6 ms·

Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can’t?

38 points by SREinSF 7y ago

m0zg 7y ago
How can they afford a NyTimes subscription? https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/your-money/financial-security-envy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytim...
- javagram 7y ago
  NYTimes subscription is $10/month through the iOS app... it’s not exactly in the same ballpark as even a single vacation :-)
  - m0zg 7y ago
    $10 here, $20 there, then multiply by 12, pretty soon you're looking at real money.
  - hu3 7y ago
    "it's just $X/mo" That's the mentality that often gets people into debt.
    - javagram 7y ago
      Budget monthly if you have that trouble, I run a monthly surplus without issues. $120 a year for news is not that much and is cheaper than paper newspapers used to be. (Edit: obviously, yes, if you cant afford it don’t buy it. News is a luxury too, just a much cheaper one. The only things people actually need are food, transportation, housing, &c.)
      - m0zg 7y ago
        Paradoxically, the reason why I can afford things is because I don't buy shit I don't need just because it's "$120 a year" and "not that much". It does add up. And then it also compounds. As a rule, I try to avoid buying things with zero (or negative as in the case of NYTimes) residual value.
        javagram 7y ago
        That’s your decision. Go for it if it’s what you need for your financial situation. My only point was that it wasn’t the same type of spending described in the article.
brenden2 7y ago
What’s with the recent stream of low quality NYT articles? This reads like the author recently discovered Mr. Money Mustache and decided to publish some blogspam. There is 0 new information.
- brenden2 7y ago
  Suggestion for mods: replace NYT link with original: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/the-'everybody-seems-wealthy'-illusion-is-it-really-just-all-fueled-by-debt/ https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/the-'...
- mattrp 7y ago
  Yeah I was just about to ask that too... like the Times can’t afford to pay for traffic like everyone else.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Wealth is correlated with luck and not causal to success. Nothing new here. I'm shocked how often people discover this, and then immediately forget it, and when they rediscover it are just as surprised as ever. It's like we're ingrained to think there's no luck in the world.
awat 7y ago
I felt this when I joined a sales org as a Sales Engineer. I felt like I was making a healthy salary but couldn’t believe the cars I was seeing driven by the reps I supported. Until one day I had a conversation about it with a few of them and found out they do everything in terms of payments. As in can I afford the payment with no concern about what that costs in interest etc. Eye opening experience.
- Zelphyr 7y ago
  I’ve been told that in sales teams it is common for them to be highly encouraged to go out and buy a new car and other things like that so that they have an incentive to make their quotas. Think that scene in Boiler Room where the guy running the firm told all the brokers to go out and buy a new car.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  There’s a school of thought that when hiring commissioned salespeople, that you want to hire the ones who have a large monthly outflow they need to cover every month.
  - Sebguer 7y ago
    https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving-an-m6-convertible-and-not-buying-a-panerai-watch/ https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving-an... Embodied with all the expected toxicity in this article.
    - awat 7y ago
      Yikes. That’s pretty much the reason I left the org I was referring to.
raven105x 7y ago
Why is this a thing? My total, all-encompassing expenses are less than 15% of my income annually and I have zero debt. I rent a modest apartment because I am in my 20s & the loss on rent is, for now, less than the would-be loss of property taxes + HOA + home loan interest. I drive a nine year old Prius I bought when I was 18 - and I know that statistically everyone my age driving a luxury vehicle is either in debt, has outside income, or simply out-performed me financially - all of which are okay. This is just a youthful and inexperienced opinion, but it sure as hell seems like the root of the issue is not income inequality, or social theory, or any other problem requiring a solution but our national obsession of not minding our own business since people aren't at peace with themselves. Mind you, these are sentient, presumably self-aware, humans doing this - this isn't the behavior of a bot in a game, but actual people. Yikes
- nradov 7y ago
  Whoa there buddy. How are we going to keep this consumer driven economy afloat if irresponsible people like you go around living within their means?
- AgentOrange1234 7y ago
  You sound like you’re managing things very well, and I don’t want to discount that in any way. I do suspect your income is relatively quite high. Where I’m at, a modest apartment alone is more than 20% of any 20-something’s average income.
  - raven105x 7y ago
    Cheapest rent is about $1,800/mo in my area (California, eh) - my car is by far the worse one around. To me, it's about what trajectory you funnel your income in to generate wealth - tangible, liquid, appreciating assets as well as ETFs, bonds & recurring revenue. The notion of someone who's my age looking at a luxury or exotic car which is a chump change spend for someone who's had 1-3 more decades to generate wealth and concluding that wrecking their own long-term trajectory by incurring depreciation & loan interest - all for the sake of superficial equality, is absolutely insane to me.
  - 7y ago
ars 7y ago
Save you time: "When people seem to be able to afford much more than their income would suggest, it’s often because there is hidden wealth or hidden debt." Then some extra stuff to try to make people feel bad for having wealth.
- mc32 7y ago
  What else can one think? Either people have money to buy the things they buy or they don't and they borrow. I guess a few could be in illegal businesses or maybe has a sugar-daddy/momma. It's like saying, that customer who just bought a lottery ticket either wins or won't win. Yeah, I guess so.
