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I'm fortunate enough to be in one of the top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make

I'm fortunate enough to be in one of the top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it. Like Atwood, I did not come from a well-off family; parents divorced in my early teens and father passed away in my late teens from cancer (smoking and alcoholism) and in many ways lucked into a very good career after attending a state university. My spouse's father -- a janitor in a public school -- and mother -- a crossing guard -- passed when she was in her 20's as well. There weren't any large fortunes passed down. Some friends recently purchased a house in my township and I visited to drop off my kid for a play date. I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. It boggles the mind to consider when/how my kids will be able to have their slice of the American Dream. There are clearly some fundamental things that have to be fixed in the US at a policy level, but there's seemingly no political will to fix them; everyone seems out for themselves and to enrich their own coffers. This is handicapping social mobility through the hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). This is the sentiment that I feel Atwood is also feeling. As a high earning software engineer (IC), I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me either because of AI or because of age (early 40's now so I figure maybe 10 years of high earning as an IC?).

epistasis 2y ago
Look to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When the powerful political class (homeowners) has all their wealth tied up in their homes, they see little wrong with such broken basic arrangements, because it doesn't hurt them and they see their number going up for wealth. Canada and Australia have similarly destructive housing policies and outcomes. And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.
- chairmansteve 2y ago
  Yes. Trump is looking like Brexit on steroids to me.
- frereubu 2y ago
  Are you accounting for things like free healthcare when comparing wages? (I wish I did't have to say this, but it's a genuine question, not snark). I always wonder when people compare other countries to the US. Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.
  - wbl 2y ago
    My US job comes with NHS level never seeing a bill. This is really easy to do in CA.
    - don_neufeld 2y ago
      Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. A health plan like that costs your company 25K/yr on the backend. They pay that as part of your compensation, you just don’t see it. Even the most basic HDHP Bronze Kaiser plan currently costs over 1K/mo, and that increases about 10% per year. If you’ve ever had a coworker (or yourself) decline COBRA coverage because it was “so expensive”, you need to understand that the price under COBRA was the price the whole time, you just didn’t see it.
      - nsxwolf 2y ago
        $25k doesn't sound like a lot. Doesn't sound like it accounts for the difference in salary.
        don_neufeld 2y ago
        I’m not sure what your point is? 25K/yr IS a LOT. Per the US Census, the median income in the US is a bit over 37,500, so it’s literally an entire paycheck. Remember - the NHS is available to everyone, not just the rich. Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...
scarface_74 2y ago
There are millions of people in the US that are making a lot less than you do who manage to buy houses, go on vacations, save for retirement and put their kids through college. I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc. I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane. Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested. We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K. Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging. I have no other income besides my job. I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.
- ebiester 2y ago
  Yes, but how is that 15 year old going to do the same? What about the ones who don't end up winning the career lottery? We need this to be possible for two people making 40k a year, not 140.
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unhappyineurope 2y ago
If you think software engineering salaries are low in the USA, try working in Europe. A 'good' salary can be 30K or even lower after tax per year, and electricity costs twice as much as in the USA. In some places, even bottle scavengers earn more than software engineers in Europe.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Yes, but my sense is that in Europe, you can "survive" easier than in the US. There are several key differences. In the US, everything is spread out so you absolutely need to own a car in many low cost of living (COL) places; there's no option for transportation. In the US, healthcare can absolutely destroy you and you cannot get quality healthcare at a decent rate without a job that provides it as a benefit. Access to transportation networks is also poor compared to Europe and Asia where trains are abundant, fast, cheap, and accessible by wide networks of public transport. The way the US has been built out is not amenable to that in low COL areas. So I acknowledge that there are lots of problems world wide in different countries and wages are lower and taxes are higher in general in the EU, but there are more social safety nets compared to the US. The baseline "cost of existing" in the US is simply higher.
- eloisant 2y ago
  Europe is a big continent with very different countries. Whether you're talking about UK, Norway, France, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, etc. that's a completely different story for each.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Europe covers everywhere from Switzerland with US-level salaries to Moldova. Be specific.
w0m 2y ago
you are me; down parents issues with smoking/etc and current career/age. > I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me My plan is simple: Retire. Avoid that 1m house when possible. > I have no idea how my kids are going to make it Same boat here, but I'm less concerned insofaras I'm doing everything I can to keep as many options/opportunities open to my kids as possible. This honestly significantly dampens the 'retire' plan; but what can you do? My parents would have no idea what I do if I tried to explain it; I expect the world to shift similarly by the time my kids are working. The goal is simply to give every advantage I can and keep as many doors open as possible.
