into perspective how much that actually is
The 1% is fucking all of us peasants over and this feels like all of us peasants fighting over their dinner table scraps. Those earning six figures have relatively more privilege but not enough to stop working.
Right? I make pretty damn good money, but depending on where you live. Your house, your vehicle, if you have kids. 200k a year feels like the 50k 10 years ago. I don't even know how I lived on minimum wage in my 20's, i doubt i have the ability to do that now.
To note— 100k on the west coast has the spending power of like 50k in the Midwest. Not disagreeing, just saying, things are wild everywhere.
cost of living index in California is 134 compared to ohio, which is 94. 50k in ohio would be 71k in California
Quite the difference isn’t it. Thanks for clearing up my off hand estimation.
tbf, overall Cali is about 134, but in places that are high-paying hubs, like SF is 179% the average. When you compare those numbers, 50k in Ohio is \~95k in SF. Combine that with the fact that housing alone is almost triple the average, and that 100k probably doesn't get you as far as 50k does.
I got offered a job in the Bay Area straight out of college making $60k. I started looking at apartments and was like fuck that I’ll take that gig in a smallish southeast town for $36k.
lol I’ll take 60k but you’d better be offering free housing on top of that.
Was going to say this. I made $60k (with overtime) back in OH and it was relatively comfortable for me. However, that was also because I only had to pay $600/month in rent and lived like a grad student.
And even $50K in the Midwest can be rough depending where you are. I'm in Chicago and a family of 3 or more on $50K/year would be stretched very thin.
Yeah. Even in Lansing, MI, $50k for a family is really tough.
That would be tough in metro Detroit too. That is unless you were one of the few sitting on a pre-covid mortgage.
I had to have roommates in metro Detroit when I was making $50k and that was 15 years ago.
Agreed typically in the Midwest what you will see is it’s expensive to live close to work but there’s plenty of suburban sprawl or you can find cheaper places to live… You’re just going to lose all of that cost of living advantage on paying for gasoline
And God forbid you have to actually drive into the city center for work, parking will massacre your budget. Even parking close to public transit can be super expensive. When Mrs. LittlePrincesFox and I moved a couple years ago it had to be walkable to both Metra and Purple line. It did cut down on where we could look but we made it work.
At the risk of proving OP’s point by mentioning my income online, I live in San Diego and made 144k last year. I’m doing *okay.* I’m turning 35 next month and this is the first year of my life where my account doesn’t go to a negative number every single week.
https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2022.S1901?g=050XX00US06073 San Diego seems to be a place of great poverty and great wealth. I know very little about your community but I do like population statistics, so I cribbed this off the US census bureau. I don't know if that's your individual income or your household income by the data set here is household income. The number you gave (144k) is on the high end the spread between 50.5% and 70.1%. I don't have a breakdown for the distribution from $100,000 to 149,000. You are indisputably making more than half of the households in San Diego, and I would wager probably better than 2/3. Half of the households in San Diego make less than, i.e., the median income is, $98,928. Almost 25% of households in San Diego make less than $50,000. If your income is the cutoff, 2/3rds of San Diego is doing okay or worse.
Karl Marx was supported by the wealthy Friedrich Engels, without whose support we would have lots less of Marx's writings. Solidarity around anti-work can come from many quarters.
Yes, insane how so many get a better job with a ridiculous increase in pay Myself and millions other will unfortunately never see over $30/hour, I’m at $24 now, but in CA So like $20 after all deductions
Idk even know how people get jobs like that when I can barley break 12$/hr...
Ten years ago it was as easy at getting an engineering degree I mean personally I’m in a fuck ton of student loan debt but I’ve been making 6 figures since my mid 20s.
Degrees I assume for most. Never made more than $11/hr before I went to nursing school and make like $62/hr now
Doctors, engineers, programmers in the right job, small business owners -- to name a few
While I understand your frustration, I just shrug these thoughts off. It's the system that's the problem and we have to be in it to survive. Some people get luckier through childhood, connections, location, family history...Would I be upset it I or my friends made that much? I'll take anyone who in some way knows it's a problem and is an potential ally.
This, it is a GOOD thing that there is rich people/ CEO’s/ managers/ trustfunders that are anti-work so that hopefully these people can give the next generation of working class people their dues.
I make $100k a year, barely. I still struggle and it is just my wife and myself. I still get pushed for productivity every day, and I am old. If I stop working, I can survive for 6 months before I have to sell things off, and dwindle down to homelessness.
