5 ms·
Maybe this goes without saying, but the average family in North America lives well above their means. Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus for the wife and gin
by cpursley 10y ago
Maybe this goes without saying, but the average family in North America lives well above their means. Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus for the wife and ginormous pickup truck for the office job husband, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc. when you can find everything you need for a comfortable material existence used on craigslist, cook at home, etc. It's possible if you have gainful employment and discipline. I didn't have either of these in my 20s. Now that I do, I'm focused on avoiding the seemingly inevitable "I deserve it" lifestyle inflation and "It's only $xxx per month" debt.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
- rfrank 10y ago> Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc. You really think that's how most Americans live?
- djloche 10y agono, most Americans live worse than that. They finance their entire life. The education, the house, the cars, the furniture, the food, the everything. If you want it all, and have the cashflow, you can have it all for a set of minimum monthly payments that leaves you with little actual cash in the bank and an increasingly large debt to pay.
- cylinder 10y agoIt's the eternal blind optimism of Americans. What's the monthly payment? Oh, I can swing that! My salary is X and always will be, or higher! Never mind that these been a recession about every eight years during my lifetime!
- mratzloff 10y ago[citation needed]
- cpursley 10y agohttps://www.google.com/webhp?authuser=1#authuser=1&q=american+household+debt https://www.google.com/webhp?authuser=1#authuser=1&q=america... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/she-bought-a-sofa-on-installment-payments-now-its-straining-her-life/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/...
- mratzloff 10y agoYour first link is about credit card debt, and your second link is about a family with no credit. You can't link the two. What point are you trying to make? You said this: Maybe this goes without saying, but the average family in North America lives well above their means. Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus for the wife and ginormous pickup truck for the office job husband, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc. But none of your links actually back that up. If we're trading personal anecdotes, fine, but otherwise you're caricaturing the average family as struggling because of (I would guess based on your implication) stupidity and greed. This doesn't seem to match my experience of the "average" family, but it is common dog whistle language.
- cpursley 10y agoNot sure why I'm getting downvotes. I can't reply to the person below, but yes, this is how most folks live according to the stats and my observations. Everything is financed. Working from home in a suburban Atlanta neighbourhood, at least once per week I see a rent-to-own furniture truck unloading something at a neighbors home. I don't even own a TV because my priorities are different.
- rfrank 10y agoHave some stats that aren't from mrmoneymoustache.com? You may want to give this a read in the meantime: http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decisions-or-poverty-thoughts-1450123558 http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decision...
- kmonsen 10y agoI don't know about the details of what you said, but one more thing I find important is that even if you could afford it you take away at least one year of saving for the future. I try to work hard these days to pay off my mortgage early and save for retirement. Using my current savings and loosing one of my good years of income seems like something that should at least be mentioned.
- gozur88 10y agoI can't help wondering how many of these mid-career vacationers the rest of us will be supporting when they run out of money later in life.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 10y agoOr how many of those didnt-vacation-and-now-I-spew-bitterness -and-lost-my-savings-anyway-due-to-buying-a-house-or-other-bs we mid-career vacationers will be supporting...