heresie-dabord 2y ago
> I have no idea how my kids are going to make it. Brother, I feel the same way. The education system is broken, public discourse has degraded to illiterate thuggery and madness, and today's children and young adults are facing crushing economic rent-taking.
samiv 2y ago
Regarding housing the problems are the same everywhere where the same "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea. We can all get wealthy by buying houses from each other with ever increasing prices. In reality the only winners in this game are a) banks b) early buyers who can cash out, liquidate and move somewhere cheaper. In my country of origin housing is now so expensive that it takes 2 median income lifetimes to pay for it. Of course you can find cheaper housing in rural countryside or in some deadbeat towns but then there's basically no work either, so at minimum you need a car to commute. For someone making a below median income operating a vehicle is easily -300€ / mo cost. And the funny thing the country is 93% forest. Unzoned land is plentiful and costs nothing but after zoning the price goes up to 20k € per each m². The townships and counties have a monopoly on zoning and use that to milk the constituents for money. Of course that money is all away from other spending so local communities and small time businesses (such as restaurants, hair dressers etc) are all taking a hit since (with the recent greedflation) people simply have no more purchasing power left over. In my current country Germany, here in Bayern the situation is exactly the same. In Munich a small unit in is at minimum 1-1.5m € and it'll be bare bones. The cost is insane. At the same time there's a shortage of all kinds of laborers. How does a "bus driver" afford to live here. Well, they don't. The whole economic system is biased against younger generations and while the older generations live longer they accumulate all the wealth. They are a large representative of the population (due to the upside down age pyramid) and active voters so they of course vote for politicians who will not topple this order. In the past all empires have fallen when the middle class has fallen. When there's a critical mass of people with nothing to lose and who feel like the system has failed them the heads will roll and revolutions will begin.
- shuckles 2y ago
  > "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea. Lending money for housing is not insane. Houses are durable goods where most of the cost needs to be paid up front. The builder of the house is paying for a structure that will house people for 50+ years. This duration mismatch is exactly what lending is supposed to help with. Lending is not the problem. People were complaining it was when interest rates were at 0%. Now they are at 7%, but housing prices are still high. Lack of supply is the problem.
sureglymop 2y ago
As a non American, I've always struggled to understand the "American Dream". It is about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and going from poor to wealthy by using the opportunities that the US provides. Is that a correct assessment? The problem I have with that is that it doesn't in any way include bringing your community up with you or letting your wealth be reinvested back into the environment in which you were poor. It solves the issue only for that single person without addressing why the issue existed in the first place. It seems to be inherently "selfish", no?
- egypturnash 2y ago
  Pretty much yes!
- Aqua_Geek 2y ago
  America has a long history of promoting “rugged individualism.” Community is hardly ever part of the conversation, unfortunately.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    It's getting worse as time goes on, too. Things like Cooperation, "Common Good" and Community are not merely ignored. More and more they're being actively opposed. Individualism is no longer: "I don't need community and society." It's become: "I don't need community and society, and you shouldn't have it either!" Rugged Individualism has become Toxic Individualism.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Just fifty years ago you could buy a home by swinging a hammer for a few years. No degree needed. So it was a thing. When you made it you would pay taxes, giving back to others. Not selfish.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    That's still possible (and in some cases, plumber/carpenter/contractor is perhaps the best option still available). What we're seeing is at least partially the result of everyone going to college for something like a few decades. Deciding to be apprentice to a plumber at 17 is much different than having to do the same at 21/23 because the degree you went into debt for isn't panning out the way you wanted. You're 4+ years behind, you're some amount of debt in the hole, and you're having to work hard. (Average student loan debt is something like $37k, which isn't the cost of a house, but is certainly close to a down payment.)
crowcroft 2y ago
Housing is a massive bomb because for so many people is is the singular investment that their net worth and retirement is held in. This idea has been so deeply entrenched for so long that a reversal will wipe out millions of people's net worth. At some point the bomb will go off, but there's no incentive to look at the long term of 10+ years out when the explosion will destroy people's political careers in the short term.
- bombcar 2y ago
  I know so many people 20 years ago who "I'll sell my CA house and retire elsewhere" was a majority of their plan. As of now, I can only count a very few who actually did it, turns out it's hard to leave where you've lived your entire working life to move somewhere you've never been, and the price differential isn't as amazing as it once was (since Covid flattened that out somewhat). The ones who did end up doing it ended up following their children (who were priced out of where they grew up). Normally you'd expect measured, predictable, steady inflation to be the method to "defuse the bomb" but so far that hasn't been really tried (if houses keep going up 1-2% a year, but inflation is 5%, you have a 3% drop in value each year even though on paper, you have an increase).
  - crowcroft 2y ago
    20 years ago is when the bomb probably could have been diffused, but I think the recovery out of the GFC put it on the back burner and then it was too late. Housing should have been getting built like crazy in places like CA so that those people thinking of selling had a reason to sell. By not building houses property values keep booming, and even if you plan to sell and move somewhere it's easy to endlessly delay that decision when you're getting rich as hell.