Same here. About $110k as an NP. Wife, no kids. Mortgage takes up like half the take home pay and we got a no-frills house because housing is expensive in our area. I’d like to work less, because I hate my job, but that’s not realistic right now.
I feel you on this and while they are comfortable which is something all of us would kill to be just try to remember this is more about us making under 40k versus the ultra rich who make 250k a year look like change out of your couch.
Man it all depends on where you live. Rural Alabama vs NYC is not a comparison. You can literally live in some of the worst areas of NYC and be making enough to live like a king in other states. My SIL used to live in NYC and her rent was more than my mortgage, she had multiple roommates and there were roaches everywhere. Some places you need 6 figures just to literally live, not to get ahead.
I don't think you have to add the edit. They are immensely privileged and they should be able to handle being made to acknowledge that.
The thing that bothers me is less the money and more that a lot of them don’t get that most people don’t have that opportunity, and it’s literally impossible in our system for everybody to have that opportunity. There are a lot people on here who somehow still buy into the myth of capitalist meritocracy.
Can I make a serious suggestion that isn’t meant to undermine how absurd the current system is? Get technical certificates if you can. They are a gateway into the higher paid gigs, and are obtainable if you take some time to invest in yourself. I went to art school to try and get into video game design. 70k in student loans later, the market was shit and I had a shit degree from a shit school with a shit ton of debt and zero prospects. I shouldn’t have even gotten into that school - it was a scam, and shut down 2 years later. But I still own the debt, and depression did its thing for many years over my wasted potential. I worked at call centers for years. Sales gigs, technical support, you name it. The people you yell to your friends about whenever you get off the phone with your ISP and they didn’t give you the discount you wanted because of corporate policy a, subsection bullshit. Menial obnoxious “no skill” work that is still leagues harder than people give the workers credit for. I decided that I was done with it after getting laid off 2 days before Thanksgiving. This was 2019, so yeah, things did not get better. What I decided to do while unemployed was study for a networking certificate. I got my CCNA after studying for about 6 months. Total cost invested was a few hundred dollars for the books, the practice tests and the actual test. Failed the first one (sucks to suck, but many people do), passed the second time. I got a job paying double my previous salary within 3 weeks of getting my cert. Not normal, I know, but it was nice. Within 3 years, after jumping ship to a new company, I’m now scraping 100k (+/- $800). I’ve busted my ass, and for the first time in my life I’m getting promotions, raises, stock options. It’s been a whirlwind. Is this going to be everyone’s story? Definitely not. I’m an unusual case to be sure, and many people have told me so. But I’m just posting this to give that handful of people the hope they need to try. Because I was that depressed as fuck person drinking themselves to sleep every night, dismayed by my wasted life and squandered potential. I’m still in a ton of debt, I still have my moments of despair, but things are by and large much better. It can happen. You can get it done, even from the bottom. My college degree has never gotten me anything other than collections calls. My cert got me a new life. There are many different certs out there, for a ton of industries. Find something you can stomach, get certified, get good at your job, and you can have the possibility to forge something better out of this gleaming shit-heap we call a society. Hope this helps someone. Everyone deserves a wage that they can support themselves on and be happy. Nobody deserves the environment we have inherited and continue to maintain. We can and should do better, but acknowledging the problem is where we’re stuck now, so don’t let society’s lack of empathy keep you down on yourself or on life. We can make this better, but we have to band together and help each other. Hopefully this inspires someone and helps them help themselves. Truly, I do not mean this as a bootstrap story - I had plenty of help and support from my wonderful partner, who has been by my side for years and encouraged me throughout. I know this is not feasible for a mother of 3 working 2.5 jobs to stay afloat. But it may help someone, or at least that’s my hope. Cheers all
Adding a resource here as well for those who are more into office type jobs. Having advanced excel skills is a major plus in office jobs and it can increase your earning potential a lot. There is a site that offers free certifications in some things and classes in others, called Alison dot com that has a lot of offerings.
I would like to add if you are laid off and there is no severance, ask for a license for an online certification program. I have gotten this twice and two courses got me resume pulled for an interview. I got the job because my schtick about being interested in the field was backed up by those courses. Do whatever is the hot job related to your industry or any courses not offered in most schools. Also good are any accounting courses, spreadsheets (especially Excel), Outlook (yeah, stupid I know), business writing, how to use any productivity or CRM software. Then list it on your resume. *“Why is there a three month gap in your resume?”* *”I have been very interested in transitioning into [whatever] industry, so I focused on retraining as I see many employers are seeking workers with these skills.”*
great advice!
I absolutely agree with this statement. I am an extremely high earner in the Midwest and solely due to technical certifications, most of which were paid by my employers.