  - ip26 7y ago
    What else can one think? You could be wondering if you're getting cheated on your salary.
- teej 7y ago
  Having family that contributes is also a major theme of the article, but isn't necessarily what you might think as "hidden wealth". That made me think the most, particularly about what contributions my extended family might have made (directly or indirectly) and also if there are any contributions I should be making back.
kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
>Not only do people want to play down their inherited wealth or money from family “but they actively try to hide it,” Mr. Conley said. “We have this ideology of individualism and worshiping of the self-made man or woman.” I have almost exactly the opposite mentality w.r.t. this scenario. I was always taught to not talk about money because it will only lead to problems, strife, envy etc.. (not that I'm rich or from a rich family but there's always people on both sides of you money-wise).
- trophycase 7y ago
  I think a lot of it too is that if you have money, people feel entitled to your time and money because you have it.
WalterBright 7y ago
> Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can’t? In debt over their eyeballs?
abrichr 7y ago
Mirror to avoid paywall: https://archive.is/ve4mL https://archive.is/ve4mL
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  Mirror to avoid paywall: disable javascript
ryanSrich 7y ago
I don’t really get the point of this article. If you know how much someone makes, then you can deduce relatively quickly that they are either a.) in serious amounts of debt, or b.) have some other form of income that you aren’t aware of.
bane 7y ago
I remember when I first started dating my wife, I encountered a number of people she knew from the same immigrant community (South Korean) who were driving expensive cars and living in nice houses despite working fairly low-end jobs. I asked her about it and she explained that basically these folks were either: a) up to their eyeballs in debt with no savings of any kind b) involved in some kind of "scam" c) were being floated by rich relatives or friends somewhere else, but the story there was complicated My wife has always been very frugal so I found this curious, but she explained that having a "rich" appearance was very important in the tight night social community that most South Koreans found themselves in. These three versions of what was happening were often occurring at the same time. An example true story: A person she knew, despite working two jobs as a cashier at a grocery and a dry cleaners, owned an expensive house and drove around in a luxury SUV. This person took payment, in part or in full as cash and often simply didn't pay taxes. At church, they'd chat up friends looking for business opportunities. When one was finally spotted (an investment opportunity), it was realized they didn't have any cash to participate. They then convinced a close friend to loan them basically their life savings upon which the investment was made with "a few percent" skimmed off the top as a finders fee to purchase a few luxury goods to keep the game going. There were multiple investors, and eventually somebody ended up stealing somebody else's identity, drained their bank account and fled the country. The investment ended up buying a large inventory of very poorly made products that were unsalable and it failed. The person she knew ended up with no serious money lost and just moved on to the next strike-it-rich plan. The house was mortgaged under somebody else's identity who had good credit and income as a "favor". The main floor was furnished elegantly for parties and after church activities, the rest of the house was entirely devoid of furniture. The SUV was a car they bought from a mechanic friend after it had been totaled by the previous owner and had new bodywork and some engine work done at extreme discount -- it barely ran day-to-day. This wasn't a rare story. It seemed to pervade a large portion of the community and everybody was inexplicably blind to it, and fell for the same money-lending, identity theft scams over and over again. When the Russell Crowe movie "Cinderella Man" came out, there's a scene where his manager, played by Paul Giamatti, is confronted by the main character's wife at his apartment. It's revealed that the apartment, and fancy lifestyle are all a display to give him credibility. https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0 https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0 It was then that I really understood what the success signaling and veblen goods in my wife's immigrant community was all about.
aklemm 7y ago
How can we get young people a better concept of money and wealth quantities and trajectories? I remember having the light bulb go off for me—previously I had zero clue and tried not to worry about—that most of those around me doing very well around age thirty had had help with a house down payment and their college costs. So the difference was simply they had the nut to get into home ownership and they didn’t have a monthly student loan.
simonblack 7y ago
'Image' versus Reality. Some people are more concerned with displaying 'Image' than whether or not they can keep up with Reality. This has been historically the difference between 'Old Wealth' and the 'Nouveau Riche'. The Nouveau Riche mentality is that if you have it, you must flaunt it ostentatiously. The people whose families have been wealthy for generations very often don't show it at all, or maybe they have some things that are 'very good' but 'old'. (To take that to its logical conclusion, think "a 40-year-old Rolls Royce".) My sister always looks like she wouldn't have two cents to rub together, but she keeps several million dollars stashed away so that all of her (4) kids could be given a million bucks at any time if necessary. Note that if she can give it to one child, then she feels she should give it to all four as a matter of 'fairness'. Then again she has three houses, all set up with clothing and furniture and appliances, so that she just has to arrive and everything is available for her immediately.