  - koolba 2y ago
    CA housing cannot be fixed without across the board reassessment. Otherwise the winner with an old property paying 2% of their 1980s purchase price will never sell. The immediate tax hit for moving to a similar house would be financial insanity. And reassessing across the board is not going to happen either because it would price out grandma living on a fixed income.
monknomo 2y ago
I think the root of many problems is housing costs I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I don't know that I'd direct my kids towards the field; maybe this is just a temporary bumpy patch and it'll improve, but it is hard to say. One thing I think is that being 40-50 or so means that there is plenty of runway for a second career. Could retrain for something, nursing, cpa, lawyer, trades? Just have to have the savings for making that transition
- atomicfiredoll 2y ago
  My thoughts are similar, but I think the cost of commercial space is also driving costs up for everyone, so I classify it as "rent." I'd love to see data, but small businesses (at least in certain sectors) seem bare able to survive--opening and closing constantly. But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.
  - monknomo 2y ago
    Yes, I think we need to reform zoning and build like crazy. With everything costing a million dollars on the west coast, I don't see why there isn't a crane every block putting up a new building Other than NIMBYs, zoning and code
    - monknomo 2y ago
      I really think we could have a boom
  - michaelt 2y ago
    > Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? The council and the mayor of Exampletown are elected by the residents of Exampletown. The people who've been forced out of Exampletown by the high rents? And those who'd like to live there, but can't afford to? They don't get a vote.
douglee650 2y ago
Get them a Roth IRA. Put $7k in it each year as long as you can. Invest the Roth in an index fund, dividend fund, or straight up picks. Have them put into the fund as soon as they are able (summer jobs, etc) If you have enough, buy another property. Your kids can live in it or manage it later. Put stuff in trusts or be sure they can manage it effectively. The thing you most want (probably) is for them to be secure into their old age, long after you are gone. But they will start feeling secure by middle age, and you will all be happier.
- LargeWu 2y ago
  The idea that most people just have an extra $7k a year sitting around to put into a retirement account they won't be able to access for decades seems pretty out of touch. A lot of people are just getting by. Additionally, if you live in a high CoL area, you might be prevented from contributing to a Roth even though most of your income goes to living expenses.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    Some of the advice thrown around in this thread is so out of touch. "Just get a high paying job". "I never worry about healthcare because of my employer". "Just put $7,000 away into a retirement account and $10,000 into a 529 every year. What's the problem?" And even if I'm in a position to do that, the problem is that there are millions of fellow Americans (the majority) that don't have these "luxuries".
    - ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
      Your on hackernews, maybe you confused this place with Reddit? This site's guidelines include "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. " Generally speaking, that points to software devs, which points to a high paying job. So when op said they don't know how their kids will save money, most commenters are replying with the assumption they're talking to a software dev. Also please by all means toss out your own solutions.
ArlenBales 2y ago
Considering your upbringing, you're making some confusing statements. Somebody who was brought up low income but is now wealthy ("one of the top percentiles of household income") should know better. It's called living frugally. It sounds like you're fearful of losing your luxurious lifestyle if your income changes. Most Americans are fearful of affording clothing, food and shelter if their income changes.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  You're reading it all wrong. Like Atwood, I understand my good fortune in life and I am ever grateful and humbled that I have achieved what I have starting from a 1 bedroom apartment where my entire family slept in one room. Like Atwood, I want an America where the path of upward mobility and opportunity is available to all and not so blatantly biased towards the privileged and those that are already well-off. I'm not concerned so much for myself, but for the two lives I've brought into this world and for the lives of the millions of Americans and immigrants that did not have my good fortune (and I'd say much of my own current status is a result of luck and opportune moments in life). Like Atwood, I worry that we no longer have the will to create and pass legislation that benefits the masses at the expense of the few because those few now control so much of the channels over which our discourse flows (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fox News, et al). Atwood's solution and approach is to use his accumulated fortune to donate to organizations that seek to help other fellow Americans. Ostensibly, that's what good policy and taxation should solve instead.
aswanson 2y ago
Wages have been flat against productivity gains since the early 1970s in the US. The only way to make it here is to invest heavily over a long time horizon.
com2kid 2y ago
Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning. One of the small cities close to Seattle (Shoreline) just announced radical changes to their zoning laws! Change can happen. Right now Seattle is going through loud public debates over this, with NIMBYs going to meetings and shouting crazy accusations about what building more houses will do (recently: building dense housing will cause vitamin D deficiency...). Go spend an hour a month shouting back at them, it makes a real difference!