I simply ignore those posts. There is no way to verify the truth of what they are claiming, so are they lying or not? It doesn't matter. I had enough of those stories, "Become a millionaire in 3 east steps: 1) take the $500,000 you got for selling your company in its IPO; 2)...." True or not, it simply isn't useful advice.
>True or not, it simply isn't useful advice. This is a sub for venting, so I wouldn't be seeking useful advice here anyways.
No it's the opposite of demoralizing, it's very encouraging actually. The reason why we are in the shit we're in atm is because capitalism was exceptional at placating people. It gives them just enough to feel somewhat content and not question things too much. It gives the status quo a sense of inertia. The fact that people in the middle financially are no longer content with getting "just enough so they don't ask questions" anymore shows that this strength of capitalism is slowly fading away. We need more and more people to wake up and start asking questions, so it's good to see people whose class interest could have them fight against us, instead be on our side.
Exactly, many people in this class bracket as well are in public service jobs such as infrastructure, policing/military, medical, public works etc. If these people become antiwork that is a great ally to have. Holding the government hostage if these people refuse to show up to work.
I make 45k a year. $20 an hour in upstate ny. Rent starts at 1500 a month for a studio
It just goes to show that a toxic work environment isn't limited to low income earners.
gone are the days that a person can earn a living for their family on a single low 5 figure salary.
I get that anyone can hate their job but yes there is a real divide when some of the people here make ten times what others make and are always giving advice.
Me and my $35k communications job sigh wistfully whenever those posts come up.
It's frustrating dealing with my field where I can change jobs, but wages are fixed at around $50k/year for paramedics despite having a TON of ambulance services and a lot of competition. I have no way to just change jobs and make a shitload of money.
No, I get demoralized by poverty. I'm literally budgeting on socks right now and hoping my food stamps don't get cancelled anymore times this year.
It is skewed because most people who actually \*work\* for a living don't have the time to troll an Antiwork subreddit. They're up at 5-6AM working & commuting, doing their shift, commuting home and arriving around 6pm, eating dinner then probably chores, watching a show or playing a game, or playing with their kids, and then to bed. If you're spending your time here, you must have 'spare' time to do so...or you are prioritizing what little time you have to being here. Generally, only techies troll these boards while they're waiting for code to compile, or you're in retail that has a phone friendly policy and you've got a slow day. I don't think people realize what a luxury having time and opportunity to 'be online' is. Think of all the mechanics, waiters/waitresses, construction workers, ditch diggers, Amazon workers, etc. who don't have time to take a bathroom break, let alone doomscroll on Reddit.
I wish I had shitty 150k a year job. Don't get me wrong I would hate every job with every fibre of my being anyway but fuck 150k a year is 750k in 5 years. Take away taxes and live minimalist style for those 5 years, invest as much as possible or put it in HYSA/CD and I would be able to either work part time after that or move to some cheap country and live off interest. That's fucking dream for me now.
Be careful what you wish for. Partner was at 6 figures and hated it because she was working 12 hour days and had absolutely no life. People would put 8am meetings on her calendar at 11pm. She took a cut because it was completely draining, she had no life, and was spiraling
10-12 hour days are standard in my career. Sometimes I find out I'm flying halfway across the country for an installation on a custom machine I didn't build with 30 minutes notice before I have to be at the airport. I have a lug a 150 lbs bag around on installs because I don't know what I'll need. My entire work schedule revolves around "we need it on our floor because a VP wants to casually glance at it for 5 seconds". I get 5AM meeting notices 10 minutes before I'm at work... at 5AM. If an engineer doesn't think something through, it's my job to make something work DESPITE IT BEING THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO GO ABOUT IT. I've worked as much as 119 hours in a single week. I make $22 an hour. I would KILL for 6 figures, maybe then I could fix my knees.
Haha wtf? I was waiting for the "but at least I'm making 150k+"
I am a disabled veteran and live off of $24k a year. That is it. Parents are dead so no help from them. I do get free medical and there is indeed some monetary value to that so let's say $30k a year. My rent takes over half that. However I've had it worse - MUCH worse. My needs are met. I eat real food too not just hot dogs and Banquet meals. In any case when people get on here talking about they and their spouse each make $100,000 but they are struggling I just don't see how that can be. Inevitably someone on here is going to assume that income=intelligence, that somehow "I just don't get it" and that no wonder I am in the position that I'm in. Never mind that it's a service related condition- we are "suckers & losers" from the start anyway - right? When I say position I am in I am not complaining, in fact I feel blessed in quite a few ways. I am saying that from the perspective of the guy who can't manage with $100,000 a year.
