The system has made it impossible to live alone. You pretty much have to pair up with someone and split finances, whether that’s a romantic partner or a roommate or whatever. You have to be absolutely killing it to be younger than 40 and living alone right now.
American Capitalists: “Communism doesn’t work.”
Also, American Capitalists: “Live in a large shared space, cook meals together, and maybe even do a little farming on the side to supplement your diet. Also, don’t use the traditional professional trade system. Learn by doing! Become your own mechanic, have friends cut your own hair and do your own dentistry, home school your kids, and dig your own well for water. Basically, become a 1950s Maoist.”
Yeah, there’s no ‘supposed to’ – it’s not designed
It’s designed to prevent savings and use as much of your income for trickle up economics as possible before your max out your borrowing potential or get sick and die.
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23/hr at full time work (40 hrs/week) is $920/week.
Let’s assume that 15% is taken out of each paycheck for taxes and withholdings and such, which leaves $782.
A typical month has 4 weeks, so $3128/month.
Stated expenses are $850+$1000+$400 totaling $2250
$3128-$2250=$878
bruh, if you’re not making it with that kind of money, you need to take a serious look at your finances and cut back on things you don’t need.
EDIT: I’m not replying to everyone.
There are several expenses that would be expected that were not covered. Those should easily fit inside the $878 monthly fund. I’m not going to go through item by item because they weren’t mentioned by OP and everyone will have a different list. The things I’d put on the list absolutely fit, with plenty to spare.
The tax rate is based on my personal experience of being poor in Texas. This was a bit of an asspull, but I did math last year that determined I was losing 13% of my paycheck to taxes and withholdings, and I make a bit less than OP so I bumped it up a couple percent. Texas does not have state income tax, so if that number sounds low that’s probably why.
Ultimately, I stand by what I said.
Expenses a normal person would likely have that aren’t mentioned:
- car related expenses
- utilities, if not covered by rent (especially a cheap apartment is unlikely to cover all the utilities
- any needed insurance not covered by job
- savings
- less frequent necessities (clothes, tools, repairs, medical expenses)
- ideally a little money for something enjoyable every once in a while
Plus what lawless hellscape is 15% for taxes and withholdings? In Ontario you’re paying 20% for taxes alone at the absolute minimum. That’s not including CPP, EI, and anything else you have like benefits co-pay or union dues.
The country is probably America, and the state is likely a red one. And you’re right about lawless hellscape. We have states that don’t collect income tax, 9 of them as a matter of fact. But they still pay federal income tax, which is the lions share of taxes.
I’m not even in one of those states, and for the majority of my working life my withholding has been about 15%. But, I wish I could pay 5-10% more in taxes for some universal healthcare. My employer pays about $10,000 a year per head for our premiums, which is very kind of them because they don’t have to pay 100% of the premiums. And that wonderful healthcare plan is a “zero deductible”, but not like you’re thinking. No, the plan pays absolutely none of your medical bills or visits or prescriptions until you hit your yearly out of pocket, which is $9,000 in network, double that for out of network. What percent of my income do you think $19,000-$27,000 is? I’ll give you a hint, it’s more than 10% haha.
Oh, the cherry on top… The only urgent care facilities in my area that are in network are owned by one hospital group. They stopped doing walk in visits. You have to schedule “urgent” care days in advance or go to one of their “standing emergency room” clinics that are minimum $1000. They invented a new, more expensive tier of urgency in between urgent and emergency. I think this is what they mean when they say capitalism breeds innovation.
Your comment is the biggest problem we have right now. There’s no, just paying a little more on taxes to get free healthcare. It’s estimated that currently it would be $3-4 trillion a year for universal healthcare. The total taxable income the US made was ~$4.4 trillion. 41.5% of that is individual taxes. If everyone paid 10% more that would only be $182B. You haven’t even scratched the surface of the cost. Adding universal health care is far more complicated than just everyone paying a little more in taxes.
Somehow only almost every other first world nation has figured it out, must be that American exceptionalism preventing us from figuring it out.