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  > Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning. I think the takeaway from the last few election cycles is that this really isn't effective anymore now that the channels of information and communication are controlled by a small handful of corporations who's objective is to simply make more money. But even besides that, I feel that defeats the spirit of the American Dream. What good is making just my community better when the kids one town over are falling behind because they don't have the property tax base to fund better programs and wealthy parents that can pay for better early childcare, private tutoring, and more resources? I already live in a fairly well-off enclave; my concern is for the rest of my fellow Americans who are not so fortunate -- the same concern as Atwood; we've "made it", but we want a society that leaves behind stepping stones for others to make their way up. So I am compliant when it comes to paying taxes and do not shun paying my fair share because in my view, taxes and government -- you know, of the people, by the people, for the people -- are supposed to be used to make all of America better and not just better for some Americans. But we've seen decades of policy bifurcating on this point. You may point out that spending on social programs have increased. Yes, but so has rent-taking on that spend and siphoning and accumulation of those funds in a few coffers.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    > information and communication are controlled by a small handful of corporations who's objective is to simply make more money. Local elections are where that small handful of corporations have zero impact. Even the real estate investment trusts and private equity don't bother with local elections, because its hopeless. Local elections are entirely determined by small networks of highly connected individuals, which is almost always homeowners looking to protect their biggest asset, their home value. And that's why local politics has resulted in a housing shortage, because the big bad villain isn't a man in a tophat with a gold watch in a corporate office, it's the next door neighbor that really hates the idea of seeing an apartment building when they drive to work each morning, and especially hates the idea of mere renters living nearby and thinks that they'll bring crime and reduce his property value.
stronglikedan 2y ago
> I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. Thankfull, Trump's new EO regarding housing has it covered. The cavalry has arrived.
adverbly 2y ago
Land value tax! The more I sit with it's long-term policy implications, the more I think it would solve the lack of productivity, progress, and prosperity with modern society. It also has supporters from across the political spectrum because it represents a tax shift rather than a tax increase(even Nobel prize winning economists Milton Friedman(libertarian) and Paul Krugman(modern keynesian) are both fans - and they're pretty far apart when it comes to most policies!) Short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smi_iIoKybg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smi_iIoKybg Long version: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-a...
sirlone 2y ago
This is the problem, we don't agree on the solution. You said > e hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). Except the USA spends more on education than most other countries. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... That would argue the issue is not about spending, at least for education, it's something else (not sure what) I agree though on the general idea that something has to change. Housing in unaffordable.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  I said "hostile policies", not "lack of spending"; you jumped to your own partisan conclusion. Policy and spend have to align to make progress. Spend alone is useless as is policy without spend.
eddieroger 2y ago
> there's seemingly no political will to fix them It's not no will, it's no incentive, and usually incentivized to not fix them. The same people keep getting voted in. What other message should they hear than their constituents are happy with the job they're doing? Over half of the American people just voted for someone who lied to our faces and promised they'd make things better when they posses a track record that proved otherwise the last time (and also now a felony record, but I digress). If I decided my career was going to be politics, and I kept getting elected, why on Earth would I ever change what was working?
losvedir 2y ago
> top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it It might not be too late to change this. I also lucked into being in the right place at the right time (interested in computers and programming when graduating in the 2000s). But from the start my goal has been to take advantage of this extraordinary luck and become independently wealthy. My wife (who's not in tech but has a solid $80k - $100k job) and I have lived very cheaply saving more than half of our takehome pay for more than a decade now, investing it in simple index funds. I, too, don't know what the future will hold for my kids or my career, but I'm relatively confident I've got 10 more high-earning years in me. And my spreadsheet tells me that will be enough to generate generational wealth such that my kids won't have to work if they don't want to. This obviously isn't a solution for everyone, and I realize much of your post is about US policy. But I just wanted to point out the potential blindspot that you may have from your upbringing where "independently wealthy" people are those people over there, and not me. But with a high income and the magic of compound growth, it's not so unattainable.
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KetoManx64 2y ago
Buy Bitcoin if you value your children's financial future
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  or not, because it's a massive gamble
  - mfkp 2y ago
    Not that I'm saying Bitcoin is a solid long term investment, but you could say the same about the stock market.
    - micromacrofoot 2y ago
      the stock market is a lot more predictable than bitcoin, even accounting for recessions
  - KetoManx64 2y ago
    Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for the last decade. The gamble you're making is losing out on is attaining intergenerational wealth.
tonyhart7 2y ago
Your kids must found a company etc, day to day job isn't going to keep up with basic necessities like housing,healthcare,lifestyle etc luckily we have more diverse job in the future
gunian 2y ago
no need to stress once the purge is over things will go back to normal just gotta do everything to not be a sub human like me :)