38 points by SREinSF 7y ago

m0zg 7y ago

How can they afford a NyTimes subscription? https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/your-money/financial-security-envy.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytim...

javagram 7y ago
NYTimes subscription is $10/month through the iOS app... it’s not exactly in the same ballpark as even a single vacation :-)
- m0zg 7y ago
  $10 here, $20 there, then multiply by 12, pretty soon you're looking at real money.
- hu3 7y ago
  "it's just $X/mo" That's the mentality that often gets people into debt.
  - javagram 7y ago
    Budget monthly if you have that trouble, I run a monthly surplus without issues. $120 a year for news is not that much and is cheaper than paper newspapers used to be. (Edit: obviously, yes, if you cant afford it don’t buy it. News is a luxury too, just a much cheaper one. The only things people actually need are food, transportation, housing, &c.)
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Paradoxically, the reason why I can afford things is because I don't buy shit I don't need just because it's "$120 a year" and "not that much". It does add up. And then it also compounds. As a rule, I try to avoid buying things with zero (or negative as in the case of NYTimes) residual value.
      - javagram 7y ago
        That’s your decision. Go for it if it’s what you need for your financial situation. My only point was that it wasn’t the same type of spending described in the article.

brenden2 7y ago

What’s with the recent stream of low quality NYT articles? This reads like the author recently discovered Mr. Money Mustache and decided to publish some blogspam. There is 0 new information.

brenden2 7y ago
Suggestion for mods: replace NYT link with original: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/the-'everybody-seems-wealthy'-illusion-is-it-really-just-all-fueled-by-debt/ https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/the-'...
mattrp 7y ago
Yeah I was just about to ask that too... like the Times can’t afford to pay for traffic like everyone else.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Wealth is correlated with luck and not causal to success. Nothing new here. I'm shocked how often people discover this, and then immediately forget it, and when they rediscover it are just as surprised as ever. It's like we're ingrained to think there's no luck in the world.

awat 7y ago

I felt this when I joined a sales org as a Sales Engineer. I felt like I was making a healthy salary but couldn’t believe the cars I was seeing driven by the reps I supported. Until one day I had a conversation about it with a few of them and found out they do everything in terms of payments. As in can I afford the payment with no concern about what that costs in interest etc. Eye opening experience.