Also, I think you misunderstood my increase statement. I don’t mean a 10% increase of the federal taxes, I mean a 10% additional tax on total income which is about 10x that. Even using that figure, you’re really telling me that it would take a 24% increase to pay for this, and I’d love to see your sources for that.
And, this is fun, even with your tax increase requirement numbers, $18,000-$27,000 is 24%-37.5% of the median household income in America. Turns out, even if it were as absurdly expensive as you say, it’s literally a bargain for your average family. I now make more than the median, and it’s only 20%-30% of my income, so still a bargain but not as good of one.
Are you saying that paying 30% of your income for free health care is a bargain? At the median income for 60 years would be almost $1.4MM.
Maybe you should have had some forward looking into what a career would pay before investing that much into college. Hell I made more than that in my entry level job more than 15 years ago.
Just because college doesn’t have an instant payoff doesn’t mean it never has a payoff.
Yup that’s the right take. It’s the literal kids who are being told they must go to college who are at fault. It’s definitely not the system, not the adults counseling them about their future, and certainly not the businesses whose only purpose is aggregating wealth for a select few.
As always blame the victim and walk away. Might as well piss on it to show your dominance.
That’s the right take. Take zero responsibility for your own actions and blame everyone else instead.
Let’s follow your train of thought here.
Everyone makes the “smart” choice of looking into their career, and determine it based on the pay scale.
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Now we have a dearth of people doing the jobs with low pay, but still crucial to our society.
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Do you think there exists a demand for everyone to enter into the higher paying work force?
See this is the problem, you’re entirely missing the point. You don’t have to go to Harvard to be an elementary school teacher. Harvard on average $228k for 4 years Bridgewater State $44k for 4 years. Only 35 miles apart.
This person chose to take out somewhere on the realm of $90k worth of student loans for a career that makes less than $50k per year.
I don’t know anything about it, but we an example out of state tuition at Fayetteville State University is less than $25k for 4 years.
There are options and choices but people would rather take the easy way and blame someone else.
I agree college prices are out of control, but right now you have to work within the constraints available.
My friend, jobs like elementary school teacher don’t pay enough to return the interest loans, and that’s only exaggerated with the high inflation.
Entry level jobs, which are supposed to be easier are simply not paying enough to make ends meet. And that’s not a problem all individuals can solve. This requires regulatory work
You either need to really do more research on topics before you make uninformed comments or just don’t comment on things you don’t know.
Mississippi the lowest paid elementary school teachers on average and it’s $48k. If you went to school for $25k then you’d only have a $250 monthly payment for 10 years. Teachers should make more, but you make good decisions you could definitely live okay.
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Don’t have kids
Jesus titty fucking Christ dude. People should be able to afford to shelter and feed themselves on any one job. I don’t care if you’re a fry cook or a neurosurgeon, everyone deserves to live with dignity and in reasonable comfort. No one cares how it was 15 years ago when you were entering the workforce. We care how it is now, where unless you won the parent lottery, you’re probably gonna need two jobs out of college if you want to actually support yourself.
At the risk of defending the guy with the bad take, op can afford shelter and food. Op can’t afford shelter and food and 1000 dollars of loan payments per month.
The 1000 dollars of loan payments per month shouldn’t be a thing, is part of my point. It wasn’t a thing 15 years ago when the person with the bad take got their “entry level job”, and it shouldn’t be a thing now. People should be able to get a college education without having to put themselves into financial ruin.
This comment shows how uneducated on the topic you took the time to comment on you are. Average cost of college in 2010 was $33k and $38k now. source
Also, 15 years ago entry level work was 7-10 dollars an hour. Dude walked into a “skilled” job and confused it for “entry level”. Which is also a bullshit euphemism meant to keep us from realizing that many people will never leave that level of work. It’s literally impossible for everyone to move up because there’s fewer jobs in each level going up.
Entry level based on the OP comment that they are a college graduate. I didn’t realize that I had to specify something that was spelled out in the OP.
numbers don’t check out
lists $2250 expenses… 100 hours of work per month would cover it
I know they have other expenses, but they failed to list them and failed to make their point.
100 hours of work if the money is tax free (it’s not). Taxes take about 40% of your gross income so on $23/hr hr can’t afford the listed bills.