epistasis 2y ago

Look to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When the powerful political class (homeowners) has all their wealth tied up in their homes, they see little wrong with such broken basic arrangements, because it doesn't hurt them and they see their number going up for wealth. Canada and Australia have similarly destructive housing policies and outcomes. And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.

chairmansteve 2y ago
Yes. Trump is looking like Brexit on steroids to me.
frereubu 2y ago
Are you accounting for things like free healthcare when comparing wages? (I wish I did't have to say this, but it's a genuine question, not snark). I always wonder when people compare other countries to the US. Edit: I agree that Brexit was the most incredible piece of self-harm that I've seen a country do to itself. I certainly don't have rose-tinted spectacles about the state of the UK.
- wbl 2y ago
  My US job comes with NHS level never seeing a bill. This is really easy to do in CA.
  - don_neufeld 2y ago
    Saying “fuck you, I’m rich” is not a good look. A health plan like that costs your company 25K/yr on the backend. They pay that as part of your compensation, you just don’t see it. Even the most basic HDHP Bronze Kaiser plan currently costs over 1K/mo, and that increases about 10% per year. If you’ve ever had a coworker (or yourself) decline COBRA coverage because it was “so expensive”, you need to understand that the price under COBRA was the price the whole time, you just didn’t see it.
    - nsxwolf 2y ago
      $25k doesn't sound like a lot. Doesn't sound like it accounts for the difference in salary.
      - don_neufeld 2y ago
        I’m not sure what your point is? 25K/yr IS a LOT. Per the US Census, the median income in the US is a bit over 37,500, so it’s literally an entire paycheck. Remember - the NHS is available to everyone, not just the rich. Source: https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...

scarface_74 2y ago

There are millions of people in the US that are making a lot less than you do who manage to buy houses, go on vacations, save for retirement and put their kids through college. I’m 50 now, we purposefully “de-contented” our lives two years ago after our youngest graduated in 2020 and after Covid so we wouldn’t have to be in the rat race. I never made a lot as your standard enterprise dev and didn’t hit $200K+ until I was 46 and started working at BigTech remotely and we used the three years I was there to pay off debt, put some money in savings, etc. I’ve turned down opportunities that would pay me close to $100k more in cash because I didn’t want the headache and definitely wasn’t going to ever be in an office. If you need me to be physically somewhere for a week, put me on a plane. Even in 2020, I said no to interviewing as an SDE at Amazon because I didn’t want to relocate to Seattle after Covid lifted and I was only making $150K then. The remote position at AWS ProServe was then suggested. We had the big house in the burbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 built when I was only making $140K. True, when we sold it last year it was double the price. But we would have had to move further out if we were buying house in 2023. It would have been doable Either way, we moved to a condo in Florida that is state tax free, we downsized to one car and now if I had to, I could pay all of our bills including our spending money with just my income and all I would need to make is $140K. Making around $200k, I max out my retirement + catch up contributions + HSA and we have been on a plane to do something (mostly vacations, occasionally visiting friends) over a dozen times a year since mid 2022 and that trend is continuing for the foreseeable future For those who don’t know, a new grad going into any of the BigTech companies can make around $165K straight out of college and should be making way more than me in three years. I’m not bragging. I have no other income besides my job. I have no worries about “AI”, I moved into consulting working full time for consulting companies in 2020 (well then the consulting department at AWS). I just have to be able to sell and/or guide implementations of whatever the shovel du jour is. Right now I’m leading a Kubernetes + AI implementation.

ebiester 2y ago
Yes, but how is that 15 year old going to do the same? What about the ones who don't end up winning the career lottery? We need this to be possible for two people making 40k a year, not 140.

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unhappyineurope 2y ago

If you think software engineering salaries are low in the USA, try working in Europe. A 'good' salary can be 30K or even lower after tax per year, and electricity costs twice as much as in the USA. In some places, even bottle scavengers earn more than software engineers in Europe.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
Yes, but my sense is that in Europe, you can "survive" easier than in the US. There are several key differences. In the US, everything is spread out so you absolutely need to own a car in many low cost of living (COL) places; there's no option for transportation. In the US, healthcare can absolutely destroy you and you cannot get quality healthcare at a decent rate without a job that provides it as a benefit. Access to transportation networks is also poor compared to Europe and Asia where trains are abundant, fast, cheap, and accessible by wide networks of public transport. The way the US has been built out is not amenable to that in low COL areas. So I acknowledge that there are lots of problems world wide in different countries and wages are lower and taxes are higher in general in the EU, but there are more social safety nets compared to the US. The baseline "cost of existing" in the US is simply higher.
eloisant 2y ago
Europe is a big continent with very different countries. Whether you're talking about UK, Norway, France, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, etc. that's a completely different story for each.
dukeyukey 2y ago
Europe covers everywhere from Switzerland with US-level salaries to Moldova. Be specific.

w0m 2y ago

you are me; down parents issues with smoking/etc and current career/age. > I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me My plan is simple: Retire. Avoid that 1m house when possible. > I have no idea how my kids are going to make it Same boat here, but I'm less concerned insofaras I'm doing everything I can to keep as many options/opportunities open to my kids as possible. This honestly significantly dampens the 'retire' plan; but what can you do? My parents would have no idea what I do if I tried to explain it; I expect the world to shift similarly by the time my kids are working. The goal is simply to give every advantage I can and keep as many doors open as possible.

