4 ms·

$38k to support a whole household sounds pretty poor to me.

by aianus 10y ago

csallen 10y ago
I agree, but the question at hand is not whether or not $38k is "poor", but whether $38k is "too poor to afford the internet".
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  I grew up in a family of 6 on 38k a year, I can guarantee that's too poor, even in the country. That was in the 80's, it must be even worse now. At those incomes all your financial decisions are about food and housing, and hopefully getting clothing donations. Let alone trying to think about educating your kids to try and get them out. This is a lifeline to people, and helps educate their children. We should be doing more as a society to help those at the bottom.
  - nugget 10y ago
    I was raised in similar circumstances and I wouldn't even consider it poor, let alone ''too poor''. $38k in 1985 is around $80k today. Sufficient to cover 4 kids in most rural and inland suburban parts of the US. This is Dave Ramsey's middle class, middle America audience. For these families it's not what they make, it's what they spend that determines the outcome.
    - gowld 10y ago
      1985 dollars are not relevant to a 2017 program.
      - luck_fenovo 10y ago
        He is responding to someone who claimed that 38k in the 1980s was too poor to raise a family on period, it's a tangent but you're complaining to the wrong person imo
    - guelo 10y ago
      You got it backwards, $38k today is $16k in 1985. Basically poor people.
      - csallen 10y ago
        Actually bluejekyll got it backwards, and nugget provided an accurate response.
        bluejekyll 10y ago
        No. I didn't get it backwards. Someone raising a family today on 38k is is roughly equivalent to somone making 16k in the 80s. Which is exactly my point. In the 80s on 38k a year it meant that we could not afford many of the things that others had. New shoes/clothes etc. my parents luckily focused on education, and other quality of life things, rather than spending on frivolous things, like cable. I'd say cable was roughly equivalent to internet today. So that was a choice that they made to go without. And I say Internet would probably have been the same type of decisions. So while 80k today may be equivalent to 40k from the 80s, I would say 80k for a family of 4 kids would be hard, 40k would be exponentially harder.
        nugget 10y ago
        I think your parents may have made a conscious choice to keep cable out of the home for other, non-financial reasons (as did mine). By the mid 1980s only about half of households had basic cable.[1] In Chicago, there were complaints about a price hike to $13/month.[2] Housing costs are the problem. The move to dual-income households, the drop in interest rates, and the population boom caused certain real estate markets to appreciate at a level far above incomes and inflation. The coastal home my parents purchased in the early 1980s has appreciated 10x in value. A similar home in the mid-western state capital of their youth has appreciated 3x over the same period. This is why I called the scenario with 4 kids doable in some (most) parts of the country, but certainly not all. [1] http://www.tvhistory.tv/Cable_Households_77-99.JPG http://www.tvhistory.tv/Cable_Households_77-99.JPG [2] http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1985/12/30/page/15/article/cable-tv-service-going-with-basics http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1985/12/30/page/15/articl...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deelowe 10y ago
    $38k in the 80s was a pretty decent wage. Hardly poor. $38,000 in 1985 would be roughly $87,000 today. That's solidly within middle class. http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income-class-are-you.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income...
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      I did not intend to imply that my family was poor, only that we struggled with that income in suburban PA. The reason I posted that is because I find it very difficult to believe that any family of 1 or more children on an income of 40k a year today would have a comfortable life, and affording broadband Internet would be difficult.
gowld 10y ago
> average ~half of those households earn more
- Adverblessly 10y ago
  Sorry for nitpicking, but "~half of those households earn more" would have been true if they were talking about median income, not average income. While many of the commonly seen distributions have median==average, income usually follows a more exponential distribution with the average exceeding the median due to a "heavy tail".

$38k to support a whole household sounds pretty poor to me.

by aianus 10y ago

$38k to support a whole household sounds pretty poor to me.

I agree, but the question at hand is not whether or not $38k is "poor", but whether $38k is "too poor to afford the internet".

bluejekyll 10y ago
I grew up in a family of 6 on 38k a year, I can guarantee that's too poor, even in the country. That was in the 80's, it must be even worse now. At those incomes all your financial decisions are about food and housing, and hopefully getting clothing donations. Let alone trying to think about educating your kids to try and get them out. This is a lifeline to people, and helps educate their children. We should be doing more as a society to help those at the bottom.
- nugget 10y ago
  I was raised in similar circumstances and I wouldn't even consider it poor, let alone ''too poor''. $38k in 1985 is around $80k today. Sufficient to cover 4 kids in most rural and inland suburban parts of the US. This is Dave Ramsey's middle class, middle America audience. For these families it's not what they make, it's what they spend that determines the outcome.
  - gowld 10y ago
    1985 dollars are not relevant to a 2017 program.
    - luck_fenovo 10y ago
      He is responding to someone who claimed that 38k in the 1980s was too poor to raise a family on period, it's a tangent but you're complaining to the wrong person imo
  - guelo 10y ago
    You got it backwards, $38k today is $16k in 1985. Basically poor people.
    - csallen 10y ago
      Actually bluejekyll got it backwards, and nugget provided an accurate response.
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        No. I didn't get it backwards. Someone raising a family today on 38k is is roughly equivalent to somone making 16k in the 80s. Which is exactly my point. In the 80s on 38k a year it meant that we could not afford many of the things that others had. New shoes/clothes etc. my parents luckily focused on education, and other quality of life things, rather than spending on frivolous things, like cable. I'd say cable was roughly equivalent to internet today. So that was a choice that they made to go without. And I say Internet would probably have been the same type of decisions. So while 80k today may be equivalent to 40k from the 80s, I would say 80k for a family of 4 kids would be hard, 40k would be exponentially harder.
        nugget 10y ago
        I think your parents may have made a conscious choice to keep cable out of the home for other, non-financial reasons (as did mine). By the mid 1980s only about half of households had basic cable.[1] In Chicago, there were complaints about a price hike to $13/month.[2] Housing costs are the problem. The move to dual-income households, the drop in interest rates, and the population boom caused certain real estate markets to appreciate at a level far above incomes and inflation. The coastal home my parents purchased in the early 1980s has appreciated 10x in value. A similar home in the mid-western state capital of their youth has appreciated 3x over the same period. This is why I called the scenario with 4 kids doable in some (most) parts of the country, but certainly not all. [1] http://www.tvhistory.tv/Cable_Households_77-99.JPG http://www.tvhistory.tv/Cable_Households_77-99.JPG [2] http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1985/12/30/page/15/article/cable-tv-service-going-with-basics http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1985/12/30/page/15/articl...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deelowe 10y ago
  $38k in the 80s was a pretty decent wage. Hardly poor. $38,000 in 1985 would be roughly $87,000 today. That's solidly within middle class. http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income-class-are-you.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income...
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    I did not intend to imply that my family was poor, only that we struggled with that income in suburban PA. The reason I posted that is because I find it very difficult to believe that any family of 1 or more children on an income of 40k a year today would have a comfortable life, and affording broadband Internet would be difficult.

gowld 10y ago

> average ~half of those households earn more

Adverblessly 10y ago
Sorry for nitpicking, but "~half of those households earn more" would have been true if they were talking about median income, not average income. While many of the commonly seen distributions have median==average, income usually follows a more exponential distribution with the average exceeding the median due to a "heavy tail".