6 ms·

The US is a great place to make a lot of money if you're lucky and successful, but a terrible place to retire.

by shiroiushi 2y ago

CalRobert 2y ago
How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US
- sameoldtune 2y ago
  Healthcare is just a word until you get into your sixties, then it is a lifestyle
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Housing and healthcare costs are insane. When you're older, you need a lot more healthcare (and you won't have that nice insurance plan you had at your big company job when you were working), and housing keeps getting more expensive, which is a problem if you're on a fixed income. You could move to much cheaper locales (i.e. rural areas), but those are "healthcare deserts" where there's no competent doctors left and hospitals are all closing left and right, plus when you're infirm how exactly do you drive yourself? Living in a walkable city (or any city really) is much more doable when you're older for these practical reasons (less need to drive, healthcare providers close by), but then you can't afford the housing there.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    Housing in US is in fact one of the cheapest... everywhere, measured as price per square foot as percentage of income. Several times cheaper than in many countries and at least somewhat cheaper than almost every single one, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian. It's just that "normal" housing in the US is what's only attainable to the very rich and only because they inherited it, in most of Europe let's say: even 1% won't be able to buy an equivalent of median new US single family house, in EU - that 1% probably owns a similar or somewhat better house but simply because they bought or built it generations before.
    - sonzohan 2y ago
      Got a source for this? I'm only finding sources that vehemently disagree, and say the only countries worse for this are Portugal and Canada. Everywhere in the world is better.
      - anovikov 2y ago
        That's probably because what you are googling is a ratio of price of average house to average income... Which only means that American houses are much much bigger and thus more pricey, because Americans have many times more disposable income per family than just about any nation in the world. But if you compare the price of the SAME sized house to the average income, the situation is opposite. U.S. is the 3rd best after Oman and Saudi Arabia. It's just that Americans are not satisfied with houses even twice the size of what people in many rich countries are happy with. https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...
        jltsiren 2y ago
        American houses are large and unaffordable. The usual term for a situation like that is inefficiency. Price per square foot is not a very useful metric, because neither utility nor construction costs scale directly with the size of a house. A 3000 square foot house is not 2x as good as a 1500 square foot house, and it should not cost 2x as much to build. Roughly speaking, walls are expensive, while making the rooms larger is cheap. And bedrooms are cheap, while bathrooms are expensive.
      - anovikov 2y ago
        I'd love to see your source. It's curious how can one manipulate numbers so badly to arrive to this sort of result.
  - kbrkbr 2y ago
    > "healthcare deserts" Well, in Germany health care is affordable in terms of cost. However, while 20 years ago you just went to a doctor when you were sick, these days you will wait hours and hours even at your family physician's crowded waiting room. You need a specialist? 6 months if it's something serious like a cardiologist. If you're on private health insurance, alright, only 3 months. I don't know if this is specific to Germany, or similar in all of Europe. But that is a change many people notice that I speak with.
    - delichon 2y ago
      In the US before Obamacare I could make an appointment with a specialist on the same week. Now it takes more than six months. Three different specialties that I know of and the only three I tried. Apparently we're catching up with Europe.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        Americans are discovering that giving universal healthcare access to everyone means those who already had access, now have to wait longer to make room for everyone else. That's how it works.
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        No they aren't. Americans are finding out that when you abuse medical workers by calling them "essential workers" who have to continue working during a pandemic while hundreds of thousands of patients berate you for saying things like "you should get vaccinated" or "don't eat an anti-parasite medication for horses" and overwork them and pay them shit, they quit in droves. They are then finding out that for profit businesses have no interest in re-hiring all the workers they had before the pandemic, because they didn't lose as much business as they saved money in salary, so everyone is just running a skeleton crew that they overwork. Meanwhile the data I find for emergency room visits are that there's barely been any increase in percentage of the population that visited an emergency room since 1997. Companies are spending less on services and letting us just suffer because we don't have better options and YET AGAIN dumb Americans for some reason blame the government for completely independent companies making self serving choices?!
  - hackeraccount 2y ago
    Depends upon how much older you mean - at 65 in the U.S. you get Medicare which is not that bad.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US Much easier in Europe, go work in Switzerland or some high paying country then go retire in a low cost area with healthcare.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Could it be that moving to a place with high salaries means that job market is more competitive with higher bar to entry, with more stress, and CoL and housing is proportionally higher so once you factor in housing, healthcare, childcare expenses etc you realize that unless you scored some FANG job that pays orders of magnitude more than the local median, you're more or less at the same wealth point as in the lower CoL locations? Feels like the solution is to find the place when you can earn more than the median there and not just blindly move to the most expensive places in the world hoping that will make you rich.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Language barriers, mostly. USA doesn't have those, that is the biggest difference I'd say, language barriers is such a massive hindrance to movement even if you are legally allowed to. Even if the work language is English you still have to live with all the signs etc being in a language you don't understand, and learning a new language is a massive undertaking. However if you don't care about that then it is really simple. And lots of people are doing just that, people spending a few years working in a high wage place isn't uncommon at all.
      - kazen44 2y ago
        also the massive difference between cultures is a thing aswell. Not to mention people tend to not move asmuch in europe compared to the US, and people like to stay close to their community and families in my experience.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    I live in the Netherlands and the combination of low pay (compared to US), higher taxes, and housing expenses make this difficult.
WalterBright 2y ago
If you save & invest for retirement, you'll be fine.
- dymk 2y ago
  And have no major health issues/accidents, and be quite lucky, and start with a lot of money in the first place, and be born in the right place in the country.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    America was populated by millions of immigrants, nearly all of them poor with little more than a suitcase. Welfare and social programs did not make them successful. Opportunity did. Even Elon Musk arrived with just a suitcase. He stayed in hostels because of lack of money.
    - vixen99 2y ago
      You have a point! It's instructive to see what's happening in Britain right now where many people dare not take jobs or even join training schemes to improve their prospects - because they will lose their benefits. To quote from the Spectator: "A Channel 4 (TV) program Britain’s Benefits Scandal hears from some of those affected – people who are often missing from the debate. We have 3.2 million trapped in a system in which they are given a decent payout – some I spoke to said about £1,300 a month, some significantly more – but who want to get back to work." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sickness-benefit-trap/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sickness-benefit-tra...
      - vondur 2y ago
        The same thing can happen in the US- People may be able to get a job, but it will then prevent them from receiving any aid that may still be needed.
        sameoldtune 2y ago
EZ-E 2y ago
Terrible place to be poor more like. Being poor is not enviable in any country, but you're better supported in some countries compared to others. Obviously this comes at a cost for the economy as a whole. At some point you need to think about what kind of society you want to live in.
- kiba 2y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily make the assumption that welfare support "costs" the economy as a whole. It's really expensive to support homeless population since they use up critical important resources such as emergency care, compared to just giving them a home. They may recover faster and become a productive member of society again. For sure, it costs real dollars in a national budget, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing for the economy.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    If you give people free food, free housing, and free medical care, who needs to work?
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Nobody needs to work in USA either, but people do it anyway since the free stuff isn't comfortable enough. Its the same in Europe, people don't view the free stuff as good enough for them so they work to get more.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        The free stuff isn't high living, but it's enough for quite a few. The poverty rate stopped declining when LBJ's welfare state went into effect.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        >Nobody needs to work in USA either But then who's gonna be the delivery man who delivers your post/packages? Who's gonna be your teachers in school? Who's gonna be the baker making your food? Who's gonna be the builder and plumber building the shelter you live in? Who's gonna be the doctor healing you? If nobody needs to work.