heresie-dabord 2y ago

> I have no idea how my kids are going to make it. Brother, I feel the same way. The education system is broken, public discourse has degraded to illiterate thuggery and madness, and today's children and young adults are facing crushing economic rent-taking.

samiv 2y ago

Regarding housing the problems are the same everywhere where the same "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea. We can all get wealthy by buying houses from each other with ever increasing prices. In reality the only winners in this game are a) banks b) early buyers who can cash out, liquidate and move somewhere cheaper. In my country of origin housing is now so expensive that it takes 2 median income lifetimes to pay for it. Of course you can find cheaper housing in rural countryside or in some deadbeat towns but then there's basically no work either, so at minimum you need a car to commute. For someone making a below median income operating a vehicle is easily -300€ / mo cost. And the funny thing the country is 93% forest. Unzoned land is plentiful and costs nothing but after zoning the price goes up to 20k € per each m². The townships and counties have a monopoly on zoning and use that to milk the constituents for money. Of course that money is all away from other spending so local communities and small time businesses (such as restaurants, hair dressers etc) are all taking a hit since (with the recent greedflation) people simply have no more purchasing power left over. In my current country Germany, here in Bayern the situation is exactly the same. In Munich a small unit in is at minimum 1-1.5m € and it'll be bare bones. The cost is insane. At the same time there's a shortage of all kinds of laborers. How does a "bus driver" afford to live here. Well, they don't. The whole economic system is biased against younger generations and while the older generations live longer they accumulate all the wealth. They are a large representative of the population (due to the upside down age pyramid) and active voters so they of course vote for politicians who will not topple this order. In the past all empires have fallen when the middle class has fallen. When there's a critical mass of people with nothing to lose and who feel like the system has failed them the heads will roll and revolutions will begin.

shuckles 2y ago
> "housing is an investment" policies have been propped up by lending. What an insane idea. Lending money for housing is not insane. Houses are durable goods where most of the cost needs to be paid up front. The builder of the house is paying for a structure that will house people for 50+ years. This duration mismatch is exactly what lending is supposed to help with. Lending is not the problem. People were complaining it was when interest rates were at 0%. Now they are at 7%, but housing prices are still high. Lack of supply is the problem.

sureglymop 2y ago

As a non American, I've always struggled to understand the "American Dream". It is about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and going from poor to wealthy by using the opportunities that the US provides. Is that a correct assessment? The problem I have with that is that it doesn't in any way include bringing your community up with you or letting your wealth be reinvested back into the environment in which you were poor. It solves the issue only for that single person without addressing why the issue existed in the first place. It seems to be inherently "selfish", no?

egypturnash 2y ago
Pretty much yes!
Aqua_Geek 2y ago
America has a long history of promoting “rugged individualism.” Community is hardly ever part of the conversation, unfortunately.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  It's getting worse as time goes on, too. Things like Cooperation, "Common Good" and Community are not merely ignored. More and more they're being actively opposed. Individualism is no longer: "I don't need community and society." It's become: "I don't need community and society, and you shouldn't have it either!" Rugged Individualism has become Toxic Individualism.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Just fifty years ago you could buy a home by swinging a hammer for a few years. No degree needed. So it was a thing. When you made it you would pay taxes, giving back to others. Not selfish.
- bombcar 2y ago
  That's still possible (and in some cases, plumber/carpenter/contractor is perhaps the best option still available). What we're seeing is at least partially the result of everyone going to college for something like a few decades. Deciding to be apprentice to a plumber at 17 is much different than having to do the same at 21/23 because the degree you went into debt for isn't panning out the way you wanted. You're 4+ years behind, you're some amount of debt in the hole, and you're having to work hard. (Average student loan debt is something like $37k, which isn't the cost of a house, but is certainly close to a down payment.)

crowcroft 2y ago

Housing is a massive bomb because for so many people is is the singular investment that their net worth and retirement is held in. This idea has been so deeply entrenched for so long that a reversal will wipe out millions of people's net worth. At some point the bomb will go off, but there's no incentive to look at the long term of 10+ years out when the explosion will destroy people's political careers in the short term.

bombcar 2y ago
I know so many people 20 years ago who "I'll sell my CA house and retire elsewhere" was a majority of their plan. As of now, I can only count a very few who actually did it, turns out it's hard to leave where you've lived your entire working life to move somewhere you've never been, and the price differential isn't as amazing as it once was (since Covid flattened that out somewhat). The ones who did end up doing it ended up following their children (who were priced out of where they grew up). Normally you'd expect measured, predictable, steady inflation to be the method to "defuse the bomb" but so far that hasn't been really tried (if houses keep going up 1-2% a year, but inflation is 5%, you have a 3% drop in value each year even though on paper, you have an increase).
- crowcroft 2y ago
  20 years ago is when the bomb probably could have been diffused, but I think the recovery out of the GFC put it on the back burner and then it was too late. Housing should have been getting built like crazy in places like CA so that those people thinking of selling had a reason to sell. By not building houses property values keep booming, and even if you plan to sell and move somewhere it's easy to endlessly delay that decision when you're getting rich as hell.
- koolba 2y ago
  CA housing cannot be fixed without across the board reassessment. Otherwise the winner with an old property paying 2% of their 1980s purchase price will never sell. The immediate tax hit for moving to a similar house would be financial insanity. And reassessing across the board is not going to happen either because it would price out grandma living on a fixed income.