Zelphyr 7y ago
I’ve been told that in sales teams it is common for them to be highly encouraged to go out and buy a new car and other things like that so that they have an incentive to make their quotas. Think that scene in Boiler Room where the guy running the firm told all the brokers to go out and buy a new car.
sokoloff 7y ago
There’s a school of thought that when hiring commissioned salespeople, that you want to hire the ones who have a large monthly outflow they need to cover every month.
- Sebguer 7y ago
  https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving-an-m6-convertible-and-not-buying-a-panerai-watch/ https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving-an... Embodied with all the expected toxicity in this article.
  - awat 7y ago
    Yikes. That’s pretty much the reason I left the org I was referring to.

raven105x 7y ago

Why is this a thing? My total, all-encompassing expenses are less than 15% of my income annually and I have zero debt. I rent a modest apartment because I am in my 20s & the loss on rent is, for now, less than the would-be loss of property taxes + HOA + home loan interest. I drive a nine year old Prius I bought when I was 18 - and I know that statistically everyone my age driving a luxury vehicle is either in debt, has outside income, or simply out-performed me financially - all of which are okay. This is just a youthful and inexperienced opinion, but it sure as hell seems like the root of the issue is not income inequality, or social theory, or any other problem requiring a solution but our national obsession of not minding our own business since people aren't at peace with themselves. Mind you, these are sentient, presumably self-aware, humans doing this - this isn't the behavior of a bot in a game, but actual people. Yikes

nradov 7y ago
Whoa there buddy. How are we going to keep this consumer driven economy afloat if irresponsible people like you go around living within their means?
AgentOrange1234 7y ago
You sound like you’re managing things very well, and I don’t want to discount that in any way. I do suspect your income is relatively quite high. Where I’m at, a modest apartment alone is more than 20% of any 20-something’s average income.
- raven105x 7y ago
  Cheapest rent is about $1,800/mo in my area (California, eh) - my car is by far the worse one around. To me, it's about what trajectory you funnel your income in to generate wealth - tangible, liquid, appreciating assets as well as ETFs, bonds & recurring revenue. The notion of someone who's my age looking at a luxury or exotic car which is a chump change spend for someone who's had 1-3 more decades to generate wealth and concluding that wrecking their own long-term trajectory by incurring depreciation & loan interest - all for the sake of superficial equality, is absolutely insane to me.
- 7y ago

ars 7y ago

Save you time: "When people seem to be able to afford much more than their income would suggest, it’s often because there is hidden wealth or hidden debt." Then some extra stuff to try to make people feel bad for having wealth.

mc32 7y ago
What else can one think? Either people have money to buy the things they buy or they don't and they borrow. I guess a few could be in illegal businesses or maybe has a sugar-daddy/momma. It's like saying, that customer who just bought a lottery ticket either wins or won't win. Yeah, I guess so.
- ip26 7y ago
  What else can one think? You could be wondering if you're getting cheated on your salary.
teej 7y ago
Having family that contributes is also a major theme of the article, but isn't necessarily what you might think as "hidden wealth". That made me think the most, particularly about what contributions my extended family might have made (directly or indirectly) and also if there are any contributions I should be making back.

kaffeemitsahne 7y ago

>Not only do people want to play down their inherited wealth or money from family “but they actively try to hide it,” Mr. Conley said. “We have this ideology of individualism and worshiping of the self-made man or woman.” I have almost exactly the opposite mentality w.r.t. this scenario. I was always taught to not talk about money because it will only lead to problems, strife, envy etc.. (not that I'm rich or from a rich family but there's always people on both sides of you money-wise).

trophycase 7y ago
I think a lot of it too is that if you have money, people feel entitled to your time and money because you have it.