The US is a great place to make a lot of money if you're lucky and successful, but a terrible place to retire.

CalRobert 2y ago

How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US

sameoldtune 2y ago
Healthcare is just a word until you get into your sixties, then it is a lifestyle
shiroiushi 2y ago
Housing and healthcare costs are insane. When you're older, you need a lot more healthcare (and you won't have that nice insurance plan you had at your big company job when you were working), and housing keeps getting more expensive, which is a problem if you're on a fixed income. You could move to much cheaper locales (i.e. rural areas), but those are "healthcare deserts" where there's no competent doctors left and hospitals are all closing left and right, plus when you're infirm how exactly do you drive yourself? Living in a walkable city (or any city really) is much more doable when you're older for these practical reasons (less need to drive, healthcare providers close by), but then you can't afford the housing there.
- anovikov 2y ago
  Housing in US is in fact one of the cheapest... everywhere, measured as price per square foot as percentage of income. Several times cheaper than in many countries and at least somewhat cheaper than almost every single one, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian. It's just that "normal" housing in the US is what's only attainable to the very rich and only because they inherited it, in most of Europe let's say: even 1% won't be able to buy an equivalent of median new US single family house, in EU - that 1% probably owns a similar or somewhat better house but simply because they bought or built it generations before.
  - sonzohan 2y ago
    Got a source for this? I'm only finding sources that vehemently disagree, and say the only countries worse for this are Portugal and Canada. Everywhere in the world is better.
    - anovikov 2y ago
      That's probably because what you are googling is a ratio of price of average house to average income... Which only means that American houses are much much bigger and thus more pricey, because Americans have many times more disposable income per family than just about any nation in the world. But if you compare the price of the SAME sized house to the average income, the situation is opposite. U.S. is the 3rd best after Oman and Saudi Arabia. It's just that Americans are not satisfied with houses even twice the size of what people in many rich countries are happy with. https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...
      - jltsiren 2y ago
        American houses are large and unaffordable. The usual term for a situation like that is inefficiency. Price per square foot is not a very useful metric, because neither utility nor construction costs scale directly with the size of a house. A 3000 square foot house is not 2x as good as a 1500 square foot house, and it should not cost 2x as much to build. Roughly speaking, walls are expensive, while making the rooms larger is cheap. And bedrooms are cheap, while bathrooms are expensive.
    - anovikov 2y ago
      I'd love to see your source. It's curious how can one manipulate numbers so badly to arrive to this sort of result.
- kbrkbr 2y ago
  > "healthcare deserts" Well, in Germany health care is affordable in terms of cost. However, while 20 years ago you just went to a doctor when you were sick, these days you will wait hours and hours even at your family physician's crowded waiting room. You need a specialist? 6 months if it's something serious like a cardiologist. If you're on private health insurance, alright, only 3 months. I don't know if this is specific to Germany, or similar in all of Europe. But that is a change many people notice that I speak with.
  - delichon 2y ago
    In the US before Obamacare I could make an appointment with a specialist on the same week. Now it takes more than six months. Three different specialties that I know of and the only three I tried. Apparently we're catching up with Europe.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      Americans are discovering that giving universal healthcare access to everyone means those who already had access, now have to wait longer to make room for everyone else. That's how it works.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        No they aren't. Americans are finding out that when you abuse medical workers by calling them "essential workers" who have to continue working during a pandemic while hundreds of thousands of patients berate you for saying things like "you should get vaccinated" or "don't eat an anti-parasite medication for horses" and overwork them and pay them shit, they quit in droves. They are then finding out that for profit businesses have no interest in re-hiring all the workers they had before the pandemic, because they didn't lose as much business as they saved money in salary, so everyone is just running a skeleton crew that they overwork. Meanwhile the data I find for emergency room visits are that there's barely been any increase in percentage of the population that visited an emergency room since 1997. Companies are spending less on services and letting us just suffer because we don't have better options and YET AGAIN dumb Americans for some reason blame the government for completely independent companies making self serving choices?!