monknomo 2y ago

I think the root of many problems is housing costs I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I don't know that I'd direct my kids towards the field; maybe this is just a temporary bumpy patch and it'll improve, but it is hard to say. One thing I think is that being 40-50 or so means that there is plenty of runway for a second career. Could retrain for something, nursing, cpa, lawyer, trades? Just have to have the savings for making that transition

atomicfiredoll 2y ago
My thoughts are similar, but I think the cost of commercial space is also driving costs up for everyone, so I classify it as "rent." I'd love to see data, but small businesses (at least in certain sectors) seem bare able to survive--opening and closing constantly. But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.
- monknomo 2y ago
  Yes, I think we need to reform zoning and build like crazy. With everything costing a million dollars on the west coast, I don't see why there isn't a crane every block putting up a new building Other than NIMBYs, zoning and code
  - monknomo 2y ago
    I really think we could have a boom
- michaelt 2y ago
  > Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? The council and the mayor of Exampletown are elected by the residents of Exampletown. The people who've been forced out of Exampletown by the high rents? And those who'd like to live there, but can't afford to? They don't get a vote.

douglee650 2y ago

Get them a Roth IRA. Put $7k in it each year as long as you can. Invest the Roth in an index fund, dividend fund, or straight up picks. Have them put into the fund as soon as they are able (summer jobs, etc) If you have enough, buy another property. Your kids can live in it or manage it later. Put stuff in trusts or be sure they can manage it effectively. The thing you most want (probably) is for them to be secure into their old age, long after you are gone. But they will start feeling secure by middle age, and you will all be happier.

LargeWu 2y ago
The idea that most people just have an extra $7k a year sitting around to put into a retirement account they won't be able to access for decades seems pretty out of touch. A lot of people are just getting by. Additionally, if you live in a high CoL area, you might be prevented from contributing to a Roth even though most of your income goes to living expenses.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Some of the advice thrown around in this thread is so out of touch. "Just get a high paying job". "I never worry about healthcare because of my employer". "Just put $7,000 away into a retirement account and $10,000 into a 529 every year. What's the problem?" And even if I'm in a position to do that, the problem is that there are millions of fellow Americans (the majority) that don't have these "luxuries".
  - ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
    Your on hackernews, maybe you confused this place with Reddit? This site's guidelines include "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. " Generally speaking, that points to software devs, which points to a high paying job. So when op said they don't know how their kids will save money, most commenters are replying with the assumption they're talking to a software dev. Also please by all means toss out your own solutions.

ArlenBales 2y ago

Considering your upbringing, you're making some confusing statements. Somebody who was brought up low income but is now wealthy ("one of the top percentiles of household income") should know better. It's called living frugally. It sounds like you're fearful of losing your luxurious lifestyle if your income changes. Most Americans are fearful of affording clothing, food and shelter if their income changes.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
You're reading it all wrong. Like Atwood, I understand my good fortune in life and I am ever grateful and humbled that I have achieved what I have starting from a 1 bedroom apartment where my entire family slept in one room. Like Atwood, I want an America where the path of upward mobility and opportunity is available to all and not so blatantly biased towards the privileged and those that are already well-off. I'm not concerned so much for myself, but for the two lives I've brought into this world and for the lives of the millions of Americans and immigrants that did not have my good fortune (and I'd say much of my own current status is a result of luck and opportune moments in life). Like Atwood, I worry that we no longer have the will to create and pass legislation that benefits the masses at the expense of the few because those few now control so much of the channels over which our discourse flows (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Fox News, et al). Atwood's solution and approach is to use his accumulated fortune to donate to organizations that seek to help other fellow Americans. Ostensibly, that's what good policy and taxation should solve instead.

aswanson 2y ago

Wages have been flat against productivity gains since the early 1970s in the US. The only way to make it here is to invest heavily over a long time horizon.

com2kid 2y ago

Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning. One of the small cities close to Seattle (Shoreline) just announced radical changes to their zoning laws! Change can happen. Right now Seattle is going through loud public debates over this, with NIMBYs going to meetings and shouting crazy accusations about what building more houses will do (recently: building dense housing will cause vitamin D deficiency...). Go spend an hour a month shouting back at them, it makes a real difference!