WalterBright 7y ago

> Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can’t? In debt over their eyeballs?

abrichr 7y ago

Mirror to avoid paywall: https://archive.is/ve4mL https://archive.is/ve4mL

NullPrefix 7y ago
Mirror to avoid paywall: disable javascript

ryanSrich 7y ago

I don’t really get the point of this article. If you know how much someone makes, then you can deduce relatively quickly that they are either a.) in serious amounts of debt, or b.) have some other form of income that you aren’t aware of.

bane 7y ago

I remember when I first started dating my wife, I encountered a number of people she knew from the same immigrant community (South Korean) who were driving expensive cars and living in nice houses despite working fairly low-end jobs. I asked her about it and she explained that basically these folks were either: a) up to their eyeballs in debt with no savings of any kind b) involved in some kind of "scam" c) were being floated by rich relatives or friends somewhere else, but the story there was complicated My wife has always been very frugal so I found this curious, but she explained that having a "rich" appearance was very important in the tight night social community that most South Koreans found themselves in. These three versions of what was happening were often occurring at the same time. An example true story: A person she knew, despite working two jobs as a cashier at a grocery and a dry cleaners, owned an expensive house and drove around in a luxury SUV. This person took payment, in part or in full as cash and often simply didn't pay taxes. At church, they'd chat up friends looking for business opportunities. When one was finally spotted (an investment opportunity), it was realized they didn't have any cash to participate. They then convinced a close friend to loan them basically their life savings upon which the investment was made with "a few percent" skimmed off the top as a finders fee to purchase a few luxury goods to keep the game going. There were multiple investors, and eventually somebody ended up stealing somebody else's identity, drained their bank account and fled the country. The investment ended up buying a large inventory of very poorly made products that were unsalable and it failed. The person she knew ended up with no serious money lost and just moved on to the next strike-it-rich plan. The house was mortgaged under somebody else's identity who had good credit and income as a "favor". The main floor was furnished elegantly for parties and after church activities, the rest of the house was entirely devoid of furniture. The SUV was a car they bought from a mechanic friend after it had been totaled by the previous owner and had new bodywork and some engine work done at extreme discount -- it barely ran day-to-day. This wasn't a rare story. It seemed to pervade a large portion of the community and everybody was inexplicably blind to it, and fell for the same money-lending, identity theft scams over and over again. When the Russell Crowe movie "Cinderella Man" came out, there's a scene where his manager, played by Paul Giamatti, is confronted by the main character's wife at his apartment. It's revealed that the apartment, and fancy lifestyle are all a display to give him credibility. https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0 https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0 It was then that I really understood what the success signaling and veblen goods in my wife's immigrant community was all about.

aklemm 7y ago

How can we get young people a better concept of money and wealth quantities and trajectories? I remember having the light bulb go off for me—previously I had zero clue and tried not to worry about—that most of those around me doing very well around age thirty had had help with a house down payment and their college costs. So the difference was simply they had the nut to get into home ownership and they didn’t have a monthly student loan.

simonblack 7y ago

'Image' versus Reality. Some people are more concerned with displaying 'Image' than whether or not they can keep up with Reality. This has been historically the difference between 'Old Wealth' and the 'Nouveau Riche'. The Nouveau Riche mentality is that if you have it, you must flaunt it ostentatiously. The people whose families have been wealthy for generations very often don't show it at all, or maybe they have some things that are 'very good' but 'old'. (To take that to its logical conclusion, think "a 40-year-old Rolls Royce".) My sister always looks like she wouldn't have two cents to rub together, but she keeps several million dollars stashed away so that all of her (4) kids could be given a million bucks at any time if necessary. Note that if she can give it to one child, then she feels she should give it to all four as a matter of 'fairness'. Then again she has three houses, all set up with clothing and furniture and appliances, so that she just has to arrive and everything is available for her immediately.