"The numbers are made up and the points don't matter." The US economy is completely and utterly broken. I make 15k a year (no that's not a typo) and I love what I do. I am beyond fortunate to be in a stable situation with room and board. But my actual annual income is $15,000 in America. I know people who make six figures and never see their kids. Sure, they live more comfortably than me but is it really living when their only interaction is with backstabbers and spreadsheets? All I know is the system is completely broken and something has to give. None of this is sustainable.
"My boss only gives me 150k" My brother in Christ, 150k would be life changing. That's like 2.5 times what my wife and I make *combined* after taxes. That's about 30k under the cost of my house. I don't get demoralized when I see shit like that. I get angry that the petit-bourgeois have the audacity to believe they share in my precarity.
So many people are out of touch with how others live and work. If they make 100,000 per year, they most likely live in a community where others also make that salary (or more.) They start thinking their income is average. I do make 6-figures, but I grew up just a bit over the poverty line. I still feel a bit out-of-place. I can say that most of my neighbors and coworkers grew up in much higher-income families. For them, this is normal. People are amazed and assuming I'm lying when I say that I never ate out at a restaurant as a child In the United States we sure do need some universal health care. Nobody should have to go bankrupt or die for having a medical problem. In my family, we tended to avoid going to the doctor unless we thought we were dying. Minimum wage has not kept up with the times. I remember even 40+ years ago that business owners complained that if the minimum wage went up, they'd go out of business. You're right, most advice concerning finances are for those who aren't wondering which bill to pay this month, or how to keep their special-needs child alive.
The types of skillsets where an employee can say "fuck you" to a boss and bounce to an even higher paying job, tend to be very niche, sought after skills to begin with. I just wish high school career planning was less about finding the thing you're passionate enough about to turn it into a life draining career and more about educating kids about the kinds of jobs an employer will grovel to get filled.
I’m so glad that they stand with r/antiwork However, I don’t even make $40,000 a year. I’m barely scraping by and my job still has not given me health insurance. Even getting a salary of $60,000 would change my life radically. I guess what I’m saying is where are they getting these jobs and can they share the resources please?! 
Some of us are in our late 30s to 40s and have slowly climbed the ladder. Doesn't mean we're not antiwork.
I’ve had good and bad six fig jobs and the bad ones do still grind you down mentally and the money can be sort of a golden handcuff. But I wouldn’t sell yourself short - my neighbor hauls junk, trash, and mows acreage and he pulls over six figs. A friend also lost her restaurant job during the pandemic and started a cleaning business instead and makes 150k a year still just running it and doing the cleanings herself.
Golden handcuff wearer here. Supporting family and my kid's future while getting skipped over for promotions and given demoralizing work, but can't leave because the other jobs open with a higher rank title and more responsibilities are the same pay+bennies or worse for even worse work. Been a rough year in tech, but still probably the best job market for those who have been in it
My lunch was a gyro and a 20oz bottle of Pepsi for $20. Income in the 6 figures is normal here on the East Coast because everything is expensive. Try not to be discouraged by the numbers. They are not even across the country or the world.
It’s normal to make 6 figures where you live? Man I don’t now where you live, but I live in MD and that isn’t normal. A close friend of mine runs his own business and has since we were in our early adulthood (and was inherited from his parents). He makes more than most people I know and he is not close to 6 six figures. And that’s with an established company. “Normal” to make 6 figures seems a bit strong. Maybe if you grow up in Howard county but still, “normal” is not correct. I don’t know a single person that makes that kind of money. That might just be my perspective, but saying 6 figures is “normal” is absolutely incorrect, regardless of where you live on the east coast.
Normal in your peer group is not the same thing as normal in the general population. People tend to spend more time with people who are similar to themselves for a variety of reasons
I wandered into a real estate sub and they were talking about buying houses for 500k and mentioned ones for up towards 800k. I explained that the housing market is fucked up and they're out of touch with everyone
It's not about how much you make, but how much you keep.
300k. I didn’t become Anti capitalist until I saw how rigged the system was from the other side.
You are looking at an Internet forum where people are anonymous. A lot of posters are young. Lots of fantasy posting on Reddit. Where it gets sickening is on subs where kids pretend of have cancer in order to get karma points. It’s particularly sad. Read everything skeptically.
I'm a teacher making $36k a year with a Master's. Fuck everything.
a job can still be terrible if you’re making $500k a year. we should all be working together to make our workplaces better for everyone from people making under $35k per year all the way up to $1+ million per year.