CharlieDigital 2y ago
> Get involved with local politics. Join community planning boards, go to city council meetings, and voice support for relaxing rules around zoning. I think the takeaway from the last few election cycles is that this really isn't effective anymore now that the channels of information and communication are controlled by a small handful of corporations who's objective is to simply make more money. But even besides that, I feel that defeats the spirit of the American Dream. What good is making just my community better when the kids one town over are falling behind because they don't have the property tax base to fund better programs and wealthy parents that can pay for better early childcare, private tutoring, and more resources? I already live in a fairly well-off enclave; my concern is for the rest of my fellow Americans who are not so fortunate -- the same concern as Atwood; we've "made it", but we want a society that leaves behind stepping stones for others to make their way up. So I am compliant when it comes to paying taxes and do not shun paying my fair share because in my view, taxes and government -- you know, of the people, by the people, for the people -- are supposed to be used to make all of America better and not just better for some Americans. But we've seen decades of policy bifurcating on this point. You may point out that spending on social programs have increased. Yes, but so has rent-taking on that spend and siphoning and accumulation of those funds in a few coffers.
- epistasis 2y ago
  > information and communication are controlled by a small handful of corporations who's objective is to simply make more money. Local elections are where that small handful of corporations have zero impact. Even the real estate investment trusts and private equity don't bother with local elections, because its hopeless. Local elections are entirely determined by small networks of highly connected individuals, which is almost always homeowners looking to protect their biggest asset, their home value. And that's why local politics has resulted in a housing shortage, because the big bad villain isn't a man in a tophat with a gold watch in a corporate office, it's the next door neighbor that really hates the idea of seeing an apartment building when they drive to work each morning, and especially hates the idea of mere renters living nearby and thinks that they'll bring crime and reduce his property value.

stronglikedan 2y ago

> I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. Thankfull, Trump's new EO regarding housing has it covered. The cavalry has arrived.

adverbly 2y ago

Land value tax! The more I sit with it's long-term policy implications, the more I think it would solve the lack of productivity, progress, and prosperity with modern society. It also has supporters from across the political spectrum because it represents a tax shift rather than a tax increase(even Nobel prize winning economists Milton Friedman(libertarian) and Paul Krugman(modern keynesian) are both fans - and they're pretty far apart when it comes to most policies!) Short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smi_iIoKybg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smi_iIoKybg Long version: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-progress-a...

sirlone 2y ago

This is the problem, we don't agree on the solution. You said > e hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). Except the USA spends more on education than most other countries. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... That would argue the issue is not about spending, at least for education, it's something else (not sure what) I agree though on the general idea that something has to change. Housing in unaffordable.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
I said "hostile policies", not "lack of spending"; you jumped to your own partisan conclusion. Policy and spend have to align to make progress. Spend alone is useless as is policy without spend.

eddieroger 2y ago

> there's seemingly no political will to fix them It's not no will, it's no incentive, and usually incentivized to not fix them. The same people keep getting voted in. What other message should they hear than their constituents are happy with the job they're doing? Over half of the American people just voted for someone who lied to our faces and promised they'd make things better when they posses a track record that proved otherwise the last time (and also now a felony record, but I digress). If I decided my career was going to be politics, and I kept getting elected, why on Earth would I ever change what was working?

losvedir 2y ago

> top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it It might not be too late to change this. I also lucked into being in the right place at the right time (interested in computers and programming when graduating in the 2000s). But from the start my goal has been to take advantage of this extraordinary luck and become independently wealthy. My wife (who's not in tech but has a solid $80k - $100k job) and I have lived very cheaply saving more than half of our takehome pay for more than a decade now, investing it in simple index funds. I, too, don't know what the future will hold for my kids or my career, but I'm relatively confident I've got 10 more high-earning years in me. And my spreadsheet tells me that will be enough to generate generational wealth such that my kids won't have to work if they don't want to. This obviously isn't a solution for everyone, and I realize much of your post is about US policy. But I just wanted to point out the potential blindspot that you may have from your upbringing where "independently wealthy" people are those people over there, and not me. But with a high income and the magic of compound growth, it's not so unattainable.

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KetoManx64 2y ago

Buy Bitcoin if you value your children's financial future

micromacrofoot 2y ago
or not, because it's a massive gamble
- mfkp 2y ago
  Not that I'm saying Bitcoin is a solid long term investment, but you could say the same about the stock market.
  - micromacrofoot 2y ago
    the stock market is a lot more predictable than bitcoin, even accounting for recessions
- KetoManx64 2y ago
  Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for the last decade. The gamble you're making is losing out on is attaining intergenerational wealth.

tonyhart7 2y ago

Your kids must found a company etc, day to day job isn't going to keep up with basic necessities like housing,healthcare,lifestyle etc luckily we have more diverse job in the future

gunian 2y ago

no need to stress once the purge is over things will go back to normal just gotta do everything to not be a sub human like me :)