- hackeraccount 2y ago
  Depends upon how much older you mean - at 65 in the U.S. you get Medicare which is not that bad.
Jensson 2y ago
> How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US Much easier in Europe, go work in Switzerland or some high paying country then go retire in a low cost area with healthcare.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Could it be that moving to a place with high salaries means that job market is more competitive with higher bar to entry, with more stress, and CoL and housing is proportionally higher so once you factor in housing, healthcare, childcare expenses etc you realize that unless you scored some FANG job that pays orders of magnitude more than the local median, you're more or less at the same wealth point as in the lower CoL locations? Feels like the solution is to find the place when you can earn more than the median there and not just blindly move to the most expensive places in the world hoping that will make you rich.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Language barriers, mostly. USA doesn't have those, that is the biggest difference I'd say, language barriers is such a massive hindrance to movement even if you are legally allowed to. Even if the work language is English you still have to live with all the signs etc being in a language you don't understand, and learning a new language is a massive undertaking. However if you don't care about that then it is really simple. And lots of people are doing just that, people spending a few years working in a high wage place isn't uncommon at all.
    - kazen44 2y ago
      also the massive difference between cultures is a thing aswell. Not to mention people tend to not move asmuch in europe compared to the US, and people like to stay close to their community and families in my experience.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I live in the Netherlands and the combination of low pay (compared to US), higher taxes, and housing expenses make this difficult.

WalterBright 2y ago

If you save & invest for retirement, you'll be fine.

dymk 2y ago
And have no major health issues/accidents, and be quite lucky, and start with a lot of money in the first place, and be born in the right place in the country.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  America was populated by millions of immigrants, nearly all of them poor with little more than a suitcase. Welfare and social programs did not make them successful. Opportunity did. Even Elon Musk arrived with just a suitcase. He stayed in hostels because of lack of money.
  - vixen99 2y ago
    You have a point! It's instructive to see what's happening in Britain right now where many people dare not take jobs or even join training schemes to improve their prospects - because they will lose their benefits. To quote from the Spectator: "A Channel 4 (TV) program Britain’s Benefits Scandal hears from some of those affected – people who are often missing from the debate. We have 3.2 million trapped in a system in which they are given a decent payout – some I spoke to said about £1,300 a month, some significantly more – but who want to get back to work." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sickness-benefit-trap/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sickness-benefit-tra...
    - vondur 2y ago
      The same thing can happen in the US- People may be able to get a job, but it will then prevent them from receiving any aid that may still be needed.
      - sameoldtune 2y ago

EZ-E 2y ago

Terrible place to be poor more like. Being poor is not enviable in any country, but you're better supported in some countries compared to others. Obviously this comes at a cost for the economy as a whole. At some point you need to think about what kind of society you want to live in.

kiba 2y ago
I wouldn't necessarily make the assumption that welfare support "costs" the economy as a whole. It's really expensive to support homeless population since they use up critical important resources such as emergency care, compared to just giving them a home. They may recover faster and become a productive member of society again. For sure, it costs real dollars in a national budget, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing for the economy.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  If you give people free food, free housing, and free medical care, who needs to work?
  - Jensson 2y ago
    Nobody needs to work in USA either, but people do it anyway since the free stuff isn't comfortable enough. Its the same in Europe, people don't view the free stuff as good enough for them so they work to get more.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      The free stuff isn't high living, but it's enough for quite a few. The poverty rate stopped declining when LBJ's welfare state went into effect.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >Nobody needs to work in USA either But then who's gonna be the delivery man who delivers your post/packages? Who's gonna be your teachers in school? Who's gonna be the baker making your food? Who's gonna be the builder and plumber building the shelter you live in? Who's gonna be the doctor healing you? If nobody needs to work.